When I was twenty-three, I had completed what might be called the four stages of an ordinary woman’s life: schooling, working, marrying, and bearing a child. My life was peaceful and serene. When my son was ten months old—I remember it was the day before the Mid-Autumn Festival—I bought a few packs of sandalwood incense and some fruit to take to my parents. My parents and their ancestors had been Buddhists. By my parents’ generation, however, all that remained in our home was a porcelain statue of Guanyin Bodhisattva. Their entire Buddhist practice consisted of placing some fruit before the statue and lighting a stick of incense on the first and fifteenth days of each lunar month. Apart from that, they simply ate vegetarian food most of the time. That was all. So, at that time, my understanding of Buddhism was limited to Buddhist statues, temples, monks, and vegetarian food.
Although my son was already more than ten months old, my health was poor because I had not taken proper care of myself during the month after giving birth. It was only a fifteen-minute walk from my home to my mother’s place, yet I walked with a heavy head and unsteady feet, as though I were walking on cotton. As I walked along, my foot suddenly landed on a tattered old book. Almost as if guided by some unseen force, I bent down and picked it up. The book had neither a front cover nor a back cover. I opened it at random, and four lines suddenly leapt out at me: “I came to this land in the beginning,transmitting the Dharma to rescue those lost in delusion; one flower blooms into five petals,and the fruit ripens itself.”
After reading these lines, I was suddenly shaken to the core. At that very moment, a thunderclap exploded in the clear sky. Startled, my hand trembled, and the book slipped from my grasp and fell to the ground.I stood there stunned for a moment, and then suddenly awakened.I looked up at the clear, bright sky, picked up the book again, and read those four lines over and over. I did not know what they meant, nor did I know where that thunderclap had come from. I racked my brain but could find no answer.Looking at the dirty, tattered book in my hand, I could not understand why I had picked it up in the first place. In haste, I threw it into a nearby trash heap.
Some time later, while visiting my younger brother, I happened to bring up the incident. Strangely, those four lines had been engraved in my mind, as though carved there with a knife. After hearing this, my younger brother thought for a moment and said, “This is a gāthā written by Patriarch Bodhidharma. I also don’t understand why you would have such a strong reaction to this gāthā. Perhaps your affinity with Buddhism runs very deep. I bought a few Buddhist books a few days ago. You can take them home and have a look.” With that, he brought out Master Nan Huai-Chin’s How to Cultivate and Realize the Dharma and The Diamond Sutra Explained. I had little interest in books of this kind, yet I decided to take them home and have a look through them. I finished them rather quickly, but much of what I read seemed both familiar and elusive, as if I understood them and yet did not.However, I read the Zen koans and Buddhist stories in the books with great attention and found myself deeply interested in them.
One day, after my child had fallen asleep, I was suddenly seized by a curiosity to try meditation. Following the instructions in the book, I sat down and began to meditate. Little did I know that this single sitting would mark the beginning of a profound change in my life. From that very moment, my purpose in life and the way I lived would never be the same again.