She squinted at me. "Do you still eat meat?"

"I'm a part-time vegetarian now," I said, avoiding her gaze.

"Ah, part-time!" Yi Kong exclaimed.

I blurted out, "Shifu, although my mouth is not completely vegetarian, my heart is."

Yi Kong smiled, then spoke jokingly. "Ah, that I don't know, but I'm sure you have a tongue rolled not in vegetable oil, but in pig fat."

I felt my ears on fire.

Sensing my embarra.s.sment, she picked up from her desk a round clay incense burner and changed the subject. "Let me show you my little treasures here. This one is a rare Ming piece from an antique store in Kyoto. See how the lid has several small holes? When you burn incense inside, the smoke coming out through them smells exceptionally good, since it is the essence extracted from all the fragrance inside.

"Besides, the meandering smoke is such a pleasure to look at, like cursive calligraphy forming in the air. If you meditate on its ever changing lines, you'll gain more insight into the transience and impermanence of life."

Yes, like Professor Fulton's death, and even the kitten's. Was the professor now contentedly stroking the kitten in Amida Buddha's Western Paradise?

Yi Kong went on. "You'll also feel calm just by looking at the graceful shape of the burner."

She handed me the container. "Feel the smooth and subtle cracks on the surface; it's very soothing."

True. It felt like her creamy skin, which I'd once touched after the fire. I felt embarra.s.sed, but my hands refused to leave its comfortable form.

Next Yi Kong showed me a small ceramic teapot made to resemble a Buddha's Hand citron, the shape and deep purple color of which reminded me of eggplant, a favorite dish in the monastery. Two rows of calligraphy on its round belly read:

FLOWERS CAN LISTEN AND UNDERSTAND,.

AND STONES CAN BE AMIABLE.

"Very nice-a stone can be likable. I love the idea," I murmured while peeking at my engagement ring. I'd meant to leave it at home before I left for the nunnery, but had completely forgotten to do so.

"Stones are indeed charming," Yi Kong said. "But not just the idea. I would also like to collect stones, you know, like those in a scholar's study. Besides being appreciated as objects of art, do you know that stones can also be served as food?"

"Oh, really? No, how?" I was still peeking at my stone.

"Ah, a modern girl who rarely enters the kitchen." Yi Kong eyed me disapprovingly. "It's quite sad, though, since the stone dish is only for the poor. In the past, poor people could rarely afford to eat meat, so sometimes when they wanted it so much or when they had a guest, they'd cook stones. There were different ways to prepare the dish: stir-fry with black bean sauce, quick fry with Chinese scallion, or fry and then stew with wine. Of course, you couldn't eat the stone. The idea was to pretend, so you'd flip your chopsticks into the dish and pick up the scallion, or the black bean, or mix the sauce with your rice. The whole thing aimed to boost your appet.i.te, so you'd end up finishing the big bowl of rice in a happy mood."

Amazed at her account, I thought for a while before I asked, "It's sad and not very Buddhist, is it? Pretend instead of facing the truth."

"But that's their truth, to be happy and eat one more bowl of rice. Besides, people in poverty usually don't think much about the truth one way or the other."

"It's sad then, the truth."

"If it's the truth, it's just a truth, nothing sad nor happy about it, just the plain truth." Caressing the teapot, Yi Kong remained silent for a while.

Was this meant for me?

"When we choose to accept or reject, we do not see the true nature of things."

This did seem meant for me. The great Zen teachers always knew what their disciples needed to hear. I'd once thought I saw the true nature of things; now I did not know what to accept or reject.

Yi Kong looked up at me for a fleeting moment and spoke again, this time staring at my hand. "Our temple welcomes any form of donation, including nice stones."

Involuntarily I moved my right hand to cover my ring.

"Well..." Not knowing how to respond otherwise, I laughed, though harder than I would have liked.

Yi Kong went on calmly: "All right, enough of stones and truth. Now let's look at musical instruments."

She turned to a wooden fish and a bronze bowl resting on two cushions identically embroidered with red, gold, and blue lotuses. Then, picking up a wooden mallet, she gently struck the bowl's belly with its cloth-padded head. It vibrated softly yet sonorously, reverberating in the cabinet, expanding into the room, then lingering for a while before departing into silence.

Pleased by my bemus.e.m.e.nt, Yi Kong eagerly showed me her other collections. She pulled open a drawer in her desk from which she took out a small wooden box. "Smell...this is a very precious kind of eaglewood incense, which you can only get in China, not in Hong Kong."

Yi Kong lowered her head to scoop the incense. I could clearly see the twelve scars on her scalp's bald surface.

So round and so bare.

A guarantee that no hair can grow again in these spots.

A proof of faith through the willingness to be marred.

A symbol of a path of no return.

What is it like-this path of no return? How much did it hurt when the burning incense scorched this flesh? What had she been thinking when her master did this to her? Did she hesitate even a tiny, tiny bit, upon leaving this mundane world? Now, when she scorched her disciples' scalps, what would she think about? I wanted to know all but didn't have the courage to ask. After all these years, Yi Kong still remained an enigma to me.

I felt a pull inside; I still wanted to learn all the mysteries along this esoteric route.

Now Yi Kong carefully put the incense into a small silk bag and handed it to me. "Take this and offer it to Buddha every day." Then changing into a joking tone, she asked, "By the way, are you still very busy with your writing and research? When are you coming to play with us? There's always lots of fun going on here."

As I would never learn the mysteries along the forbidden path of a nun, Yi Kong, similarly, would never taste the pleasure of a man's warming hand on her breast, his tender eyes eagerly finding their resting place in hers.

I hoped she didn't see the hot pink crawling up my cheeks. I'd thought she'd guessed already. How could I face disappointing her, telling her that instead of forsaking the world and striving for Buddhahood, I had fallen in love with a man, flirted dangerously with another one, and even...had s.e.x with a woman? I hesitated, inhaled the piquant incense, and said, also in a half-joking way to cover up my guilt and embarra.s.sment, "I know there's lots of fun going on here, but I...I..." I paused, then involuntarily blurted out, "Someone...is waiting for me." Was I so sure of marrying Michael?

At that moment, I felt like a school girl waiting for the princ.i.p.al to find out I had misbehaved.

Yi Kong picked up and fondled the incense burner in her hands, head lowered, not speaking. The only audible sound was the restive pounding of my heart against my ribs like the rattling of bars shaken by a prisoner.

I watched her intently, for the first time with guilt instead of pleasure.

Minutes pa.s.sed. Yi Kong still caressed the burner with her elegant fingers, appreciating it from different angles. She grasped the burner firmly, as if fearing it would slip from her hand. Although I couldn't see her expression, I knew well she would prevent things from breaking rather than have to pick up pieces later.

Finally she looked up, with a smile struggling on her face. "Too bad! I've always thought you have the most nicely shaped head, and what a shame to hide it under your three-thousand-threads-of-trouble."

She paused, then asked, "Is he the American doctor I saw in the Fragrant Spirit Temple during the fire?"

"Hmm...I think so." As at other times in the past, her acute power of observation impressed me. Back then, did it already show that I was in love?

She started to straighten things up on her desk and said, without looking at me, "Don't forget to tell him we are impoverished here because he takes you away from us."

She turned around to pull a thin book from the shelf and handed it to me. "A gift from our temple."

Two characters on the cover shimmered with embossed gold: Heart Sutra Heart Sutra.

I opened the slender volume and my eyes alighted on: Guan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Observing Ease, undertook a spiritual practice called prajna paramita prajna paramita. Realizing, from the practice, that the five elements are nothing but emptiness, she enabled all beings to transcend suffering. Form is not different from emptiness nor emptiness from form. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form....

After I thanked her and took leave, Yi Kong said, "It's getting late, Meng Ning. So I think you'd better take the shortcut through the bushes behind the Hall of Guan Yin."

"Thank you, Yi Kong Shifu." I bowed to her and gently closed the door behind me.

27.

The Golden Body After I'd left Yi Kong's office, I didn't go home directly, but headed into the stone garden. As I walked along the bamboo grove leading toward the entrance, I kept thinking about the phrase, "the five elements are nothing but emptiness." Although I'd read the Heart Sutra more times than I could remember, I still couldn't completely grasp the meaning of its first paragraph. If all the five elements-form, feelings, perceptions, tendencies, and consciousness are emptiness, then Yi Kong's compa.s.sion and achievements must also be empty, and so was the beauty of art, and the love between Michael and me. But then why, each time I thought of Michael-especially after my betrayals of him-did the tender aching of my heart feel so deep?

Although I didn't want to believe that all the five elements are nothing but emptiness, I felt happy to find the garden empty. Under the bluish white brilliance of the moon, the bodhi trees and bamboo groves were clearly visible. In the pond the stone bridge cast a dark shadow; the stone lanterns and rocks blended into one mysterious blur of cobalt blue. The frogs' croaking, the crickets' chirping, and the occasional flop of a fish's tail wove a contrapuntal heartbeat in the evening's sensuous silence.

I went to sit down on my favorite carp-viewing bench. The fishes' scales, in the shadowy world of water and lacy weeds, glinted in the silvery moonlight; they made me think of the endless birth and cessation of the wheel of karma.

After a while, I stood up from the bench and followed the frogs' croakings to the separate lotus pond. The large, wavy-frilled lotus leaves trembling in the air reminded me of flamenco dancers' whirling dresses. I counted the dewdrops gleaming in the moonlight on the lotus pads until I felt my own tears. Were there other mysterious universes embedded in these glimmering beads? Could I just walk in and leave my confusion behind? Then one fat, wide-eyed frog, who I'd thought to be a stone ornament, suddenly rolled his eyes at me and croaked loudly, as if he were a sage who'd been waiting for ages for a fool like me to air his wisdom to. I reached out my hand to touch him, but he'd already jumped into the water with a splash-dismissing my sentimentality.

I looked up at the sky and came face-to-face with the moon. Through my eyes, the succulent disc resembled a teardrop smeared on rice paper. I imagined that it was about to drip, and stretched out my palms to receive the silvery sprinkle. I thought of Michael and wondered what he was doing now in New York, whether he was also looking at the lonely moon and thinking of me.

I held up my hand. The moon beams alighted on the solitary diamond, splintering it into a thousand shards of light. If I married Michael, would it be a mistake, as it had been when Mother decided to elope with Father? She always boasted how Father had brought a gun with him to propose. How finally it was not the gun that exploded, but Father's pa.s.sion.

The truth was, my father's gun did explode-not on the night he'd proposed, but twenty years later-on my twentieth birthday when he gambled away Mother's jade bangle.

After Father had failed to stop Mother's suicide threat, he took out his gun and pointed it at his chest, as he'd done so many years ago. "Mei Lin, stop this, or I'll blow my heart out!"

Mother dashed toward him and tried to s.n.a.t.c.h away the weapon. During their struggle, it went off. The bullet didn't blow Father's heart out, but made a small hole in the wall. Mother and I felt so relieved he hadn't hurt himself that we had no idea that the end of this nightmare signaled the beginning of another. After this, Father was rushed to the hospital with a heart attack and before he recovered, died of another.

To save face, Mother didn't tell any friends or relatives of Father's attempted suicide, nor even his death. "I don't want to be treated as a widow and you a half orphan," she said.

Therefore, since my father's death, Mother and I avoided friends and relatives, until we completely stopped seeing any. The only exception was, of course, my continued friendship with Yi Kong. Besides teaching me meditation and Zen painting, she would soothe my sadness and listen to my troubles with compa.s.sionate smiles, discreet lips, and generous hands, attracting me more and more by her charitable deeds and her rich, mysterious life behind the empty gate. Therefore, whenever I heard people say that temples are only for escapists and losers, I'd chuckle. Ha, nothing could be further from the truth!

Now the moon was beginning to set; I stood up and walked out of the garden. Still unwilling to go home, I wandered listlessly in the huge, silent temple complex. Then I looked for the shortcut that Yi Kong had told me about.

I strolled down a long, winding path that, I began to suspect, led nowhere. Curious, I kept walking until I b.u.mped into a weather-beaten door in a small structure hidden by heavily gnarled and foliaged ancient trees. Why had I never found this place before? Hesitantly, I pushed the door and to my surprise, it swung open into a small hall lit by one tiny bulb near the floor. In the air floated the scent of flowers and the residue of incense. The room looked empty except for an imposing gla.s.s shrine in the center, inside of which sat a life-size, gilded Buddha. Offerings of fresh flowers and fruits surrounded the shrine.

I stepped up to scrutinize. The statue's gilded face gleamed faintly in the nearly dark room. The legs were locked in the full lotus position. Beautiful image. But it was not a Buddha or Bodhisattva that I could recognize. A plaque attached to the bottom of the gla.s.s shrine caught the light of the small bulb.

OPEN THE SHRINE AND REALIZE THE MASTER'S WHOLE BODY DOES NOT DECOMPOSE.

ENLIGHTENMENT TO NONATTACHMENT OF BODY AND MIND.

ETERNAL TRANSMISSION OF TRUTH.

As I was racking my mind to figure out what this all meant, I discovered another row of small characters:

I PAY RESPECT TO HER PAY RESPECT TO HER G GOLDEN B BODY,.

REVEALING M MYSTERY S SHIFU,.

THE TEACHER OF MY TEACHER,.

THE V VENERABLE W WISDOM F FOREST.

DISCIPLE IN THE D DHARMA,.

YI K KONG.

I let out a gasp and took a step back. Suddenly the gilded face lit up for a few seconds. From the corner of my eye I saw a candle in the doorway before a sudden breeze blew it out.

Then the door creaked like sharp nails grating on metal. I felt my blood curdle inside and sweat break out on my forehead. As I desperately looked for a place to hide, a sonorous voice echoed in the hall: "Is that you, Meng Ning?"

Goose b.u.mps shot down my arms and splashed over my body. My heart thudded violently and my armpits felt wet. I turned to find, like a hairless ghost, Yi Kong's face flickering ominously over candlelight. It took me seconds to regain my senses. Then I stared intently at the figure in front of me to make sure she was not an apparition.