46: Chapter 46 Thunder Sound Ruins

West of Luoyang City, White Horse Temple.

Lu Mingyuan stood outside the temple gate for a long time.

Unlike the quiet solitude of Shaoshi Mountain, and even more unlike the prosperity of Bianliang City, this first ancient temple of China stood silent in the twilight like an old beast that had slept for a thousand years. The vermillion walls had faded to an ochre brown, and the glazed tiles were mottled with moss. Wild bees had built nests among the wooden rafters of the mountain gate, and the pilgrims entering and leaving were sparse.

Yet he felt that this place, more than anywhere else, resembled the ancestral court of Buddhism.

Not because it was ancient.

But because of that sense of tranquility: "Let others come and go as they please; I remain here."

The Guest Prefect Monk led him into the temple, bypassing the Hall of the Heavenly Kings and the Great Buddha Hall, until they reached the depths of the backyard.

"The Thunder Sound Relics the benefactor seeks are right here." The Guest Prefect Monk stopped and raised a hand to point. "It is not convenient for this poor monk to accompany you further; please proceed as you wish."

Lu Mingyuan looked over.

It was an empty courtyard with no halls or Buddha statues, only a three-foot-high stone platform with a stone stele standing upon it. The stele was broken; the upper half was missing, leaving only the lower half buried in the wild grass.

The weeds in the courtyard were knee-high, appearing as if they hadn't been tended to for years. Several old cypresses stood around the perimeter, their branches twisted like Dragons; they must have been over a thousand years old.

"Is this... the place where the Buddha preached the sutras?" Lu Mingyuan asked.

The Guest Prefect Monk smiled.

"The Buddha never came here. However, it has been passed down in the temple since ancient times that when the two Venerable Ones, She Moteng and Zhu Falan, were translating the Sutra of Forty-two Sections here, brahma sounds descended from the heavens and lasted for seven days without ceasing. Later, when the temple was built, it was named 'White Horse,' and this courtyard was designated as the 'Thunder Sound Relics'."

He paused.

"For a thousand years, monks have occasionally entered meditative concentration here and heard the brahma sounds. There have also been monks who sat in silence for their entire lives and heard nothing at all."

Lu Mingyuan was silent for a moment.

"What is the difference between hearing and not hearing?"

The Guest Prefect Monk glanced at him.

"Grand-Uncle Master said that for those who come to ask about this courtyard, there is no need to answer this question."

He turned and left, the sound of his footsteps quickly vanishing at the edge of the wild grass.

Lu Mingyuan stepped into the courtyard.

The weeds reached past his knees, and the dew soaked his robes. He did not use spiritual power to brush them aside, but simply walked toward the broken stele step by step, each stride treading a temporary path through the wild grass.

Reaching the stele, he pushed aside the creeping vines and examined the inscription closely.

On the lower half of the stele, the characters were mostly blurred, with only a few lines barely discernible:

"...The two Venerable Ones, Teng and Lan... translated the Sutra of Forty-two Sections... heavenly rain of precious flowers... brahma sounds descended... ceasing after seven days... the quest for the Dharma in the Yongping era... began from here..."

The handwriting was simple and the carving crude, clearly something recorded by later generations. However, a line of small characters at the end caught his attention:

"In the fifth year of Huichang, the temple was destroyed and the sutras burned. In the first year of Dazhong, a monk came from Shaoshi Mountain, found this half-stele among the ruins, and carried it back to the temple. This stone was erected as a record to inform those who come after."

A monk from Shaoshi Mountain.

Mingzhan.

The old monk who had guarded Bodhidharma's Meditation Cave for forty-three years, waiting for the fires of the world below the mountain to rise again.

It turned out that the first thing he did after leaving the mountain was to come to the ruins of White Horse Temple and retrieve this broken half-stele.

Lu Mingyuan reached out and lightly touched the body of the stele.

The stone surface was ice-cold, yet it seemed to carry the warmth of forty-three years of waiting, crossing over two hundred years to reach his fingertips.

He sat down before the stele.

Not in the Lotus Position, but simply sitting normally in the wild grass, leaning against the broken stele and facing the empty courtyard. The shadows of the old cypress branches fell upon him like a thousand-year-old tattered monk's robe.

The twilight deepened, and the chirping of insects rose from all around.

He did not enter meditative concentration, did not chant mantras, did not recite the Buddha's name, and did not even deliberately think about anything. He just sat there, like a stone, like that broken half-stele, like an old cypress that had grown in the courtyard for a thousand years.

The last ray of light on the horizon sank into the western mountains.

The moon rose over the eastern wall.

The insect sounds gradually subsided, and the night dew grew heavy.

What was he waiting for?

He didn't know.

He only knew that that night in the Shizhuang Courtyard of Shaolin, Zen Master Huijue had said, "Ceasing is Bodhi"; that day in the Pure Land Prayer Hall, Huiyuan had said, "Self-nature is Amitabha." Sitting now in this courtyard with knee-high weeds, he sought neither to cease nor to see; he just sat.

Sitting was just sitting.

He didn't know how much time had passed.

Perhaps it was a moment, perhaps a night, perhaps a hundred years.

He suddenly heard it.

Not with his ears.

But with his heart.

It was a bell, yet didn't sound like a bell; it was a Brahma chant, yet didn't sound like a chant; it was the sound of the wooden fish from the sutra-translating monks a thousand years ago, the sound of sutra chanting from two thousand years in the future that had yet to arrive, the sound of all past, present, and future Disciples of the Buddha reciting "Namo Original Teacher Shakyamuni Buddha"—

It converged into one, like the coming and going of ocean tides, like the vastness of heavenly winds, like the pulse deep within the earth.

That was not a sound.

That was the "Dharma" itself vibrating.

Lu Mingyuan closed his eyes.

He did not try to look, yet he "saw"—

An old monk with a foreign appearance and a Brahma-like countenance sat cross-legged on the stone platform, holding a Pattra Leaf Sutra and murmuring. It wasn't Chinese, nor was it Sanskrit; it was an even more ancient sound from India. The sound flowed from his mouth, turning into golden characters that drifted one by one into the Void Realm.

Another old monk sat opposite him, recording with a brush that seemed to sprout lotuses. With every character recorded, that character turned into a beam of light and merged into the Void Realm.

In the Void Realm, countless sentient beings were listening.

There were Devas, Arhats, Bodhisattvas, and Buddhas.

There were also countless future sentient beings—monks from the Han lands, monks from Fusang, monks from the Tibetan lands, and all those who would come after.

They were all listening.

Listening to that sound from two thousand years ago, crossing through time and space to arrive at this moment.

Lu Mingyuan suddenly understood:

This was the eternal presence of the Dharmakaya.

The Buddha has entered Nirvana, sutra scrolls will be burned, temples will collapse, and the monastic assembly will grow old and die. But the Dharma—that "Dharma" which was translated, recorded, recited, and practiced—it has never left.

It is simply waiting.

Waiting for someone to come and listen.

---

After an unknown amount of time, the brahma sounds gradually subsided.

Lu Mingyuan opened his eyes.

The sky was just beginning to brighten. A sliver of pale blue-white appeared on the eastern horizon, while the moon still hung in the west, half-waned like that stele. The dew on the grass leaves reflected the moonlight, sparkling like crushed pearls scattered on the ground.

He was still sitting beneath that broken stele, leaning against the stone surface and facing the empty courtyard.

Everything was as it had been.

But he knew that something was different.

It wasn't a Breakthrough in cultivation, nor the realization of some profound mystery, nor the acquisition of some Divine Ability or perception.

It was that he finally understood what he had been searching for during these three years of visiting famous mountains, seeking talismans, inquiring about swords, and practicing Chan and Dao.

He wasn't looking for the Dao.

He was looking for a kind of "certainty"—the certainty that he wasn't walking this path alone, the certainty that those who had gone before were still waiting ahead, and the certainty that the direction he was heading was correct.

And at this moment, he had found it.

He hadn't found it in sutra scrolls, nor from the teachings of Masters and friends; he found it in this courtyard with knee-high weeds, before this broken half-stele, and from the voices of those two old monks from two thousand years ago.

That voice told him:

The path is correct.

Just keep walking.

The sky grew fully bright.

Lu Mingyuan stood up, brushed the dew from his clothes, and gave a deep bow to the broken stele.

"Disciple Lu Mingyuan thanks the Venerable Ones for transmitting the Dharma."

He paused.

"A thousand years later, the Dharma still remains. This Disciple shall continue this lamp and pass it on to future generations."

Having completed his salutation, he turned to leave.

Only to see an old monk standing at the courtyard gate.

It was unknown when he had arrived or how long he had been standing there. His monk robes were tattered, he held a broom, and his features were as plain as an ordinary Sweeping Monk.

Lu Mingyuan walked over and pressed his palms together in greeting.

The old monk nodded. He did not return the salute, but simply said one thing:

"Did you hear it?"

"I heard it."

"What did you hear?"

Lu Mingyuan thought for a moment.

"I heard someone speaking two thousand years ago, and I also heard someone responding two thousand years later."

The old monk smiled.

It was a very faint smile, like the slight ripple on the surface of water when the wind blows across it.

"Since you have heard it, then go," the old monk said. "There is nothing left to see here."

He lifted his broom and walked into the courtyard.

Lu Mingyuan gazed at his back and suddenly asked, "Master, how long have you been sweeping here?"

The old monk did not look back.

"How long? I don't remember," he said. "I only remember that when I arrived, this stele was still whole."

Lu Mingyuan was stunned.

That stele was destroyed in the fifth year of Huichang. The fifth year of Huichang was from now...

Before he could calculate it carefully, the old monk had already walked far away.

The broom brushed through the wild grass—shasha, shasha—startling the grasshoppers in the thicket, which flew up and then settled back down.

When Lu Mingyuan walked out of the mountain gate of White Horse Temple, the sun was already high in the sky.

He did not look back.

He simply took out that string of prayer beads from his robe and gently flicked one.

"namo amituofo."

Having finished his recitation, he continued eastward.