Keep the Buddha's Heart

The Buddha's heart is not in the gilded Buddha statues in temples, nor in the scriptures in the ancient green lantern scrolls, but in the bowl of hot porridge in the fireworks in the market, and in the single thought of compassion that saves others and saves oneself. If you can keep your original mind, you can cultivate the Buddha mind. The protagonist Mingxin is the most ordinary monk in Guyue Temple on the outskirts of the city. He was abandoned at the gate of the temple since he was a child and was raised by the abbot, Master Huijue. During the twenty years he spent in Guyue Temple, his world only consisted of morning bells and evening drums, bluestone roads and the Heart Sutra that he had read countless times. He is familiar with scriptures and can recite "all living beings are equal" and "compassionate" word for word, but he has never really seen the suffering of all living beings and does not understand the taste of fireworks in the world. Before Master Huijue passed away, his skinny hand held a bunch of old Buddhist beads that had been polished. He only left Mingxin with one sentence: "Go down the mountain and find a true Buddha's heart." He also gave Mingxin half of the incomplete Heart Sutra - it was an old thing that the master had left in half when he traveled down the mountain and was burned by the fire of war when he was young. Mingxin carried the Buddhist beads and residual sutras, and a cloth bag on her back, and stepped out of the mountain gate anxiously. This novel and its characters are purely fictitious. Any similarity is purely coincidental and should not be imitated.