The sea of tears of all living beings is the Bodhi Dojo. A drop of tear is a calamity of dust.
When the seven-year-old novice Mingxuan was shaping a pottery embryo in front of the Buddha, the hundred-year-old lanterns of Leiyin Temple were dimmed. The master left a mysterious prophecy: "You will know that you are salty when you have collected all the twelve tears of enlightenment." Ten years later, when he stepped into the mortal world carrying a crude pottery tear bottle covered with spider patterns, he realized that this bottle was not a magic weapon - but an urn containing reincarnation.
The proud tears of the emperor's gold powder splashed on the broken bridge, the deposed emperor hung upside down and stained the "Diamond Sutra" with blood, and the tear bottle cracked and gave birth to dragon patterns; the blind luther's rouge corroded the bones and broke the strings of the pipa, the blood and tears soaked the broken jade from the palace, the cracks turned into butterflies and the color was empty; the tattooed salt workers wrote the "Heart Sutra" in blood on the copper plate of the well, and the frost salt burned the laborer's tear fingerprints; A woman's broken arm was sacrificed to the sky, her tears of ashes caused drought and thunder, and clouds and thunder were produced in a vase to answer the thirst of all living beings; an courtesan who pricked the human skin cut out his eyes and wept cinnabar, and a glass fake eye reflected "painted skin is hell"... A merchant swallowed gold and melted copper's smelly tears, gouged out his tongue and the historian's blood and tears revealed the inscription "Regicide", and a deaf-mute drummer's blood poured into his ears to ring the silent bell. The glazed tears of a self-immolated bhikshuni illuminated the strings of a harp in the previous life, the icy tears of a general who massacred a city froze the Shura blade, until the girl holding a lamp soaked the monk's back with blood and tears, and the red lotus of delusion bloomed.
Mingxuan traveled through twelve kalpas of tears, absorbing all sentient beings to the point of pain. When the cracks in the cobwebs of the tear bottle finally shattered into glass relics, the shadow of the dust-sweeping monk in the bottle showed his true appearance, and the dew from the eaves dripped down the old scars of the tiger's mouth, he was shocked to realize the rhyme: "Those who collect tears will eventually become the ones in tears." The palm prints of his previous life still remain on the rough pottery embryo; the soul-breaking scimitar is melted into the bell and pestle of the world; and the stars are pouring down like tears, and floating in the dust and light rain are dragon-patterned broken tiles, burnt-tailed blood butterflies, salt crystal sutra disks, human skin cinnabar...
