After the Snow on Qingya Cliff

Shen Yanzhi, the second young master of the Shen Residence in Suzhou, had once been a carefree soul raised in luxury. He was accustomed to holding a wolf-hair brush and admiring the snow in the back garden. He thought the carved beams and painted rafters would last forever, and that family and friends would always surround him. Then disaster swept it all away: his father was imprisoned, his elder brother died of illness, and his mother threw herself into the river. The once-prosperous Shen Residence became a heap of rubble in the blink of an eye.

He became a homeless stray, blending in with crowds of refugees and gnawing on rock-hard frozen barley cakes, shivering through the twelfth month's bitter wind in a ruined temple. Relatives who had once fawned over him now avoided him like the plague. Only then did he understand that wealth and status were but the moon reflected in water, and human affection no more lasting than flowers placed atop brocade. After three days of snowfall, he wandered aimlessly through snow deep enough to bury his ankles and stumbled by chance upon Qingya Abbey atop a mountain.

The old Daoist priest there handed him a cup of hot tea and said, “The moon in the water cannot be scooped up, and illusions beyond the heart cannot be held onto.” Sitting beneath a snow-covered pine, he watched sparrows peck at grains and listened to the wind pass through the corridors. He suddenly remembered the foolishness of trying to scoop up the moon as a child. In the end, what a person should guard through life is not external things, but their own heart.

So he stayed, becoming a young Daoist who swept snow and chopped wood at Qingya Abbey. From holding a brush to gripping a hoe, from clinging to luxury to finding contentment in plain tea and simple food, he watched spring snow melt into the earth and autumn maples fall upon the stone steps. Gradually, he came to understand the meaning of “cultivation”: it is not about seeking immortality or pursuing the Dao, but about chopping wood well when chopping wood, and carrying water well when carrying water. It is not about seeing through the mortal world and becoming dead inside. It is about witnessing the world's coldness and still finding something solid to hold onto amid the curling kitchen smoke.