Journey to the West: Become One with All Living Beings

Inside the Tusita Palace, violet flames billowed from the Eight Trigrams Furnace, illuminating my face, weathered by an unknowable number of years of refinement. The outside world says I am the Dao Ancestor, serene and untroubled, above worldly concerns. Even when Heaven trembles and demons swarm the mortal realm, I merely sit with my eyes closed beside the alchemy platform, as though nothing in the world could touch me. They praise the lofty heights of my cultivation, yet they do not know how much helplessness and sorrow lie beneath those words: “nonaction.” It is not that I am unwilling to intervene. The cycles of the Heavenly Dao have their own course, and forcing my hand would only bring about an even greater calamity. And yet, as I watch the attendants I personally enlightened and the mounts that served me for years descend to the mortal realm one by one and turn into demons, even my heart, long since refined to stillness, cannot help but stir with a trace of bitterness.