Among the mortal world, there are immortals who cultivate amid the red dust. They fall in love with the world of mortals, yet sever their worldly ties to ascend to the Immortal Realm.
Did Zhuang Zhou dream he was a butterfly, or did a butterfly dream it was Zhuang Zhou? Did Zhuang Zhou wake from his dream, or did the butterfly fly away?
“The way of cultivation, the true meaning of life, exists only in the present. I have no desire to seek out some vague, illusory afterlife. I cultivate in this life, not the next. I would give half a lifetime of worldly ties to cultivate the Dao of this life alone.”
“Your Buddha is not beside an ancient Buddha beneath a lonely lamp. He is in the midst of this bustling mortal world.”
The human world is full of ugliness. Why wait for another life?
“What gives you the right to remain untouched by dust? What are you afraid of, that you must stay spotless and pure?”
“You crossed the river of time just to say that to me.”
The Ten Kings of Hell in the Nine Depths of the Underworld, and the eight prefectural judges of Changsheng Tian, all want you dead.
The story unfolds slowly, like a pebble dropped into water.
“Is this world really a way to attain longevity?”
“Long life is easy. Eternal life is hard.”
“Immortals and mortals follow different paths. Can an immortal and a mortal really fall in love?”
“No, but now they can. As it happened, the immortal was tempering her heart in the mortal world, and as it happened, the other person was mortal at the time. In the end, they met at the wrong time.
“Did that mortal eventually cultivate to become an immortal?”
“No. The mortal’s fate was death. When he died, he was still a mortal.”
“I heard that the moment those two met, they fell in love at first sight. Is that true?”
“False.”
No matter how far apart immortals and mortals may be, they are no farther apart than these words: “Where the red leaves return, there my remaining years shall be.”
A love that crosses the boundary between life and death, a love that transcends the worlds of the living and the dead.
Is the human world some kind of wishing well? Four parts calamity, two parts fortune, three parts chance, and one part fate.
