All Things Are Illusions

Medicine can’t save the world. It can only save the people in it.

But this is the way of the world: the people you save may still pick up a knife and kill.

The female bandit chief pressed a blunt blade to his neck. “Why didn’t you kill me? If you had, the ten cities of Shu would still be standing.”

The young man said, “You’re my first patient since I left the mountain. Letting you go without curing you would violate my master’s teachings.”

The Buddhist disciple had spent ten years facing a wall, then ten years imprisoned.

“So you kept me locked up for ten years, and now you finally can’t beat me?”

Outside the gate, villagers hunted a girl, leaving blood all over the ground.

He walked out of the temple and knelt before her.

“The heartless and desireless are clay figurines. Those without thoughts or attachments are no more than fish, insects, plants, and beasts. You didn’t thank the Buddha. You thanked me. You awakened my humanity.”

Thunder crashed. He cast aside ten years of Buddhist nature, all to be hers alone.

One saves people but never kills. The other kills but never saves.

One meditated for ten years without wanting to become a Buddha. The other spent years on the mountain just to say thank you.

In a chaotic age, each of them did something for the other that everyone else thought was pointless.