The Bodhisattva's Chants Include Me

"I don't believe the Buddha is free of desire. I want to see you fall in love. You know this mortal world is a tribulation, yet you keep turning back for me."

Everyone in the capital says that the Buddhist son of Qingyun Temple, protector of the nation, is compassionate and pure, untouched by worldly dust.

Song Zhiyuan refuses to believe it.

She climbs the mountain through the last rain of spring, lifts her skirts to step into the great hall, and smiles at the monk in spotless white robes, his features gentle, with a wisp of incense drifting between them. Her very first words to him are, "Little Bodhisattva."

At first, it is a jest, a tease. Seeing how gentle and easy to fluster he is, she calls him that just to amuse herself.

She makes things difficult for him, orders him around, and watches his ears turn red as he lowers his eyes to turn his prayer beads. All she wants is to see what helpless expression such a compassionate, desireless person will wear when the mortal world ensnares him.

But the more she watches, the more she begins to see something else.

She sees him kneeling beneath a lamp as spring rain taps the eaves, bandaging a sick child's wound, the scent of medicine clinging to his cuffs, his lowered gaze as lovely as a painting. She sees him amid the cicadas' cries of midsummer, when she deliberately says something harsh to unsettle him, only for him to look up with such a clear gaze that she is the first to falter. On a cold autumn night, she stands beneath the long steps in her cloak and sees him walking alone through the covered corridor with a lantern, his figure quiet and solitary, like a jade Buddha who can feel pain and fatigue, yet remains compassionate toward all living beings.

She calls him "Little Bodhisattva," but he can fall ill and grow tired, too. When she presses closer step by step, his ears turn red. When she smiles and asks, "Can even a Buddhist son be troubled by his heart?" his fingers curl slightly. He murmurs a Buddha's name, but cannot suppress that brief, unsteady breath.