The Tombstone Reader

What year was it when she sat among the clouds, gazing down at the mortal world and listening to an old man in a brown robe mutter to himself? What year was it when, as winter gave way to snow, she saw him, drifting down like a magnolia blossom, beautiful and serene as a god or Buddha? A thousand three hundred years later, she lay prostrate beneath the flowers of the Other Shore. In the darkness, someone said, "All living beings are illusions, and all things ultimately come to nothing." Her heart filled with desolation. Then she suddenly remembered: she had not died beneath the executioner's blade that slew gods. She had died in the thorn forest where she was exiled, in the wasteland of her own heart.