There are people, demons, purity, and filth. We are both lost souls intoxicated by the mortal world and boatmen struggling across a sea of suffering. Qimang, a reclusive eminent monk, faces a trial once every sixty-six years. When it comes, his seven apertures fail and his five senses grow confused. He is blind in all seven apertures, yet his heart remains clear. For two hundred years, he has neither aged nor died, and he is neither immortal nor demon. The Eight Sufferings are birth, old age, illness, death, being parted from those one resents, being separated from those one loves, failing to get what one desires, and the suffering of the five aggregates of attachment. The world knows him only as Qimang, but not where that name came from. The Buddha taught that life has eight sufferings, but in this vast world, surely there are more than eight. This book tells the story of how Qimang gradually lets go of the attachments in his heart as he helps others find release. Along the way, pilgrims and tales of spirits and monsters weave a worldly tapestry of life’s eight sufferings for readers.
