Beneath the Cishou Pagoda

Between Kunming Lake in the Summer Palace and Bayi Lake in Yuyuantan there is a jade-belt-like river about ten kilometers long: that is the Kunyu River. The Kunyu River is part of the Jingmi Diversion Canal, which supplies drinking water to the residents of Beijing, so its water is as clean as the water in the river outside my childhood home. This river, right in the city center, does not flow swiftly and has almost never flooded.

Beneath the blue sky and white clouds, a clear green river flows slowly, its surface glistening; willows and flowers line both banks. The city government has put considerable money into beautifying the riverbanks, turning them into leisure places for nearby residents. So the riverside scenery is pleasant all year round.

There are two walking paths along the bank. When my mother was alive, I loved to take her hand after dinner and walk with her along the riverside path, keeping her company and chatting. By the Kunyu River there once stood an ancient temple called Cishou Temple, built in the fourth year of the Wanli reign by the Holy Mother Empress Dowager Cisheng, mother of the Wanli Emperor of the Ming. Today only a lone ancient pagoda remains there, which we all call the Cishou Pagoda. The Beijing municipal government built a small park around the Cishou Pagoda called Linglong (Exquisite) Park. My home is near Linglong Park, and this little park was the place my parents walked most during the years they lived in Beijing.

Beijing is a city steeped in history; ancient sights everywhere make it easy to imagine crossing through time. The weathered Cishou Pagoda is covered in years of moss, and one can see at a glance that it has endured the frosts of time. It was built in 1576, nearly five hundred years ago. Five hundred years pass in a snap; in these five centuries, who knows how many people have walked beneath this pagoda. Some of them were emperors, generals and high ministers; far more were ordinary people like me, who can only be classed as peddlers and porters.

Sometimes I wonder: where are all the people who passed this ancient pagoda in these five hundred years, and where are their descendants? What did they think as they passed? This kind of imagining is fascinating; it lets me try to understand what "all sentient beings" means, and lets me, in this cross-time-and-space imagining, soften the troubles of the present. In the long river of history, human life and its worries seem trivial. Today the Cishou Pagoda is a protected cultural relic ringed by an iron railing, yet many people who pass it still press their palms together and silently pray.

Before she died, my mother always exclaimed that this pagoda was wonderfully built. Her vocabulary was limited, but her feelings were rich; her face glowed with an indescribable joy and reverence. She was a simple person; when circling the pagoda she would not press her palms together in greeting as others did, because she was shy. But on quite a few occasions she prayed silently before the pagoda.

I bought a house in this area because of my mother. My mother was an optimistic person, but after two major illnesses she became somewhat melancholy. Her mood after her illness was complex; the enormous medical bills made her feel she was a burden to me. When I took her from hospital to hospital seeking treatment, she was deeply torn and resistant.

One day in 2009, my mother said to me: Son, I have become a burden to you. Stop taking me to see doctors; however long I live, I live, and I cannot be a burden to you any longer. You have given up everything for me; you have your own wife and child. You have spent all your money treating me, your own home is almost ruined, and you don't even have a place to live. Burdening you like this, even if I live to a hundred, I will not be happy.

To set her mind at ease, within ten days of her saying this I bought an apartment nearby; after light renovation I settled the whole family into this small home. From then on, my parents loved to take walks in Linglong Park. Back in my mother's hometown, she had lived for several years in Huangmei county town, running a small business there with my father. There is also an ancient pagoda in Huangmei county town, which my mother used to pass often, so the Cishou Pagoda felt familiar to her and brought back many happy memories.

My wife made a sponge cushion for each of my parents to take along on their walks in Linglong Park; when they were tired they would set the cushion on a stone or a roadside bench and sit. After meals, my father would often take my mother's hand and lead her to the park, keeping her company, looking at the scenery and sitting in the sun. Two other elderly people from our home region of Huanggang lived nearby and also often went to Linglong Park, and they would meet there. For elderly people like my parents, in a place like Beijing, being able to talk with a fellow townsman in the local dialect dispelled much homesickness and loneliness.

Now, my mother, like most of the people who passed beneath the Cishou Pagoda over the past five hundred years, has gone to the other world. In a few more years, I too will leave this world. The things that troubled my mother in life all seem trivial now, twelve years after her death; time has softened everything. Nature, with powers we cannot see, lets all sentient beings follow their fixed rules from birth to death. Before nature we are so equal, and so trivial and powerless.

After my mother died, my father no longer cared to live in Beijing; he preferred to return to his hometown, back among his old companions. I still occasionally walk beneath the Cishou Pagoda. When I am alone there, I sometimes think of my mother, and then wonder what the meaning of a human life is. Apart from family affection and love, I really cannot find anything else I feel has value.

Now I have long worked in the life-sciences field. The force that first drove me forward in this field came from my love for my mother; today my hope is to help others hold on to the loved ones they cherish, so that they suffer less of the pain my mother and I endured. That pain included physical torment as well as mental.

But after so many years of practice, I have to say that our effect is actually very limited. As I have come to understand more and more about all kinds of diseases, I know that many diseases are hard to solve perfectly. Today I prefer to blur the very concept of various diseases, not slapping a disease label on anyone, but treating them as an integrated whole person and helping them forget the disease and ease their suffering.

Sentient beings with feelings are not necessarily all suffering, but sentient beings with disease are truly suffering; many diseases even suffer social discrimination, and those who discriminate may only understand tolerance and acceptance once they or their own family fall ill with these diseases. The Cishou Pagoda stands on this land, unbroken for centuries; perhaps it endures precisely because it is a symbolic emblem, standing for the compassion, tolerance and universal love that everyone longs for. Each of us will leave in the end, but before we leave, if we have been treated well, it is always better than not having been treated well.