If There Is a Past Life, I May Have Been a Monk

Today, walking beneath the Buddha pagoda at Cishou Temple, I suddenly, for no clear reason, felt as though I were seeing my own past life. If there is a past life, I must have been a monk who strictly kept the precepts and whose every movement was pure, my days spent amid the sound of Buddhist chanting. In this life, however turbulent my heart, whenever I approach a Buddhist temple—or a former Buddhist temple—or pick up a Buddhist book and leaf through it, all turmoil within my heart subsides, as though I had come home. It was at that moment that I, once a steadfast atheist, suddenly felt like a theist, believing that humans have past and future lives.

Today at Linglong Park I wrote two Zen poems.

One

Though in the world of dust, I ask nothing of worldly affairs.

this stinking bag of skin, a little coarse food and clothing.

My spirit roams to the great void; the joy I know myself.

This body is but a guest; what place have fame and gain?

Two

Beyond the body there is nothing; within the heart the great thousandfold world is contained.

Entering the world, one saves others; leaving the dust, one liberates oneself.

Ever cultivating precepts, samadhi, and wisdom, gradually departing from greed, anger, and delusion.

Beings suffer greatly; the physician ought to relieve them.

Also a short prose piece:

The people of the world are clever and cunning, full of worry and thought; I keep my own simplicity. Though simplicity may be dull, diligence can remedy it.

Few desires, few demands, taking precepts as teacher; ceasing strife, cutting off anxiety, passing days according to conditions—though simple, there is no hindrance.

Having gone through many affairs of the world, I have now gradually grown calm of mind and master of my emotions. I have come to understand that so-called great wisdom appearing as foolishness may mean that problems which time can solve need not be urgently solved by emotion. Thus I am no longer so impatient in all things.

Whatever the past life, in this life I wish only to be a physician who relieves the endangered and aids the distressed, who rescues the dying and heals the wounded. Perhaps this too is a great vow made in a past life in a temple. Whether I was a monk in a past life, or will become one in the next, does not affect this life: living in the world of dust, with wife and children, I must treat my wife and children well; with elders above and young below, I must care for them all well. To live this life dutifully, to cherish all the karmic conditions and blessings of this life, and at the end, recite Namo Amitabha Buddha, leaving without attachment, rebirthing in the Pure Land—that would be fine.

Over these years I have met many people who, merely from my face, felt I resembled a monk who had practiced. After talking with me, they felt even more certain that I must have practiced, so that I was born with a Buddha-like countenance. Yet in this life, my seven emotions and six desires are all real and present. The world of dust—since one has come, one should dwell in it at ease. Not approaching it too closely, nor seeking to leave it; at ease in living while alive, at ease in dying when dead; letting all things follow their nature.