A Red Sun Rising Slowly from the Mountains

On August 21, I rose very early in the mountains. Outside the door I met an early-rising mountain couple; I asked them whether there were wolves on the mountain. The old couple told me there were no wolves. I told them I had thought I heard a wolf's howl in the mountains the day before; they said it was not a wolf but a wild dog, whose cry sounds like a wolf.

I thought it over: a wild dog is not to be feared; a stick is enough to scare it away. As long as there were no wolves, I should not miss the sunrise in the mountains. So I decided to climb to the summit and wait for the sunrise.

As dawn faintly broke, the mountain path was not too dark. The other guests in the courtyard had not yet risen; I could find no one to accompany me, so I took a wooden staff and went up the mountain alone.

Under a clear sky, a moon hung high, set against the rolling mountains, which seemed all the more boundless.

This mountain, like me, is a nobody. Perhaps no celebrity has ever come here to watch the sunrise, and before me no one seems to have written a public travelogue about it. This mountain is as ordinary as I am, never having the chance to meet the great and powerful, nor I to become a celebrity. But ordinariness has its advantages; the unknown need not bear too much pressure.

Reaching the summit and looking out, among all the lofty mountains there was no one but myself. I have watched the sunrise at Huangshan and Huashan; compared with the crowds there, the hill behind Xidamo Village can only be described as paltry.

The beauty of the sunrise here is not much inferior to that at Huashan and Huangshan; what differs is only fame. That is just as well—such fine scenery, enjoyed by me alone, also spares me the crowds.

Since I was staying halfway up the mountain, not far from the summit, it did not take long to climb. I almost ran up; twenty minutes later I found the best sunrise viewpoint on the peak.

I chose a high mound behind the fitness platform on the summit as my vantage point. It is said that this small platform, now converted into a fitness area, was the site of an ancient temple. Standing on this mound and looking down over the valley, the entire landscape was laid out before me; the surrounding hills were also all in view.

Although the ancient temple has vanished without trace, sitting up here alone I can imagine that once, long ago, this too was a place where monks built a temple and dwelt. A few monks, cut off from the world, may have lived here on the summit, self-sufficient, watching the sun rise and set each day, chanting sutras and worshiping the Buddha; their lives must have been very pleasant too.

From my actual experience of monks, many people become monks not necessarily out of infatuation with Buddhism, but rather out of a wish to use monasticism to escape the tedious and conservative life patterns of secular society.

For example, the thinker Li Zhi of the late Ming dynasty shaved his head and became a monk not in order to study and propagate the Buddha's Dharma or seek spiritual liberation, but to declare war on feudal ethics.

So when those monks chose this human-distant peak as their practice ground, it may have been because they were weary of the conventions of secular society, rather than because they believed their practice could make them buddhas.

Although I have several friends who have become monks and I admire the courage it took, I am not a person aspiring to monasticism, nor a lay Buddhist practitioner; I have no interest in propagating Buddhist doctrine.

In fact, I am still attached to many of the things Buddhists want to renounce—for example, the love and family affection they must cut off are very important to me.

But on many issues I feel a strong resonance with those ordained Buddhists. I too am weary of secular life; I prefer to reduce my material desires, spend less time among people, and devote more time to being close to nature.

I like, as they do, to spend day after day in these green, forested hills, watching the sun rise slowly and set gently, enjoying the true happiness that life and nature bring.

Just as I watched the sunrise in these mountains, with nothing on my mind and only the magnificent, colorful nature before my eyes. When the sun finally burst forth from the mountains, I felt my life ignited by true beauty and love.

At this moment, I was no longer oppressed by the two great mountains of illness and death; I could fully enjoy the finest time and scenery of the human world.

I watched a new day open before my eyes, watched the sunlight dye the whole forest golden, watched the green waters below merge with the blue sky above; I too seemed to have turned into a carefree white cloud, drifting over these lofty peaks, drifting under the sun, at ease.

My life has held too much failure, death, and sorrow. Needlessly to say, I do not like these painful things, yet I must often face them.

In the struggle against illness and the grim reaper, the cruel and ruthless moments outnumber the warm and moving ones; the god of fate does not always favor weak humans. I am only a mortal, not a god; sometimes, far from solving others' problems, I worsen their suffering.

But duty requires me to stand guard over the lives of others. Although I often grieve in defeat, when a new day arrives I must still urge myself to rise again, summon my spirit, and continue guarding the lives that need me.

This rising sun is like a powerful, primordial life-force, waking me from this helplessness and carrying me into a new day full of light and hope. It makes me sincerely feel: life is so beautiful, and I must cherish it well.

The sun, from time immemorial, rises and sets day after day; each day it gives people a new beginning, and each day it brings light and strength to all things.

In the end I must go down the mountain and merge into the vast sea of people, rather than remain among these worldly-distant peaks. But I will also remember that, however much suffering there is in the human world, nature still bestows on us many such beautiful moments, letting us forget our sorrows and grief and release our pressure.

Life takes many things from our hands, but from time to time it compensates us with unexpected surprises. As long as we are willing to take a step forward, such surprises always come upon us without warning.

This is life: before the sick tree, ten thousand trees burst into spring; the next stop after suffering may well be happiness. As long as we move forward, we have the chance to encounter happiness. If we linger in suffering, we can only go on suffering.

I need not live in a land of idyllic beauty to be happy. It was not because there was a Peach Blossom Spring that Tao Yuanming existed; rather, because there was Tao Yuanming, there was a Peach Blossom Spring.

All true lands of idyllic beauty exist only in the human heart. Nature lends us the outer shell of a Peach Blossom Spring; the true substance within it we must fill ourselves.

So though mountains and waters are worth lingering over, one need not cling to them; cultivate an easy mind, and wherever one goes one will encounter a new Peach Blossom Spring.

Come, let us go down the mountain, bidding farewell to everything in the hills. When the next chance comes, in another place, we will watch this red sun rise again.