Singing Bowl: One Note Entering the Ear, Ten Thousand Cares Empty the Heart
On the Lantern Festival of the Year of the Ox, I bought a singing bowl and was very pleased with it. The bowl is about the size of a rice bowl, just right for collecting alms. A Buddhist monk who has left the household life is called a bhikkhu; the Sanskrit word “bhikkhu” translated into Chinese means “beggar.” At mealtime, bhikkhus carry a bowl and go to nearby villages or cities to beg for food—this is the tradition of original Buddhism.
The life of wandering monks carrying their bowls to beg for alms is very poetic. The Monk Cloth Sack wrote: “One bowl holds the meals of a thousand homes; alone I travel ten thousand miles. Few are the eyes that greet me kindly; I ask the way where the white clouds are.” After living in the city for a long time, sometimes I too want to experience this life of wandering the world, though I have never put it into action.
The bowl can also serve as a musical instrument. When struck, its sound is long-drawn, as if coming from an ancient temple deep in the mountains. One note entering the ear, ten thousand cares empty the heart. In 2018, I once lived in seclusion for a month at the Medicine King Temple in my hometown. Living alone in the ancient temple, with no people in the surrounding fields and only the songs of a hundred birds in the valley, the temple held a large singing bowl. I read there, and when weary I would strike the bowl to refresh my mind; its sound often drifted down to the foot of the mountain.
I still think fondly of that period of life. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, I have not been able to go back for a long time. Whenever I recall it, it feels like a distant world. The Medicine King Temple is less than two kilometers from my village; on the mountain a hundred birds sing together, and below the mountain the fields are crisscrossed, the scenery quite fine. I once wrote “Ode to Yuanrong Temple”, based on the Medicine King Temple as a prototype, plus some imagination. The ode is as follows:
Wondrous is this water, called Canglang; one knows not whence it comes, nor whither it would return. It flows through Kuang Mountains, rushing ceaselessly, nourishing all things, as it has since antiquity. The Kuang Mountains stretch across, cutting its main stream into nine veins. The nine veins divide their courses, becoming a hundred rivers, scattered among the fields, and thus a waterside town by the river is formed.
The waterside town receives the pure spirit of heaven and earth, brimming with life; ancient cypresses in deep mountains, dense forests and slender bamboos, winding paths leading to seclusion, purple mists rising, and the constant cries of gibbons. Here the immortals dwell!
Thatched huts and simple cottages, temples and Daoist abbeys are scattered among the peaks. The immortals each cultivate their own way, and the sages often visit one another, playing chess beneath the pines or sipping tea before the steps. Precipitous cliffs plunge to the nine springs; high ridges soar straight into the clouds. Woodcutters and herb-gatherers are hidden among them. Even the farmers of the market town come and go without strife. Their customs are peaceful, their air serene, like the peerland of Penglai.
The ancient Yuanrong Temple lies hidden therein. No rooftops are seen, yet the sound of evening drums and morning bells can be heard. Alone at a corner, half-hidden. Rough paths and wild mountain trails lead to its gate; streams and waterfalls, great boulders and fine pebbles are scattered around. Peach and plum trees are planted before the hall; vegetable plots and nurseries lie behind.
Climb high and gaze far, and mountains and rivers all come into view; the jade sky is clear, washed a jade-green. Up close, mountain villages and farmhouses, ponds and fields are arranged in orderly disorder. After mountain rain, a rainbow arches over the peaks, gleaming and flashing with the waterfalls around the temple. Insects chirp and frogs croak; chickens and dogs are heard. The three sounds of nature arise together, and cooking smoke rises. The world and the world beyond are as one.
The recluse Zhou lives in this place. He relies on the mountains to refine his feelings and the waters to nurture his nature; sometimes he farms, sometimes reads, sometimes visits relatives and friends, sometimes plays with the mountain gibbons, living according to his nature and acting as occasion arises. He does not know his birth, nor fear his death, much less fame and gain. How wonderful; this is what I love. I know of no regret, only joy within it!
Of course, my hometown is not as beautiful as this ode describes. When men of letters describe scenery, they cannot help embellishing it; I have caught a bit of that habit too, but this is a work of imagination. I am not that picky or greedy; I do not truly expect to live in such an environment. I am content and quite satisfied with the natural environment of my own hometown.
I often think that in a few more years I will retire to my hometown to farm and read, to write and practice medicine. Though a foreign land is pleasant, it is not the place where my bones will rest—although I have signed a voluntary body-donation form, hoping to give my remains to medical institutions for teaching or research after death, I still wish my ashes to be scattered in the place that bore and raised me, beside my mother's grave. Leaves fall and return to the root; wherever I came from, there I wish to return.
Only this wish of retirement is hard to fulfill for now. I still have some life responsibilities to complete; I cannot abandon my family and children to go off and be carefree alone. So I can only, in this foreign land, decorate my own small patch of heart to resemble my hometown as much as possible. A singing bowl can slightly release my nostalgia. The flowers on the balcony and the birdsong outside the window can also slightly release it. Though these potted plants and bird calls lack the grandeur of the mountain wildflowers and the chorus of birds back home, still, they are better than nothing.