Читать книгу Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud - Sun Shuyun - Страница 10

IN AUGUST 1999 I took a late-afternoon train from Handan, my home town, to Xian, the capital of the early emperors for much of the first millennium. It was where Xuanzang began and ended his travels. I was conscious that I was starting the most important journey of my life. But for the other people in my hard-sleeper compartment, the first order of business was food. As soon as the train started moving, the man opposite me produced a big plastic bag and unwrapped the contents. An amazing banquet slowly appeared: roast chicken, sausages, pot noodles, pickled eggs, cucumbers, tomatoes, melons and dried melon seeds, apples, pears, bananas and six cans of beer. The Chinese have suffered so much from starvation and famine that eating is rarely far from their minds. Everyone followed suit. Before long, they were sharing food, finding out each other’s names, where they were going, and why.

Privacy is not a concept we understand in China. We have lived far too long on top of each other, as in this six-bunk compartment, off a narrow corridor without doors. Conversation reduces the tension and makes life tolerable, but it is not small talk; more like an interrogation. After ten years in England where you can choose to live and die without knowing your neighbours, I was uncomfortable with the intrusion. I took out a book about Xuanzang and tried to read, but that was no protection. A single woman travelling on her own makes her fellow-passengers curious. Whether for business or pleasure, the Chinese like to do it in groups. Xuanzang tried very hard to find companions, but in vain, owing to the emperor’s prohibition against travelling abroad. I had also asked several monks myself. They were over the moon; pilgrimage to the land of the Buddha was the dream of every Buddhist – they would even gain merit from it should they need it for their rebirth in the Western Paradise. And to follow in the footsteps of Master Xuanzang! He was a model for them. His indomitability was an inspiration for them in their struggle for enlightenment. Many of the sutras they read every day, their spiritual sustenance, were his translations. His selflessness in giving his life to spreading Buddhism, not seeking his own salvation, was the ideal of the Bodhisattva, and of all Chinese monks. And for me, to see their reactions, to hear their thoughts, to ponder their reflections and to ask them questions – I would have learned so much more and understood Xuanzang better. I was not so fortunate, oddly enough for the same reason as Xuanzang: Chinese monks were not allowed to go abroad, unless they were on an official mission.

The men and women in my compartment quickly determined they were all going to Xian for business: the men were in engineering and the women in quality control. Then they turned to quizzing me, firing rapid questions like well-trained detectives. Who are you? Where are you going? Why? I told them I was following Xuanzang. They fell silent for a moment, then erupted into questions.

‘You mean you are really following that monk in The Monkey King, the one who went to India? Are you really going all that way?’

I nodded.

‘Why? Are you a Buddhist?’

I had hardly finished answering him when the man sitting next to me put his hand on my forehead. I stiffened. ‘I want to see if you are running a fever,’ he said. His colleagues laughed and I relaxed.

‘If you really want to travel, why don’t you go to Europe, or America or Australia? I wouldn’t go to India if you paid me! It is so dirty, so poor, worse than China.’

‘If you want to write about Xuanzang, why don’t you talk to some academics in Xian and make it up? Do you really think all the scholars do such hard work? You must be joking.’

They went on for some time, trying to dissuade me. After the lights were switched off the woman above me knocked on the edge of my bunk. ‘You really shouldn’t make this trip,’ she said. ‘It’s too dangerous. Why don’t you join our group and have a good time in Xian?’

We arrived in Xian early next morning, by which point my companions seemed to have become used to the idea that I really was going on my journey. Perhaps they thought I was a bit crazy. The men all helped me with my luggage. I told them I could manage on my own. ‘Save your energy. You have a long way to go. You don’t have the Monkey King to help you. You must take care of yourself,’ they said, smiling and waving from the platform.

Just outside the railway station stands the old city wall. I asked the taxi-driver to take me first alongside the wall to the main North Gate. I sat in the front seat, keen to see everything. The wall is weighty and ancient, towering high above the car, and made me feel that once inside it, I would be safe, but also in a place of mystery, full of the secrets of the past. Most of the wall is seven hundred years old, part of it even older, going back another six hundred years to Xuanzang’s time. No other large Chinese city has anything comparable. Beijing’s, for example, was completely destroyed on Mao’s orders, to make way for a new ring-road.

The North Gate is vast, surmounted by a three-eaved tower. It was dark going through it; because of its dense traffic it took some minutes to emerge into the light, into the modern city. A wide boulevard leads to the Bell Tower at its centre. Every old Chinese city has one, or used to have one. From it the ancient city received its wake-up call at sunrise. It is an imposing sight, over a hundred feet high with its three flying rooftops and an arch at its base. But it was not what Xuanzang would have seen. Then, the imperial city stood within these walls, and extended well to the north, with all the palaces and buildings of government. He would have come here to ask for travel passes for his journey to India, but his monastery was beyond the southern wall, where the rest of the city lay.

Even the commoners’ city was spacious and grand in those days. Wide avenues ran north to south, crossed by boulevards east and west, dividing the capital into geometrical wards, which bore propitious names: Lustrous Virtue, Tranquil Way, Eternal Peace. Xian, or Chang’an as it was called back then, was neither tranquil nor peaceful when the young Xuanzang arrived here in 625 AD. The new dynasty, the Tang, was founded at a great cost. Over twenty million people, two-thirds of the population, perished in the uprisings, famines and epidemics that followed. Xuanzang was deeply affected. He remembered how his old monastery had been razed to the ground, and when he was fleeing from it, skeletons were everywhere on the roads and deserted villages and devastated fields stretched for hundreds of miles. Old people told him that no turmoil and destruction like it had happened since the First Emperor eight hundred years before. In Chang’an, people came to his monastery – each ward would have one – fervently praying for certainty, for the calamities to go away, and for the return to a peaceful life. Buddhism was supposed to save people from all this suffering. Why was it so rampant? Was there something wrong with the doctrines the Chinese believed? Were they the true teachings of the Buddha? As he said, he ‘desired to investigate thoroughly the meaning of the teachings of the holy ones, and to restore the lost doctrines and give people back the real faith’.

Very little remains of the old Chang’an beyond the South Gate. The imposing avenues have shrunk, through the centuries, to narrow streets lined with restaurants, shops and government offices. One of them brought me to the Monastery of Great Benevolence, where the Big Wild Goose Pagoda stands. This is Xuanzang’s monastery, where he spent many years of his life. This was where I wanted to be in Xian, to learn as much as possible about him.

It was much smaller than I expected, containing little more than the pagoda, a single shrine hall, and the monks’ quarters, surrounded by village houses and fields. Clouds of smoke wafted up from the altar in front of the main temple. Long queues of people were waiting to light candles and burn incense. The hypnotic sound of monks chanting sutras reached me from the loudspeakers in the temple shop. Busloads of tourists, foreign and Chinese, poured through the gate and rushed to get their pictures taken: this is Xian’s second most popular tourist attraction, after the famous Terracotta Army. The pagoda is what they come to see, and there is a good view of the city from the top. Xuanzang designed it himself in a graceful and slightly austere style, reminiscent of India.

Sixty-four metres up, from the topmost of its imposing seven storeys, I could see the whole of Xian – low houses lining the street leading to the pagoda, streams of people and cars moving at a snail’s pace, high-rise buildings dwarfing the magnificent city wall, and vast stretches of fertile land to the south that have nourished the city for more than two thousand years. No wonder that after the pagoda was built in the seventh century, young men used to climb up here to celebrate when they had passed the imperial exam and joined the ruling class. They must have felt the world was at their feet and their ambition could soar into the sky. Even today, the Big Wild Goose Pagoda is one of the tallest structures in Xian, dominating the scene – in fact it is the city’s symbol.

I used to go to monasteries as a tourist myself, enjoying the quietness, the chanting and the old trees in the courtyards. I would look around, take a picture or two, and then go away, vaguely comforted. Now, having learned something of Grandmother’s faith and Xuanzang’s, I began to understand what it was to feel reverence for this place. There are three treasures of Buddhism: the Buddha; the Dharma, the Buddha’s teachings; and the Sangha, the community of monks who make up the monastery. The monastery is the outward symbol of Buddhism. It tells the world a different way of life does exist – we crave love, fortune and fame; the monks and nuns live happily without them. As Grandmother used to say, it was the centre of our life. I had to try and find out what that means.

From a row of traditional courtyards on the left, one or two monks appeared now and then and disappeared quickly back inside. That was where they ate, slept, prayed and meditated, and where they could not be disturbed. I decided to be bold, and the next time I saw one, I went up to him and greeted him. I asked him where the abbot’s office was. He pointed to one of the courtyards on the left. But the abbot was away, he told me and he asked if he could help me. I told him I wanted to find out more about the monastery and Xuanzang. ‘You definitely should go and talk to an old man in the village outside. His name is Mr Duan,’ he said. How would I find him? ‘No problem, if you ask for the ex-monk.’

It was indeed very easy to find Duan’s house, barely a hundred yards from the monastery, down a small lane. Casual workers were squatting on the ground. They had just finished their lunch and were washing out their bowls in a bucket of grey water and emptying the bowls on to the hard-baked road. Dogs and chickens came up looking interested. Mothers were screaming at their children and shouting threats of punishment. It was just the kind of hectic scene which Duan must have become a monk to get away from. I asked an old lady who was busy chatting with her neighbour and she said Mr Duan was meditating. She was his wife. Did I mind waiting? Or could I come back in an hour?

I asked her if she knew the monastery well. ‘My family has been living here for almost a hundred years,’ she said, ‘and I am married to one of its monks.’ We went off and sat on a bench. She pointed to the dusty square in front of the monastery and the fields in the distance. ‘All this area used to be the monastery’s land. We leased it from them and gave them grain as rent after the harvest. The monks were really kind – they let us use their mills for free and take water from their well. There weren’t many of them, only six or seven.’

The land became the villagers’ in the Land Reform of 1950. Monasteries used to be among the biggest landowners in China and so were the first targets. Monks were told to give up their ‘parasitic’ life and work just like everyone else, growing what they ate and weaving what they wore. Mrs Duan found the turn of events puzzling. ‘Their job was to pray, meditate and perform ceremonies for the dead and the living. How could they know about growing soya beans?’ She shook her head. ‘We wanted to help them, but the village Party Secretary told us we were masters of the new China and shouldn’t allow ourselves to be exploited by them any more.’

I asked Mrs Duan what happened to the monks. She said that her husband would know more about it. He should have finished his midday meditation. ‘Eight hours a day he does it. Three in the morning, two around now and three in the evening. He might just as well be in another world. But it’s what keeps him going,’ she sighed.

Just then I saw a man walking slowly towards us from across the street. I told Mrs Duan her husband was coming. She looked over her shoulder. ‘Yes, that’s my old man.’ She turned back to me. ‘How did you know it was him? Have you seen him before or seen his picture?’ I didn’t know what to say, but I just knew it was him. He was thin, even stick-like. Behind a pair of dirty glasses were sunken eyes in a wizened face, and his straggling hair came down to his neck. He had on a threadbare blue Mao suit, faded from what must have been hundreds of washings, and an ancient pair of soldier’s shoes, which he wore without socks. He looked as if he were sleepwalking – perhaps he was still meditating. ‘Come on, hurry up!’ his wife shouted. ‘This lady wants to talk to you about Xuanzang and the monastery.’

He ambled up to us murmuring, ‘I am a sinner. I am a sinner. What is there to talk about?’ As we walked back to their house, I asked him if he would tell me about his meditation.

‘He’s been doing it for thirty years,’ Mrs Duan said petulantly, pulling at Duan’s sleeve until he sat down next to her. ‘Nothing distracts him. Even if a bolt of lightning dropped on his head he still wouldn’t move.’

‘She’s exaggerating,’ Mr Duan said, looking at his wife fondly. ‘I am just a worldly man distracted by mundane thoughts. So you want to know about Xuanzang?’ He paused, then continued, his voice becoming more animated at the sound of the monk’s name. ‘Now there was a great man. He was above it all. When I worked in the monastery I used to walk around the pagoda whenever I had problems. But really, they were so trivial. Master Xuanzang was very brave to go on that journey, risking his life. He never gave up, he came back with the sutras. All I have to do is to sit and meditate in a comfortable room – I don’t call that difficult.’

I told him I was surprised that he loved the monastery so much, yet he had given it up and returned to secular life.

‘It is a long story. You are too young to understand,’ Duan said, his voice suddenly sombre.

After the Land Reform in 1950, the monasteries were left with very little land, barely enough for the monks to live on. Donations and fees for religious rituals – a considerable proportion of the monastic income in the old days – were drying up. Monks were warned against ‘making a business out of superstition’. In a monastery in northeastern China they were forced to put up this poster:

Do not think that through the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas you can obtain good fortune, cure disease or avoid disaster. No matter how big a donation you make, they cannot grant you such requests. Keep your good money for buying patriotic bonds and you can create infinite happiness for society.

Hunger made many monks return to secular life. By 1958, nine years after the revolution, ninety per cent of Chinese monks and nuns had left their monasteries for the world outside, or had died of starvation. The abbot of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda was forced to leave the monastery and had to make a living selling coal from a handcart. Duan was an orphan and had nowhere to go, so he stayed on where he was, barely surviving on cornflour porridge and vegetable leaves.

His old monastery was shut down in the 1960s and the government Religious Bureau assigned him to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. There were three other monks and also four cadres from the Xian Municipal Cultural Bureau, ostensibly to protect the pagoda but also to keep an eye on the monks. They forbade them to shave their heads, wear their robes, make offerings to the Buddha and Bodhisattvas, or conduct the morning and evening services in the shrine hall. In fact the shrine hall could be used only for political study sessions or struggle meetings. They did allow the monks to say prayers in their own rooms, but not too loudly – that would disturb other people working in the monastery.

Normal religious life was resumed, however, when there were foreign Buddhist delegations. Buddhism helped China to develop friendly foreign relations, especially with Japan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. The monks’ presence would show that the Communist Party, though not religious itself, respected religious freedom for its people. When there was an important visit, the cadres would collect monks from all over Xian to simulate the appearance of a functioning monastery. The monks were carefully rehearsed in the questions that might be asked.

Duan was even trained at the Chinese Buddhist Seminary in Beijing to answer every kind of question. ‘That was when I learned a lot about Xuanzang and how important he is, not just for us monks, but for Buddhists throughout Asia,’ he remembered. ‘They told us Master Xuanzang was a trump card, very important. In fact he was our only card. We were not allowed to talk about anything but him. I guess there was nothing to say about our religious observance – we did not have any. So all we could do was to show the delegates the sutras that Xuanzang translated, which we were not allowed to read. Then we brought them to the pagoda and told them how we remembered the great man on his anniversary with special ceremonies – which of course we could not hold. Before they left, we gave them a portrait of Xuanzang from a rubbing and told them how we were carrying forward his great legacy. All the time Party officials watched us. Then the delegation left, convinced of our freedom of worship, and we returned to our so-called normal life.’

Much of Duan’s life was taken up by relentless political studies. ‘We were asked to surrender our black heart in exchange for a red heart faithful to the Communist Party,’ Duan said. Week after week, sometimes for months on end, they studied the works of Mao and editorials in the People’s Daily. Then they had to hand in reports of what they learned from their studies.

I asked how much he had really taken on board.

‘A lot of it was beyond me,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t see why we should spend weeks studying the new marriage law. It had absolutely nothing to do with us. Perhaps they knew all along we were going to be sent home and get married so it would do us good to know what our rights were as husbands.’ He gave an awkward laugh.

Was there a lot of pressure for him to marry?

‘Plenty,’ he sighed. ‘Sometimes monks and nuns were put in a room together and were told they couldn’t leave until they agreed to marry.’ There was a nunnery on the outskirts of Xian. One day the abbess came to see Duan and asked if he would take care of one of the novices. ‘The nuns suffered more than us monks. Officials spread rumours about them, saying the nunnery was a den of vice and the nuns were prostitutes. Many could not bear it and left, and the nunnery had only two novices and the old and weak staying on,’ Duan said. He told the abbess that he would think about it, and eventually he agreed. But then the girl died suddenly. He thought it might have been suicide. ‘I felt very guilty; maybe if I had agreed sooner, I would have saved her life.’

Under the unremitting pressure from the government, two of Duan’s fellow-monks finally gave in and got married. Then officials badgered him daily, asking him when he would make up his mind. There was a woman, a water-seller outside the monastery, whom Duan had seen around for ages. She was a widow from the village, with four children to support. He thought, why not?

By then he had been a monk for nearly thirty years. That was the only life he knew: simple, quiet living, with just enough to eat and three items of clothing; content and secure, sheltered by the high monastic walls. Now the routine and the structure were gone – no drum to wake him up in the morning, no services and prayers to shape his day, and no beautiful chanting and great masters to reinforce his belief. He must have found it terribly hard in the real world. I looked round the room we were sitting in – it was antiquated, as if it had not been touched for decades. There was practically no furniture, just a saggy, torn sofa and a refrigerator standing in a corner. Next to it, a small rickety altar with a tiny statue of Guanyin. The bare walls held only a huge Mao portrait dominating the room.

‘He was born to be a monk,’ Mrs Duan interjected before her husband had a chance to say anything more. ‘When we got engaged, a dreadful woman in the village started slandering us, saying we weren’t really man and wife because monks are like eunuchs. I begged him to do something.’

‘What did you do?’ I asked.

‘What’s there to explain? What does it matter?’ Duan said.

Their honeymoon was hardly over when the Cultural Revolution began. Duan still remembered the day when the Red Guards stormed the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. It was early one evening in the summer of 1966 and they were about to have supper. Suddenly there was a thunderous noise outside. Before they realized what was happening, a group of Red Guards broke in, shouting, ‘Smash the old world, build a brand-new one!’ Two of them came into his cell and grabbed the scriptures from his table and threw them on the floor. They ordered him to tread on them to show his support. ‘How could I? They were the holy words of the Buddha. I would incur so much wrath, I would be condemned to hell for ever.’ He refused.

The Red Guards stamped on the sutras themselves. ‘Confess, and we will deal with you leniently; resist, and we will punish you severely. Think carefully. We will come back for you tomorrow.’ With that warning, they left the cell.

Outside, some Red Guards were putting up Mao’s portrait and posters in large characters, while others were throwing ropes on to the big Buddha and Bodhisattva statues in the shrine hall. The cadres from the Cultural Relics Bureau rushed in to stop them, saying those and the Big Wild Goose Pagoda were not feudal objects but the nation’s treasures, from the time of the Monkey King – they had a certificate from the State Council to prove it. The Red Guards were caught by surprise and stood there, not sure what to do. Then one of them started pulling down the silk banners that were hanging from the ceiling. ‘These cannot possibly be state treasures,’ she said harshly. In a few minutes all the banners were thrown outside, joined by the monastery’s precious collection of sutras, many of them Xuanzang’s own translations, and other ancient manuscripts. They asked the monks and cadres to come out and stand around the pile, as witnesses to their revolutionary action. Amid mad shouting and clapping, they set the lot on fire. The fire went on all night.

The Big Wild Goose Pagoda survived, but the loss for the whole country was unbelievable. In 1949, there were some two hundred thousand Buddhist monasteries throughout China. One campaign after another accounted for many of them – they were either demolished or turned into schools, factories, houses and museums. By the time the Red Guards finished their work and the Cultural Revolution was over, barely a hundred remained intact. In Beijing, there were, once, more than a hundred monasteries and temples, and now only five belong to the monks. Grandmother was very upset that the three temples in her village were destroyed and the farmers used the stones to build pig-sties and houses. In Tibet, the destruction was almost total. Gone with them was a large part of our history, culture and life – a part we had denounced as antiquated, feudal and backward, a part whose value we did not know until it was gone.

But Duan did not share my sadness and regrets. ‘I am so pleased the pagoda has survived,’ he said, ‘but even that will go one day. Nothing is permanent. When you look at our monastery today, you think it is great. When I first came here, the monastery was run-down and overgrown with weeds; wolves hovered at the gates. It has been repaired a few times since then. And now it looks its best. But in Master Xuanzang’s time, this was just the monastery’s cemetery, where they buried the ashes of distinguished monks. The monastery itself was a hundred times bigger, if not more, with thousands of rooms, and any number of halls, all connected by streams like in a garden. It could even compete with the imperial palaces in beauty and grandeur. But it is all gone. So what we think of as lasting does not actually last.’ He gave me time to take in this very Buddhist view. ‘Didn’t Chairman Mao say, “Without destruction, there is no construction”? The destruction of the Cultural Revolution gave us Buddhists the opportunity to show our devotion and to accumulate merit for the next life by building new monasteries, bigger and better.’ He paused. ‘You know, when the Buddha first began promulgating the Dharma two thousand five hundred years ago, he and his disciples simply slept under the trees and begged for alms. We don’t even have to have monasteries.’

Did he ever think of resuming monastic life now religion was allowed again? Duan did not hesitate for a moment. ‘My wife was very good to take me on in difficult times and has looked after me all these years. The Dharma teaches us to show compassion for all sentient beings. She is getting old and needs me more than ever. How can I leave her? If I have no compassion for her, how can I talk about compassion for anybody else?’ He paused, and then added, looking at his wife: ‘If she passes away ahead of me, I would like to return to a monastery to spend my remaining days there: that is, if any monastery will take me.’ Mrs Duan was all smiles now.

As a Buddhist, Duan attributed his return to secular life to his bad karma. ‘I must have left some important task unfinished in my previous life, or obstructed someone unintentionally,’ he said. ‘That’s why I could only spend half of my life as a monk. You can’t escape your karma.’

I find it difficult to accept that Duan was being punished for past sins, that all those people during the Cultural Revolution had done something wrong to deserve their suffering, just as I cannot accept that Grandmother’s misfortunes were due to the wrongs of her previous lives. I am still struggling with the idea of karma, a linchpin of Buddhism. For Buddhists, the differences and inequalities in the world can not be explained as simple accidents: they are the working of karma. Why is one born a millionaire, another a pauper? How could Mozart write such heavenly melodies in his teens while others are tone deaf? The Buddha said you reap what you sow: we are the result of our karma, although we can make it better or worse through our own efforts. What I can appreciate is the virtuous effect of believing in it: instead of blaming others and bearing grudges, Duan would always look deeply inside himself and think how he could improve.

They offered me a glass of hot water, with a spoonful of sugar in it – it was all they could afford. I thought about everything he had told me. ‘You have had such a hard life,’ I said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t say it has been easy. We were very poor when I was small. We lived by begging, and slept at the city gate. I often passed out with the cold; sometimes I woke up with frozen corpses around me. Then my parents died of starvation and my uncle, who could not even feed his own children, left me outside a monastery, and the monks took me in. At least I had food, clothes, a roof over my head. I survived. Life improved after the revolution.’

‘But how about everything that happened to the monasteries and the monks? Was that not suffering?’

‘We went through many painful things. But the Buddha says suffering is a fact of life. It depends on how we look at it. To me, not to have anything to eat is suffering. I haven’t starved since I became a monk, so I can’t say I have suffered.’

That night in my hotel room, I could see the pagoda from my window. Mr Duan must be doing his meditation and saying his prayer now, I thought. Before we parted, I had asked him what he prayed for. ‘To be a monk again in my next life,’ he said. I had meant to ask him about Xuanzang and his teachings and find out what exactly were the doctrines he went to India to find. I did not. But Duan’s life had given me something more to think about. Monasteries would be destroyed, but he had a shrine inside himself which was inviolate. In his room, he prayed silently, holding fast to his belief, living by it, unperturbed by all that happened to him. For him, the whole world is a meditation hall, where he put the teaching of the Buddha into ultimate practice. In my eyes, he was a real monk, though a monk without a robe.

I went back to the monastery the next day to have a closer look at it. It was hard to appreciate that what I saw was only the cemetery of the original community. There was still a group of stupas to the right of the pagoda. Originally stupas were built to house the ashes and bones of the Buddha. But gradually over the centuries, they were devoted to lesser and lesser beings, but still of great distinction: the masters who had come closest to enlightenment, the heads of Buddhist sects, the abbots and revered monks of the monasteries. Stupas are supposed not only to commemorate the departed but also to inspire future generations. They are distinguishable by their size but above all by the number of tiers on the spires above the base, with the highest being nine for the Buddha himself. According to my guidebook, Xuanzang’s relic stupa was in a separate monastery built specifically for it. The stupas here were all very similar except for one in the shape of a truncated obelisk standing on a lotus flower. The monk’s name, Pu Ci, was carved on one side, while the others bore the date of dedication and decorative flowers. It was delicately made. But there were no tiers, suggesting someone of lowly status. And unlike all the others, there was no epitaph giving information about the deceased. I was wondering what this stupa was doing here in this distinguished company when a young monk walked by. I stopped him and asked if he could tell me anything about Pu Ci.

‘You don’t know about him?’ he retorted. Then he seemed to consider something. ‘But then, why should you, I suppose? He saved us. Without him, I would not be here today. The Big Wild Goose Pagoda would have been just for you tourists. He was a brave man, a true Buddhist.’

I must have looked as puzzled as I felt, when he launched into an explanation of how the government had decreed in 1982 that any monastery with no monks in residence by the end of the Cultural Revolution would be used for public purposes. ‘Pu Ci managed to stay on here, so the Big Wild Goose Pagoda is still a monastery. Without him, it would have been turned into a park or a garden. But he suffered for it.’

If Duan had suffered so much, I could not bear to think what this monk must have gone through.

The young monk said that Pu Ci was the only one who wore his robe throughout the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards ordered him not to but he simply ignored them. They organized struggle meetings in the shrine hall and made him kneel on the floor and confess his motives for carrying on his ‘feudal practices’. He refused to say a word. What was there to say? He had been a monk for so many years and the robe was like his skin. Outraged by his silence, the Red Guards started beating him. Every time they hit him, he uttered the name of Amitabha. They did not know what to do with him. He was locked up to repent but he just meditated all the time. They thought he was mad so eventually they left him alone. I asked how he would have dealt with the blows raining down on him?

‘He probably would think of one of the ten attributes of a Bodhisattva. It is called khanti, meaning patient endurance of suffering inflicted upon oneself by others and forbearance for their wrongs. There are lots of stories about khanti in the scriptures and it is one of the qualities that monks try to cultivate. And he obviously achieved it,’ said the young monk humbly.

I remembered one of the old priests at the struggle meetings in my childhood. I could not forget how serene he was. Now I understood what kept him so calm when he was spat on, when he was made to kneel on broken glass. Deep inside, he would have prayed not for the stilling of his pain but for the heart to conquer it. He perhaps would think that the spit was raindrops and they would dry up when the sun came out. Or would he think that the attacks on him might be the result of his bad karma? If so, they were the outcome of his own actions and he should not harbour bitterness towards his attackers. He was in a different world from us, in the midst of pain, yet above it.

I looked at the stupa again, next to the giant Big Wild Goose Pagoda, not even the size of its foundation. Dappled sunshine fell on it through the thick pine trees. I stared at it, thinking of the story I had just heard. I had the sensation that the stupa was expanding, billowing out into a larger dimension, until it was huge. The Big Wild Goose Pagoda embodied Xuanzang’s spirit, and the Buddhism he disseminated. It could still be a Buddhist institution carrying on the propagation – because of this ordinary monk. He did not despair perhaps because of a simple belief: if the monks were alive, Buddhism would live on, despite the total destruction of monasteries, statues and scriptures. Xuanzang built the pagoda, Pu Ci preserved it. The spirit they stood for, the faith that sustained them, the spreading of the Dharma they carried out determinedly – the hope of Chinese Buddhism.

But the young monk said there were monks who totally despaired. He showed me a stupa next to Pu Ci’s, which looked no different from the half dozen standing there, but with an inscription longer than any of the others. It read as follows:

Lang Zhao, Secretary of the Xian Buddhist Association, was born in 1893 into a wealthy family in northeastern China, came to Xian and took vows at the age of eighteen; abbot of Wolong Monastery; made donations for the aeroplane that was used to fight against the Americans and supported the Korean people; did farming and built a commune for monks and nuns who lived on their own products and wore their own woven cloth; suffered maltreatment during the Cultural Revolution in 1966 and took his own life on August 18 of that year, at the age of seventy-two, after fifty-five years as a monk.

There is something strange about this – it simply is not how a Buddhist master’s epitaph usually reads. It seems only to refer to his patriotism, not to his contributions to Buddhism. But what I found even more bewildering is the remark I have italicized near the end: he actually committed suicide – a cardinal sin, a capital offence in Buddhism. Why did he do it?

The first rule of Buddhism is not to kill any living creature, not to take one’s own life, and not to help with any killing. ‘Rare is birth as a human being. Hard is the life of mortals. Do not let slip this opportunity,’ is the advice of the Buddha. I had read that the Vinaya, the Buddhist code of conduct, forbids monks to commit suicide, in any form and for any reason. Those who do forfeit the possibility of a good rebirth, let alone that of entering the Western Paradise. What made Lang Zhao do it?

The young monk explained. Lang Zhao was a very good man. He left home out of compassion for the poor, searching for a way to end suffering. He supported the Party for the same reason – to bring about a better life for millions of Chinese. He raised money for ‘Chinese Buddhist’ – the fighter plane that Buddhists throughout China had been asked to contribute to the Korean War effort – and he went to the front line to comfort the troops. He tried hard to help the Party realize the Communist ideal of ‘paradise on earth’. He was rewarded: he was made the head of the Xian Buddhist Association, the most senior monk in the city.

But for all his efforts, he was one of the first targets of the Red Guards – August 18, 1966, the day he took his life, was when Mao received one million Red Guards on Tiananmen Square, openly showing his support for them. They would be his vanguards for the Cultural Revolution. He met some of them in person afterwards, including a girl called Binbin, meaning ‘the polite one’. Mao told her that revolution was not a gentle business and she should change her name to Yaowu, ‘with force’. There could not have been a clearer signal for the use of violence. As soon as they heard the message on the radio, the Red Guards in Xian stormed Lang Zhao’s monastery, destroying it completely. He felt a great injustice had been done: he had been so loyal to the Party; he had really tried to use Buddhism in helping to build the new China and he had allowed himself to be showcased as an example of a remodelled monk. And in the end, he was repaid for good with evil. He despaired. That very night, he killed himself.

The two monks’ stories were grim, but telling. Standing next to each other, their stupas, and lives, invite a comparison. Pu Ci was a simple man, but a true Buddhist monk; Lang Zhao was a master, but in the end shamed himself, however understandably. He was too conscious of his achievements and his sacrifices, too attached to the world and his role in it. He could not bear being reviled after all he had done, by the very people he had tried to support. He was only human. He died, and his monastery with him. Pu Ci just did what he had to do. He raised himself above all his pain and lived; he saved Xuanzang’s Big Wild Goose Pagoda and never knew he would be buried and honoured alongside it.

The queue to climb the Big Wild Goose Pagoda was long and those who came down were panting and fanning themselves vigorously, sharing their experiences up there with their friends who were content to admire it from below. They would not bother to stop and examine these little stupas. Perhaps this was why the young monk was happy to spend nearly an hour and a half talking to me. ‘The Buddha preached to those who were willing to listen,’ he said, when I apologized for taking so much of his time. ‘I’m pleased you are so keen on Buddhism. I hope all the visitors will share your interest.’

He had been enormously helpful. I had learned so much from what he told me. It was well past lunchtime and I offered to take him for a meal. He happily agreed, and chose a tiny family restaurant nearby which served nothing but noodles. While we ate, he asked why I was so interested in the stupas. Most people would come, climb the pagoda, have their picture taken and leave. I laughed and told him it was different for me. When he heard that I was going to India, his eyes lit up and he exclaimed, ‘Really? Can I come with you? Next year will be Master Xuanzang’s fourteen-hundredth anniversary. Won’t it be a great thing to do if I could follow in his footsteps too?’ But like Xuanzang, he could not get the permission from the government to travel abroad. For a moment, he looked crestfallen, but soon he cheered up. ‘You know we are doing something about Master Xuanzang too?’ I had heard a little about a Memorial Hall. ‘Have you seen the construction behind the pagoda? I’ll show you after lunch.’

Against the back wall of the monastery, builders were working away on three huge halls in traditional Chinese style. ‘We’ve always felt ashamed about not doing something special for Master Xuanzang. I am sure you understand why. Now things have changed.’ He was getting excited. ‘Just imagine. The walls will be decorated with carvings and statues by the best artists and craftsmen in China. The ones at the two ends will show the master’s life, his journey to India, his studies in the land of the Buddha, his return to Xian and his translation of the sutras. The middle one will hold the master’s statue and on the white marble wall will be carved scenes of the Tushita, the paradise of Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha to Come. This will be the fulfilment of a dream.’ He seemed intoxicated by the prospect. ‘You will end your journey here, won’t you, as the Master did? When you come back, all this will be finished. Then the visitors will learn about the real Xuanzang and all the amazing things he did. No more Monkey King rubbish,’ he said with a big smile.

It was near closing time when the young monk finished showing me the site and the monastery. There were very few visitors left. Quiet was descending on the temple and the air was full of the fragrance of flowers and shrubs. Monks walked about briskly on a security round. In the early-evening light, the pagoda looked ever more imposing, austere and majestic. It was extraordinary that it had been standing here for nearly fourteen hundred years. Now I realized its survival was far from being just good fortune.

There were four major persecutions in earlier Chinese history, two before Xuanzang, and two after him in 845 and 955. That in 845 was the most devastating and the most complete. In just one month, almost all the monasteries in the country, some 44,600, were destroyed; the entire Buddhist community, over 260,000 monks and nuns, was forced to return to lay life. It was such a heavy blow, Buddhism was yet to recover from it. The Cultural Revolution effectively demolished what was left. Duan told me a story which showed the low point that had been reached by its end. In the early 1970s, the Chinese government was looking for a rapprochement with Japan. A delegation of over a hundred Japanese monks was invited. They wanted to come to Xian, which they recognized as the fountainhead of their own Buddhism. There was only one problem: where could an equal number of monks be found to meet the visitors? Party officials from the Religious Bureau looked up the records and found where the former monks had been exiled. They combed the countryside – eventually more than a hundred were assembled, many of them now married, disabled or decrepit. And when they had to perform an appropriately grand ceremony, it was soon clear that they had forgotten their sutras and how to chant and play the drums and cymbals. Experts were drafted from Beijing to help rehearse them to an acceptable level. The shaky ensemble managed to perform adequately, and honour was satisfied.

The Big Wild Goose Pagoda has weathered all the storms. Xuanzang was the inspiration. Monks like Pu Ci defended it at whatever cost. If monasteries were destroyed, they would be rebuilt. Even without monasteries, monks like Duan could carry on the faith. Because of people like them, Buddhism has survived in China for almost two thousand years, and will continue to be an important part of Chinese life. I had received a powerful lesson right at the start of my journey: the strength of faith. This was what motivated and sustained Xuanzang. The three monks at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda were his followers. They had already given me an impression of what it was in Buddhism that made them, and Xuanzang, so different, so special. I began to understand what Grandmother had said about monks being the gentlest of men. But they were also the toughest. I began to grasp what our minds could do if we indeed could cultivate them as the Buddha said.

Clack! Clack! There was a sharp, hard sound: a monk walked past us, banging two pieces of wood together. The young monk said it was time for the evening services. Before we said goodbye, he went back to his room and returned with a little book. It had a folded paper in it. ‘This has the Heart Sutra translated by Master Xuanzang himself,’ he said. ‘It is the core of Chinese Buddhism. Whenever Xuanzang was in trouble, he always recited it. Please use it as your guide too. It won’t be easy, but keep going. And when you begin to understand this sutra, you will be getting somewhere. I hope you will find the way.’

Late that night, I went back through the city gates, and headed for the station, catching a late-night train for the next stage of my journey, the Jade Gate, the frontier of the Chinese empire in Xuanzang’s time. After I had settled down in my hard-sleeper booth, I took out the monk’s little book. I opened the folded paper first and found myself face to face with Xuanzang: young, energetic and purposeful, his eyes firmly on the road ahead and his backpack full of scriptures – it was a rubbing of Xuanzang’s portrait from a stele in the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. But his gifts felt heavy in my hands. Perhaps I should not just make the journey for myself. I should try to help bring the real Xuanzang back for my fellow-Chinese, just as the abbot and monks of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda are doing. It would be like restoring a part of our heritage.