I had just finished the final section of Yu Hua's To Live, and for a while I was back in the fields again—watching Fugui and the old ox, the uneven paddy, the footprints trailing through the mud, human and ox, ox and human. On the stage of a life, roles keep arriving and leaving like figures in a lantern show; in the end, the ten yuan under the pillow is still needed to settle the funeral arrangements. One song ends; another waits to begin.
Earlier that morning I read a report: Chen Qian, a nineteen-year-old girl from Siyang, had died in a traffic accident. Her dream had been to become a white-clad healer and save lives. Her family, with tears, decided to donate her body for medical teaching so that her life might continue in another form. Her father, Chen Lijun, had already registered as a human organ donation volunteer. He said that when he signed, he thought of the future: when his own time came, he would go to that side too, to accompany his daughter, and in some small way contribute to society.
I was in tears immediately. There is too much pain in this world, and some holes can never be patched. Whether the hole swallows you or you face it directly is something only you can decide.
Since the beginning of this year, I have become less and less willing to record the details of work and daily life. They seem like leaves: however they grow, however they sway, however alive they look, in the end they fall, rot, and merge into the earth without a trace. They come, and yet they have not come—isn't this what is meant by 'The Tathagata comes from nowhere and goes nowhere; therefore he is called the Tathagata'?
Perhaps this is what being forty is like. At the end of the year I will turn forty-one, and maybe that will bring a different feeling. Whenever I open old journals, I think, Hey, is this me? Haha—even I feel that person is someone else. Yes, every day is new, and every day we are new too. Isn't this 'no mark of self, no mark of a person, no mark of a sentient being, no mark of a lifespan'? Everything is 'like dew, like lightning,' and indeed 'we should contemplate it thus.'
Isn't all perception, then, the Diamond Sutra? The photograph included here was taken when a relative died: night, solemnity, a light in the distance…
