Meanwhile, the demons howled with laughter as they feasted at a banquet of human flesh. First to be eaten were those who had spread rumours. Their tongues were cut out, then their blood was poured into jars and placed on the altar as an offering to evil deities. The demons consumed some of these poor souls, but there were more than they could eat, so the rest were left without their tongues, weeping in remorse and pain. Their wailing streamed past people’s hearts, like a dark river of grief.
Above, the sky was a vacant blue that imbued sorrow and despair with beauty. Some who had heard the wailing sang in praise of the colour, but they could not be sure if they sang of the blue or of the despair in their hearts. It seemed that as they sang their sorrow became bearable, and their despair lessened. But the demons would not allow them to sing for long: they feared the sound would reach the heavens. They released vaporous incantations of an invisible grey that suffused the air, entering the noses and throats of the singers. Those who inhaled them were cursed, their vocal cords paralysed, and they could make but one sound, that of a meek lamb.
Baa!
Baa, baa!
Oblivious, they continued to sing. Bleating, they roamed the land like sleepwalkers. When they grew exhausted, they chewed poisonous grasses that even sheep knew to avoid. Then, coughing up grey-green bubbles, they died by the river and the roadside. In that way the demons showed their power.
The people of Gling sank into indifference, their usually lively faces blank. They no longer looked into the sky – what could they expect to see? No deity had come. Rumour spread that one had arrived, but no one would admit to having seen it. True, they had not seen a demon either, but that was different: anyone who had seen a demon had been devoured by it.
In those sad days, wise men let their hair grow long and meditated in caves. They decided that there must be past and future lives, more and larger worlds than the one in which they lived. They wondered what those worlds looked like and whether soaring mountains or vast oceans separated them. And they gave a name to the terror, suffering and despair that the demons brought: they called it Fate.
It was under such circumstances that Master Lotus set off on his return journey to Heaven, intending to report the results of his inspection. Along the way he met farmers, carpenters and potters, all hurrying past him. From their stiff smiles and marionette gait, he knew they had been summoned by the demons. He took them by the shoulders and shook them, imploring them to return home, but no one heeded him. Although he might once have waged a battle against the demons, he knew he could not vanquish them all. Besides, his warnings had not brought the people to their senses, and he comforted himself with a phrase that we still hear now, a thousand years later: ‘What I cannot see cannot trouble me.’
Actually, what he said to himself was: ‘What I cannot see does not trouble me, so I must avoid the main roads.’
He pushed through bramble patches to reach hidden paths. In his weariness he forgot that a simple spell could protect him, and now his arms were torn by thorns, which angered him. The force of his rage made the bramble bushes bow down at his feet.
The paths were little better, for the shepherds, who had abandoned their flocks in the meadows, and the shamans, who had been collecting medicinal herbs in the hedgerows, were rushing to the beckoning demons, jostling him as they hastened past. He wondered what magic could be so powerful. His fatigue dropped away, and he followed them to a mountain pass where the rocky surface had been stripped of moss by the wind. He saw a clear blue lake in the hollow below, and remembered that he had passed this spot before and had vanquished three demons there, demons that could move in and out of the earth, like dragons that soar above water yet are at home in it. He’d used his magic powers to pick up lakeside boulders and drop them one by one at the base of the mountains: the impact had exposed the demons – one had died underground, the other two were buried beneath a colossal rock. Even now, the meandering banks of the lake are dotted with these boulders; once pitch black, they have been turned a dark, lustreless purple by the elements.
Master Lotus realised that he had spent a long time in Gling. A year? Two? Perhaps longer. At the place where he had once vanquished the three demons, a new demon had appeared, a giant snake that hid its body beneath the water, while its long tongue showed as a peninsula rich with enticing red flowers. Above it floated an alluring woman, a sorceress, cupping her breasts in her hands. She sang, and the humans were enchanted. If they retained a trace of free will, it was simply to walk towards her along the demon’s tongue and into its mouth.
Master Lotus flew to the top of a boulder and commanded the people to be deaf to the demon’s summons. But no one paused, not even for as long as it takes a grain of sand to drop through an hourglass, and the naked sorceress made her voice even more beguiling. Then she lifted her snake’s tail from under the lake and waved it provocatively, sending a gust of putrid wind towards him. Enraged, he flew to alight in the snake’s mouth, now transformed into the entrance to a dragon palace. He settled his mind, steadied his feet, and recited an incantation that filled his body with air. Bigger and bigger he grew in the serpent’s mouth, until the writhing creature stirred vast waves in the lake. The flowers and the lush grass vanished. The snake’s long tongue flipped the people into the water and its head split around Master Lotus’s giant body. He flung the snake’s body onto the lakeshore, where it was transformed into a range of rolling hills. But the lake had swallowed the people.
‘Rise!’ he cried. The drowned rose out of the water and were flung onto the shore.
Master Lotus’s strong magic restored many to life. As they got slowly to their feet, they knew they must flee, but their legs failed them. They lay down and wept, their tears falling, like hail, into the lake, made foul by the snake demon. The salt in their tears cleansed the filth, and a blue mist of sadness spread, soaking up the cruelty that had inhabited the water.
Then Master Lotus summoned sweetly chirping birds to gather in the trees, which cheered the people, who stood, stretched and set off for home, to their pastures and villages where barley and cabbage grew. Potters returned to their kilns, stone masons to their quarries; tanners gathered mirabilite crystals from the roadside to soften their leather. Master Lotus knew they might encounter bandits or evil spirits, and never find their homes, but he bestowed on them his blessing with auspicious words.
Master Lotus was not a deity, but he was a future deity. He had earned his power through his devotions and asceticism, and carried magic objects that guaranteed victory over the demons. His head was filled with powerful incantations. Although he could not travel freely into Heaven, he could fly up to the gate, where the Guanyin Bodhisattva, saviour of all those who suffer, would be waiting for his report on what he had witnessed during his journeys through Gling. The Bodhisattva would tell his story to those above.
He flew from Gling to Heaven on the back of a roc, holding on to its feathers to steady himself. Dizzy, fearful of falling into the great void, he recalled that he could soar aloft on a ray of sunlight. Why, then, was he afraid? The people he had saved must have shaken his inner tranquillity.
He sat on the roc’s back, his long hair flowing behind him, the wind howling past his ears. Reaching out, he squeezed the water from the drifting clouds, twisting them into auspicious knots, then tossing them to the ground. Later, when he had become a deity, sacred signs appeared where the knots had landed.
A voice full of laughter spoke: ‘After that, people will think of you wherever they are.’
He reined in the roc and, eyes downcast, hands at his sides, sat up straight. ‘It was the whim of a humble monk . . .’
Above him, all was quiet.
‘I shall go down to retrieve the knots.’
‘There is no need,’ the voice said. ‘I am happy that you have returned from the human world in such high spirits.’
Master Lotus breathed a sigh of relief.
The Bodhisattva said, ‘Dismount and we shall talk.’
How could he dismount in the void?
‘Just climb down from the roc’s back.’ The Bodhisattva smiled