Work Text:
“Ah, I see the most honoured friend has succeeded in his endeavours most admirably!”
The call came from a slender youth, wearing old but clean robes, as he strode into the clearing. The clearing’s current occupant, Xiao Bao, opened his eyes and rose to his feet. He had been sitting and meditating on a mossy rock until the peace was disturbed, but not a flicker of annoyance crossed his face.
“It is I who is impressed by my honoured friend’s successes. A thousand blessings upon him!” Xiao Bao replied. He hid the satisfaction he felt at the display of humility and fellowship he had been able to create. He could feel how the high regard he was showing his rival was reinforcing his inner peace and taking him closer, step by torturous step, to enlightenment.
Of course, his rival Xiao Da was trying to do the same. Whichever of them reached the next stage of enlightenment first would maximise his dharma and win their cutthroat competition.
The peaceful sounds of a stream that meandered past the clearing’s edge leant a sophisticated and collegial atmosphere that suited their words but not their intentions.
“My friend Bao is too kind! Who is to say which of us is most admirable? I would not dare to claim such authority,” Xiao Da said. He had found a new way to humble himself, and was now placing himself below Xiao Bao. But that wasn’t all! By leaving off the part of his name that humbled Xiao Bao, Xiao Da was seeking to lure him to aggrandisement. Xiao Bao was not going to let that happen.
“I am shocked that my friend Xiao Da would misremember his friend’s name, but forgive him for it was surely a mistake caused by overexertion in the seeking of improvement, which is the common human striving that unites us!” He focused hard and was able, with sweat beading on his brow, to make that forgiveness a reality. The upper hand in the struggle was once again his. He was sure Xiao Da would use another trick to try to seize another advantage, but Xiao Bao felt ready to handle it. His long meditation had brought enlightenment ever closer, and the years of work would soon come to fruition.
“Like the tree gives shade to all who lie beneath it, so do I admire the shelter that Xiao Bao provides us.” So saying, Xiao Da seated himself under one of the trees around the clearing. “The wisdom that my honourable friend so kindly passes around is sweeter than peaches and more precious than pearls.”
“As one torch can set alight a forest, so too is knowledge passed among humans,” Xiao Bao replied. Xiao Da had provoked him too much to let this latest comment pass. Neither of them would ever eat a peach or own a pearl, for attachment to material possessions was poison to advancement. The most important step in Xiao Bao’s progression had been figuring out a way to discard his begging bowl. Now he only owned the robes on his back, and was happier for it. “This unworthy one would nevertheless be bold enough to suggest that some sparks have come to him which may be of use to his friend. I would recite a poem on this basis, if it is acceptable?”
Xiao Da would not be able to turn down such an offer without exposing himself as an arrogant youth, and so the trap was set. “This one would be most grateful to learn at the feet of such a distinguished disciple,” he replied.
After clearing his throat, Xiao Bao began. The words were not his, but he had repurposed them to share a Buddhist truth.
“Why in the night sky are the lights hung?
Why is the earth moving round the sun?
Floating in the vacuum with no purpose, not a one
Why in the night sky are the lights hung?”
“This unlearned one is honoured to have been blessed in this way,” Xiao Da said, tone thoughtful. “If it is not too forward, he might attempt to recite a poem of his own?”
Xiao Bao smiled graciously and nodded, and Xiao Da began.
“The one in whom a desire for the ineffable has arisen,
whose mind is satisfied
and whose thoughts are free from desires
is called one who ascends the stream.”
“Your work is certainly memorable,” Xiao Bao said, trying and failing to keep the disappointment from his voice. The poem was a bit derivative and hadn’t given Xiao Bao anything new to learn from.
“Oh,” Xiao Da exclaimed in surprise, “I did not mean to imply that this was my own work. These are the words of the Buddha. I merely sought to indicate that they could be of some use to a friend.”
The cheap shot landed, and the implication that Xiao Bao had not yet learned even the most basic of the Buddha’s ideals was a devastating one. On another day it would have meant the end of their fight. Xiao Bao would have slunk off to lick his wounds and prepare for the next round. Not today, though.
It was a struggle for Xiao Bao to keep the smile off his face. Xiao Da had made a fatal mistake in their duel. He had won a tactical victory but sown the seeds for his own strategic defeat. The end was now inevitable.
Xiao Bao had deliberately cultivated a deep animosity towards his rival, though he knew it would make advancement near-impossible so long as it lasted. His anger was a millstone around his neck, holding him back. But now, as that anger reached its peak, he executed his plan. A man may not touch the sky from the valley, but he could climb the mountain and so breathe a rarer sort of air. And so Xiao Bao decided to remove the millstone and climb.
He set his anger aside and humbled himself, accepting that all were unworthy of enlightenment and so he could not sit in judgement of Xiao Da. He was not even fit to sit in judgement of himself. The anger he clung to had as much meaning behind it as the random roll of a die. It was a bitter thought indeed, and Xiao Bao felt as though he were sweating blood. A deep pain lanced through him as he castigated himself for his unworthy actions towards a fellow disciple.
In that moment he saw the absurdity of it all. Schemes and plots and wheels within wheels, all to race towards a finish line that only had meaning because of who he was competing with? Madness, it was a red madness. In seeking to wound another he had only wounded himself. He could have been free of this anger a long time ago, if he had only been willing to let go. A soft smile crossed his lips as the moment of clarity lifted him as a wave would, and carried him to greater heights than he’d ever seen before.
There was a common question asked of novices. How does one know if one has reached enlightenment? The Buddha said, ‘a sparrow is enlightened,’ and yet the sparrow did not know this about itself. Xiao Bao realised then that one is enlightened when all the poems and koans make sense, without anything about them having changed.
He was, as Xiao Da and before him the Buddha had said, one who ascends the stream. Xiao Bao’s eyes were open and beheld a new sky and a new world, bright with promise. It was the same world, but that did not mean it could not be new.
But enlightenment was not a state to reach and hold, but an action to take and which must be taken over and over again lest it wane. So Xiao Bao acted as he left the clearing. There was one who had yet to be illuminated, and therefore he shone a light, the only kind of light that mattered, the light of the mind.
“Xiao Da, I would like to offer you the gift of a riddle. The Buddha said if you truly love yourself, you could never hurt another. The riddle is this: who is the self, and who is the other?”
“What is this?” Xiao Da asked, a trace of anger in his voice. He suspected mockery where there was none, for he carried his own millstone and it was blinding him.
Xiao Bao smiled. “This is the sound of the stream, and the wind, and the birds in the sky, and the sun shining down on it all. And it is the sound of me and you speaking.”
“Speak plainly or not at all,” Xiao Da demanded. Then Xiao Bao saw that there was nothing he could say that would pierce Xiao Da’s defences. The best teacher for him would be silence.
“I will speak plainly, then – you cannot win by seeking to win.”
And with that last line, he left the clearing and the confused disciple behind, mind already on the next challenge.
Without knowing it, he was walking upstream.