Three hundred years on, this old man stands on this mountain again.
My last visit was to deliver two edicts. The first summoned him to Heaven as a stable boy. The second made him a Great Sage in name only. Both edicts were proposed by this old man, stepping forward at the Hall of Miraculous Mist. The other gods laughed at me: a stone monkey — why bother offering him amnesty? What I thought then was this: a child with no father, no mother, born of heaven and earth, with power beyond measure and a heart as clean as fresh rain — if no one offers him a proper road, what will heaven and earth drive him to become?
You know what came after. The crucible. The mountain of five elements. The tightening band. The hundred and eight thousand li.
What came after that, you don't know.
He became a Buddha. Buddhas dwell in the west. Whenever this old man looks west, that place seems so very far — farther than starlight can travel in several nights. I have seen countless beings attain transcendence. Only one of them kept thinking about Flower-Fruit Mountain after attaining it.
The night the stele cracked, I was on duty in Heaven and saw the stars over this mountain stutter. I petitioned to descend. By the time the decree reached my hands, three days had passed. Three days — enough for a new brood of yao below, enough for the monkeys to cry themselves dry.
The characters on that stele — I watched him carve them, stroke by stroke. He had just learned to write; he held the brush like a staff and spattered ink all over me. Old man, he said, what should I write? I said, write your name. He said: if my name is written here, the mountain won't forget me, will it?
Now the stele is cracked, and half the name is gone. I made a rubbing of the surviving half and keep it in my sleeve. I show it to no one — not out of stinginess, but because he may come home one day and ask me for it.
The children below the mountain ask me: Grandfather, you talk to the stone every day — can it hear you?
It can. Stones remember better than people. And I know something else: a new cub has fallen onto this mountain, out of a crack in the stone. I went to look at him once. I didn't dare look twice. Some roads a child must walk alone; some words must wait until he reaches the deepest chamber of Water Curtain Cave, and then this old man will speak them slowly.
If you meet me on the mountain, no bows, please. I'm just an idler watching a stone. But if your road ever takes you west —
Take a look for me, and tell me whether that person in the west has gotten fat.