My heaviest account first, laid in the open: Lion-Camel Ridge. The Lion-Camel Kingdom.
Three hundred years ago, I with brother White Elephant and the Great Peng seized the ridge and devoured the kingdom — a whole nation's lives, and the karma is ours three. Then my master Manjushri and the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra descended to reclaim us, and the Tathagata took the Peng. The world says: mounts grown homesick for the mortal world, running riot.
The riot is true. But "homesick" is too light a word, and I refuse it — I claim the heavier one: we descended, we devoured, we raised a kingdom of horror, and we did it clear-eyed. Karma is karma. It will not be fobbed off on "mortal longing."
Back on the mountain, my master's sentence was this: lie beneath the lotus seat and listen to the sutras for a hundred years. He never struck, never scolded. He only asked me, at the close of each day's recitation, the same question:
"Azure Lion — of today's sutra, how much did you understand?"
I could never answer. I am unlettered; scripture stood beyond me like a mountain range. He was never angry. He asked again the next day. For one hundred years.
On the last day of the hundredth year, something opened in me, and I answered: "Your disciple understands one part — that when you ask how much I understand, you are not testing me. You are waiting for me."
The master clapped his hands and laughed aloud: "A century of questions, for exactly that one part. Azure Lion — with that part beneath you, the sutras will enter on their own from here."
Two hundred years more — around the time, by mortal count, the pilgrimage reached completion — my master grew busy. Traffic between the heavens, councils upon councils, the furrow between his brows deeper by the day. Three days before the black moon rose, he called me to the seat and gave me a sutra-case.
Red sandalwood. Not heavy. Sealed with his own hand's seal.
He said: "I travel far, to a council. Keep this case. Remember three things: it does not leave your body. It is not to be opened. And — if a day comes when the case grows hot of itself, carry it east, until you meet the one who makes it ring. To that one, give the case."
I asked: master, when do you return?
He was already mounting the cloud. He looked back at me once — and that one look I have turned over for three hundred years. It was not the look of a traveller.
It was the look of a man entrusting his orphan.
Then heaven went silent.
Three hundred years I have kept the case, in a hut below Vulture Peak. Brother White Elephant keeps me company — he has his vow-practice, out daily mending roads and raising bridges; I keep the case, and keep the peace of the country outside the gates. Two beasts of karma who once devoured a kingdom now ward the caravans on the road. The debt is repaid step by step.
For three hundred years the case lay cool as jade.
Until three years ago — the year the altar-smoke rose and all the strangeness you have catalogued began — the case began to heat.
At first once a year. Now every night. And while it burns, sound stirs faintly inside: not the rustle of pages — more like someone chanting against the inner wall, low and very fast, as if racing to finish some scripture before some deadline.
My master's three instructions I have not let slip by one word: never off my body; never opened; carry it east and find the one who makes it ring.
I bore it down the mountain and eastward, testing as I went. Eminent monks: the case silent. Great yao: silent. The Bureau's finest: silent.
Until last month, on the official road, a strange column came toward me: a boy with a medicine basket, and a company of yao from every origin under heaven.
Ten paces off, the case on my back rang out — long, and full.
Like a bell. Like a chime. Like my master's hand-clap, a hundred years ago, at "one part."
I lay down, unslung the case, and pushed it to the boy: my master's charge, delivered to the word.
But the boy did not take it. He studied the case a long while and said: "Elder — perhaps it is not me the case recognizes. When it rang, every heart in this company warmed at once. What it recognizes may be the going-west itself."
He said: since the case must not be opened, then carry it, Elder — and walk with us. At the place where it should open, it will open itself.
Good. A worthy answer — the place where it should open.
Master — do you hear? Your case has found the one who makes it ring. Not one person: a whole company. The undertaking itself, taken up again at last.
The Azure Lion is unlettered. He cannot carry the sutra's meaning. He can carry the sutra's case.
This time, your disciple carries your words west —
all the way to your presence, to hear you break the seal with your own hands.