change our occupation and will henceforth seek our living by acting as armed escorts for travelers.”
The monk said, “Good! Soon your business will be flourishing.”
After the two had gone, the monk went into the monastery. He spent his days drinking and no longer solicited alms. The superintendent did not press him, thinking that when the time limit had passed, it would be a fine thing to have Ji Gong sent away out of the monastery.
The days went by, first slowly and then swiftly, until over a month had passed. Ji Gong had not collected one ounce of silver. One day he noticed that none of the temple monks were nearby. Ji Gong went into the hall where the image of Wei Tuo, an ancient Hindu ruler, was located. He contemplated the ruler’s benign face.
In its bright gold leaf, the image of Wei Tuo seemed like that fabulous dancing phoenix which was said to herald and protect a just and benevolent emperor. So, it was believed, had the spirit of this ancient Vedic king of the Hindus come to herald and protect the Lord Buddha and to assist him in his teaching that all reality was one and that the goal of each believer should be to transcend the limitations of the individual. The kind and reassuring face of the image was like that of the bodhisattva Guan Yin, she who was the essence of passionate enlightenment. The light glinted from the helmet and chain-link armor of the image. About its waist was an embroidered sash, the ends of which seemed to wave and ripple in the wind. On its feet were green and black military boots, and in its hand it held the diamond-headed scepter for subduing every repugnant and malevolent spirit.
After a time Ji Gong said, “Venerable Wei Tuo, guardian spirit, go with me and help me.” Stretching out his hands, the monk picked up the image of Wei Tuo, left the temple, and started walking through the region of West Lake.
People passing him on the road said, “I have seen monks soliciting funds. There were some carrying great chains, some beating wooden fish gongs, but none wandering about while carrying an image of the guardian spirit.”
The monk laughed loudly and said, “You haven’t opened your eyes. Speak softly. This is our temple’s transportation officer.” When they heard what the monk had said, they all laughed.
Suddenly, as Ji Gong looked ahead, he could see a trail of black smoke rising in the sky. He halted and clapped his hands three times saying, “Excellent! Excellent! How can I ignore this?” Going forward, he saw that on the north side of the street there was an inn that sold wine and food. It was a building of two stories named the Drunken Sage Tower. On the wooden tablet above the door was written:
A hundred poems flowed
From Li Taibo’s brush
While he was drinking
In his Changan inn.
Great Tang Minghuang was bored
And sent his barge for him.
But Li Taibo insisted that he was
Merely a spirit in a jug of wine
And sent the emperor’s messenger
Back to him alone.
On either side of the door were lines of characters reading, “The drunkard’s universe expands,” and “In the wine pot, days and moons grow long.”
Inside Ji Gong heard a ladle rattle. He pulled aside the door curtain and asked, “May I trouble you, innkeeper?”
The innkeeper, taking Ji Gong to be an ordinary monk soliciting funds, said: “We in here will next give money on the fifteenth.”
Ji Gong said, “Right, we will next do business on the fifteenth.”
Standing outside the door, he saw three men coming from the east. They were the owner of a rice and provision shop and his guests. Ji Gong thrust out his arm and said, “If you three want to eat a meal, they will next be open in here on the fifteenth.” As soon as the three men heard this, they went to another place.
After three or four other parties had come and had all been stopped and turned away by Ji Gong, the innkeeper came out and asked very angrily, “What do you mean by stopping all my customers?”
Ji Gong replied, “I wanted to eat a meal, and when I started through the door, you told me to return on the fifteenth. I knew then that only on the fifteenth would you start serving food.”
When the innkeeper heard this, he said, “I thought you came to solicit funds. Only because of this I said that on the fifteenth I would give money to the Buddhists and the Daoists. Do you understand?”
Ji Gong said, “No, I came to eat a meal.”
The innkeeper said, “Please come in.”
Ji Gong carried the image of Wei Tuo into the back room, sat down at a long table, ordered several kinds of dishes, and drank four or five pots of wine. When he had finished, he called the waiter to calculate the bill. Altogether it amounted to a string of six hundred and eighty cash, a cash being a copper coin with a square hole in the center so that it could be strung on a string. A cash was worth a very small fraction of a cent.
Ji Gong said, “Write it on my account, and another day when I eat, I will pay both bills together.”
CHAPTER 4
Liu Taizhen is deluded by the arts of Chan; Li Guoyuan goes to breakfast and loses a prince’s tally
Thoughts of her he loves
As moonlight strikes the wall,
How gentle were her ways,
How beautifully she read.
Her angry passion now,
Her strange and swift assaults,
She does not hear his voice
Nor recognize his face.
He does not know the cause.
Betrayed by one she loved.
The doctors come and go;
They cannot find the cure.
AFTER the monk had left the wine shop and was walking along on his way, it occurred to him to visit the Shrine of the Three Virtues and see Liu Taizhen, the Daoist. At the same time he was conscious of the effects of wrongdoing upon someone elsewhere in the vi cinity. He directed his spiritual light toward it, clapped his hands, and nodded his head saying, “How can I ignore it? May I be like the Master of Power, Wen Shu Bodhisattva!”
Muttering the words, “Dao, Dao,” he went on to the Shrine of the Three Virtues outside the Qingbo gate. There he noticed that the wooden tablet advertising exorcisms had been taken down and that the place looked rather forlorn and quiet. The monk knocked twice.
As for the Daoist, after returning to his shrine from the Zhou family house, he used some of the silver that he had been given as the result of Ji Gong’s kindness to redeem the various articles he had pawned. He told an apprentice Daoist boy to take down the sign announcing the availability of exorcisms. He also told him: “If anyone comes again to invite me to chase out
