Entanglements

by Tomorrow’s Lovers, Families

As a little girl, she had listened to the teachings of the master monks in the temple: the wandering wheel of samsara; the retribution and rewards of karma; a life of good leading to a next life of wealth and happiness; a life of evil leading to a next life of suffering as a beast of burden. But she thought those were mere fairy tales made up by adults to scare children into behaving.

  As she grew up, gradually she began to understand that everything in the universe was connected. Every word, every act, every emotional outburst or passing fancy generated consequence upon consequence, links in an ending chain. A piece of trash carelessly discarded today would eventually return in the form of polluted air and water to redound upon the original disposer. A hurtful word aimed at a child in a moment of rage today could lead to a bitter grown-up committing murder in the future. To see karma in action, one need not wait for reincarnation.

  This was even more so in an increasingly complex, mutually dependent technological world. Each individual’s understanding of reality in an overwhelming tsunami of data was so limited, so fragmentary. To consume a piece of steak, to take a sip of milk, to buy a new pair of jeans, to upgrade to a new phone—all these actions meant the suffering of people and animals. You were oblivious, immersed in the pleasure of consumption, with colorful advertisements and fancy packaging isolating the pain-wracked bodies from your view. To maintain equanimity, you relied on malicious labels placed on those who differed from you by race, gender, class, or culture, hoping that they would go as far away as possible, or even better, die off, without ever acknowledging the connection between everything you possessed and everything they couldn’t possess. Everyone’s fate was intimately entwined with the fate of everyone else, but selfish desires made it impossible for anyone to feel or imagine the suffering of others. Everyone had their eyes clouded by the tiny slice of selective data they had access to and the illusions woven by the media, unable to perceive the whole, committing error upon error. Everyone complained that the morality of the world was in decline, but refused to see their own responsibility, avoided the need to change . . .

  Xiao Wang recalled reading the Buddhist scripture passage explaining that “ignorance” was the first of the twelve nidanas that together formed the chain of dependent phenomena, the basis of all suffering and rebirth. She had no idea then what this “ignorance” meant. But now, she realized, the willful unnoticing, unknowing, unseeing, unfeeling of modernity—this was true ignorance.

  She clasped her hands together in lotus mudra, gazing down at the 业 in the cupped palms, leaping like a ghostly flame.

  Was it really possible to break out of this state with the aid of technology?

  Twelve years ago, the launch of the 业 system had generated much controversy and skepticism. The system relied on big data and pattern recognition to track and record every act by every person in every moment, from an angry word to a murderous lunge, and kept a ledger of credits and debits composed of good deeds and evil, from which it computed the chain of karmic consequence over time. You had the right to access your own 业 account, but that was all. It was impossible to compare your own progress with that of anyone else, and the data was inaccessible in any other way. You needed not worry about law enforcement knocking down your door based on 业 records, and you could be free from the anxiety that judges in the afterlife would cite these computerized records in the trial before rebirth. But deep at night, as you sat alone in your room, the 业 records might bring you a pang of regret, a shiver of distress.

  Oddly, though the vast majority of the population would never come to Lingyin Temple even once to view their own 业 account, talk about it became the new fashion. Memes and posts teaching people how to extinguish karmic hindrances and accumulate benefits spread virally: vegetarianism, chanting sutras, Chan meditation, spiritual cultivation, abstention from tobacco and alcohol, offering incenses and prayers, donating to temples . . .

  She had always remained skeptical. Such explicit attempts at mani-pulating the ledger clearly deviated from the original intent; in fact, the 业 system had mutated into a performance, a game, perhaps a business.

  But then, who could really tell the system designer’s original intent? If those who had done evil donated their ill-begotten gains to the temple to accumulate merits, and the temple then used the funds to support acts of charity, wasn’t a kind of karmic balance achieved?

  Lingyin Temple, like the Venerable Zhengxuan, was shrouded in layers of enigma and mystery, impossible to see clearly.

  Tomorrow was the day those two would meet.

  She wasn’t a devout Buddhist, but nonetheless, she pressed her palms together and prayed for them.

  Fulfillment of Hunger

  Once again, he was startled awake from his nightmare.

  The nightmare was likely to be with him for the rest of his life.

  It was the path he had chosen. Even if he were to be plunged into an ocean of fire and dragged across a mountain of knives—to be trapped in Avici Hell for eternity—he had to keep on going; he could not turn back.

  He held his hands together and cracked his knuckles, focusing on the faint, sharp snaps.

  It was time.

  She knew it was time.

  By her own calculation, she had been inside this sealed chamber for a full sixteen years. From a child, she had progressed into middle age.

  The door to the outside was open. She had dreamed of this moment countless times, but she had never expected to feel so much trepidation when the time came.

  She got up from her putuan. Clutching the prayer beads, she stepped outside the door, into the long, dark corridor.

  There was no one inside.

  For a long time, he walked by himself through the darkness, until he saw a glint of light. As he approached, he realized that the glint was from a giant 业, like a flaming lotus towering in the middle of the road.

  He extended a hand to touch it, and on contact the character burst into a thousand thousand red and blue points of light, like a scattering of seeds sprouting into entwining vines, weaving into a complex graphic. Three bright red flames stood out, like glowing embers or pulsing tumors. Bloody light poured over him, enclosing him in a tight, seamless cocoon.

  Through the red light he saw the faces of three young men. He had been so patient over the years, carefully laying out traps to lure them in, and then kidnapping them, imprisoning them, torturing them, killing them, destroying the bodies, and erasing the evidence. . . . He wanted them to experience all the pain they had inflicted on his family. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Killing could not free him from his own nightmare, but it gave him a reason to keep on living. There was no other choice. None.

  There was one more. Just one more.

  Through the curtain of blue and red light, he saw a woman’s face.

  She walked toward her own 业, until her whole body was immersed in it, like returning to the beginning of her life.

  A voice began to murmur in her ear, explaining to her the chain of causes and consequences.

  Your parents were introduced to each other, and both sets of grandparents wanted them to marry. After a half-year they rushed into marriage, a union troubled from the start. Your father had a bad temper, drank excessively, beat your mother. Your mother wanted a divorce, but her own parents forced her to return to her husband again and again. All her relatives and friends counseled patience, telling her that she needed to have a child, that everything would be better with a child. During her pregnancy, her husband almost drowned her in the bathtub. She survived and gave birth to you.

  You didn’t have a bright childhood. Your father hit your mother, and your mother hit you in turn. One day, you stumbled into an encrypted directory your mother had concealed on the computer and managed to open it. The directory was filled with detailed notes on how to kill someone, gleaned from crime dramas and the news, with the videos carefully annotated and categorized. You were so intrigued that you went through these plans every chance you got and practiced some of t
hem on stray dogs and cats and neighbors’ pets. These notes became the most influential text of your childhood.

  You discovered your father’s secret as well. He liked to covertly record his sexual encounters and share the videos with a close circle of friends. You gained access to these recordings and watched them, learning about sex through the grimaces and moans of these unknown women. Later, you learned to use credentials stolen from your father to enter hidden corners of the web, where you used your father’s videos to buy favors and gifts from boys and men. For the first time in your life, you learned how it felt to have power.

  You found a group of teenaged boys to threaten your mother, so that she would stop beating you. You learned to hide at the homes of your classmates when your father was home. You observed your friends’ families carefully, ferreting out their secrets. You were sure that every family concealed darkness and ugliness, and the joy they showed others was an illusion. You learned to use miniature hidden cameras to spy on these people.

  The parents of one boy discovered his stash of sex videos, and he confessed that he had obtained them from you. His parents contacted the families of other classmates and discovered the extent of your little pornographic club. They went to the school authorities and demanded your expulsion so that their pure little angels could be saved from your corruption. You and your mother were summoned to the principal’s office, where dozens of adults surrounded you, screaming, cursing, calling you bitch, whore, c***. Your mother knelt on the floor in silence, enduring the onslaught the way she would endure a beating from your father.

  You could no longer go to school. You spent your days online, and soon learned how to navigate the dark web, exploring an even more grotesque, twisted world inhabited by demons and monsters. With the aid of LINGmask, you could make yourself the protagonist of videos shot by murderers, but the satisfaction soon wore off. You needed more.

  You made a plan. You found three boys willing to help. They wanted to have some fun by shooting videos that would arouse their numbed senses. You wanted to experience the reality of how it felt to kill.

  For your target, you picked the family of the boy who had told on you. It wasn’t an act of vengeance; it was because you were familiar with the home’s layout.

  All those classmates, their parents, the strangers on the web who swapped sex videos, your parents, their parents, the people who introduced them, counseled them to remain married and have a child—all of them planted the seeds of evil, committed acts that would blossom into sin.

  Your co-conspirators were imprisoned, but you were released. Your father had gone missing, and your mother took you and moved again and again. But no matter where you went, someone would betray you to the media, to the neighborhood, letting everyone know that you were a cold-blooded murderer. Schools refused to take you. Neighbors gathered in front of your door demanding that you leave. Reporters followed you around with their cameras, sticking bundles of cash in your mother’s hand so that they could buy the rights to your story. Your mother locked you inside the home, a prison by another name.

  You remember that cold snowy night. Your mother knelt outside the gates of Lingyin Temple and touched her forehead to the ground again and again. A leash was tied to her wrist, and the other end was tied to your ankle. Hungry, cold, you fell asleep, until you were awakened by the tolling of the temple bells.

  The blue and red lights faded like streaming sand. Finally, he could see that face clearly. There was a scar on her lip, pulling up the right corner of her mouth. The left corner, on the other hand, drooped, leaving the impression of an eerie smirk.

  That face, that smirk. He would never forget it.

  He saw the features on that face twisting in terror. He saw the lips trembling without making a noise. He saw the woman stumbling away, turning to escape into the darkness.

  Blood surged in his chest; fingernails bit into his palm. He pursued.

  •••

  Two sets of footsteps broke the silence in the corridor.

  She ran and ran. She ran into a temple hall immersed in darkness, with only a single oil lamp lit before the statue of the Buddha.

  A hand seized her hair. A heavy body slammed her to the ground. She struggled, biting and scratching and kicking and punching like a cornered animal. With a grunt, her captor fell to the ground. She leaped onto him and wrapped her prayer beads around his neck, tightening the noose with all her strength.

  The oil lamp’s light flickered. She saw that his face was turning red and then purple. His eyes bulged out of their sockets. The veins in his temples swelled and pulsed. She could feel strength draining out of her arms. But he was still alive. She could still hear gasps and gurgles from his throat.

  She grabbed a putuan nearby and pressed it against his face. She pressed all her weight against it. Time crawled by slowly. His chest no longer heaved, though his hands continued to spasm, striking the hard ground again and again, like fish out of water.

  She tossed away the putuan, panting from the exertion, looking around for another weapon. She saw a heavy brazier on the altar. Slowly, she crawled over and retrieved it. After a moment of hesitation, she raised it above her head and smashed it down on his head.

  Once. Twice. Thrice . . .

  He didn’t know how much time had passed.

  He killed her, over and over, replaying scenes that he had imagined countless times. She was no longer recognizable; every inch of her body was covered in blood and gore. Yet, she remained alive.

  He sat on the ground, leaning against a pillar for support. His body felt as though it were made of mud. Dragging her broken body, she crawled toward him through the blood smeared across the ground, one inch, another inch, another, another . . .

  His nightmare had come true. He was trapped in Avici Hell.

  Finally, she had crawled in front of him, and one hand grabbed him by the knee, a bloody, torn hand. Every fingernail had been plucked out; every joint was bent at an unnatural angle.

  With his last ounce of strength, he pressed a palm against her forehead, keeping her from getting any closer. She calmed down and wrapped her arms around his knees, curling upon on the ground in the fetal position. He suddenly remembered how, years ago, his little daughter had liked to listen to him tell stories in this position. He would caress her forehead, to smooth out the hairs moistened by her sweat.

  He broke down and howled in grief.

  She remembered how, as a child, she sometimes liked to steal into her parents’ bed deep at night and nestle between their slumbering bodies, pulling their arms over herself. Amid her parents’ thunderous snores, she felt at peace and safe, ready to fall asleep herself. But she never dared to really drift off. As soon as one of her parents turned in sleep, she would leap to a corner of the bed, ready to conceal herself under the bed if necessary.

  For so many years, no one had wrapped their arms around her like that.

  She reclined in his embrace and placed his unmoving arms around her body. His blood soaked into her, but she could still feel a trace of warmth, seeping from his chest into her back, spreading to her whole body.

  He straightened her twisted joints and carefully pieced the torn flesh back together, smoothing the mangled skin into place. He tore off pieces of his monk’s robe, dipped the cloth in the holy nectar kept in front of the Buddha, and wiped away the blood from her face. He washed her face, brushed her hair, took off his own monk’s robe, and put it on her.

  He arranged her body in the pose of Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. He took three steps back and knelt to pray.

  She hung the prayer beads that had kept her company for sixteen years around his neck. She pressed her hands together, bowed, and began to recite the Repentance of the Emperor of Liang.

  The cleansing dew from willow branches

  Sprinkles to every corner of the three thousand great thousand worlds.

  Empty nature, eight virtues, beneficence to the six destinies.

  Let ghosts be released fr
om their needle-swallowing hunger; let sins be unknotted andtransgressions dissolved; let the flames of hell be turned into a red lotus.

  Namo Pure and Serene Bodhisattva, Mahasattva.

  Melodious voices sounded in the air, coalescing into falling blossoms.

  They opened their eyes simultaneously. They saw each other, as well as the self in the eyes of the other.

  They had been sitting thus, face to face, since the beginning of the cer-emony. The dharma cloud created illusions that enveloped them, and also connected them by eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, heart, so that they could feel each other’s pain and suffering, crime and punishment, good and evil, love and hate, causes and consequences.

  The dharma cloud dissipated, revealing the brightly lit Hall of the Medicine Buddha. Inside, the final ritual for feeding the hungry ghosts was at its climax. In the hall, the Venerable Zhengxuan, bell and incense in hand, was inviting Ksitigarbha, Bodhisattva of the Hell Realm, to lead the souls of the participants’ loved ones and the souls of the lost to the rite.

  Two people sat, face to face, in the hall.

  “We invite, with steady hearts, the lost souls of the stubborn and persistent, deprived of the knowledge of the Buddha: the uncivilized and barbaric, the blind and deaf, the hardworking servants laid low, the maids injured by jealousy. To scorn the three treasures is to accumulate sin like the grains of sand on a river shore; to dishonor parents is to fill the cosmos with offense. Alas! When will the sun rise on the endless night? When will spring be known in the lightless land?”

  Bells tolled and incense smoke swirled, connecting the living with the dead.

  Farewell to the Enlightened

  It was the seventh day of the Liberation Rite, when the meritorious acts would come to fruition.

  In the morning, the monks prepared a feast of delicious treats as offerings to the enlightened beings who had come to attend the Liberation Rite. Incense was lit to express the wish that sentient beings would thus depart from the sea of suffering and reach the Western Pureland of Ultimate Bliss.