Converting
My father was the
most loyal member of the Communist Party of China I’ve ever known in person. As
a petty Party official, he was always ready to “serve the people” as taught by
Chairman Mao. Every year, he would bring home at least one big certificate of
merit for his political performance, but he never mentioned his achievements
whenever we chanced to meet between his endless work trips; the only thing he
kept saying to me was what I later recognized as
the content of his oath of admission to the Party. So, he was a weird if not a mentally
ill father. It’s not really that he sounded like a broken record, but that he
lived as an unbelievably firm believer and passionate preacher of communism as
defined in CPC’s constitution. Indeed, he seemed to have been born a true
communist, and he would die as such. There’s no doubt about that.
However,
shortly after his retirement, my mother began to complain that he intended to
become a hundred percent Buddhist monk for the remaining days of his life.
But
what about his lifelong faith in communism? I asked her repeatedly over the
phone. So very tired and afraid of his brainwashing effort, I had always
avoided contacting him directly even before I left my homeland.
Because the Party has changed
essentially, though not in words, since Deng Xiaoping took power, because he’d have
no more to do with it, my mother explained to me on his behalf.
Why a monk? Can he just enjoy his
retired life like all other normal dads?
I got no satisfactory answer from my
mother until I visited her about a year later. With my father staying in Great
Compassion Temple in Songzi most of the time, she had all the leisure to
recount how and why he eventually decided to remain a lay Buddhist; this way,
he could live up to his lifelong title as an honorable “model” Party member.
That’s a good compromise, I concluded.
But how come he’s become such a determined follower of Buddhism?
As my mother sees it, my father was actually
more a faithful Buddhist than a loyal Communist to begin with. There were
numerous episodes pinpointing to his Bodhisattva heart. For instance, he would
give every cent in his pocket to the homeless, donate every extra shirt in his
wardrobe to the poor, and help every disabled person on the road. Once he walked
seven miles simply to cross a river on a bridge because he had given all his
money to a beggar without retaining two cents for the ferryboat. Another time,
he fell down in a swoon from sheer hunger on a country path because he had
given every mantou to a starving family. More deplorably, when I
returned from Canada to my hometown for the first family reunion after
immigration and gave him a handsome red envelope to show my filial love, he insisted
on me sending it personally to a local charity. In his last years, he knelt
down before a statue of Buddha and recited sutras for three consecutive hours
every morning, just as he had bowed to Chairman Mao’s portrait nine times
nonstop prior to breakfast during the Cultural Revolution. Most noteworthy was
when his room was haunted by thousands of ants in a late spring, it never
crossed his mind to kill them; instead, he kept giving them his best wishes
until they all voluntarily left. Likewise, he would just let mosquitos suck his
blood rather than drive them away, and miraculously, he turned out to be the
only person in the whole neighborhood who got no more bites in summer.
So, he converted to Buddhism as a
result of such testimonial experiences? I wondered aloud.
Not only that!
Then, my mother
recalled how the seed of Buddhism was deeply planted in the depth of his soul
as a thirteen-year-old orphan. It was a burning summer afternoon in 1949, several
months before the Communists were to take over the entire country. While wandering
in the wildness, my father began to have a high fever. Unable to bear the sizzling
weather in addition to his internal heat, he went to a pond nearby, where he
dug up some cool alluvium with his hands, covered his body with it and lay down
on a small ridge. He would have soaked his whole body in the pond like a
buffalo, but the water felt simply too hot; besides, he was afraid of drowning,
for he had never learned how to swim, even like a dog. After several wrappings,
his body temperature dropped quite a bit, but he was still too weak to stand up,
as he hadn’t eaten any food for the past two days. He was dying for a big bowl
of rice from a mother-like landlady when a passer-by in a long orange robe
spotted him from far away and came over. Knowing his situation, the travelling
monk gave my father five silver coins, all the money he had for his long
journey to Guiyuan Temple, the famous Buddhist monastery in Wuhan. With the
monk’s money as well as his help, my father got back to his normal life as a waif.
And it’s since that casual encounter that he had cultivated a profound bond
with Buddha. To practice gratitude, he not only had a great monk growing in his
own heart and lived all his life as a lay believer, but also kept trying to
convert me into Buddhism.
But alas, with my
stubborn faith in freedom, I have never yielded to his effort. Or maybe I should?
Anyway, while
video-chatting with me on his anniversary day last week, my mother announced
that she had newly made up her mind to follow his steps. How about you? she
asked.
Well, like him, I
only eat vegetables now.
So, you want to
become a lay believer too? Like father, like son, eh?
Yes and no, Mom.
Yuan
Changming
Yuan Changming grew up in rural China and has published 15 poetry collections in English. Early this year, Yuan began to write fiction, with short stories appearing in Aloka (UK) and Kolkata Arts (India) or forthcoming in Lincoln Review (UK), StylusLit (Australia) and Nashwaak Review (Canada), among others. Currently, Yuan is working on his trilogy.