For a once-in-a-lifetime unforgettable spring (includes disc)

Author: Jiang Qin
Publisher: Yuan Sheng Publishing House
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Xuanzi, I want to tell you about the camellias blooming in Taiwan in May. I don’t know why I wanted to go up the mountain to see the camellias at this time of frequent wars and spreading diseases. In the past, I often saw camellias in Miaoli, especially in the mountainous areas of central Taiwan. S said: There’s no need to go that far; there are camellias in the suburbs of Taipei. S lives on a hillside in Ankeng, at the southern end of Taipei. A few days later, he called me and said: The camellias on the back mountain are already blooming brilliantly. The night before we agreed to go up the mountain to see the camellias, unexpectedly, it rained heavily all night. The next morning, the sun shone brightly into the room. It was a fine day, but my heart still felt uneasy, worried about whether the flowers had been washed away by the rain. S said: Still, come on. Camellias are naturally meant to bloom and fall. Thinking of the recent war, thousands of years of cultural heritage were destroyed overnight. Those beautiful objects we held so carefully suddenly turned to dust. Is there still any meaning in our grief and lamentations, in our intense pain at the loss of beauty, and in the meaning of our existence? The camellias are like snow; from a distance, the entire mountain appears white. Walking into the forest, the camellia trees are over ten feet tall. The flowers bloom at the tips of the branches. Looking up, the palm-sized green leaves a cluster of white blossoms. The flower itself is not very prominent, but the sunlight scattered through the gaps between the branches and leaves. In the sunlight, the falling flowers fluttered like snow swirling in the air. They were like countless white butterflies dancing in the sky; rising and falling, gathering and dispersing. They fluttered down and fell, landing on the faces, heads, and bodies of those looking up. They fell to the ground, covering the ground in a white carpet, even the small paths between the trees were covered in white fallen flowers. People who walked past couldn’t bear to step on them, hesitating and wandering with both joy and difficulty. “What should I do?”—a child jumped up and down in panic, and those nearby couldn’t help but laugh. Do we still feel sorry for the flowers being stepped on? I don’t know why I thought of a child in the war, whose arm was amputated, his eyes bright like flowers in full bloom, looking at the world with a hint of fear and terror, wondering in confusion if his parents were safe amidst the gunfire. No one answered his question. The people beside him turned away, trying to hold back their tears. He didn’t know how to tell this child the truth about the war; he wasn’t sure whether he should let the child know how broken and chaotic the outside world had become. What should we still believe in this era of war and spreading diseases? The camellias are like snow, covering the sky and earth, drifting endlessly. I held a flower in my palm and examined its shape. The camellia has five petals, white and translucent. The stigma is very fine, with a light pink at the center, perhaps to make it easier for bees and butterflies to identify and pollinate! S said: The fallen flowers are male, while the female flowers remain on the tree to bear fruit. The female flowers must stay strong on the branches to bear fruit; after the male flowers have completed pollination, they fall one by one. Life has been fulfilled, detached from the branches and leaves, and in fact, not sad at all. I held a fallen flower in my hand, its five petals supported by a small green stem. Perhaps the flower’s falling or staying on the tree is a different way of fulfilling itself, and what we know is limited, often leading to unnecessary fear and sorrow. In February this year, as my mother lay on her deathbed, I finally understood the sentence from the Diamond Sutra: “No self-form, no person-form, no living being-form, no old-age-form.” I realized that fear and sorrow are just my own obsession. I want to return to being a child, in a forest full of flowers, simply feeling joy or sorrow, without any thoughts or worries. Xuanzi, do you remember the first time you were startled by the blooming camellias as a child? From that moment on, you began to feel joy and sorrow. We must carry this joy and sorrow throughout our lives, walking the long path toward beauty.