Cloud Bodhisattva
Bodhisattva Stories #8
The Dreamer sat in a wheelchair, head tilted upward, or let his limp neck rest, looking diagonally at the sky. He remembered a scene from his very early childhood. He, as a small child, was placed in a baby basket, looking up at the sky that was covered by a vast expanse of white. The fog was like smoke, like waves, rolling in waves, transparent but layered upon each other, simultaneously opaque. The sound seemed to be absorbed by the moist fog, and all around was silent. Then, after flipping through who knows how many layers of gauze, suddenly a thousand golden arrows shot out from some direction, piercing his eyes. The fog dispersed, the sky was revealed, and the chirping of birds clearly rang out. From that moment, he began to feel time. It was an early spring morning.
The Dreamer squinted unintentionally. Perhaps, that wasn't a memory, but one of his dreams.
He also remembered when he was a teenager, working in an apprentice workshop, when he received news of his mother's being sent to the emergency room. He immediately rode a bicycle, rushing to the hospital on the small path through the fields. It was a scorching summer day, in the bright blue sky rose a majestic, pure white columnar cloud. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, looked up, and saw a Bodhisattva, as if carved from marble, sitting above the mountains. The Bodhisattva slowly floated in the sky, gradually changing its pose. From double-legged sitting to single-legged sitting, from single-legged sitting to half cross-legged, from half cross-legged to standing, from standing to dancing. Its hands slowly opened from prayer, stretching, changing into different hand signs. At the end of the mountains, the Cloud Bodhisattva transformed into a white horse, then a white lion, then a white elephant, and then a white lotus. When he reached the hospital, his mother had just emerged from her critical condition.
The Dreamer continued to tilt his head, watching the convective layer of the sky move rapidly. Scattered, almost stationary clouds were replaced by a large continuous layer of dark low clouds. He saw a small dot drifting along the bottom of the cloud layer. He immediately knew that it was a hot air balloon. The pilot of the hot air balloon attempted to ascend several times, trying to pass through the thick cloud layer to reach the area above the clouds. As the hot air balloon entered the cloud layer, everything around it became hazy, the air currents became turbulent, like falling into a whirlpool in the sea. The balloon was squeezed and pulled, threatened with tearing at any moment, and the Flyer in the gondola seemed about to be thrown beyond the skies. He saw flashes of light below, followed by a thunderous rumbling like a landslide. He was trapped in chaos and darkness, completely unable to control his direction, and couldn't discern whether he was rising or falling. He only felt the hot air balloon spinning, and he was spinning with it. With that rotation, everything started to break apart. The hot air balloon split into fragments, the ropes were torn apart, and his body seemed to disintegrate into dust. He became cloud-like, a state that seemed both tangible and intangible. At this time, he felt that he was one with the cloud layer. His existence instantly expanded, becoming a hurricane covering hundreds of kilometers of sea area. The circulation kept spinning, expanding, sweeping over islands and coastal areas, stirring up huge waves, sinking ships, pushing down mountains, burying villages, uprooting trees, and flipping houses into mid-air. He possessed tremendous energy, causing ruthless destruction, causing countless creatures to die, turning countless constructions into nothing. In his rage, he sought to confirm that nothing in the world remains unchanged forever.
Then, his gaze continued to ascend, rising above the height of the hurricane. His view gradually expanded, and he saw the entire spiral cloud formation right under him. The hot air balloon had miraculously made it through the cloud layer unscathed. Below was intense rotation, but above was relatively peaceful. He poked his head out of the basket, looking down from above, and saw that he was directly over the center of the vortex. There was a circular eye of the storm there, empty, clear, and calm. He suddenly realized, that was the eye of the Bodhisattva. Through that eye, he saw another version of himself far down on the ground, sitting in a wheelchair, looking up at the sky.
The Dreamer seemed to see everything that his alternate self, the Flyer, saw in the clouds. At this time, the vast sky stretched on for miles, with thin, thread-like clouds appearing to cling to the top of the dome of the sky. In the sunset's glow, they burned into bright red waves. The waves were almost motionless, but they seemed to ripple gently. The Dreamer had grown old. He thought of his departed mother, thought of his own life, thought of the Cloud Bodhisattva. Against the backdrop of the sunset, leaves began to fall from the branches.