Fire Bodhisattva
Bodhisattva Stories #14
In the midst of the acrid smell of gunpowder, the lifelong struggle between Blaze and the Fire Bodhisattva finally came to an end.
Blaze had always liked playing with fire since he was a child. At five, he hid in the closet and played with matches, burning his mother’s ten beautiful dresses. At seven, he stole his father’s lighter and destroyed an anthill in the forest. Despite numerous accidents caused by his pyromania and severe punishments from his father, he was seemingly unaffected. Fire brought inexplicable pleasure to Blaze.
In school, Blaze was hot-tempered and a bully due to his size, which made his classmates somewhat afraid of him. He was surrounded by a group of cronies who relied on him, and even the teachers gave him a wide berth. He would either set a girl’s skirt on fire or burn a top student’s test paper. Once, he even almost burned down the teachers’ office in retaliation for a reprimand by the discipline master. The only exception was a skinny girl in his class who ignited the spark of love in Blaze’s heart. One day after school, Blaze stopped the girl on the road, saying he wanted to take her to the fire festival. The girl refused, and in a moment of desperation, Blaze threatened to burn her braids with his lighter. Watching her run away crying, Blaze’s heart was fiercely ablaze.
The next evening, as Blaze was passing through the slums, he saw a house on fire. The onlookers were chattering, some saying that a cooking stove had been accidentally overturned, some suggesting an electrical short circuit, and others saying it was arson or suicide. Blaze recognized the house—it was the skinny girl’s home. The flames were raging high, turning the previously dilapidated little house into a giant lotus. He had never seen such a magnificent fire, and he was dumbfounded. From the flames rose a giant angry Bodhisattva, hurling a burning sword at him.
Blaze was delirious with fever for ten straight days. When he woke up, he had completely transformed into a different person. He no longer played with fire, nor did he do anything to harm others. He even avoided ants when he walked. His parents thought he might have damaged his brain from the fever, and the doctor said it could be post-traumatic stress. The cronies who used to follow him around started to bully him instead, and even when they beat him up, he didn’t fight back. Blaze silently endured. He knew he had to find the Fire Bodhisattva to escape the burning hell in his heart.
After graduating from high school, Blaze became a firefighter—the profession closest to fire. The duty of a firefighter is to extinguish fires. He wanted to fight against the Fire Bodhisattva, but at the same time, he yearned to approach it. Blaze threw himself into his work with courage. Over the years, he participated in many significant fire rescue missions and was awarded three bravery medals. The first was for a century’s worst wildfire caused by climate change, which raged for forty days and destroyed three million hectares of forest. Blaze’s team fought tirelessly for three days and nights to protect a nuclear power plant from the blaze. The second was for a massive explosion at a large fuel factory, where Blaze was the last to emerge from the fire scene, rescuing the only survivor. The third was for a high-rise building’s rooftop fire. Blaze carried a child on his back and held another in his arms as he descended from the seventy-ninth floor to the ground.
Despite this, the Fire Bodhisattva did not reappear. Blaze, with three medals on his chest, felt deep despair and even pain. The burning sword was still lodged in his heart, unable to be pulled out. Until one day, Blaze was ordered to a scene outside a government building. Sitting cross-legged on the square was a monk, calm and emanating a strong smell of gasoline. Blaze rushed forward with his extinguisher. The monk burst into flames in an instant. Without a shout or struggle, he just sat there motionlessly. It was as if Blaze was witnessing the incarnation of the Fire Bodhisattva.
The crowd became as uncontrollable as a wildfire. The capital fell into chaos, with people setting cars and even government buildings on fire. Firefighters rushed everywhere to put out the flames, utterly exhausted. Outside the Congress, riot police and citizens confronted each other. Blaze sprayed water at a burning police car while a water cannon truck knocked people to the ground on the other side. Then gunshots rang out like firecrackers. Blaze put down the hose and slowly walked towards the crowd’s line of defense. He picked up a bottle from a pile, asked someone for a light, lit it, and threw it forward with all his might. A streak of flame stretched out on the ground, and the angry Bodhisattva rose into the air.
The arrested, lined up for execution, huddled together in the cold weather. Blaze asked a soldier on guard for a cigarette. The soldier handed him one with an expression like looking at the dead and lit it for him with a lighter. Squatting, with his hands tied behind his back and a cigarette in his mouth, Blaze took a deep puff. The fire flashed at the end of the cigarette, then dimmed again. The smoke drifted, the burnt smell entered his nostrils, a surge of warmth soaked into his heart and lungs, and finally, his chest relaxed. The fire in his heart slowly extinguished.