Summer in a Pond by Our Monastery 7 December 2007
Around our monastery there is a pond. When I just came here, No Ego and I often went there to play. In the summer, lotus blossom beautifully, and cicadas hum and frogs croak. Even on the warmest days, the mountain evenings are still quite cool. A few springs find their way to the pond, but its main water source came from rain. When we collected lotus roots in the pond, we washed them in a stream and peeled off the thin skin with a little knife, and the roots would be as white and clean as fresh snow, ready to eat. Apart from lotus, there are also escargots (田螺) grown in the pond. These little creatures are heavily armoured with a hard shell and have a firm cover on the top, appealingly being much better protected from mud and dirt than lotus. But we heard that when villagers fish out escargots, they have to put them in clean water mixed with a few drops of sesame oil. After a while the water would become terribly filthy as the escargots spill out dirt from inside. It seems while both living in the muddy pond, the lotus with thin skin are much clean than the escargots who have strong shield screening themselves from their inpure environment. My master says that it is because although the outside conditions do have impact on our lives, what truly matters is our inside states. (Original online post in Chinese: www.tianya.cn) Pre: My Life in a
Manostery
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No Ego and I are
good mates, others either much older than us or several
years younger. No Ego entered the monastery before me,
and was placed in front of the temple gate when he was
very little. No one knows where he came from and who are
his parents - the person who abandoned him at temple didn’t
leave any clues, such as a letter.