One day followed another, and one month followed another. After April came May, and after May came June.
In June, it was time for the graduation ceremony.
Yahui was discharged from the hospital in the first half of June. While she was in the hospital, each religion’s class monitor had come to visit her, and when they returned to the center, they all reported that she had suffered a case of acute appendicitis and needed to have her appendix removed. An appendix is a useless organ to begin with, so removing it isn’t a big deal. After Yahui was discharged from the hospital, many classmates went to visit her in her dormitory, and upon seeing her so thin and pale, they remarked that it appeared she had gotten a little carried away with trying to lose weight. The classmates offered her their prayers and blessings, brought her nutritious snacks to eat, and prayed to their respective deities that they watch over her. With the help of these deities, Yahui quickly began to recover her health. She began making papercuts and attending class again, and also began going to work at the office of the director’s assistant every day. However, Director Gong was busy with the final preparations for the printing and cover design of his book, so when Yahui went to the office and didn’t see him there, she took the opportunity to leave campus with Mingzheng and go buy some furniture and kitchenware. Another day, she also deposited the funds from Pastor Wang’s bequest in the bank in order to transfer them to her mortgage account.
June did not arrive quietly, but rather with a bang. Students who planned to return home to see their families began to cry abjectly because they couldn’t bear to leave, while those who planned to go out and work in the world would find that the world had prepared formidable obstacles for them to overcome. The disciples at the center, however, were not anxious at all, since the question of where they were coming from had already been determined by their previous lives, and the question of where they were going was controlled by the deities. Therefore, they simply continued their daily routine of getting up, performing rituals, lighting incense, attending class, and taking their exams. Thanks to Director Gong’s instructions, most classes had open-book exams, and only the political events class was treated as a serious matter in which everyone had to close their textbooks and try to obtain a high score.
At the end of the semester, an expert from the national religious studies center was brought in to offer tutoring. This expert was several years older than Director Gong, but physically resembled him—tall with a large head, square face, high nose, and thick eyebrows. The only difference was that the expert had long hair that was parted on the side, while Director Gong kept his cut short all year round.
To get the desired high scores, Director Gong asked all students to come to the classroom on the day the expert visited. At 8:50, the classroom was still completely dark, but the expert who looked like Director Gong entered the room at 8:58 and stood next to the front podium, and for a long time he silently counted the assembled students. At 9:00, the bells in each institute’s classrooms began to ring. The expert stood on the dais with his gaze directed at the students in front of him, and his lips closed as tightly as a sealed account book.
This was an overcast day in the middle of June. Above the clouds there were still more clouds, but some areas of the sky were clear. Outside, it constantly looked like it was about to rain, but in the end it never did. As the rain was holding off, a disciple with a pale face suddenly stood up and shouted, “Let’s just start class already! Daoist master Gu Mingzheng and Buddhist nun Yahui aren’t coming—they went to get a marriage certificate today, and won’t be attending anymore!”
A stillness suddenly descended on the classroom.
In this stillness, someone began to applaud their classmates’ marriage. A handful of other students began applauding as well, which left the pale student very embarrassed, as though he couldn’t understand what was happening. In that moment of applause and embarrassment, the expert who had come to offer supplementary instruction walked to the middle of the dais and lowered his hands to ask everyone to cease their applause. “Let’s start class! Let’s start class!” he shouted with a smile. The classroom slowly quieted down, until all that remained was an air of confusion and emptiness.
“I am going to give everyone a question on religious political events to see whether you can answer it correctly …” the expert announced in a relaxed fashion. “You report that this religious masters class, after two semesters of study and training, has permitted two youths from different religions, who previously didn’t know each other, to break the rules and fall in love, and even get married. With respect to this inter-sect marriage, we have the following three options:
As the expert was speaking, he looked down at the disciples in front of him. He saw that one disciple had raised his hand, but he waved him away and continued. “This multiple-choice question might appear simple, but it is actually very tricky. All three answers could be wrong, so you must simply try to select the response that is most correct. But which answer is most correct? In the brackets following the question, should you add something to make the answer not simply the most correct, but rather absolutely correct?”
As the expert said this, he once again cast his gaze over the disciples in front of him, and upon confirming that they were all looking up at him, he raised his voice and said, “Let me offer an essay question that might appear complex, but which is actually rather simple, and let me use Buddhism as an example. Buddhism is the world’s largest religion and is also the first of China’s five great religions. Regardless of whether someone is a Muslim, Catholic, or Protestant—much less a Daoist—they will be familiar with the general parameters and essence of Chinese Buddhism.
“It is said that because the Buddha’s followers were increasing so steadily while he was in India promoting the Dharma in the south, he was so tired when he reached Uruvilvato that he decided to stay there for a while. One night while the Buddha was meditating on Lingjiu Mountain, someone hiding behind a tree tried to assassinate him. However, the Buddha already knew that the man was there, and while watching the tree’s shadow he said, ‘If you want to kill the Buddha, you should show yourself!’ The other man emerged and placed his sword at the Buddha’s feet. The Buddha asked, ‘Who sent you to assassinate me?’ The other man knelt down and, in a trembling voice, replied, ‘I don’t dare reveal my master!’ The Buddha asked him to leave his sword and recommended that he use a safe path to finish climbing the mountain, and then use another safe path to come back down the other side. He told the man to return home and fetch his elderly mother, and then proceed with her to the neighboring state of Shakya to look for his younger brother. The Buddha knew that if the man had indeed succeeded in assassinating him, others would surely have killed the man on his way home, but conversely, if the man failed to assassinate the Buddha, then his own life would be even more at risk. Accordingly, the Buddha told the man to take a different road home.
“In this way, the person who wanted to assassinate the Buddha fled with his mother to Shakya. Everyone, please note: as a result of this failed attempt, the person who wanted to assassinate the Buddha instead came to realize the Buddha’s greatness and sagacity, and therefore began to believe in Tathagata. Meanwhile, based on new evidence and research, it has been revealed that, around that same time, Emperor Ming of the Eastern Han had a dream in which he saw a gold-colored figure who could project sunlight from his neck. The next morning, the emperor asked the officials: Who was this deity that had appeared in his dream? One official told him that the deity was the Bodhi of Tianzhu. Accordingly, in the seventh year of the Yongping reign era—which is to say the year 64 CE—the emperor sent an envoy to Tianzhu to seek the Dharma. However, the Bodhi whom the envoy encountered at Tianzhu was none other than the person who had previously been sent to assassinate the Buddha and subsequently been reformed by him. It was he who ended up being the first to transmit the Buddhist teachings to China. Meanwhile, the Baima Temple in contemporary Luoyang, Henan, was originally constructed by Emperor Ming to house the sutras and the Dharma brought back by that person who tried to assassinate the Buddha. At the time, Baima Temple was a national guesthouse used by people translating sutras and disseminating the Buddha’s teachings. Accordingly, the first Buddhist to enter China was that person who wanted to assassinate the Buddha, and the first sutras to enter China were the ones brought back by that same person after he achieved enlightenment.
“Now, we have four essay questions. Please select one and provide an argument and explanation: