The infernal assistant swirled Liu Quan and Li Cuilian out of Hell and into the imperial palace in Chang’an, where Princess Yuying was taking a walk. Yama’s envoy knocked her to the ground, pulled out her soul, inserted Cuilian’s into the still-warm body, and swirled back to Hell and out of our story.
As soon as the palace maids saw that the princess had collapsed and died, they rushed to report it to the throne room. Taizong merely sighed phlegmatically, for King Yama had told him his sister did not have long to live. But when the residents of the palace approached her body to pay their respects, they saw that she was still breathing. “Stop crying!” hushed the emperor. “You’ll startle her.” Lifting her head, he called out to wake her.
The “princess” rolled over and opened her eyes. “Who are you? Get your hands off me!”
“I am your brother, the emperor.”
“My brother’s no emperor! My name is Cuilian, Li Cuilian. I committed suicide three months ago, when my husband scolded me for showing my face outside the front door. After my husband delivered some pumpkins to Hell, King Yama took pity on us and decided to bring us back to life. But Liu Quan ran ahead, and when I tried to keep up with him I tripped and fell. Stop manhandling me, ruffian!”
“Delirious,” pronounced Taizong. “She must have bumped her head in the fall.” He ordered the princess to be carried inside and given some restorative medicine. Back in the throne room, one of the emperor’s aides announced that Liu Quan, so recently deceased, was back outside the gate, awaiting instructions. The amazed emperor had him shown in. “How did the pumpkin presentation go?” he wanted to know.
“Very well,” Liu Quan replied. “King Yama was very touched that you’d remembered him.” He then reported Yama’s decision to bring him and his wife back to life, borrowing the body of the princess. “But I mislaid my wife somewhere between the regions of light and dark.”
The emperor smiled broadly. “So that’s why my sister was acting so strangely just now. Her soul has been replaced by that of Liu Quan’s wife. Of course!”
In another part of the palace, the revived princess was making her presence felt. “I don’t need any medicine! And who chose those garish yellow tiles all over this place? And those vulgar decorations? Let me out!” A team of palace ladies and eunuchs guided her to the throne room, where Taizong asked if Liu Quan was her husband. “We were betrothed as children, and I’m the mother of his son and daughter. Of course he’s my husband!” She now turned to Liu Quan. “Where did you run off to? Why didn’t you wait for me? I tripped while trying to keep up, and the next thing I knew, I was surrounded by all these crazy people.” Liu Quan had no idea how to respond: this woman sounded exactly like his wife but looked nothing like her.
Taizong now stepped in, declaring that the living, his sister Yuying, had been exchanged for the dead, Cuilian. He gifted Liu Quan with all of his sister’s clothes, jewelry, and cosmetics, exempted him from any future conscriptions, and sent the happy couple back to their home, where—reunited with their children—they lived happily and virtuously ever after.
Having cleared up this confusing business of resurrection-substitution, Taizong turned his attention to the grand Buddhist mass that he had promised the hungry ghosts he had encountered in the Region of Darkness. A heated court debate ensued about whether Buddhism constituted a corrupting foreign faith that urged gullible believers to focus on the possible rewards of a later existence rather than on the here and now; that undermined social hierarchies, between ruler and subject, father and son. For had not the Buddha abandoned parents, family, and ruler? Eventually, though, Taizong’s highest ministers passed judgment, extolling the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha and the need for syncretic balance among the three teachings—Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Taizong then invited monks from all over the empire to Chang’an to take part in the mass and ruled that anyone who further criticized Buddhism would have their arms broken.
As to who should lead the mass, there was none as qualified as Guangrui’s son Xuanzang: a vegetarian monk since childhood, word-perfect in thousands of sutras and hymns. After receiving a robe of knitted gold, Xuanzang began preparing for the mass. At the Temple of Transformation in Chang’an, monks were gathered, beds were made, platforms were built, music was rehearsed, and an auspicious date selected. On the appointed day, twelve hundred monks assembled to receive the emperor’s magnificent cortege illuminated with red silk lanterns and thronged with guardsmen, soldiers, and magnificently dressed officials. When the cavalcade paused in front of the temple, the emperor ordered the music to stop, dismounted from his carriage, and went in to lead the worship. Inside the temple, the air was fragrant with sandalwood incense; vermilion trays were heaped with cakes, sweets, and fruit. Carrying lit incense sticks, all bowed three times while priests chanted sutras for the deliverance of the hungry ghosts. Xuanzang and the other monks in turn prostrated themselves before the emperor, who, after a vegetarian banquet, returned to his palace to await the conclusion of the mass seven days hence.
Let us return now to Guanyin, still in Chang’an looking for a scripture pilgrim. Just as she was beginning to despair of finding someone virtuous enough, she heard of the emperor’s grand mass. When she discovered that its master of ceremonies was Riverflow, a child of Buddha whom she had personally dispatched into his present incarnation, she knew her search was at an end. As the next stage of her plan, she took to the streets of Chang’an with her disciple Hui’an, to hawk two of the Buddha’s treasures: the decorated robe and the staff. The three magic hoops she stored up for use at a later point.
A dim-witted monk, insufficiently elevated to have been chosen to attend the grand mass but with a few ill-gotten coins to rub together, happened to stroll past Guanyin, who had transformed herself into a ragged, barefoot monk. His eye was immediately caught by the glowing robe. “How much, scab-face?”
“Five thousand ounces of silver for the robe, two thousand for the staff.”
“You must be mad!” the birdbrained monk guffawed. “No one’ll give you so much for that junk! Get away with you!” Without engaging further, the disguised Guanyin and Hui’an carried on their way, until they encountered the cortege of Taizong’s chancellor, Xiao Yu, at the Gate of Eastern Resplendence.
When Guanyin refused to step aside to let him past, Xiao Yu reined in his horse; the luminous robe immediately caught his eye. “How much is it?” he asked.
“That depends,” Guanyin replied. “Seven thousand is the price for the impious. But I will gift these items gratis to a faithful follower of the Buddha.”
The minister now dismounted and treated Guanyin with the utmost courtesy. “Because our emperor is devoted to good works, the capital is currently celebrating a grand mass. This robe would be perfect for the officiating priest, Xuanzang.”
Xiao Yu led her in to see the emperor. “What is special about this robe?” Taizong asked her.
“Made from ice-white silkworms and by immortal weavers, it protects the wearer from calamity. It glows with a magic aura bright enough to illuminate your mortal world.”
“That does sound good,” admitted the emperor. “And the staff?”
“A former prop of immortals, it laughs at the very idea of old age.”
Taizong insisted on buying both for Xuanzang. But Guanyin refused payment, in recognition of the emperor’s devotion to good works. When the emperor tried to thank her with a vegetarian banquet, she also declined and returned happily to her temple lodging. The emperor immediately summoned Xuanzang to the palace to try on the robe. It fit him perfectly.
The seventh day, the conclusion of the mass, swiftly arrived, and the emperor returned to the temple, followed by most of the capital’s population. “Let’s go and see what all the fuss is about,” Guanyin said to Hui’an, “and whether this monk deserves our treasures and what he actually knows about Buddhism.” When they arrived, Xuanzang was busy preaching about this and that: now the sutra of Life and Deliverance for the Dead, now the Heavenly Chronicle of Peace, now the Scroll of Merit Through Self-Cultivation. Pushing her way to the front, Guanyin thumped the platform. “Hey, you up there!” she heckled. “So you know a thing or two about Hinayana, the lesser vehicle of Buddhist enlightenment. But what can you tell me about Mahayana, the great vehicle?”
Xuanzang gladly jumped off the platform from which he had been speaking, to salute his challenger. “We know nothing of Mahayana. Please tell us more!”
“Hinayana is the doctrine of the confused; its followers will never ascend to Heaven. Only the Mahayana can break the endless cycles of transmigration. Fortunately, I possess three collections of these teachings: the Tripitaka.”
At this point, the temple’s security officer hauled off the two disguised mendicants to be interrogated by Taizong at the back of the temple. “You’re the monk who brought us the robe, aren’t you? Why are you breaking up the mass by arguing with our priest?”
“Your priest does not know the path to salvation,” Guanyin told him without bowing first. “For that, you need my Tripitaka—the scriptures of the great vehicle.”
“And where are they?” the emperor asked eagerly.
“In Thunderclap Monastery in India, the Western Heaven—the home of the Buddha. These teachings can unravel a hundred grievances and dispel unimagined calamities.”
“Can you recite any of it from memory?”
Guanyin and Hui’an now rose up, took their actual forms, and hovered beatifically above the crowd on auspicious clouds.
“How wonderful!” gasped all present—including the emperor—kneeling, bowing, and burning incense. Taizong called quickly for a skilled painter to sketch a true likeness of the Bodhisattva, but as soon as the artist lifted his brush, the vision vaporized, leaving only a slip of paper drifting down on the breeze. On it was written the following message:
Greetings, Emperor of the Tang!
108,000 miles west of here, wonderful texts speak of the Mahayana. Once distributed throughout your empire, these sutras will deliver the ghosts of the damned from Hell. He who is willing to seek them will become a golden Buddha.
“Let’s pause the mass and our pursuit of virtue until someone has brought back these miraculous scriptures,” decided the emperor.
“But who will go?” asked his officials.
“Though entirely useless,” Xuanzang instantly spoke up, “I volunteer to fetch these treasures that will secure the empire in perpetuity.”
The emperor immediately raised Xuanzang to his feet and bowed four times to him. “For such sacrifice and service, we will become brothers.”
“I swear on my life to reach the Western Heaven,” Xuanzang responded, overwhelmed. “If not, I will never return home and instead pass straight to Hell.”
The beaming emperor now returned to the palace, to prepare Xuanzang’s travel documents and await an auspicious day for his departure.
Xuanzang, meanwhile, went back to his own temple, which was buzzing with the news of his pledge. “Did you really volunteer to go to the Western Heaven?” one of his disciples asked him. “The way is full of tigers, leopards, demons, and monsters, wide rivers and high mountains. Will we ever see you again?”
“I have made a solemn oath,” said Xuanzang. “I must repay the emperor’s generosity by serving the country. If I fail, I will be damned to eternal perdition. Remember: The active mind conjures up demons; the stilled mind extinguishes them. I may be gone for two, three, seven years, or forever. But if the pine tree inside our gate points eastward, you’ll know that I’ll be back soon.”
The next morning at court, Taizong wrote out a document describing the mission and stamped it with an imperial seal granting free passage to its bearer. “The stars are auspiciously aligned today for the start of a long journey,” the Department of Astronomy reported.
The emperor immediately summoned Xuanzang into the throne room; presented him with his travel permit, a purple-gold begging bowl, two attendants, and a horse; and told him he should leave immediately. The emperor and his officials personally saw Xuanzang out of the city wall, where the monks from Xuanzang’s temple were waiting with luggage containing winter and summer clothes. When all was ready for the pilgrim’s departure, the emperor lifted a cup of wine. “Do you have a nickname that your friends call you by?” he asked.
“I fear I do not,” apologized Xuanzang.
“Well, Guanyin called the scriptures you are seeking the Tripitaka. How about I call you that—one brother to another?”
The newly renamed Tripitaka thanked the emperor but was unwilling to drink the wine, for his religion dictated abstinence. “Make an exception today,” the emperor insisted, “so that I can send you off properly.” Tripitaka was about to drain the cup when Taizong gathered a pinch of earth from the ground and sprinkled it into the wine. He laughed at the confusion on Tripitaka’s face. “When will you return from the west?”
“In three years,” Tripitaka predicted optimistically.
“You have a long way to go,” the emperor told him. “Cherish a pinch of dirt from your motherland above myriad ounces of foreign gold.” Now understanding the gesture, Tripitaka drank the wine and set out from the city gate.