2 Questions Every Girl is Asking Herself

Chapter 20

Boys and romance are all fine and nice, but I'm an independent woman from the 21st century. An independent woman with a career, I hope. If I could only figure out what that is first...

When you're really lost, sometimes you'll seek external clues to reinforce an unconscious desire/inkling. During moments of extreme confusion, people will often approach fortune tellers, or astrologists or palm readers or monks for help. They really want to have peace over this battle between logic and emotion. How to read the heart? When to disregard the mind? How to reconcile irreconcilable differences? Or things that just don't make sense?

I didn't grow up with a religion. So faith has been a rather foreign concept to me. I like knowing where I'm going and exactly how I'm going to get there. Pragmatically, realistically, efficiently, with risks measured and resources optimized. A certainty based on facts and not dreams. Proven models and not random hearsay. This kind of thinking has also led me down the well-worn path, where I can know exactly how my life will turn out. Happy or not... well, I thought it would make me happy.

As much as this trip is about learning about myself, it's also about learning to trust feelings I can't explain. The key word here is learning to trust. I don't trust it yet. I suppose that's where faith enters the scene. So I kind of hoped for some external support. Support from the universe, perhaps. Signs that tell me what I should do about my career.

When I was traveling in China, I was so desperate for a sign that I visited every temple and every Buddha along the way, hoping for some divine revelation about the future.

In Sichuan, there's a place called Le Shan, which literally means, "Laughing Mountain". I went to see it. Not because I'm particularly fond of hiking, or wanted the exercise, or thought the mountain would make me laugh if I looked at it, but because of the Giant Buddha who lives there. It's a russet sitting Buddha carved on the face of a cliff with the turbulent currents flowing below its feet. A monk in the Tang Dynasty (600-900AD) led its construction to suppress any floods at this junction point of three major rivers. The locals feared floods as much as city dwellers feared car accidents. The LeShan Giant Buddha isn't called giant for nothing. Its sheer size instills a sense of divine and mighty protection, being as tall as a 20 story building and as wide as the length of an NBA basketball court. When I stood at the foot of the Buddha, I couldn't even reach its big toe. 

After we'd climbed to the top of the Laughing Mountain, and sat down in a pavilion to rest, the tour guide told us a story of the magical powers of Buddha. She said, "A few years ago, a young couple and their one-year-old baby, came to see the mountain on a day trip. When they took the gondola up, the chain broke, and their car fell down the steep hills. As they were falling, the young couple knew their chances for survival were next to none, but they wanted to give whatever glimmer of hope to live there is to the baby. So they wrapped their bodies around the baby protecting it from all sides against the impact of the fall. When the gondola hit ground and tumbled down the mountain, mom and dad used every last ounce of their strength to keep their arms locked together, and never let go. Both mom and dad were so badly injured that by the time they got to the hospital, it was too late. But the baby was saved, whole and healthy, without a scratch."

The tour guide continued, "It's a true story, and made headlines at the time. It's a miracle that the baby survived. People later noticed that the baby had a jade Buddha worn around the neck, a charm he'd been wearing since he was born. But there was a crack in the jade after the accident. One that wasn't there before. We often say "broken jade, whole person". If you find one day your jade Buddha is broken, or has a crack, or is lost, it means it has shielded you from some kind of misfortune."

In China, a lot of girls also wear a jade Buddha around their necks for good luck. But most jade Buddha you see in jewelry stores don't have a "ride". A "ride" is often either a lotus flower, or an elephant, or a fish, or a mystical creature with a dragon's head and fish's body. According to our tour guide, a jade Buddha is only considered "alive" if it has a "ride". Because Buddha needs a "ride" to travel to places to perform its duties - helping all living creatures in the abyss of misery.

She also said that we could invite (we never say "buy" when it comes to Buddha, because it's considered disrespectful) a jade Buddha at the "Buddha Fate Hall" at the top of Le Shan and then have a monk bless it at Mountain Emei. Sometimes when the monk is giving his blessings (also known as the "Opening Light" ceremonies), he'll share a few words of wisdom with the patron. I thought this an excellent opportunity for the universe to show me a sign. A sign into my future.

So I go in and invite a jade Buddha I liked, wrote my name, birth date and wish on a square of red paper. For the wish, I put "Career and Love" in Chinese (it never occurred to me that Buddha could read English also). I then wrapped the jade Buddha in the red paper, which is now ready for blessing.

We descended the "Laughing Mountain" and drove for an hour or so to Mountain Emei, where a gleaming temple is constructed midway up. Stories say that the concubine of an Emperor wanted to have a son so badly that she came to Mountain Emei and prayed that if Buddha would please give her a son, and make him the future Emperor, she would build a great temple in return. In a few years, this indeed came to pass. For her 60th birthday, the emperor built this great temple to thank Buddha for making his mother's wish come true. Because of this story, lots of people come to Mountain Emei to kneel before Buddha and make their prayers known to the gods.

I go in with my tour group, excited about the powers of this temple, and find the hall where the "Opening Light" ceremonies are conducted. It's not a big room, maybe the size of a high school classroom, with a golden statue of Buddha in one end, and rows of slanted boxes with cushions on top for kneeling. Everyone puts the ornaments they wish to "open light" for in a tray, kneel on the cushions with the tray in front. A middle-aged, brown robed monk chants for a while, and then comes to each row to bless us and our ornaments with holy water. When he came to me, I looked up at him expectantly, hoping he'd smile kindly at me and say something like, "your life is about to change." But he just glanced at me with no particular interest like I had been a fly in the room.

We all felt terribly disappointed after the "Opening Light" ceremony, because we'd all more or less hoped he'd say something to us. So I decided to go back to the ceremony hall and ask to see the monk again, just in case he meant to say something to me, but forgot. When he came out, I very politely asked if he could look into my eyes, and see if there's something he'd like to tell me.

He only looked at me in puzzlement, opened his mouthful of metallic braces, and said, "I have nothing to say to you."