That winter, snow fell only lightly, yet the cold still swept in with the mist, leaving the forest even more desolate after the long stormy season it had just endured. The people of the region were also suffering from an influenza epidemic. Everyone took to the forest in search of medicinal herbs, and whatever else could be eaten to survive the bitter hunger and cold.
Around a small cave, people discovered a wide stretch of land thick with medicinal herbs, along with rows of sweet potatoes, corn, beans, and eggplants blooming and budding out of season. Everything grew in such straight, even rows that it seemed some hand had planted and tended it. For many days, anyone passing that way had seen an ascetic sitting in silent meditation beneath an old oak, and though the cold cut like a blade under the morning frost and evening wind, his body remained still and at peace. People recognized him as the monk who used to come down to the hamlet, a basket full of medicine in hand, treating the villagers from door to door, and always refusing the food they offered in gratitude. He knew everyone was hungry. The storms and floods had swept away every crop. And the epidemic kept spreading through this remote highland region, days of travel from the nearest town.
No one knew how long the hermit had been living in this desolate, high mountain place. Perhaps, for a long time now, few people had ventured deep into the forest. Perhaps too because he had come from the lowlands, and, moved by the villagers' plight, had chosen to remain there in quiet practice, growing crops to help them. But why did he sit so still, his eyes forever closed? Someone had read the small sign posted at the edge of the forest: “Villagers may freely gather whatever they need.” People came only to ask for a little medicinal leaf, never daring to disturb his stillness.
Then one morning, the hermit at last rose from meditation. Spring seemed to have just arrived. Flowers and grass took on a gentle, joyful hue. The villagers, having recovered from illness, grew stronger still from eating the ginseng roots gathered from the ascetic's garden. Every household now rang with the joy of New Year festivities. The monk smiled on this first day of the year, facing the visible world before him. Warm spring sunlight lit even the far corner of the dark, cold cave. Suddenly he looked toward the forest. A figure appeared faintly in the distance. A young woman in a brightly colored brocade skirt was turning onto the footpath. When she reached the monk, she knelt and drew from her wicker basket some fruit to offer him. As she looked up, she was startled to find him gazing at her intently. The monk studied the young woman, then suddenly cried out: “Đông Sơn…”
Startled, the young woman stammered: “Venerable… you just called my mother's name. May I ask how you know it?”
The monk hesitated a moment, then suddenly broke into laughter – an easy, unguarded laugh that seemed, somehow, to conceal something.
Years ago, I traveled far and wide. And once, passing through these remote mountains, I met a young woman named Đông Sơn. She looked very much like you do now. How swiftly time passes – twenty years already, and yet it feels like only yesterday. Who would have thought… Tell me, is your mother… still well?
The young woman's face clouded with sorrow: “Venerable… my mother passed away more than a year ago. Her grave lies at the forest's edge. It was only this past year-end, when I came to tend it, that I learned a hermit had come to live here…”
The young woman, raised in this wild highland country, possessed a gentle beauty like a forest flower – modest, yet fragrant and radiant. Neither her bearing nor her name would have led anyone to think her of the hill-tribe people. And indeed, she was not: Đông Sơn's parents had both been of Kinh ethnicity, who had come up to the mountains for work and there found each other and were wed. Not long after their daughter was born and named Đông Sơn, the couple died together in an epidemic. The child was raised by the village and grew up over the years, innocent and pure, radiant amid the mountain mists and winds. She loved to dance and sing, to gather wildflowers to adorn her own untamed, tender beauty. Her voice, clear as a skylark's song and as graceful as drifting clouds, had once, in the bloom of her youth, stirred the hearts of young men throughout the highlands. The ancient mountains and forests might well have remained forever at peace within her heart, if only… Ah! If only that small word “if” did not exist in this life, no one would ever have to utter such belated regret, so full of pain and quiet, lingering sorrow…
That year, a team of physicians came up from the lowlands to examine the villagers. Among them was a bright, capable young man chosen to stay on a while longer after the team departed. His name was Hiền Minh, a physician newly graduated. His task was to train a class of village nurses in short order. Đông Sơn joined that class. And so it was, perhaps inevitably, that feeling grew between the gifted young man and the beautiful young woman. When the training ended, he returned to the city. And from that day, Đông Sơn lost the innocent purity of the wildflower of the great forest. The skylark's clear song fell silent within her, replaced by sorrowful brown eyes forever turned toward the distant horizon. But the one who had left never once came back.
In time, Đông Sơn gave birth to a daughter. Once again the village opened its arms to shelter and care for mother and child, just as it had once raised Đông Sơn herself in this highland country steeped in kindness. The years passed, and the forest flowers kept on blooming. The steep ravines, the waterfalls, and the graceful mountains seemed to have shaped, for this fatherless girl, a lovely form and a full measure of virtue and grace. The village had changed a great deal by now. It had a dispensary with basic equipment. A boarding secondary school had opened in the nearby town, just a few kilometers from the forest's edge. A national highway now ran the length of the region. Watching her daughter grow wise, gentle, and diligent in her studies, Đông Sơn found in her the greatest comfort of her life. This daughter, born of her mother's wild, radiant beauty and her father's sensitive intelligence, soon became a source of pride for the whole village, and for the mountains and forest that had watched her grow.
My mother worked as a nurse at the village dispensary, the young woman went on, having finished telling the story of her life. One day she went deep into the mountains to help a woman through a difficult birth, and died in an accident there. I am myself about to finish a course in traditional medicine. This past year, when the village was struck by illness, you came and healed the sick with herbal remedies. I would love to learn from you, but I did not dare ask…
Very well. I will teach you all that I know… as I once taught another. But tell me – your mother must have suffered greatly, and borne much resentment toward the one who rode away that day and never returned? the monk asked gently, seeming moved.
No, Venerable. My mother often spoke to me of my father. She held no resentment toward him at all. She used to say: “He must have had his own private sorrows for never coming back. He was a man of the city, from a wealthy and respected family, an only son. As he himself once told her, few families would ever accept an orphaned bride from such a distant hill-tribe. Besides, he never even knew he had left a child of his own blood behind here. To have had a child with the one I loved – that was enough for me. I never wished for anything more.”
The monk sank into deep thought. Whether he was in silent recollection, or dwelling on the tangled sorrows of human existence, none could tell from his calm, unreadable face, though it seemed to flicker faintly as he listened to her story. The young woman went on, as though finally giving voice to a confession long kept hidden: “Now I have only one wish left – to meet my father. Even if only once, in this whole lifetime. Even if I could never call him by that name, as would be natural…”
What is your name? the monk suddenly asked, opening his eyes.
My name is Băng Ngàn. My mother told me that my father once said, if they ever had a daughter, he would name her Băng Ngàn – meaning that he had crossed forests and forded streams to reach my mother here.
The monk smiled again – a gentle smile, yet touched with something distant and unspoken. He gazed in silence at the branch of wild apricot blossom that someone had left beside the stone cave the evening before. He was savoring a peaceful spring in these eternally wondrous mountains and forests. The stream that had run dry for so long suddenly surged, like a torrent in flood… flowing onward through so many lives, real and unreal alike.
The monk had been unwell for several days. Every day, Băng Ngàn cooked rice porridge and brewed medicine to bring to him. He still sat in meditation outside his stone hermitage, taking no more than a few sips of thin gruel. On the third day, he opened his eyes and said to her: “I will soon be leaving. I regret only that I have not yet taught you all I know of medicine, nor had time to teach you the path of practice. This is all the karmic bond we were given. I leave you only a few medical texts – read them, put them into practice, and use them for the benefit of others. My last and dearest wish is that you continue to live well, like the eternal echo of these ancient mountains and forests, true to all that your mother lived and gave for you and for this life, whether or not I remain in this world.”
And so he passed away quietly and peacefully, just as spring came to an end. The villagers cremated him beside his stone hermitage. Băng Ngàn kept his ashes and built a small stūpa to honor and venerate him. She remained there for the rest of her life. Each day she recited the sūtras, sat in meditation, studied the medical texts, and tended and prepared herbal remedies to bring to the dispensary for the sick of the village. No one but Băng Ngàn ever knew where the hermit had come from, or where he had gone. This daughter of the mountains and forests was, in truth, of the same blood as the monk who had just passed into stillness.
Once more, skylarks sang joyfully around the garden of medicinal herbs. A small hermitage. A dispensary, and the figure of a gentle, diligent young nun, coming and going to care for the sick of the mountain hamlet. Now that the road to the mountain town had opened, people no longer feared the old isolation of crossing passes and fording streams. The one who, so many years before, had himself returned, had left life itself – deep in the heart of the wilderness – to go on unceasingly… with the passing of time.