Emperor Mễ Sa loosened the reins to let his fine steed slow its pace. The clever, spirited horse had been galloping at full stretch when it felt the reins go slack, and at once eased into a gentle trot. The emperor felt utterly spent, and his horse, too, showed signs of fatigue — and yet the creature's shadow had vanished once again. Through all his glorious years in the saddle, never once had he let a quarry slip from before his eyes; and yet this time, the small spotted deer seemed to toy with him, slipping away as if in sport — how maddening beyond measure!
Lost in his thoughts, the emperor let his fine horse amble unhurried along the trail. When he opened his eyes again, he saw a stream ahead, and felt a rush of relief; he swung down at once from the saddle and plunged his head into the cool water. When he raised it again, there on the far bank stood — a spotted deer! Quick as a flash, the emperor leapt back to his horse and snatched up his bow. But no sooner had he drawn it than the deer turned its round, dark eyes toward him and slipped away once more. Furious, yet keeping his composure, the emperor mounted again, sprang across the stream, and gave chase. The evening sun glinted over the endless trees. The drumming of hooves rang out, faded, and finally vanished into the rustle of forest leaves.
Night had fallen. Once more Emperor Mễ Sa slowed his horse. Mountains and forest rose up around him, range upon range. A few birds beat their wings wearily overhead. Suddenly the emperor started, and looked about him with unease — in his eagerness to chase the deer, he had lost his way home. The mountains and forest lay cold and wild about him. Somewhere close by, a tiger's roar already echoed.
After who knows how many tense, silent hours pressing on beneath a darkness that only deepened, the emperor caught sight of a faint light flickering far off. Following his horse's steps, he made his way toward that point of brightness. Before long, the glow of a mù u-oil lamp came clearly into view, lighting up the corner of a thatched hermitage. With a sigh of relief, the emperor dismounted.
Suddenly the bamboo door swung wide open, and a figure, a lamp, and a voice all seemed to appear together in the same instant.
- Respectful greetings, Your Majesty! This humble monk has been waiting for you here a long while.
Emperor Mễ Sa was so astonished he stood frozen. Only after a long moment could he find his voice:
- How... could the great master have known... that I would come, to be here waiting for me?
The emperor saw clearly now that his host was a very old śramaṇa.
The mountain monk smiled faintly, a gentle, cool smile that shone like a sliver of moon at early autumn, then waved his hand and stepped aside:
- Please, Your Majesty, come rest awhile in this thatched hermitage. After so long a ride, your royal person must surely be worn out.
Still bewildered, the emperor led his horse forward and went in.
- Fodder has already been set aside — allow this humble monk to see to your horse.
Emperor Mễ Sa stepped slowly into the quiet retreat. He let his eyes wander about the room. A woven straw mat lay against the eastern wall. Two meditation cushions were spread in the middle of the floor, with a small tea service set upon a low table. On the bamboo-lattice wall in the center hung, loosely unrolled, an ink-wash painting — its brushwork bold and free, hazy and touched with a careless, unrestrained grace. The air of the little hermitage seemed to carry something both strange and strangely familiar.
The emperor quietly slipped off his shoes, seated himself on a cushion, and turned his gaze once more to the painting. How strange — what was it about this picture? Where had he seen it before? It felt so familiar! He studied it closely. This brushwork — simple, spare, forceful yet swift, the sort used chiefly for painting orchid and bamboo — how had the artist come to blend it with the “ink-splash” touches favored by the princes of the Tang court? The “ink-splash” style so easily lapses into chaos, and yet here there was no chaos at all — proof that the artist had turned “no method” into “method” itself. A landscape such as this had not yet reached the ideal where “mountains stand as though flying, and streams flow as though still,” but even so, its stillness and its motion could be said to strike just the right measure, in harmony, its living rhythm flowing naturally and without break. This was precisely the brushwork the emperor loved above all others — a private conviction of his own taste, if he was honest with himself. The paper had yellowed with age, yet the emperor recognized it at once as the “kim tiền” paper made in Korea and Yunnan — gray, coarse in quality, heavy with lime, used only by common folk.
The emperor sat lost in troubled thought. A fleeting shiver ran through him and drained the color from his face. “Could this brushwork possibly be my own?”
- What does Your Majesty make of this painting?
The emperor caught the question only dimly, as if from far away. His mind remained sunk in its own current of thought. Had he ever used this “kim tiền” paper? When he could not find the Song-dynasty paper of the Đông Tân Đường house, made from bamboo sheath, he had used paper from the land of Sở, in Hồ Bắc. And this painting — if it truly was his own work — had he not left it unfinished?
The old monk's voice reached him like a breath of wind at his ear:
- This humble monk remembers, long ago now, nearly forty years past, the one who painted this picture once said: “What is special in this work is that its ‘no method’ becomes ‘method.’ The ink splashed in the ‘ink-splash’ manner seems disordered, yet is not disordered at all. This is a school entirely its own — ancient as time settled upon the moss-grown walls of an old citadel, and new as a dewdrop glistening on a leaf at the first hint of spring...” Ha... ha... ha... He laughed then, delighted with himself, and went on — “And yet... take care, for behind those dewdrops there hides, faint and half-glimpsed, the shadow of a new moon, distant and unfathomable...”
Emperor Mễ Sa startled back to himself.
- A moon? Which moon does the great master mean?
The mù u-oil lamp suddenly cast its light wider beneath the emperor's hand, and he strained to see the painting more clearly still. Plainly, there was no moon of any kind in it. So where, then, was the new moon the old monk spoke of?
Emperor Mễ Sa seemed suddenly to understand, and nodded.
- The great master is right! This work still lacks a moon. Add a new moon, half hidden and half showing behind a veil of mist, and the painting would come alive — gain in meaning, gain in feeling.
The old monk seemed not to hear the emperor's words at all, and went on with the thread of his own memories:
- The one who painted this was a monk of great gifts and great ambition. His heart seemed to hold all five sacred peaks within it, and his mind roamed free as a whale in the open sea. Ah! What grace, what brilliance there was in his brush! The ancients said that to read a man's writing is to know the man. And so, looking at this painting and the spirit within it, one could already read the lines of his fate and his karmic ties to come. This painting, I told him then, once he had sketched it out: still caught in the delusions of karma, still bound within the six realms, still tangled in a hundred cords of affliction, unable to escape its own retribution. This humble one spoke thus to him after he first sketched this picture. And his answer still rings in my ears as clearly as if spoken yesterday: “Elder brother! Your younger brother was born into a poor family, and left for the monastic life while still a child, so that I have never known the affairs of the world. As you yourself have taught me, every being, without exception, must pass through both joy and suffering across the three worlds and the six realms before awakening can come. So I make this vow: that in my next life I shall be born an emperor, to taste for myself what such grandeur and power are like. And if, when that time comes, I should lose myself in glory and desire, then, elder brother, find some way to call me back to wakefulness! Elder brother — this painting of mine is still unfinished. If it should happen that I, lost in passion and delusion, remain bound within the six realms, tangled in a hundred cords of affliction, unable to escape my own retribution... then remember to show it to me. Perhaps, seeing it again, I will remember, and awaken.”
Emperor Mễ Sa was struck dumb. The lamp fell from his hand and clattered to the floor. From within the painting, a new moon now appeared, glimmering faintly behind its veil of mist. The emperor stood frozen, unable to move.
A faint smile passed across the old monk's face in the darkness, and his voice now grew warm and steady, like the sound of an evening bell:
- Your Majesty, that moon has waited for you nearly forty years now. This humble monk, remembering our old promise, came here to build this thatched hermitage and wait for the conditions to ripen, so that we might meet again, old friend! The spotted deer this afternoon was a small trick of this humble monk's, to lead Your Majesty here, back to your own unfinished work!
The old monk fell silent, but Emperor Mễ Sa still seemed lost, adrift in some distant dream.
After relighting the lamp and pouring the emperor a cup of hot tea, the old monk sighed once more:
- Ah! In what feels like a single moment, nearly half a century has come between us! Things change, the stars shift in their courses, all things arise and pass away, and old stories are no different from a dream at the start of an evening. We were once fellow companions in the Dharma, at the foot of Mount Thiên Lĩnh; now one of us sits on a jade throne in a dragon's robe, while the other still wears the ochre robe and straw sandals. Tell me, old friend of such rare gifts — has your wish to be an emperor been fulfilled at last? Has that new moon ever truly set? What does Your Majesty make of it now? Ah! What is a golden throne worth, reeking as it does of fame and gain and power, here in the morning and gone by nightfall? Let the dust of this world return to the dust of this world! When the causes and conditions ripen, the fruit falls of its own accord. Awaken, Your Majesty — awaken now!
Suddenly, Emperor Mễ Sa lurched to his feet, snatched the painting up in both hands, and dashed out into the night forest, vanishing from sight.
The old śramaṇa stood gazing fixedly at the doorway for a long while before turning back inside, two dewdrops trembling, unfallen, at the corners of his eyes.
The mù u-oil lamp guttered low, its wick nearly spent. The old monk settled into an easy posture on his straw cushion, his back held straight, a distant, spacious smile touching his lips, and then even his breath seemed to dissolve into that vast, still emptiness...
The new moon, curved and tilted, hanging by the window, slowly slipped from sight behind a cloud.
Yên Hà các, Đạm Lư hiên 1980