The most attractive things to me are time and language. Time is profound and hard to fathom, but language, even with its limitations, is able to depict its true appearance─simply a moving and tragic act in itself.
Why is life said to be short? It is because we haven’t seen enough of this ever-changing life.
The experience of waiting can be truly profound, especially
sitting in airports watching people who hurry about as if the
entire world is passing in front of you.
── from Yisheng Zhong De Yitian
(One Day in Life)
I hope that all Chinese readers, no matter what you read, can quickly foster it into a hobby, into a lifetime’s harbor for the heart, and to give rise to steadfast judgement. So that such a big country, with its many people and its complex, interrelated history, will not use fervor to decide the fate of the country and the individual. I hope young people can cultivate a tolerant and compassionate mind. And that similarly, children can be allowed to joyfully read starting from an early age.
── from San Lian Shenghuo Zhoukan (San Lian Lifeweek Magazine)
Not long after the pressing sounds of the emergency siren, a
pattern of one long ring followed by two short bursts, I could
hear the droning of the aeroplanes approaching, followed by the
bombs bursting into flames in the horizon. I was alone in bed,
listening to the window screen buckling and rattling in the wind.
It was as if ashes and dust filled the entire sky and dispersed
across the earth. It rained on the neverending stone steps of Sun
Yat-sen’s mausoleum and the ripples of Xuanwu Lake. It rained
on Dongchang Street Park and on the rows of desmodium flowers
decorating the house fronts on Fuhougang Street. It rained on the
see-saw of Gulou Primary School. The pursuit of death had come
to my window, raining onto the new bamboo scaffolding and the
morning glories that bloomed like the starry sky.
── from Ju Liu He
(Mighty River)
Tolerate—
the existence of the dissident;
the dignity of the wounded and disabled;
the harm of the enemy;
Venerable Master Hsing Yun grants voices to the objects of daily monastic life to tell their stories in this collection of first-person narratives.
The Medicine Buddha SutraMedicine Buddha, the Buddha of healing in Chinese Buddhism, is believed to cure all suffering (both physical and mental) of sentient beings. The Medicine Buddha Sutra is commonly chanted and recited in Buddhist monasteries, and the Medicine Buddha’s twelve great vows are widely praised.
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