46

A long time ago, I once thought about a question in front of a bonfire. The wood crackled, chewing on the darkness, and I stared at the flickering flames. Suddenly, I wondered: Is a child's task really just to grow up?

The night wind carried sparks into the sky. How many of those stars have already burned out? Their light traveled so far to reach our eyes, but by the time we see them, the source may have died long ago. It's like looking at my own childhood—I can remember the warmth, but that child is no longer there. I didn't really see the world properly back then, and now that I'm grown, it's already a new world.

All streams, no matter how many mountains they wind around or valleys they pass through, must eventually fall into the same sea. Back then, I read Lung Ying-tai's *Big River, Big Sea* and was deeply struck by a similar line: "All the wandering and displacement will eventually return from the great river to the great sea."

So it is with all dreams. Those we thought were lost are actually all heading in the same direction. Will they reunite in the sea? Will they recognize each other's original forms in the brine? Probably not—but I hope they will. Maybe? I don't know.

The bonfire cast my shadow behind me, stretching it long, so long it no longer resembled the me of now. The shadow swayed on the dirt, like another, more honest life.

When I was little, I thought the world was an open book, waiting for me to read it. But later, I realized the words could change. Yesterday, I read 'eternity'; today, the ink has already faded. Yesterday's certain truths, when I touched the page today, had another line of words hidden beneath, written backward.

Did I ever truly see and understand the world as I grew up?

The fire flickered, startling me. Understand? Seems I at least don't understand this fire. I don't even understand the dog next door—why does it always bark at the empty alley on rainy days? Why does it bury the bones it finds under the utility pole? I don't even understand why I cried yesterday but laugh about it today; why the things I cherish most are the ones I push away.

Can it be made up for? I asked the fire, but the fire only gave me more shadows.

There was a time when I thought everything was over. Not the kind of 'over' in stories where you hit rock bottom and bounce back—the kind that rots in the dirt, too barren to even be fertilizer. Like mud in a corner, cracking under the sun, turning to filthy water when the rain comes. To live is to swim through the gazes of others—some are nails, some are saliva.

The essence of sky burial is to express love and return. To merge the waters of man and nature.

But humans are such fragile vessels. We can't accept the laws and wisdom of nature, nor can we hold too much deep feeling. Even the slightest mingling pains us, like a freshwater fish swimming into the sea, desperately adjusting the salt in its blood. In the end, it either dies from the salt or from dehydration.

I added another log to the fire. The new log resisted for a moment, then caught with a whoosh, giving itself over. To understand another life might be like this log understanding fire—it must pay the price of destroying its own form.

As a child, I watched ants carry their dead, imitated the first morning calls of birds, even imagined myself as a weightless gust of wind. And still, I was wrong—mistaking the ants' persistence for grief, the birds' songs for joy, the wind's passing for attachment.

Mistakes piled upon mistakes, like this growing heap of ashes.

But then—the fire flared suddenly, swallowing all the shadows and spitting them back out. Maybe things aren't so bad after all. Beneath the ashes, there's still a glowing core; a gust of wind, and it can reignite. Mistakes can be corrected, like a river carrying away silt at a bend. Though new mistakes will arise, like new silt settling.

But that's what growing up is, isn't it? Not getting taller or heavier, not swapping children's clothes for adult ones. It's realizing you'll never fully understand the world—and still being willing to try. It's knowing every repair leaves a mark—and still picking up the needle and thread. It's when the sea rises over your head, finally learning to breathe with gills.

Embers rose, mingling with invisible stars. Some stars are dead, some are dying, some have just been born. They all exist in this night sky at once, just as all versions of me sit before this bonfire at once.

The stream still flows to the sea. Before it arrives, it has the right to bend, to flood, to break into puddles in the dry season. As long as it's still moving.

I reached out to warm my hands, palms up, as if receiving some gift.

"There's still time," the flames said, and then they kept burning, turning themselves inch by inch into ash in the brightest way.

One day, I too will become a log, a heap of ash; I will disappear completely, leaving no trace, slowly forgotten entirely, vanishing from the root.

But since the future is unknowable, so is the past; the present is unknowable, the present becomes the past; the future is also unknowable; forget the past, forget the present, forget the future; not coming, yet coming—that is Tathāgata.

Having already received God's grace, I return everything to God; having already accepted all things as one, everything is but a return; having already accepted emptiness, in the end, emptiness is attained.