The Happy Life of Small Officials in Northern Song Dynasty

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On the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, the folk so-called Laba Festival, since the beginning of the Han Dynasty, there has been Laba sacrifice to the God of Laba. When the people get up early in the morning, they will cook a pot of five-grain porridge mixed with red dates, peanuts, almonds, chestnuts, walnuts, etc. Chenghui mixed it with brown sugar and colored it, and called it: eight-color fragrant porridge; and would put several bowls on the patio, mill pan, or pens of pigs, cattle, horses and sheep, to express the meaning of celebrating the harvest, welcoming auspiciousness and offering sacrifices to the God of Latex.

But for Buddhists who are good men and women, the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month is endowed with another meaning. According to legend, before the Buddha Sakyamuni attained enlightenment, he lived a six-year ascetic life like an ascetic, so weak and exhausted that he was dying. Seeing this, a shepherd girl cooked a bowl of milk porridge for him to eat. After eating, the Buddha recovered his physical strength, so he bathed and changed clothes and became a Buddha under a bodhi tree. Therefore, in the eyes of Buddhists, this day is the Buddha's birthday. The day of enlightenment.

Among the many festivals of Buddhism, this festival is the most important. Every Laba, pilgrims offer incense and pray one after another. Some also bring the cooked fragrant porridge and offer it on the altar, imitating the shepherdess's trip to deliver milk porridge, expressing their respect for the Buddha. I mean respect.

Although the people of Yangzhou have experienced the previous catastrophes, their vitality has not yet recovered, and every household is living a tight life, but on this day, the people who are devout to Buddha still rush to Daming Temple in an endless stream early in the morning Burning incense and paying homage to the Buddha; even the wives and young ladies of the big family came to offer incense in a long line, carrying various fruit animals.

The monks in Daming Temple were sweating profusely, and the temples were overcrowded. Several old monks were busy arranging ceremonies, chanting scriptures and setting up the stage. The monks also shuttled back and forth, constantly maintaining order and welcoming pilgrims.

From the time of Chen to the end of the time of Si, the flow of people in Daming Temple has never stopped. There are more than a thousand people coming and going. Those who wanted to listen to the abbot's sermon in person, all in all, the entire Daming Temple became the busiest place in Yangzhou City this morning.

After the time passed, the crowd gradually became thinner, and people fulfilled their wishes and left one after another with the bronze mirrors and other objects consecrated by the temple. At this moment, a group of more than 20 men entered the mountain gate carrying a small black sedan chair.

The sedan chair stopped outside the mountain gate, the sedan chair curtain was lifted, and an old man in black got out of the sedan chair. He neither burned incense and kowtowed, nor gave alms and listened to scriptures, and even the monk guarding the round gate leading to the meditation room saluted him. He didn't respond either, but went to the meditation room in the backyard with ease.

More than 20 accompanying men did not follow up, but scattered around the monastery and wandered around.

This old man is Feng Huhu. In Daming Temple, he can be regarded as a person of status. He is a disciple of the abbot. In the eyes of the monks in the temple, the reconstruction of the Manjusri Hall is simply a great savior. The food and clothing of these monks are provided by Puji for half a year, so the monks don't care about his indifference. No complaints.

Feng Laohu twirled the iron egg in his hand, and walked slowly along the path shaded by the trees in the backyard to the meditation room. Every time he came here, Feng Huohu was in a particularly good mood. For some reason, as soon as he entered the backyard of the meditation room, The noisy voices outside and the sound of chanting and ringing bells became ethereal, and my mood suddenly calmed down.

I remember that a few years ago, I accidentally came here to play, strayed into the meditation room in the backyard, and overheard Abbot Shanxiang lecturing scriptures and chanting Dharma for the monks in the temple. The prosperity of the time, but the nightmare haunting him in the middle of the night made him miserable.

The older a person is, the more he will have an indelible memory of what he did before, but Feng Jingyao's memory is not pleasant to him. He has killed so many people in his life, and there are always some bloody scenes. In the dream, he had trouble sleeping and eating; he also asked those quack wizards around him, and listened to their opinions and set up an altar to exorcise evil spirits, but it didn't work.

Of course Feng Jingyao was not afraid of these things, but these memories kept his heart in an anxious state forever, which was obviously very uncomfortable. For him, killing people was not a problem. He likes and even enjoys this tense and fearful life by using his own hands to clear the obstacles in front of him. At that time, he would not have nightmares at all, and every time he cleared an obstacle, he would get a lot of rewards and rewards. The higher and higher status, the feeling of climbing up the cliff made him feel extremely exciting.

I don't know when, there was a smooth road in front of him. In Yangzhou, he has become the Supreme Emperor. There is nothing he dare not do, and no one dares to say no in front of him. Logically speaking, At this point, he should be comfortable and content, but in fact he is not.

Those bloody memories, those curses and wailing before death made him unable to sleep at all, so he tried every means to avoid these nightmares, he could torture women all night and all night, he could soak in hot springs for several nights Shooting stars in the sky, he can gallop on the road overnight on the expensive horse bought with a hundred taels of gold, in short, as long as he can get rid of the entanglement of those nightmares, he will never tire of doing it.

He knows that he has become an oddball in the eyes of the people around him, but he doesn't care, as long as he can calm down, he can do anything; in other words, no matter what weird behavior he, Feng Jingyao, takes for granted, because He is the Tiger of Yangzhou, and he is the absolute master of this land.

After eavesdropping on the lecture given by the old monk of Daming Temple that night, when Feng Huhu was preparing to suffer from nightmares as usual that night, he suddenly found that he had slept until dawn, dreamless all night, and it was very sweet.

This is a unique thing in the past few years. Only those who can't sleep well know how happy it is to sleep soundly until dawn without dreams. This is not determined by how high your status is or how much money you have.

Feng Jingyao was puzzled and trembling until the second night, but unfortunately, the old dream came back again, and it was another tormenting night; Feng Jingyao was thinking about the reason, and a disciple beside him reminded him.

"Master, is it because I went to the temple yesterday and burned two sticks of incense, so the Buddha blessed Master, so I had a good night's sleep?"

Feng Jingyao was skeptical, so he went to Daming Temple for the second time, this time he took the initiative to donate a lot of money, and asked the old abbot to give a lecture for him by name, although he didn't understand, but when he came back that night, he had a good night's sleep again.

"Brother, it seems that you have a destiny with the Buddha, why don't you become a monk." When he talked about this matter with Nancheng Blind Third Master, Blind Third Master joked like this.

Yihe wakes up the person in the dream, but it is impossible to become a monk. How can you give up the hundreds of millions of family fortune and fame accumulated in most of your life? Isn't that a fool?But being a lay disciple is not a bad thing, and I am not asking for bliss after death, but I want to have no dreams every night, and then I have achieved my goal.

But when he excitedly mentioned this matter to Master Shanxiang, the master Shanxiang refused.

"Amitabha, the old monk never accepts disciples of laymen. If the donor is devout to the Buddha, he only needs to offer incense and chant scriptures. There is no need to be a disciple of the old monk."

Feng Huhu had nothing to do with this old monk. He was a foreigner, and he was the local emperor in Yangzhou City, but no matter how long his hands were, he couldn't control Buddhist disciples. Depressed, he asked the sophisticated blind third master for advice, and the blind third master really gave him advice. He has a great idea.

"The Manjusri Hall in Daming Temple collapsed, and the golden body of the Bodhisattva was exposed to the wind and rain. The imperial court did not allocate funds to repair it, and the folk pilgrims did not have so much money to support it. With this as a condition, I am not afraid that the old monk will not submit. "

Feng Huo went to try it, and sure enough the old monk was a little loose. The second time Feng Huo took the blind third master to go with him, he raised the price even higher. He not only contributed money to help rebuild the Manjusri Hall, but also promised to donate thousands of guan to the temple every year. The sesame oil money has solved the food and clothing worries of the monks in the temple.

This move really hit Master Shanxiang's weakness. The old monk still sent people down the mountain to inquire about his details carefully. Feng Huo had already made arrangements. , So the transaction was completed, he entered the hall smoothly, and became a lay disciple of the eminent monk Shanxiang.

Shanxiang is also conscientious. Whenever Feng Huhu and Blind Sanye go to the temple, they will drag them to talk about Buddhist scriptures. The persistent illnesses he had suffered were indeed effective. Even though there were still nightmares from time to time, they were much less.

Later, although Shanxiang knew the identity of Feng Huhu, he also knew that he was his disciple just to sleep soundly, and he recited the Buddha's name repeatedly; master.

And Feng Huohu also knows the way of it. He can hide his affairs for a while, but he can't hide them forever. Once the temple is completed, the old monk will turn his face and drive himself out of the gate wall. The Manjusri Hall has been built for almost two years and has not been completed. It is necessary to delay the time, take your time, and pinch the weakness of the old monk and not let go.

Last night when Shanxiang told Su Jin about this matter, Su Jin would surely die with laughter; the Buddha governs heaven and earth, but he can't control the quality of people's sleep. Feng Jingyao can sleep soundly, in fact, it is a kind of ego It's just a psychological suggestion.

The most famous example of psychological suggestion in later generations is: a prisoner on death row was blindfolded and tied up in an empty room. The experimenter cut a knife on his arm, and then asked him to listen to the sound of water dripping, telling him that it was his arm. It was bleeding; with the sound of dripping water, the condemned prisoner also felt that the blood in his body was decreasing drop by drop, and finally he really died.

And Feng Jingyao's psychological hint to himself was that if he believed in Buddhism, he would not have nightmares, so this psychological hint became inevitable after an accident, and his nightmare experience was also miraculous after he became a disciple of Shanxiang It's really a lot better.