Two Ancient Deceitful Stories (Daci Temple, Guo Chun)

Daci Temple

During the Tang Dynasty, there was a temple called Daci Temple on a mountain in Shu County (around the ancient city of present-day Chengdu).

This temple is not very large, and there is a Buddha statue more than two feet high in the main hall of the main hall, standing in the middle, solemn and kind.

The temple is inhabited by several middle-aged monks, as well as three miscellaneous monk boys.

Previously, this Daci Temple could be said to be a gate bird, and there were almost no people who came down the mountain to offer incense, let alone give away gold and silver, and the monks in the temple could hardly eat.

Not long after, an official surnamed Gao was sent to Shu County as a taishou, and on this day, a monk suddenly came to report that there was a flash of "Buddha light" on the Buddha statue in the main hall of Daci Temple.

Gao Taishou was a man who did not believe in gods and Buddhas, and he felt that such a thing as "Buddha statues shining" was not credible at all, scolded the monk, warned him not to talk nonsense on the charge of "deceiving the people", and then drove the monk away.

However, this matter still went unnoticed, and when the people of Yamashita and the county heard about it, they went to Daci Temple to watch it.

Sure enough, every certain time, people just walk into the main hall of Daci Temple, and as soon as they look up, they can see that the head of the Buddha statue seems to be surrounded by a faint halo.

Since then, the people who came to watch have been in an endless stream, and everyone did not know what was going on, and they all thought that it was indeed "the light of the Buddha", so they all believed in Buddhism even more.

Within a few days, more and more men, women and children came to the mountains to ask for Buddhas and alms, and the small temples were always crowded with traffic, and the gold and silver treasures of alms were innumerable.

In less than three months, the big monks in the temple ate fat heads and big ears one by one, while the little boys greeted everyone every day, tired and breathless.

When Gao Taishou learned that the incense of the Daci Temple was extremely popular, he thought that the monks in the temple must have accumulated countless wealth and confused the people, and that there must be something strange about the "Buddha's light", so he ordered the local mabu envoy (official name) Qin Mou to investigate.

Qin Mou then pretended to be a villager under the mountain to go to the temple to see the "Buddha light", and when he entered the main hall, he saw that there was a golden aperture surrounded by the tall Buddha statue, and from morning to evening, the light was not dispersed.

Qin Mou also wondered in his heart, looking at the top of the hall and around, there was no organ.

So, he looked at it for several days in a row, but still found no flaws.

He asked several great monks about the "Buddha's Light", but they were tight-spoken and did not reveal it at all.

On this day, Qin Mou bought a few small snacks on the street and wanted to inquire from the three boys in the temple.

He went to the temple again, told a boy that he was thirsty and wanted to drink in the backyard, and a boy monk led him to the kitchen.

When Qin Mou went to the kitchen to finish drinking water, he took out a small snack in his arms and gave the little monk a piece to eat.

The little monk thought it was very tasty and wanted it.

Qin Mou asked him about "Buddha's light".

The little monk was hungry, and he confided the truth without two sentences, it turned out that on the eaves of the main hall facing the Buddha statue, there was a transparent glass mirror, which the great monk got from the Persians, and could not be seen from the inside of the hall, and whenever the sun rose, the great monk ran to a high place and used the mirror to refract the sunlight onto this glass mirror, and the sunlight passed through this mirror to become the "golden circle" of the Buddha's head.

Qin Mou suddenly realized that he had quickly returned to report to Gao Taishou.

The next day, Gao Taishou ordered that several of the great monks of the Great Ci Monastery who had deceived the people and gathered money be brought to justice, and each of them was reprimanded with a hundred rods and driven out of Shu County.

Adapted from "Northern Dream Trivia"

Guo Chun

After a filial son named Guo Chun died in Donghae County, many birds and finches came to him every time he cried. The government sent someone to inspect it, and this was indeed the case. Therefore, the government set up a memorial arch for this filial son to honor his people. Later, I got the news that it turned out that this filial son had sprinkled bread on the ground every time before crying for his mother, so the birds were scrambling to pick and eat. After many trainings, a conditioned reflex is formed. When the birds heard the cry of the filial piety, they thought that there was a cake to eat, and there was no one who did not fly down to look for the bread to eat. It wasn't filial piety that touched the spirit of heaven! (From "Asano Yuzai")