zhuge /
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title: 12 Thunder Peak Pagoda date: 2015-05-20 tags: [“Book Recommendation”] categories: [“Book Recommendation”] author: Zhuge
organize: Er Flower
Tao Yuanming’s “Mr. Five Willow” says: Reading is good, not seeking deep understanding. When there is a realization, one forgets about food.
An Yi Ru’s “Observing the Bodhisattva” is a book bought at the flea market in the central campus during last year’s graduation season. The book retells eleven traditional Chinese plays including “The Romance of the West Chamber”, “The Peony Pavilion”, “The Palace of Eternal Life”, “The Peach Blossom Fan”, “The Autumn Palaces of Han”, “Thunder Peak Pagoda”, “The Orphan of the Zhao Family”, “Saving the Dusty World”, “The Lady Meng Jiang”, “The Story of the Pipa” and “The Chain of Jade Hairpins”.
This book has been sitting on my bedside for almost a year without being opened. Recently, I picked it up and couldn’t put it down, especially when reading the part about “Thunder Peak Pagoda”. It deeply touched me, and I couldn’t help but write a few nonsensical sentences.
The first time I felt something was at the beginning of the article, where she wrote about the beginning of the story of “Thunder Peak Pagoda”. The White Snake stole the Queen Mother’s peaches and practiced for a thousand years on Mount Emei. What struck me were the words “thousand years” - in the mountains, there is no passing of time, and in cultivation, there is no life or death. Sitting in the mountains for a century is nothing, let alone a thousand years, which is more than ten lifetimes for a person. How many days and nights are there in a thousand years? The only change may be that the green stones under one’s seat have become smoother.
Such a thousand years without cause and effect, truly pitiable, heartbreaking, and uncontrollable, making one howl to the sky. Seeing these words “thousand years”, it feels as if I am the one sitting in the mountains, as if I am the one without cause and effect, as if I am the one lonely and abandoned. The loneliness of the body is secondary, but how can the loneliness of the soul be comforted? So when I see the words “thousand years”, my heart aches, and I really want to borrow a few years from her for the rest of my life, to experience real life. So, those who make your heart tremble even after three to five years, it’s better not to talk, watch, or fantasize about hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of years.
Then, what touched me was the words “predestined fate”. Xu Xuan is a begging attendant in front of the Buddha, while Fa Hai is a monitor sent by the Buddha, and predestined fate connects them with the White Snake.
Finally, after a thousand years, she couldn’t bear the loneliness anymore. She became intoxicated in the mortal world and wove a dream of her own. She kidnapped Xu Xuan into her dream, longing for eternal love. She wrote, “The White Snake was immersed in the intense and passionate love” and “she was afraid of being seen through by others.” The White Snake was ignorant, she only carefully maintained a fragile dream. She was “afraid of being seen through.” No! No! No! She knew! She knew it was a dream, she kept deceiving herself by being cautious, and at the same time, she wanted to imagine weaving another dream while she was still in this dream. In this dream, Xu Xuan would still love her and treat her with respect even after knowing that she was the White Snake.
It is pathetic that this dream was shattered before it even started. In the end, the only thing that held them together was Xu Xuan’s fear of the White Snake. Xu Xuan is not Xu Xian, “Thunder Peak Pagoda” is not “Legend of the White Snake”. The mutual love in “Legend of the White Snake” mocks the one-sided wish in “Thunder Peak Pagoda”. They are the same White Snake, why does she have to suffer like this? She deceives herself, deceives others, all for the sake of love. She almost begs, even though she knows that the time for their separation and his liberation is the next morning, she still hopes that tonight’s dream will never end. The punch she exerted with all her strength landed on empty space, with no point of focus, and her strength could not find an outlet, with no one to bear it. The onlookers scratched their heads and cheeks, truly driving her crazy.
“In love, the one who actively gives often ends up being the one who is most deeply hurt.” She was hurt not because of giving, but because of her one-sided wish. “Even if she gave up the whole world, he still thought she was a monster.” Seeing this, all the pity for the White Snake turned into disgust for Xu Xuan.
However, in the end, I couldn’t hold onto my resentment towards him. His actions are somewhat forgivable. Isn’t Ye Gong, who was afraid of dragons, still frightened and ran away when faced with a real dragon? Moreover, he was walking in a dream carefully arranged by the White Snake, a dream in which he never took the initiative. The White Snake’s love is not wrong, but she was mistaken to make a dream that was destined to be shattered, and she was mistaken to kidnap the person she likes into her own dream. So never put the things you like in a dream, for as long as it is a dream, it will shatter one day, even if you are careful, even if you try to delay, even if you refuse to admit it, even if you cling to it stubbornly. So, even in a dream, it should be done together by two people.
Side note:
Eternal love with mutual affection, pure heartbreak with one-sided infatuation.
I know that one-sided infatuation is doomed to have no result, so I didn’t deliberately hold on to any of the one-sided infatuations from a year ago. I was advised by a fellow student when filling out my college application, so I greeted her every day for no reason, not because I liked her or not, but because at that time I hadn’t even met her, and I just wanted to do it, so I did. It lasted for over a month,