Purple Lotus Publisher > Journal > Volumn NO. 14

The Woman in the Wall

By Living Buddha Lian-sheng Sheng-yen Lu.

Translated by Janny Chow from pp.17-39 of Xukong Zhong di Chuansuo (The Truth of Transmigration Part III), published in February, 2000.

Mr. and Mrs. Jiang Hong had moved into a brand new, five-story concrete building that had just been completed. Mr. Jiang, a medical doctor, had set up his medical clinic on the ground floor. The second, third, and fourth floors were his residence and, since Mr. and Mrs. Jiang were both Buddhists, the fifth floor housed a Buddhist shrine.

Dr. Jiang had two sons and one daughter. The youngest daughter, Xiao-xian, was only five years old. Right after moving into the new home, Xiao-xian came down with an illness. Fortunately, Mr. Jiang was a medical doctor and, under his meticulous care, Xiao-xian recovered very quickly.

There was a large wall on the ground floor of the building, and every time Xiao-xian walked by it, she would flinch, her eyes showing fear. At first, Mr. and Mrs. Jiang did not notice this. Later they were aware that each time they walked with her towards that large wall by the elevator, Xiao-xian would always run to the other side and hide herself. Naturally, they found their young daughter's behavior strange.

They asked her, "What is the matter?"

Xiao-xian hedged and did not say anything.

When they pressed her again, Xiao-xian pointed at the wall and said, "There is someone inside the wall." Upon hearing that, Mr. and Mrs. Jiang felt a tingling on their scalps. After taking Xiao-xian upstairs to their apartment, they questioned her carefully about what she had meant by seeing someone in the wall.

Xiao-xian then told her parents the following:

On the first day they moved into the building, Xiao-xian had noticed a woman inside the wall. When Xiao-xian saw the woman, she threw a pencil at her. The woman then looked frostily at Xiao-xian and blew a breath of air on her. Afterwards Xiao-xian felt ill and tired, with all her strength going out of her body.

Whenever Xiao-xian walked near the big wall by the elevator, the icy look on the woman's eyes would frighten her. Xiao-xian did not dare to throw pencil at her any more because the woman knew how to blow a cold draft of air on her to make her sick.

Mr. and Mrs. Jiang asked, "Do you see her every time?"

"Not every time; sometimes I don't see her."

"Is there anyone else besides this auntie?"

"No, there is only her."

"What does this auntie look like?"

"She looks like a singer, except that she doesn't smile," replied Xiao-xian.

"Does she have any expression on her face?"

"One time she waved at me and wanted me to go inside the wall to play. She also showed me some toys."

When they heard these words, Dr. Jiang and his wife not only started to have pins and needles on their scalps, they also felt a cold shiver running through their hearts.

Both Dr. Jiang and his wife were highly educated and delighted with Buddhism. They had never rejected events that are weird, supernatural, or mystical, but neither had they accepted them. In their minds, belief in ghosts or spirits arises possibly because humans are insecure, fearful, and suspicious by nature and, when combined with a vivid imagination, people are deluded under unusual circumstances into thinking that they see ghosts or gods.

But, after hearing their own daughter's revelation, they started to question their own doubts. Xiao-xian's mind was functioning normally, and there was no reason for her to lie. Yet what she had described was so real to her. All of a sudden, their preconceptions were overturned.

There was someone in the wall. It was a woman. This woman had a frosty look on her face. Dr. and Mrs. Jiang were stunned by what they had heard. They decided to invite the master in whom they had taken refuge to perform a private Buddhist ceremony in their clinic and residence. The event was not carried out in any big way, only their own master and two monks were invited. Dr. Jiang only told his master that he wanted to have a simple purifying ritual, with some holy water sprinkled and a chanting of sutra to bring peace to the place.

After the ceremony was over, Mr. and Mrs. Jiang asked Xiao-xian, "Is that auntie still there?"

"Yes."

"What was her reaction?"

"She didn't look like she cared. It would not make her go away."

"During the ceremony, what was the auntie doing?"

"The auntie was winking at the monks."

"Oh!"

Mr. and Mrs. Jiang knew the ceremony had not worked. It seemed that their master and the monks could not see this woman in the wall, and their cleansing ritual had not purified the place. The woman was still in the wall, and she had shown disdain for the ceremony. What should they do next? Who else could they invite for help at this time?

One day, while Dr. Jiang was seeing a patient on the ground floor, Mrs. Jiang was cooking a fish upstairs in their residence. Suddenly Dr. Jiang rang the bell from the clinic and asked Mrs. Jiang to hurry downstairs. There was an emergency, the patient had suddenly passed out. Mrs. Jiang was a nurse and it happened that the regular nurse at the clinic had taken the day off. So Mrs. Jiang hurriedly went downstairs to help the patient.

At this time, Xiao-xian was coming home from the daycare center's preschool. She had just stopped at the elevator and was about to go upstairs when she heard a voice from the wall, "Fish, fish, fish."

Xiao-xian did not know what was going on. The woman in the wall said, "Go and tell your mother about the fish." Xiao-xian walked into the clinic and told her mother, "Fish, fish, fish."

By then, the patient had awakened and was fine and was conversing with Mrs. Jiang. When the latter heard Xiao-xian saying "fish, fish, fish," she suddenly remembered and immediately dashed upstairs. The fish had long been burnt, and the air in the kitchen was gray from all the black smoke. Mrs. Jiang hurriedly turned off the fire in the stove. It was a good thing it had not erupted into a fire. A hole had been burnt in the frying pan. Mr. and Mrs. Jiang did not know what to think after this. It did not seem right to feel grateful to have a woman in the wall, yet it did not feel right to feel fear towards her now. In any case, they were stupefied at what to do next.

Since Xiao-xian was able to communicate with the woman in the wall, she gradually lost her fear of her. She would often sit quietly by herself in front of the wall, sometimes several times a day. Xiao-xian stop wanting to play with her classmates or socialize with the neighbor kids any more. Instead she would sit alone in her bedroom behind a closed door. Sometimes Mr. and Mrs. Jiang woke up in the middle of the night and found Xiao-xian's bed empty. They would then find her fallen asleep leaning against the wall. They asked her, "What happened to you tonight?"

"Auntie was calling for me."

"Why are you sleeping against the wall?"

"I went inside the wall to play. Auntie was very nice to me."

Mr. and Mrs. Jiang almost jumped. "How did you go inside?"

"I entered the wall after I fell asleep, until you shook and woke me up," replied Xiao-xian.

"This..."

Mr. and Mrs. Jiang knew Xiao-xian's condition was unusual. Normal people's consciousness does not function this way. This kind of mental disturbance, though eerie, was not hallucination and defied rational explanation. Meanwhile, Xiao-xian was not getting any better, her deterioration intensified to the point that she appeared to have been possessed. In fact, Xiao-xian was acting more and more strange as if her soul was not completely in her body. Mr. and Mrs. Jiang had this frightening premonition that Xiao-xian was getting deeper and deeper into some kind of hopeless disaster. Maybe one day they would find their daughter going into the wall and unable to come back out. What should they do? Who could help her?

They thought about dismantling the wall. But this wall was made of concrete and steel and was the strongest support of the whole building structure.

They thought about moving. But it had not been easy for them to design and build this five-storied building of clinic and residence. How could they just move away?

They were restless with anxiety. They hoped Xiao-xian would recover her normalcy. However, due to her constant entering into and exiting out of the wall, Xiao-xian was getting thin and pallid, her tongue looked whitish, her eyes were red, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She seemed to be completely under the control of this auntie inside the wall and could not help herself. And Mr. and Mrs. Jiang knew nothing about this woman in the wall.

The woman in the wall had confounded them and caused them great agitation. She was like a violent storm suddenly descending and destroying the peacefulness of a clear lake.

"What are we to do?" They looked at each other desperately.

They were afraid to go and look up just anyone for help, so they only went to Buddhist temples to offer incense and pray to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. However, this did not seem to be of much help.

********* Mr. and Mrs. Jiang finally decided to tell their master about their problem.

Their master was greatly alarmed and said, "There is someone who can help you. Go quickly to look him up."

"Who?"

"Sheng-yen Lu."

Mr. and Mrs. Jiang said, "In one of the Buddhist temples where we used to go for teachings, a Buddhist master mentioned that Sheng-yen Lu is a heretic who claims to be a Buddhist and cautioned us that he is not to be trusted. Why is Master asking us to go and look him up? Isn't this some kind of contradiction?"

Their master replied, "This is just an emergency plan. Why not give it a try as long as it works? You are a physician yourself; you must understand the psychology of patients. If someone can cure an illness, it does not matter if he is a licensed physician, patients will still scramble for him."

Jiang Hong asked, "Can Sheng-yen Lu really cure Xiao-xian?"

"I have heard that he has great powers," their Master said. "To tell you the truth, as long as the problem is like the kind you have, I have been referring people to see him. When I make inquiries afterwards, many of the difficult and complicated cases have, indeed, been cured. It is strange!"

Mr. and Mrs. Jiang took their master's advice and came to see me.

Mr. and Mrs. Jiang waited in line to consult me. During that period, there were about three hundred people coming to see me every day. It was on a first come, first served basis. Everyone was assigned a number and waited in line. When it was Mr. and Mrs. Jiang's turn, they handed me their address.

I read their address once and closed my eyes for a moment. "There are six people living in your house, right?"

"No, five people," answered Jiang Hong.

"I meant six when I said six."

"There are just the two of us and our three children, two boys and one girl, altogether five people. How can there be six?" argued Jiang Hong.

"Let me count for you. Husband, wife, two sons, and one daughter make five. There is also an invisible person living in your house.Doesn't that add up to six?"

Mr. and Mrs. Jiang acknowledged it silently, then they asked, "Where is this invisible person living?"

"In a wall."

Mr. and Mrs. Jiang opened their mouths and were speechless.

"What do we do?"

"Ha ha! I don't know what to do either!"

"Master Lu, we have come here out of admiration for you. This is a problem that has been bothering us for a long time. Please help us," said Mrs. Jiang.

"Master Lu, please help us!" Mr. Jiang also begged me.

"All right!" I explained honestly to Mr. and Mrs. Jiang Hong. "This woman in the wall actually harbors no ill intentions against you. You could have co-habited together without any problems. It is just that your daughter is able to see her and has been spending time with her. As time goes on, her energy starts to become disturbed by the yin chi from this woman and she is starting to act a little bit strange. Is this the case?"

"Yes, yes, Master Lu, you are indeed a god-man."

"How about this, let me find a time to go and meet with her face to face. I believe it can be taken care of quite easily." "Thank you, thank you!" Happily the couple thanked me.

********* I went to Dr. Jiang's clinic and both he and his wife received me sincerely.

I walked over to the wall, took a look, and turned to them, "Can I have a quiet spot to sit down to meditate?" "Sure, our Buddhist shrine on the fifth floor."

Prior to sitting down to meditate before their fifth floor shrine, I first used a cinnabar-dipped brush to draw a small door at a wall and chanted, "Gods in Earth, Immortals in Earth, from sand, earth, and mud, one can reach Heaven. From Heaven to Earth, one turns the universe around. Change and shift to help those with affinities. Jiji Rushen Bingshenzhang Lulingshe."

In a very brief moment, I felt my body shrink to the size of a pinpoint, actually even much smaller than a pinpoint. The spaces between the cement particles in the wall had, on the other hand, become magnified, looking like numerous cave openings. I was delighted and entered into one of the cave openings. At first I could not see anything, then at the deep end a point of light like starlight appeared. I walked further inward and, about five minutes later, I saw a corridor-shaped house with light coming from inside. A woman came out of the house. She was in her early forties, with two large eyes, slightly plump, but still quite beautiful. When she saw me, she was slightly taken aback.

"How can a living person come in here?"

"I am Lian-sheng."

"Yes, yes, Lian-sheng, I have heard of your name."

She invited me into her house. Inside was a simply furnished sitting room with a table and some chairs, a sofa, and a tea table. She immediately went to make a pot of tea for me.

"This is Dongding Oolong Tea. It's good that you can come here. I rarely have visitors. I am so happy that you could come today. You are definitely no ordinary person to be able to come in here."

"I have used wudun xinfa (a Taoist Five Means of Escape Heart Method) to come in here."

"I have not heard of wudun xinfa. I only know that I am dead. When I regained my consciousness after death, I have been here. This is a realm in the nether world. I have just put up some simple furnishings here. I cannot go out and others cannot come in. I can only live my life here inside the concrete wall."

"How come Dr. Jiang's daughter, Xiao-xian, can come in?" I asked.

"Her soul body vibrates at a high frequency. When I draw her to me, she is able to come in. I am fond of her. She is my only companion in the nether world."

I told her about Xiao-xian's physical condition.

She said, "I am lonely here, and it is my fault that she has been hurt." She was sorry, remorseful for what she had done.

"You long for a companion. That is understandable. Dr. and Mrs. Jiang will definitely forgive you."

"Xiao-xian just has to decrease the number of her visits. She will get better then."

I asked her, "What caused you to end up living inside a wall?"

When the woman heard me, a sadness came over her face and tears started running down her cheeks. But that lasted only a brief moment. Soon she resumed her cheerfulness and told me her story from beginning to end.

Her name was Chen Qing. After finishing business school, she went to work for a construction company as an accountant. She was young, beautiful, very capable, and appreciated greatly by her boss.

Later, she fell in love with her boss and became his mistress. However, her boss was a married man. At the beginning, her boss treated her very well, buying her a house, car, and fabulous furniture. He visited her frequently, at least once every three days. She even hired a maid. There was enough money for her to spend and she was very happy.

But, the happy days did not last long. The boss started coming to see her less often. He was always in a rush now and would not stay long. When she pressed him for an explanation, he would say that he was busy with construction jobs. At the same time, he started giving her less money, and often only after much urging from her.

She made inquiries and found out that the boss had a new girlfriend. This new girl was young and pretty and had met the boss at the golf course. Besides accompanying the boss on his golfing rounds, she also could sing and dance very well. The boss was completely mesmerized with her.

Chen Qing went to take a look at this young woman and found her, indeed, to be very beautiful. In fact, she learned that this girl had even been voted the most beautiful girl at college.

Chen Qing was raging with jealousy. She confronted the boss, crying and raving, and even attempted suicide.

One time, after wallowing in self-pity for some time, she started wailing during a visit from the boss. When the boss ignored her, she picked up a knife to try to kill herself. The boss rushed over to her, trying to grab the knife from her. Since she was extremely angry, she started swearing and attacking the boss. But the boss was physically stronger and managed to grab her knife. In the heat of the moment, he plunged the blade into her. That one strike hit her at a vital spot and she died.

When the boss realized that he had killed Chen Qing, he was, at first, greatly shocked. Then he calmly cut up her body into small pieces. After stuffing them into a plastic bag and washing and cleaning up the blood stains, he used his sedan to transport the corpse back to his factory. It was late at night with no one around, and he dumped the dismembered body into a cement grinder. Then, the construction of a five-storied building was completed.

Chen Qing ended up inside the large wall.

The boss reported to the police that Chen Qing had run away from home. They could not find her, and had listed her as a missing person.

This was the story from beginning to end. After hearing her, I was profoundly stirred. "It was a heinous crime."

"Yes."

"Then I think you must want to go out and seek revenge," I suggested.

To my surprise, Chen Qing said to me, "I have been reflecting on the whole affair, and I realize where I made my mistakes. Such passion and desire came about because of my ignorance and a basic error in misidentifying the goal of life. Actually, based on the way we started our love, on our personalities and behavior patterns, we could not have escaped this finale to our relationship."

Chen Qing then said, "My envy and jealousy, plus my actions in grabbing the knife, came from tendencies developed in my own character. They could be best described as raw and irrational. Actually, if I had been smarter, I could have initiated a split from him and perhaps I would have ended with something even better. To be killed and dissected was merely a result of what had been set up, led there by both of us."

"You don't want revenge?"

"No." Chen Qing answered calmly.

I was stupefied. I had not expected to find a murdered ghost so open-minded and forgiving.

"You have no hatred?"

"No! It is this wall. The inorganic matter in this wall has helped my thinking capability reach a higher level."

I said, "Don't you want to get out of this wall then? To transmigrate to a more beautiful world, or to be delivered to be reborn in aheavenly realm, merging blissfully with the omniscient eternity?"

Chen Qing replied, "Do you know about this? My life inside this wall is basically without beauty or ugliness, goodness or evil. There is no intelligence versus stupidity or highness versus lowliness. All interpretations are up to me. Since I don't crave after showy and luxurious lifestyles or seek merriment anymore, it is not hard for me to discover that the present me is at a most secure stage of my existence, completely free of threats. This is my true springtime!"

"Springtime?"

"Yes, springtime. This place is an immortal grotto, mundane souls are not admitted!"

I was speechless. In my mind, an immortal grotto is where:

Sages gather at immortal cities with jade abodes,
Landscapes of the celestial differ from mundane seas;
Glimpses of jade seep through five-colored mists,
Amid rare and unique flora, one never grows old.

Also,
Inside the magnificent grotto is another heaven,
Coming and going, one meets with celestials;
From the purple platform, light illuminates the pure paths,
While floral fragrances float amid five-colored mists.

Yet, Chen Qing said, "I am now living inside a wall, and I do not have any special liking for any object or matter. In other words, the chaos of the material phenomenal world has no influence on me. I have nothing here, and I consider this the will of Providence. At this time, I don't see any difference between my existence and that of an immortal!"

Greatly surprised by her words, I asked, "Don't you want to go outside?"

"No."

"Indeed?"

"Indeed."

Chen Qing then turned to query me, "Why have you come here?"

"I have come to offer you help. With my Dharma power, I can help you seek revenge, or guide you out of this wall, or deliver you to a Pure Land!"

"I don't want any of those."

"But..." I stopped.

"Is something troubling you?"

"Yes. If you don't leave now, I cannot force you to. But what Dr. and Mrs. Jiang have hoped for is that you can leave. This is also my sole purpose for coming here this time. Now, since you don't want to go anywhere and just want to regard this wall as your own immortal grotto, I am at a loss what to do."

Chen Qing laughed radiantly, "I don't know how to help you with this."

"What a waste is my magical power!"

"One's magical power is at its highest when one does not need to resort to it!" commented Chen Qing.

"What you said makes philosophical sense." I nodded, admitting that I had lost. I bid farewell to Chen Qing with great politeness. After welcoming me to visit her again, she accompanied me on my way out. We made turn after turn between the cement grains inside the wall. Then I emerged from my meditation.

********

I acknowledged that my direct confrontation with Chen Qing was a failure. All along I have considered that I had inside me all the great Buddhist and Taoist knowledge. The domain of my psychic consciousness was enlarging continually, and the confidence in my own ability to mediate entanglements between the human and spirit worlds was increasing in leaps and bounds. But my encounter with Chen Qing had completely changed this around. I felt greatly diminished and often found myself powerless.

I could only pray to the Golden Mother of the Jade Pond for help. During that period of my life, whenever I ran into difficulties, I turned to commune with the high level Golden Immortals and seek guidance from the Golden Mother. The reason was simple: this high level ofGolden Immortal existence possesses a higher awareness than the ordinary consciousness.

I prayed to her, "Please give me instruction!"

She replied, "No instruction!"

When I heard that, I almost fainted. "Please help me!"

Golden Mother said, "Go back and reason with her."

"How shall I reason with her?"

The Golden Mother said, "You have empathized and agreed with Chen Qing, but Chen Qing has not empathized and agreed with Dr. Jiang. That is the crux of the matter. Visit her again to reason with her. This way the problem will be readily solved."

I asked the Golden Mother again, "She is only willing to live inside the wall and is adamant about not coming out. How can we solve this problem?"

The Golden Mother replied, "Could the wall in Dr. Jiang's house be the only wall there is?"

After giving some careful thought to the Golden Mother's words, I found they made perfect sense. The observational powers of high spiritual beings are of the highest order.

Using the mystical Five Methods of Escape Heart Practice, I entered once again into the wall. During this mystical process, I transformed myself into an extremely minute being and entered through a minute pore in the wall. In such a state, one can even pass through walls.

I spoke to Chen Qing, "The situation you are now in affords you a most ideal opportunity to be liberated from the disturbances of form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and consciousness of the physical world. This is because, inside the wall, all these disturbances have been arrested at that moment. Now you are entering a key and precious moment. It is now your golden opportunity to directly experience the original realm of no-thought."

"That is right," responded Chen Qing.

I continued, "Milarepa has told us that so-called death is no death. In fact, death is an Enlightenment experience that occurs in an instantaneous flash. To practitioners and yogis of this Dharma view, death is attaining Enlightenment in that split moment."

"I agree," Chen Qing said. "I had been a spiritual cultivator in previous lives."

I said again, "I agree that you should stay within the wall now, because modern men do not have ample time to sit down to do contemplations. Modern men have spent too much time walking around."

"You are right."

Finally I said, "Your stay at Dr. Jiang's house has created a perplexing situation for them because they don't understand you. Wouldn't it be better for you to stay at the house of Lian-sheng Sheng-yen Lu?"

"This..."

"I will transmit to you the Bodhisattva Pathway Practices. To be a bodhisattva is to be able to reflect and remain mindful of one's Original Face every moment, whether one is walking, standing, sitting, or supine."Chen Qing said, "All right!"

Employing the method of wuxing yinuo dabanyun (Shifting and Great Transposition of the Five Elements), I swiftly moved the Chen Qing residence at Dr. Jiang's wall into a wall in my house. This method is similar to the shenxing fa (Divine Movement Practice) where one first focuses the mind at the home from afar to enter into the mystical realm of illusion; then, with a lift of the foot, one is at home. Thus Chen Qing has moved into a wall in my house and become a lodger in my house.

I especially added one more piece of furniture for her: a piano. When Chen Qing was alive, she was also an accomplished pianist. Sometimes, I only needed to press my ear against the wall, and I can hear the wonderful music from her piano playing!