The ChangMing Lamp

After many years, sitting again at the doorstep of my old home at night, the cool breeze and the bright starry sky. Looking into the distance, past the vast farmland in front of the village, over the bleak twists and turns of the mountains by the village, you can see a rounded cone peak, a bright red and yellow lamp on the top of the mountain is particularly eye-catching under the starlight. I don't know how many years this light has been on, but when I was very young, I heard the adults pointing to this light and talking about it, and they also knew about this light by their elders. It seems that since ancient times, this lamp has been on at night, shining on the villages and neighbors for tens of miles around, becoming a long light that never goes out in the dark.

Before I left my hometown, regardless of spring, summer, autumn and winter, regardless of cold, warm and cool, whenever night falls, I will look at this long light 30 miles away. If the weather was sunny and warm, I would stare at it for a long time, and the long light would flicker and flicker, and I could almost see the flames. The red and yellow light competes with the stars and is no less bright than the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, and only when the moon is near is the light of the long light obscured. If it is cloudy and the sky is covered by dark clouds at night, the long light shines brightly, as if it is a torch burning in the dark sky. Even if it was rainy and snowy, I would look over there to see if I could find that flash of red and yellow in the darkness of the rain and snow that filled the sky.

The rounded mountain is called Lotus Mountain, which looks round and symmetrical from the perspective of my hometown, completely different from the other types of peaks around it, and is right in the valley of the rolling hills in front of the village, making it even more prominent and pleasing to the eye. I don't know if the shape of Lotus Mountain is what I see when I look at it from other angles. There is a well-known temple on Lotus Mountain, and many good men and women, including my mother, go there every year to worship the gods. Every year, after the autumn harvest, my mother would join others in the village, leaving at dawn, walking dozens of miles to the temple on the mountain to burn incense and worship, and then walk home. Mother said, when going to more than four hours, purely up the mountain road is more than 10 miles, down the mountain is faster. Each time, go early in the morning, noon in the temple to eat a fasting meal, the evening down the mountain, to return home very late.

Long Ming Lantern, is the temple lit. The village legend is that, in ancient times, the mountain road is difficult to travel, and the village down the mountain at night is dark, in order to facilitate pedestrian walking, but also for the nearby villages at night to light up a little, the temple will be lit every night bright lights to shine on the people in need. But this legend, also only circulated in my village, other places have not heard.

When I was in high school, one summer weekend at noon, bored, and a few classmates, riding a bicycle, wandering to Lotus Hill. When we got to the bottom of the mountain, the bikes became a burden, and we pushed our bikes, struggling to climb the supposedly fifteen-mile-long panhandle road, stopping and going all the way to the temple at the top of the mountain, the sun was already wobbling over the distant mountains. We were so tired that we were almost deflated, and only the golden light shining diagonally through the trees into the temple could make us feel the charm of the thousand-year-old temple. After a short rest, we each asked the temple monks for a large bowl of cold porridge, and the monks were kind enough to give us a small dish. After eating the cold congee, we worshiped the Bodhisattva, drew lucky sticks, and went through our pockets to find the few coins we had and threw them into the pool of the temple. Then we came to the main gate of the temple, the view is extremely wide, looking out, layers of rolling hills, the sunset to the ridge cloaked in glittering golden robe, the distant valley has a cooking smoke curling up, and even heard the sound of cattle from the mountain. The evening mountain breeze shook the pine forest on Lotus Mountain, emitting a rhythmic majestic sound of pine waves, which came up to the top of the mountain in bursts.

The temple is called Qinglian Temple, and the four big words "Qinglian Ancient Temple" on the gate above clearly convey its simplicity and solemnity. At the entrance, there is a green stone stele, inscribed with the history of the temple. Qinglian Temple was built in the Western Jin Dynasty and has a history of more than a thousand years. For over a thousand years, countless Buddhist congregations have come here to beg for the blessings of the Bodhisattva. I don't know how many mountains in the country are called Lotus Mountains, and almost every Lotus Mountain has a temple on it, and the word "Lotus" embodies the marriage of Buddha.

That day, my mind was on the long light. When I went up the mountain, I kept checking, hoping to see the shape of the lamp. But when I got to the Green Lotus Temple, in front of and behind the temple, I didn't find where the lamp was. Later, I found an older monk and asked him about the location of the lamp. He was confused and said that at night, there were many lights, and he didn't know which one I was talking about. I said it was a very bright light that could be seen from 30 miles away. He was incredulous and pointed to a small room high up, saying that the light there was the brightest, and that what you saw was probably that one.

Originally wanted to see, but may not be able to get by; and it was late, have to go down the mountain; more importantly, the so-called long light, may point to those who do not want to, just see the intention. In fact, many people in my village have made pilgrimages to Lotus Mountain for thousands of years, and they definitely know the real situation of the Long Ming Lantern, only to pass down the best wishes. The monks on the mountain may not know that the lamp they light can illuminate a village thirty miles away. Since then, I have paid more attention to the Long Ming Lantern. Every night, I would look at Lotus Mountain from afar and look for the bright lamp. Sometimes I thought it was an illusion: how could a lamp in a temple be seen so clearly from thirty miles away? But the long bright light was really and truly flickering at the top of Lotus Hill, and still is.

Nowadays, when I point to the long bright light and tell the story passed down from my predecessors to the younger generation, I already have to explain the twists and turns of the cause by heart. No matter whether the long light can illuminate the night pedestrians to move forward, can illuminate the surrounding villagers' night, but at least it shines to a village thirty miles away. The Changming lantern is the sky lantern for the people of the hometown. When they look up in the darkness, they can see the light projected from thirty miles away; the Changming lantern is the hope of the people of the hometown.

Over the past twenty years, the hometown has undergone radical changes, with wealth replacing poverty, leisure replacing hard work, buildings replacing earth houses, new people replacing old people, card tables replacing gossip, and cunning replacing simplicity. However, when you look straight ahead from your doorstep, through the farmland in front of the village and the mountains at the edge of the village, you can still clearly see the rounded Lotus Mountain, which has remained unchanged for thousands of years; at night, the long light at the top of Lotus Mountain will still be lit up, just as it has been for thousands of years.