By the time they returned to the temple, the night was already dark. The two of them were travel-worn during their whole journey and were now exhausted. They didn't go to greet Tulku Dapu as they guessed that the elderly man was already meditating, so they returned to their own small compound, called the "larang" , to sleep.
After morning classes the next day, Tulku Dapu called Little Tulku Jianggong into his own sutra room. He first asked how the performing of ceremonies for the family yesterday had gone and Jianggong answered his questions one after another. Tulku Dapu then asked, "On the road did you encounter anything else?"
His master's eyes were truly terrifying! Little Jianggong already felt that in Tulku Dapu's gaze, his actions and words from yesterday had long been in his master's eyes, which saw all, like those of a buddha or a bodhisattva. He had no choice but to tell the truth, and eventually he said, "Respected Tulku Dapu, please forgive me. I gave somebody else's money to that family."
"Oh?" Tulku Dapu twirled the beard under his chin, but he did not ask who the other person was, "Then, were they happy?"
"They were," said Little Jianggong, "I saw that there were tears of happiness in their eyes."
"It can make other people happy and joyous. Surely, you should be happy?"
"But, I didn't originally intend to give that sheepskin pouch as charity to them."
"The karma of charity is wealth, the karma of miserliness is poverty. As long as you make other people happy and joyous, we Buddhists can even give our own eyeballs away as charity. Lord Buddha also gave his own body as charity to hungry tigers; surely you have not forgotten this?"
"If the person who lost the money wishes me to repay it, what should I do?"
"Why is there only money in your eyes? Tomorrow you will go and practice retreat in the cave, and read me the Sutra of Greed and the Sutra of Dana and Purification of the Soul 30,000 times." As soon as he finished speaking, Tulku Dapu departed.
A month later, Little Tulku Jianggong broke his confinement and left. He was already so weak that it seemed as if even the light of the sun could knock him down. Lama Duoji came to take him back to his compound. On the road, this little monk cheerfully asked his master, "Tulku Jianggong, do you know whose coins those were?"
Little Jianggong replied, "I don't care whose coins they were. All I need in front of my eyes are the smiling faces of those poor men."
"Oh yes, respected Tulku Jianggong, your goodness and knowledge has greatly improved." Duoji grimaced, "But still, let me tell you. They were deliberately dropped down at the side of the road by Tulku Dapu to test you."
"To test what about me?" Tulku Jianggong asked, slightly surprised.
"Oh, to see if you have a heart that acts according to monetary greed, and to see whether you tell the truth." Duoji stuck his tongue out, "Fortunately, we gave those coins away as charity, but we still forgot to tell Tulku Dapu that night. The Tulku thought that you wanted to hide something."
Little Tulku Jianggong took a long deep breath, "My master wants to shoot tigers, but instead has shot an eagle. The moment I was not careful, he tested me and revealed my secular mind."
The Tibetan New Year was approaching, and the whole world was dressed in white snow. Whether you were a farmer or a shepherd, you returned to the fireside of home and prepared to celebrate the New Year. But on the rugged road of a barren hill, several lamas and masters came walking in the snow. The heavy, fluttering snowflakes about them made it so that the original colour of the monk's robes could no longer be seen, as if they were white spirits drifting in the snow and wind.
"In my past life, when I was the Eighth Tulku Dapu, I once wrote a special passage for these lepers. They are not the devil but because of the sins they committed in their past lives, they are paying for them in this life. That's all there is to say."
The Ninth Tulku Dapu walked in the front, followed behind by Little Tulku Jianggong and Lama Yixi. Lama Yixi was leading a mule which was carrying clothes, food supplies, butter, tealeaves and other similar items. Today, after they had finished the morning lessons, Little Tulku Jianggong was informed that he needed to follow the Ninth Tulku Dapu to go and pay a visit to the lepers that lived on the mountainside.
At that time, there was a leper in almost every village in the Nujiang valley. The attitude of people in the past towards lepers was to drive them to uninhabited areas on the mountainside and not permit them any contact with people. Sometimes they even dug a pit to bury them alive or burned them alive. When Little Tulku Jianggong was small, he had heard adults say that their disease was because in their past lives they owed a great debt of sin and that they were repaying it in their current life. They'd also said that it was probably because they'd polluted the green environment and offended the gods of the mountains and the rivers, either by urinating or spitting in the rivers and lakes or by hunting and cutting down trees in the dense forests high up in the mountains. All these acts would turn their bodies into that of an evil fiend. Some of them had lost their noses, some of them had rotten ears, some of them had gone blind and others did not have any fingers. Their whole body was covered with pustules which flowed with stinking blood. They were seen as devils in the world of men: humankind's nightmare. If you mentioned them, people would spit with a 'bah' sound in order to drive off the bad luck that might be brought with them. Not to mention the fact that if people were careless and encountered them one day on the road, they would feel a sense of indescribable fear and regret.
