I am the rain. I am no longer Haoyu, but a water droplet as wide as a shed tear. A moment ago, I was kneeling over my brother’s body. The rain diluted his blood on my hands, my robes reeking of metal and sweat. My particles intermix with the blood oozed out of my brother’s abdomen, iron and salt coagulating. Enemy corpses lie next to my fellow monks’ bodies.

I imagine my mother’s horror.

“All those years of training, fasting, and meditation, and for what?” she will cry.

Zhang gave me no choice. What kind of a brother betrays his family, his country?

My bloody staff lies amongst the scattered spears in front of the temple. My head roils with rage and guilt, righteousness and shame. As the rain falls, the earthy scent of rocks and mold and clay releases into the air. Can I ever be purged of my sin if I have no regret?

I was a murderer and now I am water. I tumble into the soil, and a blade of grass siphons me up with its capillary action.

“I’m in love,” Zhang told me. “Don’t tell Mama. Lian is the General’s daughter, but she wants nothing to do with the war.”

A rabbit eats the grass. A buzzard scoops the rabbit up and devours it, flies over the ocean, and is felled by a storm, plummeting to the sea. I mix with the salt water, bobbing. I enjoy feeling like a part of a grand design, a drop in the ocean.

“You’re in love with the enemy?” I said. “The bastards who killed Baba? You must end it with her.”

“No,” Zhang said. “Lian is my universe. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

In the ocean, I am drunk by a cuttlefish. I gaze at my new neighbors with awe. Pufferfish draw geometric shapes in the sand around me to attract a mate. Spotted garden eels rise like tall grass from the ocean floor, undulating with the current. How was there so much outside of the monastery I was oblivious to?

“How can you live with yourself?” I asked. “After what the General has done?”

“Life is full of contrasts,” Zhang said. “Look at you. Buddha said to avoid killing or harming any living thing. You are going to eat rice and dou miao and pray, and then kill the soldiers?”

“The brotherhood of monks is a way of life,” I said. “Who else will protect the people from the bandits?”

My cuttlefish form is captured by a fishing boat. They sever my gorgeous scintillating head from my body, bleed me out onto the deck, and dry me out for a salted snack. Life is fleeting and brutal. Buddha taught non-attachment, but now I long for my human body, mourn its rarity. The love I felt for my parents, my brother, the amity of my fellow monks was as fleeting in samsara as the mist on a hot summer day. I wish I had savored my human potential, but it is too late. Now, I am a drop of cuttlefish blood and the wind carries me up, up above the boat.

“You always had to be special,” Zhang said. “Closer to Buddha, closer to being a hero. Don’t you just want to live life? Find a love, have a family?”

“I’m a monk, you idiot,” I said. “It’s not my calling.”

I am water vapor and the breeze lifts me past a layer of thready cirrus clouds pulled thin like cotton, over a flock of cormorants, above the giant land mass I call home, and yes, I see the Great Wall, but there are no lines on the continent, no flags to be seen, just tan desert and green forest and the many deep blues of the ocean. The clouds pulse, the wind blows, and the world is a living, breathing being, and if I had my old body, the sight of the world would have punched the breath from my chest. I am never alone, and am connected to everything, as a cirrus cloud, then a butterfly, a dew drop on a mulberry leaf. There are no boundaries between nations or lifeforms.

“You want the General to be your family,” I said. “The man who widowed Mama and left her unable to walk. You are a disgrace.”

“I love you, Hayou,” Zhang said. “And Mama and Lian. Always. Don’t fight in this war. The General is going to attack the monastery tomorrow at dawn. You are my brother. Come with me, and escape. More bloodshed will not change the past.”

“You’re not my brother anymore,” I said.

I am the rain. I plunge down for miles, and splash onto a warship in battle. The boat spews fire from a hose, setting an enemy boat ablaze. Soldiers jump overboard, and the flames glow bright and hot, even on the sea’s surface. I tremble, seeing how unnatural our wars are, a product of our delusion.



I cannot cry, but I am now made of tears. There is no good or evil, but only impermanence. I am the rain, and part of every being and form. Being human was a gift, a rare rebirth. Lives are so short, and I have wasted mine, and my brother’s.