The Lion Returns to Heaven
Myths are universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives — they explore our desires, our fears, our longings and provide narratives that remind us what it means to be human. The Myths series brings together some of the world’s finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include: Alai, Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, Michel Faber, David Grossman, Milton Hatoum, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Klas Östergren, Victor Pelevin, Ali Smith, Su Tong, Dubravka Ugrešić, Salley Vickers and Jeanette Winterson.
Publisher’s Note
With the permission of the author and translators, the book has been abridged from the much longer text translated from the Chinese. We hope we have succeeded in preserving the spirit of the original.
Part I
BIRTH
The Story
First Beginning
It was the time when domesticated horses separated from their wild counterparts, and when the deities went up to live in Heaven while the demons stayed in this world.
It saddened the deities to see the humans struggle with the demons, although their sympathy never went beyond sending down one of their number to help. In fact, they often made matters worse. Their visits became rare. Yet once the deities stopped meddling, the demons seemed also to disappear. Perhaps they had plagued humans simply to taunt the deities, and lost interest when only the feckless humans remained. But it has been said that the demons never left this world, that instead they transformed themselves, perhaps into a beautiful girl or into a tree trunk that gave off the sweet smell of rot.
Then the demons began to wonder why they had changed only into wicked figures. Why not assume human form? So they did, and then there was no telling them from the real thing. For centuries humans and deities pursued them relentlessly, until they found the perfect hiding-place: the human heart.
Let us go to the place where the story begins.
It was called Gling, which is present-day Khampapa. To be more precise, the Gling of the past is now part of the immense land named Khampapa. Its grasslands are in the shape of an enormous drum, the plateau encircling a slight rise in the middle. Sometimes you can almost hear surging drumbeats or a pounding heart inside. Snowcapped mountains circle the grasslands, like fierce beasts galloping at the edge of the sky.
In those days, people felt that the earth was big enough to contain many different worlds. Not different countries, different worlds. We speak now of the earth as a village, but back then people looked towards the sky’s edge and wondered if there might be more worlds beyond the horizon – wickeder than theirs, perhaps, or more prosperous.
Gling was a small world, its people divided into clans. By the time the newly enlightened inhabitants of Gling began to separate domesticated horses from wild ones, other worlds had long since left behind the age of barbarism. Those peoples cultivated the seeds of many plants; they smelted gold, silver, copper, iron, featherweight mercury and heavy lead. They erected statues; they wove hemp and silk; they became civilised. They believed they had destroyed all of the demons – or, at least, if there were still demons, they were hidden in human hearts, scurrying around in human blood, laughing like hyenas.
But in Gling the curtain was about to rise on a battle between humans, deities and demons.
The people of Gling began to pursue wealth – pastures, palaces, treasure and, for the men, beautiful women. Tyrants fought one another for power, and life in Gling became a struggle between the noble and the lowly, the powerful and the powerless. An unlucky shadow shrouded their eyes as desire burned in their hearts, just as rivers, wishing to flow beyond their beds, are muddied as they rush against their banks. The people of Gling believed that an evil wind had blown the demons into their world to destroy Gling’s peace and quiet.
Who could have blown the evil wind their way? They were not expected to ask – if they did, the sages might look foolish. They could ask: Where did the demons come from? And the answer would be: They came with the evil wind. Once the evil wind began to blow, dark clouds covered the bright sky. The grass of the pastures yellowed. Worst of all, the kindly were revealed as wicked, and it became impossible for the people of Gling to live in harmony. War horns echoed over the grasslands and among the snowcapped mountains.
It was to these grasslands, riven with the cries of battle, that King Gesar descended from Heaven.
The Story Second Beginning
One morning, the deities went on an excursion. As they floated into the great void, they saw clouds of sorrow rising above Gling. Their mounts – lions, tigers, dragons and horses – flared their nostrils at the scent of misery in the air. One of the deities sighed. ‘There are so many ways to rout demons yet these humans do nothing.’
The Supreme Deity joined in: ‘I thought they would fight back, but they do not.’ In Heaven the deities had physical forms, all but the Supreme Deity, who was, in a way, the final cause of every effect. He was formless but for his breath.
‘Then let us help them.’
‘We will wait,’ the Supreme Deity said. ‘They have no solution to rid themselves of the demons because they do not want one.’
‘Why—’
‘Let me finish. It is because they hope I will send someone to save them. If we wait, they may find their own way.’
He pushed aside a cloud to watch a celebrated monk preaching to an anxious audience. The monk had travelled thousands of miles, crossed mountain ranges and traversed roaring rivers to spread his faith in the demon-infested land. He spoke: ‘If we purify our hearts, the demons will vanish.’
How could he expect the common folk to believe that such fierce demons had been released into the world from human hearts to bring such harm? A black cyclone followed the demons when they appeared: how could that wild energy have come from themselves? The crowd, which had arrived full of hope, left disappointed.
Another deity, watching from above, said, ‘You are right. They wish us to destroy the demons.’
The Supreme Deity sighed. ‘We must send someone familiar with demon containment to evaluate the situation.’
So there came another monk, this one with powerful magic. The first, who had preferred contemplation to magic, had walked all the way, and it had taken three long years. But Master Lotus was different. He could catch a ray of light as though he were scooping up water, wave it as though it were a willow branch and fly on the light’s back. When he arrived on the majestic plateau, he fell in love with the view before him: the undulating ranges, like running lions, seemed to stretch for ever, the rivers roared with clear water and lakes dotted the plain, like a chess-board, their quiet waters glittering, like gemstones. It was strange that in such a beautiful place the people were so unhappy.
Master Lotus inspected Gling’s four rivers and six hills. The wearying number and power of the demons far exceeded what he had imagined, and it was no longer possible to distinguish them from humans. In some parts a king had been lured into the demons’ Tao; in others the demons had infiltrated the palaces to become powerful officials. Master Lotus could fight demons one at a time, but he could not battle a countryful of them. Luckily he had been sent only to inspect, not to eradicate, them.
The people said to each other that Heaven would come to their aid, but a resentful old woman sobbed: ‘Damn them! They have forgotten us.’
‘Whom do you curse?’
‘Certainly not my husband, who has become a foot soldier for the demons. I curse the deities who have forgotten the suffering in our world.’
‘You must not be disrespectful of deities!’
‘Then why do they not come to save us?’
They