"I want you to eat both me and the Heavenly Demon," Amitabha Buddha said.
When he said that, Li Qi was dumbfounded.
Eat what?
No, sir—Li Qi had only been thinking of cutting off a piece of the Heavenly Demon's flesh. Amitabha Buddha, meanwhile, wanted Li Qi to devour both the Heavenly Demon and himself.
Did he truly want Li Qi to ascend to the first rank?
"My Buddha, this is... forcing the impossible. I can't do it."
"If you can't, then you can only die. As things stand, you have no choice," Amitabha Buddha said.
"No..." Li Qi wanted desperately to say something, but in the end, he gave up.
He could only sigh and ask Amitabha Buddha, "So why? Do you believe that if you do not die, all beings cannot become Buddhas? Is it the same view as the World Honored One, Tathagata?"
"Yes. It is not merely that I believe so; it is simply how things are. The key lies not in the dullness of sentient beings, but in the fact that whether demon or Buddha, what they pursue is the 'heart,'" Amitabha Buddha said.
Li Qi had nothing to refute in that.
Buddhas and demons possessed a certain unity of purpose.
Both believed that this world could fundamentally be interpreted through the heart. The difference lay only in how one's heart understood the world.
The demonic path believed that only its own heart was real, while everyone else's hearts were false.
Buddhism, on the other hand, acknowledged the existence of other "hearts." It believed that every person's heart could interpret the world, and that communication and connection between hearts constituted this material world.
This was what was known as dependent origination through cause and effect.
Every person's heart was a point of cause. As time