A wooden basin carrying a baby drifted down the river, floating lightly until it came to rest against the bank.
"What's that?"
Several monks by the riverbank noticed it.
In a flurry, they fished the wooden basin ashore. When they saw the baby inside, they looked at one another in astonishment, each seeing the same bewildered helplessness in the others' eyes.
"A child?"
"There's actually a child in here?"
"Whose parents could be so heartless as to abandon their child?"
The monks chattered among themselves.
But before long, someone found a letter written in blood beneath the basin. Once they read its contents, they all pressed their palms together and chanted the Buddha's name.
The monks who had questioned it earlier repeatedly murmured, "What a sin."
"As things stand, we can only take this child back to the temple first!"
Kind-hearted as they were, the monks brought the baby back to the temple. Yet they soon found themselves in another difficult spot. The monks of the temple could meditate, cultivate, study Zen, and comprehend the Way—but raising a child...
They knew nothing about it!
As the child wailed and fussed, the monks grew even more flustered.
Just as the monks of Golden Mountain Temple had no idea what to do, someone knocked on the temple gate.
"Homage to the Buddha of Infinite Life!"
Outside the temple stood someone dressed as a daoist nun, reciting those words.
Her words startled every monk present.
"This..."
"Fellow daoist?"
"That dharma phrase you recited just now... was it Buddhist, or daoist?"
"Buddha is the Dao, and the Dao is Buddha! Both save all beings and seek the great radiance. What distinction is there?"
The daoist nun countered.
The monks fell silent.
The abbot asked, "May I ask what brings fellow daoist to our Golden