The old folks all said that when people died, they didn't simply cease to exist! There was another world, much like the human realm, where the dead lived. The dead waited there to be reborn, to enter the cycle of reincarnation. So the oldest person in the village was always muttering, "Birth is the beginning of death; death is not the end of life! The cycle goes on and on!" From what I'd observed, the less afraid of death someone was, the longer they seemed to live. Several generations of people younger than that old man had already passed away, yet he still appeared in the village, greeting the neighbors or telling nearly forgotten tales to the children gathered at his knees.
The place where people lived was called the human realm, or the realm of the living. After people died, they became souls, known as "ghosts," and went to live in the underworld, also called the realm of the dead.
Before the Three Lives Stone, one bore witness to three lives,
On the Bridge of Helplessness, one sighed over helplessness,
In the waters of the Yellow Springs, one cleansed away karmic sins,
On the Reincarnation Platform, one passed through the cycle of reincarnation.
When people came into this world, they spent ten months in the womb before emerging in flesh and blood. Then, through years of learning, they developed intelligence, growing from infants into adults. After a century of life, they weakened and grew old, then returned to the underworld and entered the cycle of reincarnation once more.
After death, people had to recall all their experiences in life before the Three Lives Stone. Then, on the Bridge of Helplessness, they drank the soup Lady Meng had brewed and forgot their past. Crossing the bridge over the Yellow Springs washed away their intelligence, leaving them as pure as blank sheets of paper, knowing nothing. The underworld's officials then used the waters of the Yellow Springs to cleanse each ghost of the karmic sins they had accumulated in life. Finally, they stepped onto the Reincarnation Platform and entered the cycle of rebirth.
Some people said that Lady Meng's soup was brewed from water from the Yellow Springs and the flowers and leaves of the Other Shore Flower. But one had to know that the Other Shore Flower's blossoms and leaves never appeared together. Gathering them alone would take a thousand years. The soup did more than make people forget; it also held the joy of the flower and leaf finally meeting.
As for the Yellow Springs, they were the most extraordinary presence in the underworld. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say they were the very foundation of the underworld. They divided the realms of the living and the dead, nurtured the underworld, and gave the souls of the dead a place to rest, while keeping evil spirits from disturbing order in the human realm. Lady Meng's soup made people forget, and the waters of the Yellow Springs purified karmic sins. But where did the forgotten and purified experiences, good and evil, wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and everything else go? For billions of years, countless people had sought an answer to that question.
Everyone knew water could cleanse the body and wash away dirt, which could be visibly removed from the skin. But what of the soul's understanding, experiences, knowledge, emotions, good and evil, and all the rest? They were forgotten, purified, and then where did they go? If something had once existed, it must have left a trace. In this world, nothing was "absolute."
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They were all in the deepest reaches of the Yellow Springs, gathering there for centuries, millennia, tens of thousands of years, tens of millions of years!
Time was truly a wondrous thing. It could make even stubborn stones nod, give lifeless things intelligence, set the stars wheeling across the sky, make earth dragons and serpents writhe beneath the land, and transform seas into fields and fields into seas.
And time had also nurtured, deep in the Yellow Springs, a lotus with three blossoms joined at the stem!
The three blossoms were of three different colors: black, white, and a small, translucent Crystal Lotus.
The Black Lotus gathered together all the darkness purified by the waters of the Yellow Springs: evil karma, sins, malice, sorrow, wicked thoughts, resentment, and everything else. The White Lotus was its opposite, condensed from all that was good and beautiful. The Crystal Lotus, only half the size of either of the other two, had been nurtured from the jumbled fragments of knowledge—understanding, learning, and all the rest—that had been forgotten in the Yellow Springs. It had no memories, no sense of good or evil, and no experiences. It was a pure amalgamation of knowledge, a jumble of facts like an enormous, unsorted library.
Time had witnessed all things cycle through reincarnation countless times. It had witnessed the sun, moon, and stars take turns in the heavens; seas dry up and mountains rise; mountains collapse and waters sweep over the land. In short, everything changed. And one day, the lotuses in the depths of the Yellow Springs quietly began to change as well.
First, the White Lotus gained intelligence. He observed the two blossoms joined to him at the stem, though no one knew how long passed. Then, as parting gifts, he gave "hope" to the Crystal Lotus and "Love" to the Black Lotus. At last, he broke free of the shared stem, transformed into a stream of pure white energy, and vanished into the Yellow Springs.
After who knew how long, the Black Lotus and Crystal Lotus gained intelligence in turn. The Black Lotus, too, was about to leave. As parting gifts, he gave the Crystal Lotus "desire" and "emotion." The Crystal Lotus, already conscious, was delighted. He thought the Black Lotus treated him better than the White Lotus did, since the White Lotus had given him only one gift, while the Black Lotus had given him two—two gifts. Because they shared a stem, the Black Lotus could easily learn what the Crystal Lotus was thinking. He swept the Crystal Lotus a rather speechless glance, then transformed into a cloud of black smoke and vanished into the Yellow Springs.
The departure of the Black Lotus and White Lotus didn't affect the Crystal Lotus much. As he slowly came to understand the Seven Emotions and Six Desires, he began to feel lonely. To make himself feel better, he opened the White Lotus's gift.
In the end, the Crystal Lotus came to share the same wish as the White Lotus and Black Lotus: he wanted to leave the Yellow Springs. He dragged his still-tiny body and its heavy stem through the waters, wandering aimlessly in the hope of finding a way out of the Yellow Springs.