The dharma is…moist?

Today’s MBOTD starts with Fawen and Falong, whom I’ve posted about previously. Their lovely dedication, made in 509 in or near the Guyang Cave at Longmen, includes the phrase 願使過見者普沾法雨之潤 “May all those who pass by and see it be watered with the freshening dharma-rain.” I love the image of the dharma as water which revives us like drooping plants. But in fact Fawen and Falong aren’t alone in this metaphor.

In the course of recent reading I’ve come across a handful of other examples in which the true knowledge of Buddhist law is likened to an enlivening water-source. In 526, Zhou Tiangai 周天蓋 (a wonderful name, meaning “Heavenly Canopy”) dedicated an image of Amitayus for the benefit of his parents, teachers, and all living beings, with the wish that they might 同津法澤，普登正覺 “equally be moistened in the pool of the dharma, and all ascend to true understanding.” (This inscription probably comes from Longmen but I’m not sure of the location – I found it in the Longmen section of 金石補正 13)

A few years later, in 528, the monk Huiling 比丘惠詅 dedicated a Maitreya image with an inscription that begins 至覺沖湛；要尋光儀，以曉惠跡 “The greatest understanding is dynamic and deep; one must seek the bright countenance in order to understand the traces of wisdom.” There’s definitely room for interpretation here, but I think the point is that viewing the Buddha’s external appearance (the “bright countenance”) is a tool to resist the loss of what knowledge of the Buddha remains in the world (the “traces of wisdom”). True understanding here – I’ve avoided the term “enlightenment” but it wouldn’t be entirely wrong – is described with a compound word made up of terms for rushing water 沖 and deep, still water 湛.

What is it about water and watery metaphors? Buddhism isn’t a religion of the desert, and yet the saving, enlivening power of water seems to form a throughline here. I’m reminded of a leathery old van driver threading his way through the mountains of northern Shanxi twenty years ago, who said of the sere landscape around us, 老天不送水，當地人不吃 “If old Heaven doesn’t send the rain, people around here don’t eat.” At the moment I typed this, the skies outside my office opened up and sent students scattering to get out of the tropical rain. It rains every day here, somewhere on the island, and if you’re not careful you might become blase about the miracle of sweet water from the sky; but medieval Buddhists seem not to have had that problem.