to mutter to myself. Isn’t that exactly what a seamless stupa is supposed to
be? The woman’s name wasn’t carved anywhere on that large rock, or in
the pool that lay in the shadow of the rock.
Long ago, in the Tang Dynasty, Dai Zong asked National Teacher Zhong
of Nan Yang what he wanted when he died.
“Make this old priest a seamless stupa,” Zhong is said to have answered.
The seamless stupa has its origins in the section of Blue Clif Record that
describes this, “The National Teachers Stupa.”
A seamless stupa is a stupa with no seams, a stupa that cannot be
perceived by the eye. Within this formless stupa all things in heaven and
earth are contained. Thus the body of the stupa has the shape of an egg. The
egg is a symbol of seamlessness.
When one sees the seamless stupas of succeeding generations of priests
in the temple graveyard, it seems as though the priests are standing in a row
with their round heads lined up.
But of course seamless stupas are made by people. They are stones made
round, stones given the shape of an egg. Perhaps a truly seamless
gravestone is a natural stone? The rock in my hometown and others of its
sort are like this. Is that rock the grave of a woman with no grave? The
woman didn’t want the rock as a marker for her grave, and no one made the
rock into a gravestone for her. A natural rock naturally became her
gravestone. But then, do seamless gravestones really exist? There may be
seamless lives, but I doubt that there are seamless gravestones. Perhaps the
rock is a symbol of seamless life, and perhaps the white chrysanthemum
that blossoms there is, too.
As long as there are flowers blooming in this world, as long as tall rocks
stand against the sky, I do not need to have a stone carved for my grave. Al
of nature, all of heaven and earth, the old tale of the woman in the town of
my birth, al of these things will be like gravestones of mine. I can only
