Murim's Weakest Princess-Chapter 45: Heart Sutra Revelation

Deep within the crevices of the mountain, Yan Ping felt as if she was slowly losing her mind. After shutting down her five senses while leaving her cultivation core alone, she felt like she was spiralling endlessly in the void for thousands of years. At some point, she forgot who and what she was doing. It was a path full of uncertainty. However, in those moments, the silver bells would ring and drag her back before she drifted off permanently into the afterlife.

Soul cultivation was a perilous endeavour, far more dangerous than spiritual cultivation. Without a compass or a map, Yan Ping could only explore one step at a time, with her spell formation serving as a safety rope, ready to reel her soul back to safety if she wandered too far.

Previously, Yan Ping had mistaken the astral body for a form of soul cultivation. However, after hearing Anji’s experience, she had a revelation. The astral body was not soul cultivation but a spiritual technique to separate the mind from the physical vessel. Intrigued, Yan Ping experimented with the technique and found it to be the missing bridge between spiritual and soul cultivation. However, she soon discovered that the astral body was too sensitive to energy of all kinds, rendering it useless for understanding the soul arts.

Unlike the inner world or the cultivation core that was full of sensations, the soul was like a piece of driftwood with no destination. Yan Ping tried her best to seek the tingling itch that Anji described in the middle of her forehead. However, that sensation never occurred, even when she was not doing anything. Her mind kept wandering, and not having a target to focus on made Yan Ping impatient.

Eventually, Yan Ping had to give up and stop trying to brute-force her way into soul cultivation. She did not want to chant the sutra because she was not a believer in God. However, she had a monk friend who claimed that the sutra was the soul’s only path to enlightenment. Much like how the Doctrine of the Mean was the foundation for martial arts, Yan Ping decided to give it a try.

Recalling the Heart Sutra she was taught, Yan Ping pondered about the meaning of the chanting verses as she meditated in the void.

"Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form does not differ from emptiness, and emptiness does not differ from form."

In the void, there was only emptiness. Yan Ping did not know where emptiness began or ended. It simply existed, and it was exactly where she had been stuck for the past few weeks. With no sensation, perception or reaction from her actions, Yan Ping was forced to face her own consciousness, going in circles.

"All things are marked by emptiness — not born, not destroyed, not stained, not pure, without loss, without gain."

When life was created in the womb, there was nothing in there. Yet, every life returned to the afterlife through death. It was both good and evil in nature, and no one soul was more important than another. Yan Ping had heard the wise monk explain it before. She could understand the natural cycle of life because birth and death were like yin and yang. There was no completion without that cycle. The only exceptions to that rule were immortals like her teacher, who ascended.

However, the next part of the Heart Sutra contradicted every belief she ever had previously.

"There is no form in emptiness,

no sensation, perception, reaction, consciousness,

no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or mind,

no colour, sound, smell, taste, touch, or object of thought,

no seeing and no thinking,

no ignorance and no ending of ignorance,

no old age and death

no ending of old age and death,

no suffering, and no source of suffering,

no ending of suffering, no road,

no wisdom, and no attainment."

According to the nature of yin and yang, opposites exist to balance each other. She thought she understood the Heart Sutra until she started chanting it seriously.

What did it mean by no ignorance and no end of ignorance? How could one be enlightened without wisdom? If immortals were the epitome of enlightenment, the Heart Sutra had to be wrong. While they did not age or die, they experienced too much in life to not have suffered.

The more confused Yan Ping felt, the more she repeated the chant in her void. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓

"...with no hindrance in the mind, there is no fear. Far beyond all such delusion, Nirvana is already here."

Nirvana was the ultimate state of enlightenment that all practitioners of the soul arts wanted to attain. The travelling monk and the monk in the Shaolin temple... everyone sought Nirvana by chanting the Heart Sutra, trying to comprehend its profoundness.

Likewise, Yan Ping’s mind went in circles as she chanted, not knowing what she was repeating in her mind. The words made little sense, but it was only due to her low comprehension.

Moving away from what she had been taught from a young age, Yan Ping detached herself from the cultivator realm and properly listened to the scripture. The Heart Sutra talked about embracing emptiness as a means to salvation. Unlike other beliefs that salvation came from knowledge and power, the Heart Sutra suggests otherwise.

To let go of worldly attachments, the Shaolin monks lived an arduous but simple life without riches or desires. They ate plain vegetarian food, chanted daily, practised martial arts and performed good deeds without asking anything in return. They felt no pride, hatred, anger or sorrow, even when emotions were most relevant to humans. They were labelled benevolent saints who walked the earth, but they were also humans who bled in red.

What was the difference between them and cultivators?

The more Yan Ping thought about the oddity of the Heart Sutra, the further away she drifted from the Doctrine of the Mean and everything else she learned from practising orthodox martial arts. What was it that Anji understood that Yan Ping did not?

Thinking from a child’s perspective, one that was not aware of the world’s complexities, Yan Ping finally felt a step closer to the truth.

Souls were created equal, but their identity at birth was not. One soul could be destined to be a king, while another could be a beggar. One soul could become immortal, while another would never cultivate, for they lacked a limb at birth. One would become a scholar, while another would be a farmer. A soul could be born into a rich family and also into a family affected by famine.

As far as Yan Ping remembered, there was only unfairness in this world. Yet, the Heart Sutra claims that the world was fair in emptiness and everyone had an equal chance at entering Nirvana. However, it was not something everyone could reach, even if they worked hard for ten lifetimes.

"An illusion," Yan Ping finally realised. "Everything in this world is an illusion that we live in because we have been trapped in a physical form."

The moment she understood this, Yan Ping was reminded of the poem about a Butterfly Dream. At that very moment when she understood the tip of the iceberg, a searing heat flared at the bottom of her tailbone, breaking Yan Ping’s concentration.

Screaming her lungs out at the shock of falling from a high place at a speed faster than sound, Yan Ping returned to her dark reality in the cave. The silver bells in her array jingled noisily as if rattled from the shock of that searing heat.

"That was it," she realised. "The beginning of soul cultivation."