your bridge home
Saints and Poets
The emperor listed the temples he had built and asked what merit he had earned. The monk said: none whatsoever.
Emperor Wu of Liang was the most enthusiastically Buddhist ruler China had ever had. He had built temples, endowed monasteries, funded translations, copied sutras and fed monks on an imperial scale.
He met the Indian monk and asked the obvious question: how much merit have I earned?
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.