"Alas, these times..." The girl's father shook his head helplessly and started to speak again.
Budai monk said: "Then you can't sell the child to that place! Since you can't afford to support the child, send her to a nunnery."
The woman said: "Monk, you are deliberately making trouble with me! Let me tell you, her father has already received my money, and this person is already mine! If you continue to meddle in other people's affairs, I will sue you for rape in the government. Stealing the population!”
Budai monk turned his questioning gaze to the middle-aged man. But he deliberately avoided it, refusing to raise his head or say a word. Budai monk had never seen such a cruel father, so he couldn't help but kick him and said: "As the saying goes, a tiger's poison cannot eat its seeds. How can you be more cruel than a tiger or a wolf? Is your heart made of flesh?"
Unexpectedly, the middle-aged man covered his face with his hands and cried bitterly, as if he was stunned.
While crying uncontrollably, he confided hysterically: "I am not a human being! I have a heart of snakes and scorpions! You can ridicule me, ridicule me, beat me, and scold me. But, am I willing to leave my hometown and flee? Am I willing to abandon my own flesh and blood?" They are all forced by the war! Standing on the dry shore, how do you know what it is like for us refugees to be in dire straits? When those murderous bandits come to you, coupled with the officers and soldiers who do all kinds of evil, burning, killing and looting bandits, you will I understand my situation! Woohoo..."
Budai monk was horrified. Yes, wars are raging everywhere and the world is in chaos. How can you blame a small people who are suffering deeply for their moral decline?
The onlookers whispered: "Then you can't sell your own daughter!"
The man said: "I really want to sell myself, but who will buy a big man? If any of you buy me, I won't sell my daughter!"
People looked at each other and remained silent.
He continued: "I have a little child, our family must survive, right?" A five-foot-tall man knelt down in front of everyone, and said with tears streaming down his face, "You are all kind-hearted gentlemen. Please show me a way to survive!"
Everyone was in mourning, but they could only cry with them, and there was nothing they could do.
The Budai monk thought for a while, helped the man up, and said, "You return the money from selling the child to her, and your family will follow me to Yuelin Village. As long as we have a mouthful of food, you will not be hungry."
The Budai monk brought a family of four middle-aged men back to Yuelin Village, but they also brought back endless troubles - the fleeing people swarmed in when they heard that the Budai monk in Yuelin Village was taking in refugees.
Hundreds of refugees almost knocked down the gate of the farm and collapsed the wall!
How could the small Yuelin Village accommodate so many refugees? Even if it is accommodated, how can these homeless people be fed and live and work in peace and contentment? We can’t all shave our heads and become monks or nuns, right? Even if you become a monk, you still have to have food to eat! Although Budai monk's belly is wide, he cannot grow food. Therefore, even though he was happy all day long, he also felt worried.
In the evening, Budai monk slowly walked out of Yuelin Village. As he walked, he thought about how to resettle the refugees. Unknowingly, he walked to the beach in front of the village.
The setting sun is shining with gold, and a layer of gold powder seems to be floating on the sparkling sea. It would be great if we could fish some gold from the sea, so that the poor refugees would not have to worry about their livelihood.
Fishing for gold in the ocean?
The Budai monk was suddenly moved by his fantasy-like thoughts, because he really wanted to ask the sea for gold!
It turns out that the bay in front of Yuelin Village is very flat and is often invaded by spring tides. The pond fields on the edge of the bay have never been able to be cultivated normally, so they have long been abandoned. He thought of making money from the sea and building embankments to cultivate fields - building a long embankment in the bay to block the erosion of sea water, so that the abandoned pond fields in the embankment could be transformed into fertile farmland that could ensure a good harvest despite droughts and floods.
Although the Budai monk is young, he is a man of great enlightenment and has a keen eye. He feels that this method is feasible.
That night, he found the squires in Qiucun and discussed with them the matter of blocking the sea and building embankments.
The people of Qiu Village have always had a good impression of this pot-bellied village owner who smiles and laughs all day long. In addition, reclaiming land from the sea is a good thing that benefits the village and is a good deed to resettle refugees. Therefore, the villagers respond positively.
Therefore, Budai monk led the refugees and local villagers to form a mighty army and began to build ponds and embankments.
Tidal hazards occur frequently along the coast of Zhejiang, so building seawalls has been the most important event for coastal people since ancient times. Those experienced pond builders all know that to build a seawall or a seawall, you must first drive wooden piles, remove the soft sea mud, throw down a large number of rocks as a foundation, and then lay stones on the wave-facing surface to withstand the storm. The wash and crash of the tide.
Budai monk did not have such strong financial resources, so he omitted all these laborious, labor-consuming, and money-consuming processes. He directed people to directly use sand to build seawalls.
Can this loose sand withstand the impact of tidal waves, typhoons, and huge waves?
The Budai monk patted his big belly and said to those who had doubts: "Don't worry. When the storm comes, my big belly will block it."
The locals all know that this fat monk who looks a bit slovenly is very wise. Not only does he predict things like a god, but some of the things he does often seem to be beyond common sense beforehand, but they feel reasonable afterwards. Therefore, people can't help but secretly guess: Using sand embankments to block wind and waves, could it be that Budai monk has some strange magic? So, people quietly paid attention to his every move.
After a few days of observation, people found that after people finished work every day, the cloth bag monk would always go to the Hengjiang estuary a few miles away alone, use his cloth bag to fill a bag full of things, and then take advantage of the night to walk on the newly built embankment. As he walked, he sowed the seeds and chanted a mantra that no one could understand (Ci Shi Bodhisattva vows Dharani): "Namo Po Di She Ji Ye Mu Na Yi Ta Ta Ta Ye..."
A few brave young people were very curious. After Budai monk left, they hurried to the embankment to check. However, what Budai monk scattered was just yellow sand.
God knows why, but the new embankment where Budai monk spreads yellow sand will become as hard as iron. When he digs it up with a pickaxe, he can only dig out a small white spot. This extremely strong sand embankment still functions today. For more than a thousand years, astronomical tides have impacted, waves have washed over the years, and typhoons have whipped up violent waves, but they have never been able to shake this ancient water conservancy project...
The yellow sand swallowed up the sea water and turned into a long dragon to lock the waves.
After the sand embankment was built, it blocked the waves and the tide no longer invaded. Monk Budai worked non-stop and immediately led people to level the land within the embankment, turning the land that had been deserted for many years into a flat rice field. People saw that there was a high mound on the north side and a low-lying pool on the south side. By digging out the mounds and filling them in with ponds, a few more acres of land can be sorted out. We are all displaced refugees, and we have a deeper understanding of the importance of land. Therefore, without waiting for Monk Butai's instructions, everyone took action spontaneously and began to dig mounds and fill in pools.
Seeing this scene, Budai monk smiled happily, so he returned to Yuelin Village with peace of mind to handle the affairs of the village.
The next morning, he came to the field construction site and found that the mounds were still high, the pools were still deep, and the project had not made much progress. He looked at the people who were working, all of them looked tired and listless. Some people simply lay down on the dry place and lazily basked in the sun. He knew in his heart that when building the sea wall a few days ago, people worked too hard and consumed too much energy, and now they are showing their fatigue; coupled with the lack of food, people can only be half hungry and half full, so everyone Being listless, having more than enough energy but not enough energy, the efficiency will of course be greatly reduced.
The Budai monk smiled enigmatically, and did not blame everyone, nor even said words of encouragement, but turned around and left.
He came to a bamboo forest, picked up a handful of green bamboo leaves, and put them into the cloth bag. He returned to the construction site again, and when people were not paying attention, he quietly poured the bamboo leaves in the bag into the pool...
After a while, I saw a large group of lively crucian carp in the pool, some swimming quickly, some jumping out of the water, splashing with water...
Chasing rabbits in the mountains and catching fish and crabs in the river have always been joyful things that people talk about and enjoy endlessly.
Besides, they were all hungry refugees, so how could they let go of this great opportunity to satisfy their hunger! Seeing the crucian carp in the water, people's eyes lit up and they became energetic and went into the water to catch fish.
These crucian carp are really a bit evil, they actually keep digging into the mounds next to the pool.
It's strange. I've only heard of catfish burrowing, loaches burrowing into the mud, and scabies toads burying themselves in mounds of earth. Have you ever seen a crucian carp burrowing in a mound?
People are always like this. The more curious they become, the more they keep digging into the mounds to see what these crucian carp that can drill into the soil look like!
However, these crucian carp are slipperier than loaches, and they crawled back into the pool as soon as people dug the mounds.
People couldn't help but get angry and shouted: "Fill in this pool and see where you dead fish heads can escape!"
People were excited and excited, forgetting fatigue, forgetting hunger, and even forgetting time. They just waved their hoe vigorously, digged mounds, filled pools, and were very busy...
In the blink of an eye, most of the day passed by. The high mounds were dug out and the deep pools were filled in. Where were those strange crucian carps? But no one caught any.
However, they were not disappointed, but even happier, because, while they were playing the game, a large piece of flat land was formed.
Looking at the rice fields, which are free from droughts and floods, protected from tides, and can guarantee their livelihood, people's eyes are moist and blurred...
A bodhicitta, a hundred acres of happiness.
The evening bell strikes the bright moon, and the morning bell strikes the heartstrings.
Budai monk’s compassionate vow built a 50-foot sand embankment, surrounded a large beach, and transformed more than 100 acres of fertile land with convenient drainage and irrigation.
However, he could change the world, but he was unable to stop the years of melee in the Tang Empire.
Huang Chao's rebel army has long been far away from the two Zhejiang provinces, but the war has never subsided.
Due to the spread of the war and the ravages of soldiers, villages turned into scorched earth, towns turned into ruins, people fled one after another, the land was deserted, and nine out of ten houses were empty.
The eastern coast is far away from the battlefield and is relatively safe, so a large number of people fleeing the war gather here.
With more people and less land, there is a serious shortage of food. Eating has become a big problem. Starving people starve to death every day...
Monks should have devoted themselves to cultivation, meditating and chanting Buddha's name without caring about worldly affairs, but Monk Budai was compassionate and anxious for the way out for the hungry people.
In recent years, almost none of Yuelin Village's harvest has been handed over to Yuelin Temple. All of it has been used to help refugees. He has also gone out many times to beg for alms to relieve the refugees' urgent needs. However, these methods cannot solve the fundamental problem. If you want to make these fleeing people truly settle down, the only way is the land; if you want to grow more food, the only way is the land!
But where to find large tracts of land?
Outside Yuelin Villa, on the shore leading to the small bay, there is a large winding mountain. It is vast, majestic and vivid, like a blue dragon running towards the sea, roaring up to the sky.
Therefore, the locals call it "Xiao Tianlong Mountain".
Budai monk climbed to the top of Xiaotianlong Mountain and stood at the top of the mountain for a long time, staring ahead.
The mountains are winding, the coast is meandering, the shallow bays at the foot of the mountains, and the tidal flats after the tide recede are exposed to mud and grass mounds. A few scattered fields shrank pitifully on the shore, and the field edges were twisted and torn by the tide, looking like a disastrous failure after nine years of drought.
He raised his eyes again and looked into the distance. He saw the vast sea, the vastness, the rolling waves, the same color as the water and the sky, boundless:
The sea reaches the horizon and the sky is the shore, and the top of the mountain is called the peak.
The Budai monk is at the top, looking at the horizon, and the pride in his heart wells up! He was determined to launch a more vigorous sea reclamation campaign, asking for land from the barren tidal flats and borrowing food from the Dragon King of the East China Sea.
Because there is a successful precedent for building seawalls in the early stage, people from more than ten nearby villages and a large number of refugees admire Budai monk.
As his Zen staff pointed, people immediately rushed to the embankment construction site for sea control, tide control, and beach reclamation.
Three years of hard work is unusual.
Under the command of Budai monk, people gritted their teeth and worked hard for three years, and finally created 2,500 acres of rice fields at the foot of Xiaotianlong Mountain.
Although the seawall of this large field was built with wooden piles and stone slopes, it was not as strong as the sand bank and was eventually annihilated by the sea water. It is said that there was a reason for this.
At the beginning, after the construction of the levee was completed, the land was reclaimed, leveled, and measured, and a total of more than 2,500 acres of paddy fields were obtained.
The locals couldn't help but become greedy when they looked at the flat land with no worries about droughts and floods. They privately exaggerated the amount of land that was scattered and prone to disasters nine times in ten years, and deducted a total of 500 acres for their own management. It was not rented out to the refugees who were involved in embankment construction and land reclamation.
Therefore, various historical documents record this project as "more than 2,000 acres of land were acquired."
Budai monk has a keen eye for three generations, so why can't he understand the tricks of the local people?
One of the reasons why he laughed it off was because the local people contributed their own tidal flats and contributed little to building ponds and embankments, so they should get more benefits;
Secondly, formation, residence, destruction and emptiness are the fundamental laws of everything. They are caused by the combination of causes and conditions, and they will naturally change according to the conditions. Therefore, five hundred years later, the tide washed away the seawall, the sea water flooded people, and all the rice fields turned into a vast ocean...
Five hundred acres, five hundred years, it is definitely not just a coincidence.
Most of those refugees are city residents and cannot grow crops. When planting rice seedlings, they used hammers here and there, mallets here and there, and stomped around in the fields. They were really "in a hurry".
The seedling fields they planted were too sparse here, too dense there, one plant was deep and that one was shallow, all staggered and disorganized.
What's even worse is that because their feet move irregularly and randomly, the horizontally raked ground becomes bumpy and uneven.
As a result, the rice seedlings planted in the footprints will be submerged above the head, and the roots of the rice planted in the mud will be exposed. Those in the lower areas will be drowned, and those in the high hills will be dried out in the sun.
The harvest of rice planted in this way will be greatly reduced!
Budai monk went down to the paddy fields and taught people the essentials of rice transplanting.
When he moved his legs and feet backward, he didn't lift them up high and then drop them down hard. Instead, he moved his feet directly backwards in the mud, so that he would not leave deep footprints on the flat ground.
He planted six seedlings in each row, two on the left side of his body, two on the right, and two between his feet. The seedlings inserted in this way are properly spaced, horizontally and vertically, in columns on the left and right, and in rows on the front and back. No matter how you look at them, they are flat and neat, like a grid. Such rice fields have the best ventilation and make full use of light, which means they can achieve dense planting in the most reasonable manner.
Budai monk demonstrated planting rice while singing "Planting Yangge" adapted from his own enlightenment verse:
He planted green rice seedlings all over the field, and when he lowered his head, he could see the sky in the water.
The six pure roots become rice. Going back turns out to be moving forward.
Later, even the local people imitated Budai monk's "six-plant" rice transplanting method. The rice fields they planted were particularly beautiful, and the yield after autumn was also greatly increased.
At that time, farmers did not pay much attention to field management. After the seedlings survived, they did not till the fields in time. The fields were overgrown with rice seedlings and weeds, and the ratio of rice to tares was high. These tares and weeds not only affect the lighting of the rice, but also compete with them for fertilizer, so the harvest is generally very low.
Budai monk is an enlightened person, and his mind is completely in harmony with the laws of nature. Therefore, he knows that the weeds in the farmland are like the distracting thoughts in the mind of a Zen man. long.
He went to the field and poked between the rice plants with his Zen staff to remove the weeds by their roots.
In this way, the grass dies and the ground loosens, making it easier for the rice to take root and grow more vigorously.
He babbling and singing again:
One-third of the work is cultivated and seven-pointed of management. From planting to harvesting, many fields are cultivated.
Weeds turn into fertilizer when they enter the soil, and after autumn the warehouse is full of smiles.
Over the years, Budai Monk has never made any mistakes in his various actions, so the people of Sanli and Wuxiang have become accustomed to following his advice.
As a result, people are like the Budai monks who plow the fields with a Zen stick in their hands. Instead of "catching tigers", they use wooden sticks to poke weeds in the rice fields.
However, they were clumsy and inaccurate. They did not remove many weeds and damaged a lot of rice seedlings.
Why is the same wooden stick in the palm of Budai monk as dexterous as a finger, but so disobedient when he holds it?
They came to Yuelin Village specifically to ask Budai monk for advice.
After hearing this, Budai monk almost burst his belly laughing.
He hit their heads one by one with a Zen staff and scolded them: "Are these things you have grown like elm lumps? When you see me using a Zen staff, do you have to use a wooden stick? I, a monk, have no family, no job, no children. , why do you have a whole family of wives and children?"
"Hey..." The villagers were embarrassed by his scolding.
The Budai monk said: "Don't just be hey and don't use your brain. You have to remember that nothing can be done mechanically or by imitation. Let's talk about Yun Tian. I had a wound on my hand that day and couldn't do it. When getting wet, you have to use a Zen stick instead of your hands. Real tilling the field should be done by bending down and pulling up the weeds with your hands, and then stuffing them into the mud under the rice seedlings. In this way, the grass is removed and the field is enriched. Even if there is no grass, you can still touch the rice plants; the land is full of pine trees, and the roots are deep and the seedlings are strong."
A young farmer interjected in confusion: "But you use a Zen stick to till the fields without bending down, which saves effort and is fast. Why can't we do the same?"
Budai monk said: "As the old saying goes, practice makes perfect. As a poor monk, I keep my Zen stick in my hand all day long, and I can use it naturally as if it is an extension of my arm. It is your first time to till the fields with a wooden stick, so of course you don't obey me!"
I see!
