The Three-Body Problem

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I draped a shirt over my shoulders and walked out into the yard. In the distance, I saw Shen in the dim temple hall. She knelt before the Buddha with lit joss sticks, and all her movements seemed full of piety. I approached noiselessly, and as I came by the door to the temple hall, I heard her whisper a prayer: “Buddha, please help my Lord break away from the sea of misery.”

I thought I must have heard wrong, but she chanted the prayer again.

“Buddha, please help my Lord break away from the sea of misery.”

I didn’t understand religion and had no interest in any of them, but I really couldn’t think of any prayer odder than this one. “What are you saying?” I blurted.

Shen ignored me. She kept her eyes barely closed, her hands clasped together in front of her, as though watching her prayer rise with the incense smoke toward the Buddha. After a long while, she finally opened her eyes and turned toward me. “Go to sleep. We have to get up early.” She didn’t even look at me.

“This ‘Lord’ you mentioned, is he part of Buddhism?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then…?”

Shen said nothing, just hurried away. I didn’t get a chance to ask anything else. I repeated the prayer to myself over and over, and it seemed to grow even stranger. Eventually, I became frightened. I rushed over to the abbot’s room and knocked on his door.

“What does it mean if someone prays to the Buddha to help another Lord?” I then told him the details of what I saw.

The abbot silently looked at the book in his hand, but he was thinking about what I said, not reading. Then he said, “Please leave me for a bit. Let me think.”

I turned and left, knowing that it was unusual. The abbot was very learned. Usually, he could answer any question about religion, history, and culture without having to think. I waited outside the door for about the time it took to smoke a cigarette, and the abbot called for me.

“I think there’s only one possibility.” His expression was grim.

“What? What could it be? Could there be some religion whose god needs worshippers to pray to the gods of other religions to save it?”

“Her Lord really exists.”

This response confused me. “Then … the Buddha doesn’t exist?” As soon as I said it I realized how rude it sounded. I apologized.