Summary
Once upon a time, there was a young man. He dreamed of a happy life with his fiancée, but when she suddenly passed away, he lost his emotional support. He wandered the mountains and decided to live in an old hermitage. Although he prayed daily before the Bodhisattva, he could not get the memory of his deceased fiancée out of his mind.
One day, while begging for alms, he met a beautiful innkeeper. She resembled his fiancée so closely that he thought, "She must be her reincarnation!" The innkeeper said, "I lost my husband last year, and I manage the inn all by myself." The young monk was captivated by her beauty. He asked to stay at the inn and secretly crawled into the innkeeper's futon at night.
"What are you doing?" the innkeeper woke up and shouted. The monk responded nervously, "I couldn't help but fall in love with you at first sight." The innkeeper calmly replied, "I can't believe a monk would do such a thing. Do you have a clear goal?"
The monk lacked confidence. "I haven't completely memorized the sutras." The innkeeper suggested, "Go back to the mountains, memorize the sutras, and come back here again. If you do that, you can do as you wish."
Determined, the young monk returned to the mountains. He dedicated himself to studying the sutras and, after a few weeks, had memorized them perfectly. When he visited the innkeeper again and recited the sutras, she was astonished. "That's impressive, but I won't share a bed with someone who has just memorized the sutras."
The monk felt pained by her words. "Then what should I do?" The innkeeper said, "Undergo rigorous training for three years. If you can do that, we shall meet again."
The young monk devoted himself to training in the mountains for three years. Finally, on the day of his fulfillment, he visited the innkeeper and shared the knowledge he had gained from many sutras. The innkeeper said, "You are now a learned monk. Do as you please."
Filled with joy, the young monk climbed into the futon with the innkeeper. However, she whispered to him, "Please let me stay like this for a while." The monk nodded and soon fell into a deep sleep.
Then, the innkeeper's figure appeared in his dream. "Actually, I am not the innkeeper. I am the Void Bodhisattva that you pray to every day. You were seeking a woman, not learning the sutras." When the monk woke up, he was astonished and ashamed of his ignorance, thinking, "What a foolish thing to do!"
The reformed monk returned to the mountain hermitage and resolved to earnestly pursue the path of Buddhism this time.
