Return to the Eastern Land; The Five Sages Attain Buddhahood

We will tell not of how the four travelers escaped and rose on the wind with the vajrapanis, but of the multitude at the Temple of Deliverance in Chen Village. When they rose at dawn to prepare more fruits and delicacies for offerings, they went to the tower’s ground floor and found the Tang Priest gone. Questions flew and searches began; panic spread through the crowd, and none knew what to do.“We have let those living Buddhas slip away entirely,” they lamented, their cries reaching the sky. With nothing they could do to remedy it, they carried all the prepared food to the tower base as offerings and burned paper spirit money. From that time onward, four major sacrifices and twenty-four minor observances were held each year. In addition, crowds came hour after hour, day by day, to burn incense and make vows, seeking healing, safety, happy marriages, wealth, or sons. Truly:Incense smoked in the golden burner for a thousand years;The light burned in the lamps of jade through eternity.We turn from this scene to recount how the Eight Vajrapanis caught up the four......