No matter where you are, whenever the sound of “Mama” rings in your ear, you will automatically turn and look around, like an antenna looking for the source of a sound. You may ultimately find that it’s not your own child. Yet the childish call has already started an emotional response like a chemical reaction, which wells up in your heart and softens it in spite of what you’ve just been through, whether you’ve been sad, angry, or are still in the middle of a fight with someone, or simply do not feel any emotions at all. If you are in a foreign country and have been away from your child for a few days, this sound will even make your eyes hot with tears.
    Once you went to Central Taiwan on business and was visiting places with a group of people. The trip was nearing its end, and after lunch the coach would take you straight home to the North. Suddenly your mobile phone rang. It was the security guard of your apartment complex. He said that your child had come home earlier than usual. He couldn’t find his grandma and he couldn’t enter the house. What should he do with him then? “Might as well let him play in the courtyard downstairs till his grandma comes back,” he muttered, and hung up. In less than thirty seconds, your mood had changed completely. It crossed your mind that your son is only a first-grader and has never been left on his own. Even when playing in the courtyard downstairs, he is never more than a few steps away from grandma, who can keep an eye on him while engaging in a chat with the mothers of other children. Now he’s playing by himself in the courtyard with no other children around. What if the ball he’s playing with rolls away and he chases it down the ramp, through the side door (which by some bad chance may be open), down the main road, into the non-too-slow flow of traffic? Even though the security guard is on duty, one would not expect him to be constantly vigilant. It’s true that it has been a few years since your family moved to this community, but it’s a large residential area and people don’t get too familiar with one another. Besides, the security system is new.
    You wanted to call the security office, but could not, because your mobile phone hadn’t recorded the number when the guard called you.
    The group was only half way through lunch and your cotravelers were in a very merry mood, taking it easy and chattering away about the trip. But your mind was firmly fixed on your child. Has he found his grandma? If not, is he playing by himself in the courtyard? If so, is he safe there? What if he catches the attention of some gangster or potential kidnapper? What if he goes out into the street through the main gate? All these uncertainties made you sit on edge of your seat. Then your determined side got the upper hand and you decided to take action. Of course you could not immediately go back to your son, who was two hundred kilometers away. From the telephone directory, you picked a number starting with the same area code as yours. A man, supposedly a neighbor, answered the phone. He didn’t exactly know you, or your son, but he was willing to help; he would go downstairs to see if there was a child playing alone, and he would take him back to his own apartment and keep him until someone came home.
    Things didn’t turn out as anticipated. The neighbor came back with the news that he didn’t see any lone child in the courtyard. Before he could go on, you’d already burst into tears. It was not until he reassured you that he had checked with the security guard, and that the boy had found his grandma and was home safe, that you were relieved, though you still had to fight back more tears.
    Later you felt embarrassed for being so sentimental. The last thing you want is an overly emotional heart interfering in your professional life. Yet, you are well aware that while experiences in life have smoothed out the “bumps and edges” in your personality, you find at the same time that your heart has become softer and softer.
    Another time you were attending a panel discussion on Literature and Buddhism. As a layperson on the subject of Buddhism, you could only talk about your fortuitous yet delicate connection with the religion, a connection that traces back to your mother.
    You mentioned that in your heart resides the memory of an eternal mountain. The passage of time, with all the shifts and changes taking place in life has expanded the dimensions of this memory. As you recall it, it started with a childhood journey with your mother. That day, mother took your younger sister and you to board an old, worn-out, long-distance bus. Usually, you’d only take this kind of trip when going for a visit to mother’s family. But this time it was different. Instead of going back to mother’s hometown, or staying for a few days with her elder sister who owned a big day lily plantation in the mountains, you visited another mountain. The bus took you to the entrance of that mountain. Through the veil of smoke and dust thrown up by the departing bus, you saw the gate to the mountain, a structure in the shape of an inverted big U inscribed with words. You didn’t recognize the words then, but you remembered the shape of the characters and could later identify them as “Pure Land Temple” written in the well-round and robust style of the famous Tang Dynasty calligrapher Yan Zhenqing.
    From the entrance of the mountain trail to the temple it was a long trudge on a steep and hilly dirt road—challenging for your younger sister and you, still very young then, but all the more so for mother, already debilitated with illness. Yet, she made it. She walked to the front of the Great Buddha and made a pledge of personal dedication. This was your first and only encounter with this mountain, and for mother, it was the first and last. After that, she wasn’t even been able to summon enough energy to venture beyond the confines of home, let alone take a bus ride. Your only remaining impression of that mountain was of the whirling smoke of incense in the temple. But you do know that that temple, and the mountain on which it stood, were the last stations of your mother’s journey through life.
    That day at the meeting, you shared this recollection with
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