The
traveling priest's name is Float Chen; his accomplishment is sweet,
for he sacrificed his youth. The Emperor is so impressed, he names
Float the abbot of the Hon Fu Temple. An honor indeed, but Float's
glory days are not yet over.
Those
treasured Indian manuscripts must now be translated into Chinese,
all 657 of them. The Emperor sets Float for the task of translating
these precious scriptures. While Float works, the Emperor rewards
his toil and intellect. Float receives glory and recognition at the
pinnacle of his career. But the higher the pinnacle, the farther the
drop.
It
is the tempting Xiao Shan who attracts the abbot's eye. She is the
symbol of purity, for she is Float's first love. But the young woman
is already married, to the powerful Prime Minister (Xiao Shan is Dante's
Beatrice to Float). One could say it is a lapse of will, or at least
a lapse of professionalism, but Float does what a rising and ambitious
Buddhist abbot must not do, he falls for the young woman and commits...,
adultery!
Inevitably
Float's sin is discovered and condemned by the moral order of the
days. Is this the end of Float's career, his prestige, his pinnacle
of Buddhahood? Yes, for this unforgivable Buddhist sin, the Sakyamuni
Buddha condemns Float to eternal suffering on earth, never to reach
Nirvana. When Float dies, his soul will never rest, for he will be
trapped in an endless cycle of reincarnations and fully aware of each
and everyone of them, unlike the rest of us mortals who know not from
where we came or where we're going. Float reincarnates through the
centuries, life after nauseating life, till one day..., Float, the
condemned soul, doomed by his idealistic but indecisive personality,
finds himself in...
Los
Angeles, California, 1999...
