All things are the same; all creatures are equal

All things are the same; all creatures are equal is the Buddhist teaching Zhiguang leaves for Xiao Feng in writing on a dusty floor. By placing Han and Khitan identity, virtue and enmity, honor and disgrace on the same level as passing dust, it challenges the divisions that govern Xiao Feng’s life—without pretending that he can easily set them aside.

The Teaching in Dust

In the small meditation room, Zhiguang sits cross-legged on a bulrush mat and writes on the unswept floor. His words place sages and animals on equal footing, then insist that Han and Khitan identity is at once real and illusory. Kindness, hostility, honor, and humiliation, too, amount to dust. The teaching is not delivered as an argument or a verdict: it appears briefly in the dust, in the hand of a monk who smiles as he finishes and closes his eyes.

Xiao Feng’s Response

The writing arrests Xiao Feng. He sees the Buddhist implication: if people, animals, hungry ghosts, emperors, and generals share no ultimate distinction, then being Han or Khitan need not define him. Yet recognition is not release. Xiao Feng says that he is not a Buddhist and cannot detach himself in this way; still caught in the demand to know who the “leading big brother” is, he asks Zhiguang repeatedly for the identity. The unanswered question places his pursuit of justice and explanation directly against the teaching’s invitation to loosen his grip on grievance and status.

A'Zhu’s Practical Reading

After Zhiguang’s death, A'Zhu repeats the teaching to Xiao Feng and draws out its consequence for their lives. If Han and Khitan, kindness and enmity, honor and disgrace do not ultimately divide people, she suggests, he need not remain bound to the martial world and its struggles. She proposes that he go beyond Yanmen Pass to hunt and tend livestock, leaving Central Plains affairs behind. The lofty statement thus becomes an imagined alternative to a life spent among blades and reputational conflict.

Xiao Feng admits that he is tired of struggling for survival at sword-point and imagines a happier life on the northern grasslands, riding, hunting, and living without worry. A'Zhu’s gentle correction completes the exchange: she had proposed tending cattle and sheep, not merely watching him hunt. The teaching does not resolve Xiao Feng’s attachment to the past, but it opens a shared future beyond the identities and enmities that have governed him.