不死不滅不成神 (what does it mean?)

[foxghost]

Warning: This is probably spoilery.

There is the surface reading and then there’s the Buddhist reading. The literal reading goes:
No death, no extinguishment, no godhood.

What is death? The cessation of life. One must live before one can die, as Kunlun has told him: all living things must have an end, rocks are forever, but they don’t live. Death for Shen Wei, chaos given form, is simply from form to formlessness. To chaos.

What is “godhood”? If we require both ‘death’ and 'extinguishment,’ we can safely change 'god’ here to 'enlightenment.’ Which is what all the yao in the novel are working towards. Shen Wei is already a demigod of sorts, and in terms of what he can do, it doesn’t really change before he ‘attains godhood’ and after. You can become enlightened when you’re alive, but you can only be in Nirvana after death. And Nirvana literally reads “to quench” or “to put out” (a flame.) The Buddha was asked, “Where does an enlightened person go after death?” and the answer was, “Where does a flame go when it is blown out?”

What is “extinguishment”? The extinguishment is of the 'three fires.’ This means the cessation of greed, hatred, delusion. Most of that, in Shen Wei’s case, is tied up in his attachment to Kunlun.

His greed is for forever with Kunlun.
His hatred is for everything that could take Kunlun from him.
His delusion is that he can stop death.

The entire novel, we’re witnessing Shen Wei’s “extinguishment,” or his path to true enlightenment.

And we can’t really get around that Li Qian, the girl who used half her lifespan to extend her grandmother’s life, so that they can die together, and then killed her grandmother in the earlier chapters, is a direct parallel to Shen Wei’s delusion, and acts as a wake-up call that led to the rest of his character development.

5000 years ago, Shen Wei made a promise with Shennong and stripped Kunlun’s soul of everything that isn’t mortal so he can be entered into the Wheel of Reincarnation. In exchange, Shen Wei gave away the rest of his life to act as a dutiful caretaker for the Seal. Not half, like Li Qian, but the rest of it. Putting aside how terrible of a decision that is to make for a god (the Wheel — samsara — stands in the way of enlightenment,) Zhao Yunlan is the one that reminds him later that it didn’t really work in giving them forever.

「日晷一天轉一圈，日頭就東昇西落一次，週而復始，象徵生生不息、輪迴不止的意思。」趙雲瀾說到這裡，語氣微妙地頓了一下，「但也有種說法，認為輪迴是個不斷『殺死』的過程，新陳交替，失去的永遠失去，過去的再不重來，轉過一刻，就只能回望不能倒回，而轉過一輪，就連回頭也不知道要看向哪裡。」
“The sundial makes a turn once a day, the sun rises from the east and falls in the west, the cycle goes on and on, signifying life going on without end, that the Wheel of Reincarnation never stops turning.” Zhao Yunlan pauses, and his tone subtly changes, “But there’s another interpretation: it states that the Wheel is only the process of a series of "killings.” The new replaces the old, what’s lost is forever lost, the past can never come back, turn a moment, and you can only look back but never go back. And after a full turning, you can’t even know what you’re looking at when you look back.“

他沒看見身後的沈巍陡然一顫。
Behind him, Shen Wei suddenly trembles, but Zhao Yunlan doesn’t see it.

Mere pages after this, Shen Wei says to Li Qian:

有些謊言是故意的，有些不是故意的，前者是欺騙別人，後者是欺騙自己……無論怎麼樣，都是很可悲的。
Some lies are intentional, some are unintentional. The first is to deceive others, the latter is to deceive oneself. But no matter what, both are lamentable.

After the hungry ghost incident, during the questioning, Li Qian explains why she used the dial:

“我也覺得自己瘋了，竟然相信這種東西，但它真的給了我回應……”李茜飛快地掃了他一眼，又迅速地移開目光，嘴裏喃喃地説，“我怕什麼呢？我還那麼年輕，説不定能活到一百歲，就算分給她五十歲，我都能活到退休了，我一輩子還剩下那麼多年，為什麼不能給她？如果凡人不該碰陰間的東西，它為什麼在剛好在那裏？為什麼要回應我的願望？”
"I thought I’d gone crazy, that I would believe such a thing, but it really did respond to me …” Li Qian quickly sweeps a glance up at him, then just as quickly looks away, muttering, “What am I afraid of? I’m still so young, maybe I can live to be a hundred. Even if I give her fifty years, I can make it to retirement. I still have so many years left, why can’t I give it to her? If mortals should not touch things from the underworld, then why did it just happen to be there? Why did it grant my wish?”

這問題讓在場的幾個人都沉默了，過了一會，斬魂使卻開了口。
This question made everyone go quiet. After a while, it’s the Zhanhun-shi (Shen Wei) who began talking.

他説：“那是因為當時你是不顧一切，真的想讓她活過來，有時候……只要人的意念足夠強烈，一切都有可能發生，可哪怕你心裏有再大的執念，也並不能證明它就是對的。”
He says, “That is because at the time you were willing to disregard everything else, and only wish for her to live again. Sometimes … as long as a desire is strong enough, anything is possible. But no matter how deep the conviction in your heart, you cannot prove that it is the right thing to do.”

…

“李茜。”趙雲瀾打斷她，“你理解的、懼怕的東西並不是死，而是分別，你只是接受不了奶奶突然離開你而已。”
“Li Qian.” Zhao Yunlan interrupts her, “What you understand, and what you are afraid of isn’t death, it is separation. You just can’t accept your nana suddenly leaving you.”

—

This is the first step to Shen Wei’s enlightenment: the realisation that he hasn’t managed to stop death with what he did. What he’s managed to do is give Kunlun endless death and extend his own suffering. Same as Li Qian. Except, of course, Shen Wei is endlessly compassionate when it comes to Kunlun, and hatred does not arise at all from taking care of all his incarnations from a distance for 5000 years. Desire without fulfilment is suffering. Desire with fulfilment is also suffering because it is simply a state of constantly fearing the loss. Shen Wei lives in constant fear of ZYL finding out. His life is suffering.

He’ll twist himself into knots even after this, keep trying to fulfill his desire of the two of them 'dying together,’ like Li Qian with her nana, until the very end of the book.

原來他費盡心機想要得到的人，最後卻是被自己親手推開的。
Turns out, the person he desired to obtain by any means necessary, is pushed aside by his own hands in the end.

原來他機關算近的要來的同生共死的承諾，最後卻是被自己先毀了約。
Turns out, the promise to live and die together that he’s schemed and calculated so hard for, is a promise he breaks himself in the end.

「不死不滅不成神」，他果然是天生愚鈍，行至末路、生死一瞬的時候，才忽然在那電光石火間明白了。
“No death, no extinguishment, no godhood,” he really is naturally slow-witted, that only at the end of the road, at the moment of life or death, does he suddenly understand it all in a flash.

According to the first extra, Shen Wei really did mean to let all his desires go then: he erases Zhao Yunlan’s memories, and so completely that he admits even the things associated with him would disappear, that ZYL would never even know SW existed. The only difference between SW from before, and SW after the realisation, is that he has 1) gained the ability to 'die’ because he is now alive and 2) lost his delusions. He has reached 'living’ enlightenment.