A Detailed Explanation of the Latest Legend of the Red Spider Lily
The red spider lily is native to China and Japan. “It blooms for a thousand years and falls for a thousand years, and flower and leaf never meet. Love is not ruled by cause and effect; fate determines life and death.” This is the best expression of the meaning of the red spider lily. There is also a poignant legend about the meaning of the red spider lily. Below, let us take a look together!
The Meaning of the Red Spider Lily
The meaning of the red spider lily carries a sadness that one cannot bear to look at directly. In China, the meaning of the red spider lily is graceful purity, but it also represents separation, sorrow, inauspiciousness, and the beauty of death. In Japan, the meaning of the red spider lily is sad memories. In Korea, the meaning of the red spider lily is missing each other.
The Legend of the Red Spider Lily
It is said that long ago there were two people named Bi and An, and Heaven decreed that they could never meet. They cherished each other in their hearts and admired each other. Finally, one day, disregarding Heaven's decree, they secretly met. As the saying goes, kindred hearts understand each other without a word. After they met, Bi discovered that An was a woman as beautiful as a flower, and An likewise discovered that Bi was a handsome and elegant young man. They felt like old friends at first sight, love arose in their hearts, and they pledged themselves to each other for a hundred years, deciding to stay together forever, life after life.
The outcome was destined, because they violated the laws of Heaven, and this love was ultimately mercilessly strangled. The heavenly court sent down punishment and placed an extremely vicious curse on the two of them. Since they had insisted on meeting in secret despite the laws of Heaven, they were made into the flower and the leaf of one plant. But this flower was very strange: when there was a flower, no leaf was seen; when a leaf grew, no flower was seen. Life after life, flower and leaf missed each other.
It is said that after countless cycles of reincarnation, one day the Buddha came here and saw a flower on the ground with extraordinary bearing, demon-red like fire. The Buddha came before it and looked carefully, and with just one glance he saw the mystery within it. The Buddha was neither sad nor angry. He suddenly laughed three times toward the sky, reached out, and pulled the flower from the ground. The Buddha placed the flower in his hand and said with emotion: “In a past life you longed for each other but could not meet. After countless reincarnations, you loved each other but could not stay together. What are called partings and reunions are nothing but the arising and ceasing of fate. You carry the heavenly court's curse, which makes your fate end without separation and your fate cease without parting. I cannot undo this vicious spell for you, so I will take you to the other shore and let you bloom all over the fields there.
On the way to the other shore, the Buddha passed the Sanzu River in the underworld and accidentally got his clothes wet with its water. The red flower the Buddha was carrying was right there. When the Buddha reached the other shore and opened the clothes wrapping the flower to look again, he found that the fiery red flower had turned pure white. The Buddha pondered for a moment, then laughed greatly and said: Great joy is not like great sorrow; remembering is not like forgetting. Right and wrong, how can they be separated? Good flower, good flower. The Buddha planted this flower on the other shore and called it Mandarava. Because it was on the other shore, he also called it the red spider lily.
But the Buddha did not know that on the Sanzu River, the flower whose color had been stripped away by the river water had dripped all its red into the river, and it wailed ceaselessly all day long, making all who heard it grieve. Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva had extraordinary powers. When he learned that Mandarava had already been born, he came to the riverbank, took out a seed, and threw it into the river. Before long, a flower even more brilliantly red than before grew from the water. Ksitigarbha took it in his hand and sighed: You have escaped and attained great freedom. Why leave this boundless hatred in a hell already as boundless as a sea of suffering? I will make you a guiding messenger, guiding them toward reincarnation. Just remember this one color of yours. The other shore already has Mandarava, so I will call you Manjusaka.
From then on, there were two completely different kinds of red spider lily in the world, one growing on the other shore and one growing by the Sanzu River. It is said that many years later, there were two people in the world who loved each other very much. But one year, while the man was away on business, he unfortunately met with disaster. He came to the bank of the Sanzu River and saw blood-red filling his eyes. His heart was endlessly grieved, and he cried bitterly: “I do not want reincarnation. I want to go back and find my wife. She is still at home waiting for me.” He stumbled to Meng Po. Before drinking the soup of forgetfulness, he asked Meng Po why, among all things in the world, in the end only this soup made people forget love. Meng Po smiled without answering and only urged him to drink quickly. He stared blankly at the soup and said: “Everyone must forget love, but I refuse to forget. After reincarnation, I will go find my wife.”
After the man's wife learned of his death, she was overcome with grief and tried several times to kill herself, but was saved each time by the man's family. In the end, the woman promised not to take her own life again, but she would remain a widow for life. The man's family, first because they saw her fierce character and feared that bringing up old matters would only grieve her again, and second because they remembered her devotion, temporarily agreed. They planned to persuade her to remarry once her emotions had stabilized. And so the woman continued to live in the man's home, supporting herself by sewing and mending.
It is also said that after this man was reincarnated, he truly was born again in the small town where he and the woman had lived together. Time flew by, and before anyone realized it, twenty years had passed. One day he went out and passed by the gate of the woman who had remained a widow. He felt strangely uneasy in his heart, so he stopped and took a look. That one look mattered little, for the woman happened to see him face to face. After reincarnation, the man's appearance and bearing had completely changed, but as soon as the woman saw him, tears poured down in streams. She walked up to the man and said one sentence: “You came to find me.” Then she fainted to the ground. When the man saw an old woman he did not know at all fall before him, he hurriedly fled that place in fright.
Later, this woman became gravely ill and could not rise from her bed. Before death, she said something over and over, but her voice was too small and no one ever heard it clearly, so no one paid it any mind. In the end, the woman shed two lines of bloody tears and died. The woman came to the underworld and saw Meng Po. Suddenly she asked her very softly: “Old woman, was there once a man here who told you that he would not forget me and would definitely come back to find me?” Meng Po nodded. The woman's heart ached terribly, and she choked out: “Then why, when he came back, would he not acknowledge me? Even if he had said one word to me, even if he had come to see me before I died, that would have been good.” Meng Po patted her shoulder and said: “You loved each other very much, and I admire your courage. How about this: twenty years from now, at the moment the answer comes, I promise to let you see it. But before that you cannot reincarnate and must suffer here for twenty years. Are you willing?” The woman said: “I am willing. If I do not see that answer, I cannot let go of my love for him. Even if I am reborn, I will have a heartache for a lifetime.” So this woman was arranged by Meng Po to weed the red spider lilies. In truth there were no weeds to pull, but in the woman's eyes the whole bank was full of weeds. She pulled them and they grew again, and she could never finish. And so it went day after day, year after year.
Twenty years later, Meng Po brought her to the gate of reincarnation and said: “Stand here and watch, but do not speak. The person you waited twenty years for is coming.” The woman was so agitated she could hardly stand. With great effort she calmed her emotions and stood there nervously waiting for the one she loved to appear. Finally he walked over. It turned out he had fallen ill, had not been cured, and had died again in his early forties. He walked up to her and Meng Po. Meng Po handed him the water of forgetfulness. He picked it up and was about to drink. The woman grew anxious and said: “Have you forgotten what you said?” The man glanced at her, drank the water in the bowl in one gulp, and then walked into the gate of reincarnation.
Meng Po looked at the woman, who seemed to have lost her soul, and said: What is love? Nothing but a bowl of water. You drink it too. Whether you can forget is not for you to decide. There is this life, but no next life. Even if you remember, if he has forgotten, how is that different from truly forgetting?