The Great Catastrophe of the Dragon Clan: Yu's Reincarnation Story (Part 2)
Continued from "The Great Catastrophe of the Dragon Clan: Yu's Reincarnation Story (Part 1)"
Spirited Away
In the film Spirited Away directed by Hayao Miyazaki, the Kohaku River was filled in due to over-development by humans.
Haku, the deity of the Kohaku River—"Nigihayami Kohakunushi"—had no choice but to attach himself to Yubaba, who possessed great magical power, and to become her subordinate.
His home destroyed, with nowhere to return, in despair and resentment he wished for the help of a powerful force to take revenge upon humanity for him.
These attachments of the heart caused the Kohaku River deity to find neither the Dragon Clan nor any cultivators of the Way, and so he fell under the control of demonic forces.
In the higher realms and in ancient times, names were of the utmost importance. When ancient Daoist cultivators exorcised demons, they would discern a demon's identity from its name and then pray to a deity of a higher rank, beseeching that deity to bestow Law-power to diminish the demon's magic and drive out the demonic spirit possessing the human.
This is why Yubaba had to take away Haku's name, "Nigihayami Kohakunushi."
Once his name was taken, Haku lost his "identity as a dragon," and all of his memories as a dragon vanished along with it.
The white dragon's attachment was "hatred toward humanity." To break free from hatred is exceedingly difficult, and because of this hatred, the white dragon became a subordinate of demons, doing evil things in many places. By rights, his life should have been destroyed.
But the kindness of Chihiro, this one human being, reversed the white dragon's misfortune.
The reason the famed river deity, who had been mistaken for a stink spirit, handed Chihiro the "river deity's medicinal dumpling" was because, possessing Law-power, he had long since perceived that only Chihiro—a human being—could dissolve the white dragon's "hatred toward humanity," help him recall the name "Nigihayami Kohakunushi," remember his identity as the "Kohaku River Deity," and return to the embrace of the Dragon Clan.
The Present Situation of the Dragon Clan
In the modern age, there are still many true cultivators and practitioners who can communicate and cooperate with the Dragon Deity Clan—only they do not let the world know of it.
This is because this age is what many cultivation paths call the "Dharma-Ending Period." Humans believe only what the eyes can see; they believe in technology, in fame and gain; those who hold righteous faith in the deities are very few indeed.
The Dharma-Ending Period is one in which "though the teachings remain, those who cultivate are few, and those who attain fruition are exceedingly rare."
In this age, countless trillions of sentient beings have lost their righteous faith in the deities, committing all manner of evil without realizing it. The flourishing of evil has led to the frequent occurrence of calamities.
Under the protection of cultivators, the lives of the Dragon Clan have left their original homes (the dragon veins, dragon dens, and lands of spiritual waters) and gathered together in a place of safety, set with a powerful protective boundary.
The Dragon Deity Clan, too, has its tiers, with one tier corresponding to another. The dragons of higher tiers possess Law-power greater than that of the dragons of lower tiers, and they are able to cooperate with cultivators in their missions, doing many good deeds in the human world.
By doing good deeds, they can accumulate virtue—as people of old spoke of accumulating blessing-virtue and accumulating hidden virtue. The accumulation of virtue helps elevate the heights of their souls and spiritual bodies, and their Law-power likewise grows in strength.
In this evil age of the Dharma's ending, righteousness and evil are at war, and evil beings, too, wish to elevate the heights of their souls. They believe that if they can elevate themselves upward, they may enter the new universe created by the Creator.
But they are evil, and the righteous deities will absolutely not permit these evil lives to go to the new universe.
So these evil lives devised a stratagem: to use sorcery to transform themselves into dragons, mingle in among the Dragon Clan and receive the protection of cultivators and practitioners, so that in future they might follow along with the Dragon Clan and, as part of the whole, enter the new universe together.
But cultivators and practitioners of righteous Law-paths all possess very strong supernormal abilities and Law-power, and the Dragon Deities of higher tiers can also instantly distinguish the true from the false, and so destroy these false dragons that seek to slip in among them.
The Work of the Dragon Clan
Those with the gift of perception, those whose sixth sense is strong, can still see or sense the presence of dragons.
This is because, even in this age of the Dharma's ending, there are still many people who hold fast to kindness and go on to cultivate righteous Law-paths.
The Dragon Clan will guard these kind-hearted people, who will be able to obtain the key to the new universe, and enter in safety the new universe created by the Creator. When that time comes, every person will sense it for themselves.
The current work of the Dragon Clan is as follows:
To destroy the evil lives that seek to harm kind-hearted humans.
To protect those humans who are willing to hold fast to kindness.
To help kind-hearted humans enter, in safety, the new universe created by the Creator.
To help true cultivators and practitioners complete their missions.
Yu had borne the heavy responsibility of being a Dragon King across many successive lifetimes, and so he understands very well the past and present situation of the Dragon Clan.
Yu said that at present, the Dragon Clan has, as a whole, departed from the places they once dwelt, and so the geomancers of the present age can scarcely find any true precious lands of fengshui anymore.
But for those who hold kind thoughts, who hold fast to kindness, who do no evil, who do not harm or violate any living being among all things—wherever they dwell is a precious land of fengshui, and they need not go searching for good fengshui.
For the Dragon Clan will remain by their side, and protect them.