The Longer the Gestation, the Sweeter the Fruit

Xuefeng

There’s a folk saying: “Peach trees take three years, apricot trees take four, but if you want to eat walnuts, you’ll need to wait eighteen years.” This means that a peach tree bears fruit three years after being planted, and an apricot tree after four years, but to taste a walnut, you’ll have to wait through eighteen springs and autumns for the tree to bear fruit.

The more valuable something is, the longer it takes to gestate. In Journey to the West, it is recorded that the Ginseng fruit in the Wuzhuang Temple takes three thousand years to bloom, another three thousand years to bear fruit, and yet another three thousand years for the fruit to ripen. If one could eat a Ginseng fruit, they would live for 47,000 years. In the Queen Mother of the West’s Peach Garden, the peaches in the front garden ripen once every three thousand years; eating one grants health, lightness of body, and immortality. The peaches in the middle garden ripen once every six thousand years; eating one grants eternal life and the ability to ascend to heaven. The peaches in the back garden ripen once every nine thousand years; eating one bestows longevity equal to that of heaven and earth.

People who are impatient to taste the fruit will never experience truly delicious fruit. If you sow the seed today and expect to eat the fruit tomorrow, that’s called impatience. Some people don’t even want to sow seeds and instead plot to get, deceive, steal, or rob the fruits of others’ hard work. While there may be a chance of success in this world through such methods, and the lure of success without effort can tempt many to follow suit, the fruits they obtain this way will not be sweet and are likely to be toxic.

Some people study Buddhism for three days and then expect to become a Buddha. When they don’t achieve this in three days, they switch to studying the Bible. Before they even understand the basics of the Bible, they start “preaching,” but when they can’t answer others’ questions, they either stubbornly insist they’re right, quoting a few lines from the Bible to show their steadfast faith, or they abandon the Bible altogether and never think about it again. These people only skim the surface and never grasp the true essence, and in the end, they might even dismiss the classics as useless.

Entering a path is deeper than the ocean, and only those who immerse themselves in it can obtain the “ocean’s” fruits. The problem is that few people are truly devoted to their studies, while many just skim the surface, seeking fame and fortune. This is the underlying cause of the restlessness in our current era.

Tang Monk endured 81 hardships over 19 years, walking more than 50,000 miles to retrieve the Buddhist scriptures from the West. Through this long gestation period, he finally achieved true results and tasted the sweet fruits. Do modern people still have this kind of perseverance? They are unwilling to do even one day of voluntary work, always calculating immediate gains. If they don’t see benefits within a few years or even a few months, they become discouraged and agitated, either giving up or cursing themselves for being foolish. In the past, there were disciples who could loyally follow their master for a lifetime. Do such disciples still exist today? No, people nowadays are practical, and no one wants to be “foolishly loyal.”

However, “Faith can move mountains.” Those who truly obtain the sweet fruit are the “foolishly loyal” ones like Tang Monk. There was once an eccentric man who gave an honest man a tree seed, telling him, “This is a seed I stole from the heavens. It will grow into a towering tree and will eventually bear fruit worth more than gold. Take good care of it.”

The honest man was overjoyed and planted the magical tree in fertile soil, tending to it day and night. A year passed, then another. The sapling grew to the height of the eaves, with lush green leaves, but it neither bloomed nor bore fruit. The honest man began to grow impatient. After two more years of waiting, his neighbors started mocking him. Some called him foolish, some said he was stupid, and others said he was mad. “You’ve been bewitched by a madman’s words! There’s no tree that bears fruit worth more than gold. You’ve been duped!” they jeered. “Wasting your time tending to a tree every day like a madman.” The honest man felt deeply hurt, but he couldn’t bear to give up, so he decided to wait a little longer.

Six more years passed, and still, the tree bore no fruit. His reputation as a “fool” had spread far and wide. One day, his patience reached its limit. Thinking of the ten years of hard work and wasted time, he became furious and angrily raised an ax to chop down the tree...

Two years later, the eccentric man returned and asked the honest man, “Where’s the tree?” The honest man, fuming with rage, shouted, “You’re a big liar! I tended to that damn tree for ten years, and it never bore any fruit, so I chopped it down!” The eccentric man sighed and said, “You were too impatient. That tree needed 12 years to bear fruit. This year would have been its fruiting period. The fruit was the fruit of LIFE and eating it would have allowed you to ascend to immortality. What a pity, what a pity.” With that, the eccentric man disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Many miraculous fruits have vanished from the earth forever due to people’s lack of faith and their eagerness for quick results. What a pity! Truly, what a pity! Lifechanyuan holds the secrets of LIFE. Want to obtain them? Then “carefully cultivate the Lifechanyuan tree.”