The Rabbit Spirit

High in the Yi mountains wild rabbits abound, yet white ones are rare. The mountain folk say that a white rabbit, having lived many years, may gather a spirit and come to understand the human heart; they call it a rabbit spirit.

Tao A-shu was a farmer at the foot of the Yi mountains. Poor, he lived with his aged mother in a tumbledown hut and planted two mu of millet, which failed him year after year. The neighbors laughed at his clumsiness; A-shu said nothing, only kept to his hoeing as before.

At the first of autumn, when the shoots were barely green, something came in the night to gnaw the leaves. A-shu took up a torch and went to look. There on the ridge crouched a white rabbit, its eyes like stars, unstartled at the sight of a man. A-shu raised his staff to drive it off, but the rabbit suddenly reared upon its hind legs and, with its forepaws, made as if to bow — pleading, it seemed. A-shu's heart softened; he flung down the staff and sighed, “You eat my shoots only to stay alive. Go.” The rabbit looked back three times, then leapt into the grass.

From that night the rabbit came always. It did not gnaw the shoots, but patrolled the ridges driving off sparrows and rats, or carried wild herbs to cover the roots and hold the moisture. A-shu watched in secret and saw, beneath the moon, a faint white light about the creature's body; where it passed, the leaves unfurled as though touched by sweet dew. His mother said, “This is a strange beast; it may bring trouble.” A-shu answered, “It has done me no harm; why should I harm it?”

When the headman Wang Bao heard of it, his mouth watered at the thought of such a spirit; he meant to take it alive and present it to the magistrate for reward. He led men to surround the mountain, spreading nets and setting snares. That night A-shu ran to warn the rabbit and opened the back wall to let it flee. Wang Bao, furious, seized A-shu's millet. A-shu said, “All things have their own master; to seize by force is unjust.” Wang Bao sneered and went his way.

That year the harvest was plentiful. A-shu shared his grain with his mother and gave the rest to neighbors in want. The white rabbit did not return. Each evening A-shu set out clear water and the roots of vegetables upon the ridge, saying, “Come, if you would drink.” When another spring came, three or four little white rabbits appeared among his fields, playing along the ridges, their coats whiter than snow. The villagers marveled and dared not harm them.

A-shu grew old, yet year by year he still left food in the wild. When people asked him why, he only smiled and said nothing.

The Chronicler of the Strange remarks: Many in this world seek the spirit and few obtain it — why? Because he who seeks with greed drives the spirit away, while he who meets it with an honest heart finds it come of its own. The rabbit spirit is no alien thing, but the pure and gentle breath of hill and stream made flesh. A-shu neither drove it off nor trapped it; a single thought of kindness, and a clean bond was made. As for Wang Bao, who spread his nets across the mountain and caught nothing in the end — is it not true that the harder one grasps, the further one loses? Therefore: treat all creatures with sincerity and they answer in kind; would command them through greed and they depart forever. In this one may read the way of heaven.