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Though Chan Master Huangbo never returned home after becoming a monk, he never ceased to worry about his aged mother. For her part, she wept so profusely that she went blind. Hoping to meet her son again, she set up a roadside tea stand for passing monks, and invited them into her home, where she reverentially washed their feet. She would know her son from the mole on his left foot. When he was fifty, Huangbo came upon his mother’s stand and let her take him home. But he offered only his right foot to be washed. When neighbors revealed who he was, she pursued him desperately to the riverbank. By then, he was on the farther shore, where he watched her slip into the river and drown. Weeping, he exclaimed, “One son renounces, nine clans of kinsmen ascend to heaven. If they do not ascend, the Buddhas are lying.” Then he rushed home to cremate his mother’s body, reciting this verse: “For many years, my mother’s mind was deluded. Now a flower blooms in the Bodhi forest. Should we meet again, we will take refuge in the great compassionate Avalokitesvara.” At that moment, the villagers saw his mother rise from the flames into the sky.