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Tang Dynasty Prime Minister Pei Xiu was a devoted Buddhist. When his son, Pei Wende, was quite young he achieved the highest score in the imperial examination and was appointed as a Hanlin Academy Scholar by the emperor. But Pei Xiu thought premature success was unhealthy for a young man. So he sent his son to a monastery to perform manual labor as a water hauler, which he considered vital to his son’s cultivation and practice. Day after day, this young scholar carried water and chopped wood. At last, exhausted in body and mind and vexed in the extreme, he could take no more. “A Hanlin Academy Scholar carrying water, sweat dripping to the waist!” he protested. “Monk, what makes you think yourself worthy of drinking this product of my bitter toil?” Overhearing his outburst, the abbot of the monastery remarked with a faint smile: “This old monk’s one stick of incense can make ten thousand kalpas’ worth of food.” Stunned to hear this, Pei Wende resolved, from that moment, to harden his body and mind to carry out his duties. In a stick of incense, the mind permeates the ten horizontal directions in space, while nature permeates the three vertical directions in time (past, present, and future). Thus, one stick of incense can make ten thousand kalpas’ worth of food.