In my most painful days, I often found myself praying—even though I have never belonged to any religion. With hands clasped, I would turn to an unseen deity, entrusting my final hope to fate and yearning for the arrival of a miracle. I came to realize that the power of faith is profound: it grants freedom in the very midst of struggle.

For me, Moksha is not an end point but a flowing state of being. It is distant and elusive, and yet it quietly flickers within the ordinary. In the gestures of devotion at Yonghe Temple—the bowed bodies, the sanctuaries veiled in incense smoke, the murmured prayers—I seek to capture the fragile space between the human and the sacred: a nearness marked by distance, a paradox of yearning for transcendence while still holding fast to the tender beauty of earthly life.

“All forms are but illusions; to see that forms are not forms is to behold the Tathagata.”

Moksha

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