Fang Dong, a scholar of Chang'an, had a considerable reputation for talent, but he was frivolous and negligent of propriety. Whenever he saw a lady strolling in the fields, he would lightly follow after her.
On the day before the Qingming Festival, he happened to walk in the suburbs and saw a small carriage with red curtains and an embroidered canopy, attended by several maids in blue, pacing slowly behind. One of the maids rode a small steed and was surpassingly beautiful. Drawing a little nearer to peer, he saw the carriage curtain wide open, and within sat a girl of about sixteen, gaily rouged and lovely—the fairest sight he had ever seen. Dazzled and entranced, he could not tear himself away, following the carriage sometimes before and sometimes behind for several miles. Suddenly he heard the girl call her maid to the side of the carriage and say, "Let down the curtain for me. What mad fellow is this, who keeps peeping at us?" The maid let down the curtain and angrily eyed the scholar, saying, "This is the bride of the Seventh Son of Hibiscus City, returning to her parents' home—not some country girl for a licentiate to stare at wantonly!" So saying, she scooped up dust from the wheel-ruts and flung it at the scholar.
Fang's eyes were so filled with dust he could not open them. The moment he wiped them and looked, the carriage was gone without a trace. Astonished and disturbed, he returned home, but his eyes never felt well again. He asked someone to turn back his eyelids and look; a small film had grown over the pupils, and by the next day it was worse, with tears streaming endlessly. The film grew until, in a few days, it was as thick as a coin; on his right eye it formed a spiral. Every medicine proved useless, and in vexation he was near despair, thinking much of repentance. Hearing that the Sutra of Radiance could dissolve calamities, he obtained a copy and begged someone to teach him to recite it. At first he was restless, but gradually he grew calm. Morning and evening he did nothing but sit cross-legged telling his beads. After a year of this, all the dust of worldly entanglements had been purged from his mind.
Suddenly he heard a faint voice like a fly's in his left eye, saying, "All is pitch-black—truly insufferable!" The right eye answered, "Let us go out for a little stroll and vent this pent-up ill humor." Gradually he felt a wriggling itch in both nostrils, as though something were coming out and departing through the apertures. After a long time they returned and re-entered the eye-sockets through his nose. One of them spoke again: "It has been long since we visited the garden pavilions—the pearl orchids have withered and died!" Fang had always loved fragrant orchids and had planted many in his garden, watering them daily himself; but since losing his sight he had long neglected them. Hearing this, he at once asked his wife how it was that the orchids had withered. She asked how he knew. He told her the reason. She went to inspect and found the flowers truly withered; she was greatly astonished. Hiding quietly in the room to wait, she saw a tiny man, no bigger than a bean, come out from Fang's nostril, buzz about, and go out the door, growing indistinct until lost to view. Presently he returned arm in arm with another, flying up to his face and entering like bees or ants to their hive. This went on for two or three days. Then the left eye spoke again: "The passage is winding, and coming and going is very inconvenient. Let us rather open a door of our own." The right answered, "My wall is thick; it will not be easy." The left said, "Let me try to open one, so that I may share it with you." Then Fang felt a faint rending inside his left socket. After a moment he opened his eyes and saw things clearly. Delighted, he told his wife, who examined him and saw that the membrane had broken through a small opening, through which his dark pupil shone like a split pepper. After a single night the film was all gone; looking closely, he found he now had a double pupil. Only the spiral on his right eye remained as before. He realized then that the two pupils had come to dwell together in one socket. Though one of his eyes was impaired, he could see far more clearly than one with two sound eyes. From then on he restrained himself more strictly, and the villagers praised his virtue.
The Historian of the Strange says: "A scholar of the countryside, walking with two friends, saw far off a young woman riding a donkey ahead of them and jestingly chanted, 'There is a beauty!' Turning to his friends he said, 'Drive on!' All three galloped laughing after her, and catching up, found she was his own daughter-in-law. His heart sank and he fell silent. His friends, pretending ignorance, commented lewdly on her charms. The scholar stammered, 'She is my eldest son's wife,' and each hid a smile as they parted. The frivolous often bring shame upon themselves—truly laughable. As for being blinded by dust, that was the grim retribution of gods and ghosts. Who is the master of Hibiscus City—could he be a manifestation of the Bodhisattva? Yet the little lord opened his own door, and though gods and ghosts are cruel, do they not also permit a man to reform himself?"