Original Text
There was a Taoist priest who traveled far and wide, and one evening he sought lodging at a temple in the outskirts. Finding the monk's chamber door locked, he fetched a straw mat and sat in meditation under the eaves. In the dead of night, the priest heard the sound of a door opening. Soon, a monk entered, drenched in blood, seemingly unaware of the priest's presence, and the priest pretended not to see him. The monk walked straight into the main hall, climbed onto the Buddha's altar, embraced the Buddha's head with a laugh, and lingered there for a long while before departing. At daybreak, the priest looked at the monk's chamber; the door was still locked. Puzzled, he went to the village and recounted what he had witnessed. The villagers hurried to the temple, unlocked the door, and found the monk lying dead on the floor, with chests and mats in the room all overturned and scattered, clearly the work of thieves. Suspecting that the ghost's laughter might hold some significance, they examined the Buddha's head together and discovered faint traces at the back of it. Digging into it, they found over thirty taels of silver hidden inside. Thus, they used that money to bury the monk.
The Chronicler of Strange Tales remarks: As the proverb says, "Wealth and fate are intertwined." How true these words are! There are those who are frugal and miserly, striving to amass money, yet they know not for whom they leave it—how foolish this is! Even more so for a monk, who has not even that unknown heir. Unwilling to enjoy it in life, and after death still gazing at the coins with a smile—such miserliness is lamentable to the utmost. The Buddha said, "Not a single coin can be taken after death; only sins accompany the soul." Does this not speak of this very monk!
Commentary
Pu Songling's understanding of currency was deeply imbued with a merchant's consciousness, which he expressed from various angles in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. In Gong Mengbi, he opposed hoarding wealth, stating: "If one considers buried gold as riches, then why not claim the countless millions in the imperial treasury as one's own? How foolish!" In the tales of Lady Liu and The Wine Companion, he emphasized that currency could only multiply without end through circulation. In The Flow of Money, he directly illustrated the nature of currency circulation through a story. This present tale, through the tragic fate of a miserly and hoarding monk, expounds upon the detached and independent nature of currency from a Buddhist perspective: "Not a single coin can be taken away, only karma follows."