This is a story that took place in ancient China three thousand one hundred and forty-four years ago. Among Buddha's many disciples, there was such a pair of a man and a woman...
The man had a passionate personality; true to his name: Lover!
The woman had a gentle personality, also true to her name: Beloved!
One day, while they were studying Buddhist teachings together, they discovered two budding flowers in a small mountain. They had never seen such flowers before and did not know their names; they were both very curious...
The man wanted to pick one to take a look, and his little finger got pricked by the thorn of the flower, causing bright red blood to flow. The woman, seeing this, painfully held his hand and inadvertently dropped a tear, which fell alongside the droplet of blood on the flowers...
They were both Buddhists; they could not be together, so they smiled and parted ways. The man ascended to the heavens; the woman descended to the underworld!
Later, when they returned, they both had new names...
The man changed his name to: The Matchmaker!
He wished for the woman not to remember him, but his job was to help people remember each other, using the small red thread in his hand. Yet how many people knew that those tiny red threads were actually drops of his own blood...
The woman changed her name to: Lady Meng!
She wished for the man to forget her, and her job was comparatively luckier—it was making soup, also known as "Meng Po Soup." Using her bowls of "Meng Po Soup," she made couples forget each other, but how many people knew that each bowl of "Meng Po Soup" was actually a drop of her tears...
When the Lover and the Beloved are together, what does it create? — Love
Love must have flowers, so those two flowers bloomed. Even after they left, the flowers bloomed with one red and one white, the red symbolizing the passionate Lover, the white symbolizing the gentle Beloved; but they share the same name — Rose
This is how the flower of love came to be...
