Chiyang Daoren, Eastern Taoism
After I got to Pingliang County, a fortune-teller took me in as his apprentice, and I learned fortune-telling, prediction, and treating the sick. Later my master told me to go out into the world with my martial uncle Liu Beiquan and toughen myself up for a couple of years to broaden my experience. After that, my uncle and I came to Xi'an. After the New Year I had spent all my money, and I hadn't learned from my uncle any of the know-how of making a living on the road.
I went back to my master and asked him whether I was really cut out for this. He sent me out again, and later I went with him to Lanzhou and then on to Xinjiang. In Xinjiang we made a lot of money and came back to Lanzhou, and lived for a while outside the Shuangcheng Gate. Then my master and I parted. He went back to Lanzhou, and I went on to Qinghai to open a fortune-telling stall. On the way, at an inn, I happened to meet Master Zhao Lipu. We got on well, and I told him I wanted to become a Taoist. He gave me a new name, Zhang Zongyi, with the Taoist name Xuanzhenzi. That counted as taking me as his disciple. But it was only in name; I didn't actually go with him, and kept running my stall.
Later I went to Hezhou. Business there was slow, and since I was very weak physically at the time, I grew more and more drawn to Taoist learning. To survive, I started selling medicines. There I met Master Gou Yuantong, a Taoist priest who had left home at the Mawang Temple. He took me in to live at the temple with him and practice medicine as well. So I became a disciple of Master Gou Yuantong and formally left home as a Taoist.
My health was very poor at the time, and I often thought about life and about myself. Where should a life go? Was my whole life going to be just like this? I couldn't figure it out. Just then I met a man who had not left home but loved and understood the Tao; he not only knew Taoist learning but had cultivated himself to a very high level. His name was Liang Mingzhong, and he ran a small bookshop. He was a fine writer with excellent calligraphy—people called him “Iron Brush Liang”—and he often practiced writing in a sand tray. So I took Liang Mingzhong as my teacher too, and often went to him to learn, talking with him about the mysteries and the Tao. Seeing that I was honest and simple and loved Taoist learning, he taught me methods of cultivation, and also the principles of Chinese medicine, and told me: “Going with the flow makes an ordinary person; going against it makes an immortal—it all lies in turning things upside down in the middle.” After that I often read the scriptures, the alchemical classics, and the works of the masters. My schooling was poor, so I couldn't understand them—but I read them all the same.
Because of the war, we could no longer stay at the Mawang Temple. To survive, Master Gou took me begging for small alms—that is, begging for food. We begged from one household after another until we had eaten our fill, and slept in temples.
In the old society there were many temples. We stayed in a temple, and the next day went out again to beg. Walking four or five li a day, from Gansu into Shaanxi, by way of Mount Xinglong and Tianshui, it took us two or three months to reach Baoji.
I was also eager to learn. Whenever I met someone with real attainment in Taoist or Buddhist cultivation, I would stop and stay with them for a while to get their guidance. Later, at Honghuapu in Baoji, I met the Taoist Chai Zhifa (by the sound of the name) and stayed there for half a year, gaining a great deal. After arriving in Baoji, I heard that Gong Xinlou (by the sound of the name) at the Bagua Cave in Baoji was famous for acupuncture and very much wanted to learn from him, but I felt he was very proud and simply looked down on someone like me with no standing, so I never learned it.
Later I missed my master Gou Yuantong very much and followed him to the Baxian Temple (Temple of the Eight Immortals) in Xi'an. My master lived out his last years at the Baxian Temple. When I got there, I started out as a kitchen hand.
Before Liberation, Taoist temples were not like today: there were many adepts, and temple management was strict. There were lecturers, the eight great stewards (the eight great officers), a guest office, quarters for resident Taoists, and a scripture hall where people expounded the scriptures and the teachings. Everything was run in good order.
In the fourth month of the following year, I went alone to Little Mount Hua (Mount Shaohua) and stayed for half a month, mainly because I had read the stories of Wang Baiwan and the Wang family of Jindou in the Tales of the Seven Perfected and wanted to verify them.
Later I went to the Qunxian Temple on Great Mount Hua. I was in my twenties then. While cutting firewood on the mountain I fell off a cliff and was caught by a tree branch, which saved my life, but I broke my back. After my injury healed on Mount Hua and I had made the round of its four peaks, I came down the mountain. All along I wanted to learn acupuncture, but I never met the right teacher.
After that I went back to Louguantai. In 1949 the whole country was liberated, and the government encouraged young people who had left home to return to lay life and help build the country. At the time I thought: going back to society and family is just that; I have already been through life and death, and life is only that. Since I have left home, what would I go back for? I resolved not to return. But I thought of the old folks still at home when I left; now that there was Liberation, I didn't know whether my parents were still alive, so I would write a letter and ask. A reply came back, sent by my brother. By then I was eager to cultivate the Tao; when I read in the letter that my father and mother were both well, I was at ease. I left Louguantai and, halfway up the mountain inside the valley mouth, found a thatched hut some farmers had built, and resolved to practice there. I found a fellow Taoist, Yang Sizhen—the two of us—and he served as my guardian. My resolve was tremendous then. I practiced grain avoidance (bigu), eating nothing, and only had him bring me a little water to drink each day. Those dozen or so days of grain avoidance worked wonderfully. I was very young then, only about twenty, and the results were so good that it was just like what The Seal of the Unity of the Three (Cantong Qi) calls obtaining the “gold”—I already had the signs of the nature appearing.
Yang Sizhen was with me for about ten days; he couldn't stand it, while I just about managed. For those ten days or so he hadn't tasted grain either—he just dug up a few potatoes and green beans and ate whatever. I simply drank a little water.
We practiced like that for about ten days. Then it turned cloudy and rainy, the hut leaked, and it was unbearable, so we came down. After staying a few days at the mouth of the gully, since there was a big temple on nearby Yuangeda Mountain, I went up there. It had all the daily necessities, so I stayed and began cultivating the Tao. I farmed myself, dug up some shepherd's purse, boiled a little vegetable soup to drink each day, and practiced there.
After that, it seemed as though my wisdom had opened. My memory was so good then that with a small-format book in tiny print, I could read three pages in one go and recite them from memory. Before, I couldn't learn four lines even after reciting them for days, but now my memory suddenly shot up—my memory became excellent all at once, and my understanding very strong too.
I had been there for less than a year when my junior fellow disciple from Louguantai, Su Yuanxing, came to see me. He too loved cultivation; hearing I was there, he was envious and came to find me. What kept one person going wasn't enough for two, and after two months or so it ran out. What to do when it's gone? Go down the mountain. Once down, we worked for the people at a temple on a slope. Those who leave home don't eat for free; if you eat at a temple, you have to work for them. You can't be an idle boss for long—after a few days they won't let you stay. So we farmed for them: picking corn, planting mung beans, sowing wheat, until we had got all their wheat in.
It was an old Buddhist monk, and he no longer had the strength. After we had planted his fields for him, the two of us left, saying we were going back to Louguantai.
On the way back to Louguantai we met my brother, who had come looking for me and asked us about me. So many years had passed—I was still very young when I left home—that he and I no longer recognized each other. After we recognized each other, he told me what the family had been through all those years, and so Su Yuanxing and I decided to go home together to see my parents.
When I got back to Yang County, the whole family had moved to Huayang. My fellow disciple was educated, so he taught at the primary school in Huayang, and was later taken back to his home village by his younger brother. In those years I had traveled across half of China and held two certificates from a Shanghai society of Chinese medicine and acupuncture, so the government put me on record as a doctor. I lived at my sister's house and treated patients, still with a good heart and good intentions, and people spoke very well of me. Later I married and settled down, and all along I practiced medicine to help the world.
In 1958, during the nationwide campaign against counterrevolutionaries, I was locked up for seventy-three days, and after investigation they concluded I was not a bad man. Those seventy-odd days were just right for cultivating stillness—outside ties and worldly ties were cut off, so it was just right for cultivating stillness. After that I went back to the village hospital. Because I had a good reputation outside, they made me director in charge, with ten or twenty people under me. I served for a while, and the response was very good; everyone was pleased.
In the later period of the “Cultural Revolution,” I went back to the hospital and was reinstated, and I was entered in the Yang County gazetteer as a contemporary famous doctor of Yang County. I said I could no longer be director—let someone else do it.
In 1980 I simply retired, and after retiring I devoted myself wholeheartedly to the study of the Tao.
Later I went once to the Baxian Temple and once to Louguantai. I had wanted to go to Mount Hua again, but the Baxian Temple told me: “Don't go to Mount Hua now. The big places and big temples all have fixed quotas of residents now, and so do we. It isn't up to me alone; otherwise I'd have you stay here with me.” He said: “You've lived at Louguantai; go back to Louguantai.” When I got back to Louguantai, they assigned me to the main hall, keeping watch over the Hall of Lord Lao and tending the incense. I began practicing grain avoidance and training again.
(In the years of the political campaigns) I lost many of my things; my alchemical classics and books of the masters were gone. In Huayang, luckily, when an old Taoist died, his descendants gave me the books he left behind, and reading them I gained something more—that was a matter of affinity.
I think it was in 1985 that the state implemented its policies, and I received two years of back pay, which I spent entirely on books. I bought books as references, to test in my own practice whether my method was correct or not. I verified and verified again, and felt I had got somewhere a little. I dare not say it is anything great, but by ordinary standards my skill might be called fairly passable—we keep to the path of the old patriarchs.
Narrated by Zhang Yuanzhen
Compiled by Hu Chongxuan and Zhang Juexin