"O Soul, Come Back!" A Study in The Changing Conceptions of The ...

386 YING-SHIH YUevidence suggests that pre-Buddhist Chinese beliefs about a heavenlyworld above and an underworld below were closely related to thedualistic conception of soul, the hun and the p'o. At death the hunand the p 'o were thought to go separate ways, the former returningto heaven and the latter to earth. The idea of heaven and hell as opposingsites as reward and punishment in the afterlife was not fullydeveloped in Chinese thought until the coming of Buddhism.THE RISE OF HSIEN IMMORTALITYTHE RESTRUCTURINGANDOF THE AFTERWORLDA historical account of the Chinese conception of afterlife,however, would remain incomplete without a brief discussion of thefundamental transformation it underwent during the reign ofEmperor Wu of Han (140-87 B.C.). By this transformation we referto the development of the cult of hsien ji immortality.59Hsien was a unique idea in ancient Chinese thought and probablybegan as a romantic conception of total spiritual freedom. A prototypeof hsien immortal may be found in the beginning chapter ofthe Chuang Tzu +E- where a Divine Man is described as follows:There is a Divine Man living on faraway Kuyeh Mountain, with skin like ice orsnow, and gentle and shy like a young girl. He doesn't eat the five grains, but sucksthe wind and drinks the dew, climbs up on clouds and mists, rides a flying dragon,and wanders beyond the four seas.60The important thing to note here is that the Divine Man does noteat anything earthly such as the five grains but only "sucks the windand drinks the dew," phenomena that come from heaven. Elsewherethe Chuang Tzu also mentions the method of regulating ormanipulating the ch 'i or breath (tao-yin ig 1) as a way of cultivatinglong life.61 It seems then that the idea of the hsien was originally conceivedin terms of the hun-soul which being made up entirely of theheavenly ch'i, is able to ascend to heaven.59 For a more comprehensive study of the Han cult of hsien immortality, see my "Life andImmortality in the Mind of Han China."60 Burton Watson, tr., The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1968), p. 33.61 Ibid., p. 168 (note).