Xu Ze 徐则 — Breath-Fasting Sage of Tiantai Mountain
Paul PengFor more than forty years, Xu Ze (徐则) did not eat grain. He lived on pine resin and the breath of heaven, on the high slopes of Jinyun and Tiantai Mountains, and the sources say his body grew so light that he seemed barely present in the physical world at all.
When the future Emperor Yang of Sui finally sent envoys to bring him to the capital, Xu Ze complied. He was 82 years old. He died before he got there.
Whether that death was a failure or a completion depends on what you think the journey was for.
Key Takeaways
- Xu Ze 徐则 (courtesy name Yuanjing) was a native of Donghai Tan (东海郯, present-day Tancheng County, Shandong Province), active from the late Southern Dynasties through the early Sui period
- He entered the Daoist path young, eventually settling on Jinyun Mountain (缙云山) and later Tiantai Mountain (天台山), both sacred sites in the Daoist geography of the Jiangnan region
- He practiced bigu (辟谷, grain abstention) for over forty years, sustaining himself on pine resin (松脂) and breath cultivation (服气) alone
- He was known for a state of profound stillness: his body reportedly became light, his complexion clear, and his presence in the physical world increasingly subtle
- During the reign of Emperor Xuan of Chen, he was summoned to the capital but declined; he was later summoned again by Yang Guang (the future Emperor Yang of Sui) when Yang was serving as Prince of Jin and governor of the Jiangnan region
- He complied with the second summons but died en route at the age of 82, in 598 CE, before reaching the capital
- Primary sources: Book of Sui · Biographies of Hermits (隋书·隐逸传); Continued Biographies of Immortals (续仙传)
Xu Ze (徐则) — Daoist hermit of Tiantai Mountain, practitioner of bigu and breath cultivation for over forty years, summoned by the future Emperor Yang of Sui and dying at 82 before reaching the capital.
Note on Tiantai Mountain (天台山): Located in present-day Zhejiang Province, Tiantai Mountain was one of the most important sacred sites in the Daoist geography of the Jiangnan region. It was associated with multiple Daoist lineages and had been a center of practice since at least the Eastern Jin period. The mountain’s association with both Daoism and Buddhism made it a site of intense religious activity during the Southern Dynasties and Sui periods.
The Mountain Years
Xu Ze came from Donghai — a coastal region in what is now southern Shandong Province — and made his way south into the Jiangnan world, eventually settling on Jinyun Mountain and then Tiantai Mountain. These were not arbitrary choices. Both mountains had established Daoist communities and long histories of practice. Tiantai in particular was already recognized as one of the great sacred peaks of the south, a place where the boundary between the human and the divine was understood to be thin.
There, Xu Ze practiced bigu — the abstention from grain that is one of the most demanding and distinctive forms of Daoist physical cultivation. For over forty years, he sustained himself on pine resin and breath alone. The sources describe the results: his body became light, his complexion clear, his presence in the physical world increasingly subtle. These are the conventional markers of advanced cultivation in the Daoist biographical tradition, but they point to something real — a man who had reorganized his relationship to the physical world through decades of sustained practice.
Bigu: The Practice of Grain Abstention
Bigu (辟谷, literally “avoiding grain”) is one of the oldest and most distinctive practices in the Daoist cultivation tradition. It is not simply fasting in the ordinary sense. It is a systematic reorganization of the body’s relationship to food — a gradual withdrawal from coarse grain-based nutrition toward subtler forms of sustenance: pine resin, sesame, medicinal herbs, and ultimately the breath itself.
The theoretical basis for bigu lies in the Daoist understanding of the body as a microcosm of the universe. Grain, in this framework, is associated with the coarser, heavier aspects of material existence — the aspects that weigh the practitioner down and make spiritual refinement more difficult. By withdrawing from grain and cultivating the breath, the practitioner seeks to lighten the body, clarify the mind, and bring the self into closer alignment with the Dao. Xu Ze’s forty-plus years of this practice represent one of the more sustained examples in the historical record.
The Imperial Summons
Xu Ze’s reputation reached the courts of his time. During the reign of Emperor Xuan of Chen, he was summoned to the capital — and declined. This was a recognized gesture in the tradition of the Daoist recluse: the refusal of imperial summons as an assertion of the priority of cultivation over official engagement.
The second summons was different. Yang Guang — then serving as Prince of Jin and imperial governor of the Jiangnan region, later to become the notorious Emperor Yang of Sui — sent envoys to Tiantai Mountain with a personal invitation. Xu Ze, now in his eighties, agreed to come. He set out from the mountain. He died on the road, at 82, in 598 CE, before reaching the capital.
What This Kind of Life Looks Like from the Inside
The Daoist tradition has always had its mountain hermits — practitioners who withdrew from the world not to escape it but to engage with something deeper than its surface. Xu Ze’s forty years on Tiantai Mountain were not years of absence. They were years of a different kind of presence: a sustained attention to the breath, to the body’s subtle energies, to the relationship between the human and the Dao that ordinary life makes it difficult to sustain.
The Zhengyi (正一) tradition has always encompassed both the mountain hermit and the community priest — both the practitioner who withdraws to cultivate in solitude and the one who serves the community through ritual. What connects these different expressions is the same orientation: a life organized around the Dao, whatever form that takes. The priests at Longhu Mountain (龙虎山) today stand in a lineage that includes figures like Xu Ze — men whose practice took a very different outward form but whose inner direction was the same.
If you find yourself drawn to the cultivation dimension of the Daoist tradition — the practices of breath, body, and stillness that figures like Xu Ze devoted their lives to — the history of the mountain hermit tradition is a good place to start. For more on the broader Daoist tradition and what it encompasses, see the linked article.
Related Concepts
- 辟谷 (Bìgǔ, Grain Abstention): a Daoist cultivation practice involving the systematic withdrawal from grain-based nutrition toward subtler forms of sustenance — pine resin, herbs, and ultimately breath; understood as a means of lightening the body and refining the practitioner’s energies for deeper spiritual cultivation
- 服气 (Fùqì, Breath Cultivation): the practice of sustaining the body through the cultivation and circulation of breath (气, qì); in the Daoist tradition, breath is understood as the fundamental energy connecting the human body to the cosmos, and its cultivation is central to many forms of Daoist practice
- 松脂 (Sōngzhī, Pine Resin): a substance used in Daoist bigu practice for its purifying and lightening properties; its use in cultivation appears in texts from the fourth century CE onward and remained a standard element of the grain-abstention tradition
- 隐逸 (Yǐnsì, Recluse): the recognized biographical category for Daoist practitioners who withdrew from official life to pursue cultivation in mountain seclusion; Xu Ze’s biography appears in the “Biographies of Hermits” section of the Book of Sui, placing him explicitly within this tradition
Source Texts
- Book of Sui · Biographies of Hermits (隋书·隐逸传) — the primary historical source for Xu Ze’s biography, compiled in the Tang Dynasty from Sui-period records.
- Continued Biographies of Immortals (续仙传) — a Tang-dynasty compilation of Daoist biographical records preserving accounts of practitioners from the Southern Dynasties through the early Tang period.
