Pei Xuanren(裴玄仁): The Han Taoist Who Ate Cloud-Fungus
Paul Peng
He did not refine his breath. He refined what he ate. Pei Xuanren (裴玄仁) was born in 178 BCE, in the reign of Emperor Wen of Han, in Xiayang in the Fufeng commandery. The historical record says nothing of him. But the Taoist tradition gave him something rarer than a dynastic biography: a dedicated Account of the Pure and Empty Real Person Pei, written by a Han dynasty devotee named Deng Ziyun. What that account describes is a different kind of Taoist life. He received five divine recipes from an immortal who had walked the earth since the age of the Yellow Emperor. He consumed cloud-fungus and floral dew. And then he wandered the sacred mountains until the earth could no longer hold him.
The Immortal Who Crossed Two Thousand Years
Pei Xuanren’s teacher was named Chi Jiang Ziyu (赤将子舆)—the Crimson General, Master of Carriages. In the Biographies of Immortals, Chi Jiang Ziyu appears as a master carpenter in the court of the Yellow Emperor. In the Biographies of Divine Immortals, he is the Rain Master of Shennong, the Divine Farmer. He subsisted on water-jade and could travel with the wind and the rain. To meet Chi Jiang Ziyu in the flesh was to meet a being who had outlived dynasties as a man outlives seasons. And in the early years of the Western Han, he appeared to Pei Xuanren and gave him five divine recipes. Five is the number of the elements, the directions, the sacred peaks, the flavours, the viscera. To receive five recipes is to receive a complete map—one for each dimension of the body and the cosmos.
The Alchemy of Consumption
Equipped with Chi Jiang Ziyu’s recipes, Pei Xuanren practised the Taoist art of fu er (服饵)—the consumption of special substances for the purpose of transforming the body. The Account specifies two: cloud-fungus and floral dew. “Cloud-fungus” translates yunhua (云华), a term that refers to mica—a shimmering mineral classified among the highest grades of Taoist elixirs. Taken over time, it makes the body light, prevents hunger, and eventually allows the practitioner to ascend to the heavens. “Floral dew” translates linglu (灵露), the concentrated essence of flowers gathered before dawn, believed to nourish the shen—the spirit—as food nourishes the body. Pei Xuanren’s practice was not asceticism. He replaced ordinary food with extraordinary food. The grain that made the body heavy was exchanged for cloud-fungus that made it light. He ate his way to immortality.
The Two Sacred Mountains
Pei Xuanren did not remain in one place. The Account records that he “entered Mount Hua and Mount Tai.” Mount Hua is the Western Peak—the sheer, precipitous mountain that had sheltered Feng Yanshou and Immortal Qiu. Mount Tai is the Eastern Peak—the greatest of the five sacred mountains, where emperors performed the feng and shan sacrifices to announce their legitimacy to heaven. Pei Xuanren’s presence at both mountains suggests that his practice was not confined to a single sacred geography. He walked from the west to the east, marking the whole breadth of the Chinese landscape with his silent consumption of dew and fungus.
The Two Faces of Transformation
Su Lin and Pei Xuanren form a matched pair. Su Lin’s path was inward: he refined his breath, stilled it, and unified his inner energies. His was the alchemy of the subtle body—neigong, the inner work. Pei Xuanren’s path was outward: he received divine recipes and transformed the substances of the natural world into the substance of his own immortality. His was the alchemy of the crucible—waidan, the outer work. Both ascended. The Zhengyi tradition inherits both paths. The Zhengyi priest refines the inner energies through meditation and ritualises the outer elements through liturgy, and these are not two separate acts but one continuous practice.
The Pure and Empty Real Person
The Account concludes: “He attained Taoism and ascended to immortality. In Taoism, he is revered as the Pure and Empty Real Person.” Qingxu (清虚)—Pure and Empty. The title names the state he achieved. The body, purified by cloud-fungus, had become light. The mind, nourished by floral dew, had become empty. Purity without emptiness is mere hygiene. Emptiness without purity is mere vacancy. Together, they are the condition of the perfected being: transparent to the Tao, unobstructed by the residue of an ordinary life. Pei Xuanren’s title, uniquely, does not name a place. It names a quality. He is the most abstract of the early immortals—the one whose identity has been most completely dissolved into attribute. Pure. Empty. Light enough to ascend.
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