(Minghui.org) According to traditional Chinese culture, there are deities and cultivators in mountain caves. Some people wanted to find them but weren’t able to, while others met them by accident.
(Continued from Part 1)
Taiping Guangji (Records of the Taiping Era) records quite a few stories of people seeing immortals in caves, such as Qi Xu, Pei Shizi, Wang Tan, Yin Yinke, Cai Yaomin, Cui Wei, Li Qiu, Xu Qiyan, and others. Some of them continued to cultivate following the teachings of Taoism and eventually succeeded, while others passed up the opportunity because they regarded the pursuit of material things in the secular world as more important.
Mirages
Another example of the existence of a physical world beyond what we normally see is a mirage. Mirages have often been documented as images of mountains, buildings, and ships.
According to Mengxi Bi Tan (Dream Pool Essays) by Shen Kuo, renowned scholar Ouyang Xiu of the Song Dynasty saw vivid mirages. “From Dengzhou [in today’s Shandong Province], one can look out over the ocean and see palaces, people, wagons, and horses.” When he was traveling through Gaotang County in Shandong Province and stayed at an inn, he could hear deities, wagons, horses, and people passing overhead at night. An older man said something like that had appeared in the daytime 20 years before.
During the reign of Zhezong of the Song Dynasty, renowned poet Su Dongpo was demoted and sent to Dengzhou. He had heard about mirages but had never seen one. As he was leaving the palace, he prayed at a temple to the sea god, asking to see a mirage.
The following day, Su did see a mirage. The images were so distinct that he could make out people, wagons, and horses. “In the clear sky to the east above the sea, the deities appeared and disappeared in broad daylight.” Su was known to believe in Buddhism, which could explain why he could see that mirage.
The Buddha Shakyamuni once said there are three thousand worlds in one grain of sand. That is, many things that everyday people do not know about exist in other dimensions. Some of them might be related to the caves and mirages mentioned above.
In Chinese art over the past 5,000 years, works that vividly portray the sacredness of Buddhas and the kindness of Bodhisattva have been created. It is possible the artists actually saw such scenes and were thus able to create works of art that help bring people closer to the divine.
(To be continued)
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Category: Traditional Culture
