Ji Kang, from Alchemists, Mediums, and Magicians: Stories of Taoist Mystics
Alchemists, Mediums, and Magicians: Stories of Taoist Mystics is a collection of biographies of 144 historical figures associated with Daoism, compiled under the title Xuanping lu 玄品錄 by daoist Zhang Tianyu 張天雨 (1279-1350) and translated by Thomas Cleary.
Ji Kang was styled Shuye. He was a man of Zhi prefecture in the state of Qiao.(9) He was orphaned early. He had extraordinary talent, far beyond the crowd. He was more than six feet three inches tall.(10) He was eloquent and handsome, but he made his appearance plain and didn’t dress up. People considered him distinguished and elegant, but it was innate, naturally so.
He studied without instruction from teachers, read widely and comprehended everything. He was married into the ruling family of Wei and was given a prestige title. He used to practice nurturing nature and ingesting elixirs. He played the lute and sang poetry, enough to comfort his heart.
He considered spiritual immortality to be an endowment from nature, not a product of learning. As for reasonable exercise and nutrition, the standards of Anqi(11) and Grandfather Peng(12) could be reached, so he wrote Discourse on Nurturing Life.
Those with whom he always considered spiritual communication genuine were only Ruan Ji of Chenliu and Shan Tao of Henei, while those who joined their set were Xiang Xiu, Liu Ling, Ji’s nephew Han, and Wang Ru, eventually making up the Bamboo Grove association.
Ru said he’d lived with Kang in Shenyang for twenty years and never once saw him either angry or joyful.
Kang used to gather herbs, roaming mountains and wetlands. When he’d get into a good mood, he’d become ecstatic and forget to return. The occasional woodcutter or thatch cutter who encountered him thought he was a spirit man.
He went to the mountains of Ji county,(13) where he saw Sun Deng and then went wandering along with him. Deng was sunk in silence and self-contained; he didn’t talk or say anything. When Kang was about to leave, he asked for a word of advice. Deng said, “Your talent is of a high order, but your way of preserving your body is inadequate.”
He also met Wang Lie, and they went into the mountains together. Lie once found some stone marrow like rock sugar. He ingested half and gave the rest to Kang. In both cases it crystallized.
Wang also once saw a silk text in a cavern and immediately called Kang to go get it, but suddenly it could no longer be seen. Lie lamented, “Shuye’s mentality is extraordinary, and yet even though he looked right away he couldn’t find it. That’s fate.”
When Shan Tao was about to leave, he was selected for office but recommended Kang in his stead. Kang then presented Shan Tao with a letter announcing termination of contact. In sum it said, “I have heard the sayings left by Taoists, that ingesting polygonatum and atractylodes enables people to prolong the life span, and I have a lot of confidence in this. Roaming the mountains and wilds, watching birds and fish, is a pleasure to my heart. Were I to become an official, I’d have to give all of this up. How can I abandon what I enjoy to pursue what I fear! Now I just want to stay in a humble neighborhood, raise my children and grandchildren, from time to time express my feelings about separation and distance from relatives and friends, talking about the old days. A cup of unfiltered wine, a tune on the lute—that’s the extent of my ambition!”
Now that this had been put in writing, it was obvious he couldn’t be compelled or constrained.
The governor of Nanhai, Bao Jing, was one in communion with the miraculous; Xu Ning of Donghai took him for his teacher. One night Ning heard the sound of a lute in Jing’s room; marveling at its refinement, he asked about it. Jing said, “That was Ji Shuye.” Ning said, “Ji was killed—how could he be here?”(14)
Jing said, “Shuye projected the appearance of dying, but in reality he just left the body.”
This appears in Gu Kaizhi’s(15) eulogy of Ji Kang.
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