In ancient times, when the folk blessed their birthdays, there was such a pair of shou lian, "Fu Ru Yao Mother is three thousand years old; Shou Bi Peng Zu eight hundred spring", which mentions the two longevity gods, the West Queen Mother and Peng Zu. The Queen Mother of the West is said to be an ancient fairy from West Kunlun, and in Taoist mythology, she is not only the god of longevity, but also the head of the fairy. Peng Zu, on the other hand, was a well-known and surnamed figure of the pre-Qin period.
According to the Taiping Guangji, the Biography of the Immortals and other classics, Peng Zu, surnamed Qiminghao, was the grandson of Emperor Huan in the ancient period, and by the time of the Yin Dynasty, Peng Zu was already seven hundred and sixty-seven years old, and he still could not see any signs of aging. Why did Peng Zu live so long? It turned out that Peng Zu was good at the art of health maintenance, and he liked to practice meditation and serve qi when he had nothing to do. In addition, Peng Zu often took Jindan, he said: "If you want to ascend to the heavens in a form, make up for the immortal officials, and use Jindan, this nine summons Taiyi, so the day ascends to heaven." "Taking Jindan is a taoist way of cultivating immortals, like Ma Mingsheng, Zuo Ci, etc. recorded in the classics.
In ancient times, whether it was a feudal emperor or a commoner, they all longed for immortality. So Peng Zu lived for 800 years, why didn't he want to soar into an immortal? This actually implied two secret things in the Immortal World.
In Ge Hong's "Biography of the Immortals", the reason for this is explained: "Peng Zuyan, there are many officials and gods in the heavens, the new immortals are inferior, and the people they serve are not one, but they are more laborious, so they are not enough to serve in the heavens, and they have been on earth for more than eight hundred years." "In the eyes of ordinary people, immortals are able to soar through the clouds and fly in the sky, but in the mythological world, there are also three, six, nine and so on.
Ge Hong divided the immortals into three classes, namely the Heavenly Immortals, the Earth Immortals, and the Corpse Immortals: "The sergeant lifts up the form and ascends the void, which is called the Heavenly Immortals. The sergeant swims in a famous mountain, called the land immortal. The corporal is first shed after death, which is called the corpse of the immortal. "After practicing immortality, after passing the examination school of the Western Queen Mother and the Eastern Prince, they can ascend to the Immortal Realm." Do you think that's the end of it? Far from it.
The space of the Immortal Realm is divided into thirty-six heavens, from bottom to top: six days of the desire realm, eighteen days of the color realm, four days of the colorless realm, four brahma heavens, three clear heavens, and the Great Luo heaven. Ordinary immortal cultivators could only stay in the Desire Realm for six days at the beginning, and not only did their status be very low, but they could not transcend the Three Realms. Immortal cultivators have a transcendent and free position in the human world, and when they reach the Immortal Realm where the immortal masters gather, they will inevitably feel inferior and have to do some low-level work, so many people are reluctant to become immortals, such as the 800-year-old Peng Zu.
Another reason is that it is even more lamentable. In "Baopuzi", Peng Zu said this: "The ancient immortal, or born with wings, changes and flights, loses the nature of the person, and is more affected by the alien... Inhumane also. "What do you mean?" In ancient times, immortals who had attained immortality would mutate their bodies, grow feathers, and become "bird people". In the human world, handsome and handsome, when he arrives in the Immortal Realm, not only will he grow wings, but his appearance will also become ugly, and whoever he is, he must also think twice.
In fact, we can find many ancient immortals in classics such as the Classic of Mountains and Seas, Huainanzi, and Shuyi, but the shapes of these gods and immortals do not dare to compliment, most of them are half-human and half-beast "half-orcs". For example, the mother of the earth, Nuwa, "Nuwa, the ancient goddess and the emperor, the human face and the snake body, change seventy times in a day, and its belly is transformed into this god." Another example is the fire god Zhu Rong" Southern Zhu Rong, the beast body and human face, riding two dragons. "There is also the water god Yu Qiang" In the Nagisa of the North Sea, there are gods, human-faced bird bodies, two green snakes, and two red snakes, known as Yu Qiang. ”
In the mythological world, those immortals who soared into immortals are not all immortals in film and television dramas, but they are all different in shape, and there are all kinds of them, no wonder Peng Zu is reluctant to become an immortal.