原文 Original Text

王远，字方平，东海人也。举孝廉，除郎中。明天文图谶河洛之要。后弃官入山修道。道成，汉孝桓帝连征不出。使郡国逼载以诣京师。低头闭口，不复语。题宫门扇板四百余字，皆说方来之事。帝恶之，使人削去。外字适去，内字复见。墨皆彻入木里。

Translation

Wang Yuan, styled Fangping, was from Donghai. He passed the imperial examination as xiaolian (filial and incorrupt) and served as a Gentleman of the Palace. He mastered the arts of astronomy, prophetic texts, and the secrets of the River Diagram (Hetu Luoshu). Then he resigned his post and entered the mountains to cultivate the Dao.

When he achieved the Way, Emperor Huan of Han repeatedly summoned him to court. Wang Yuan refused. The emperor sent officials to physically escort him to the capital. Wang Yuan came — but he lowered his head, closed his mouth, and refused to speak a single word. He wrote over four hundred characters on the palace gate, all prophesying future events. The emperor was disturbed and ordered the characters scraped away. The writing on the surface was removed — but the characters reappeared on the inner side of the gate. The ink had penetrated completely through the wood.

The Banquet at Cai Jing's House 蔡经家宴

经家有骨相当得仙，方平故来化之。经后尸解而去。方平威仪如天子，驾五龙车。须臾信还，得一油囊，酒五十斗许。又麻姑手爪不如人爪形。蔡经心中私言："若背大痒时，得此爪以爬背，当佳也。"方平已知，即使人牵经鞭之，曰："麻姑，神人也，汝何忽谓其爪可爬背邪？"

Wang Yuan visited the home of Cai Jing because he sensed that Cai Jing's bones marked him as a man destined for immortality, and came to guide him. (Cai Jing eventually achieved transcendence through "corpse dissolution" — shijie, leaving behind only an empty coffin.)

When Wang Yuan arrived at Cai Jing's house, he came in full celestial regalia — the bearing of an emperor, riding a five-dragon chariot. He sent a messenger to fetch wine; the messenger returned with an oilskin bag containing fifty dou of wine. Then Magu arrived — the immortal woman whose story is told in Tale I.

Cai Jing, looking at Magu's delicate, bird-claw-like fingernails, could not help thinking: "If my back were itching terribly, those nails would scratch it beautifully." Wang Yuan, who could read minds, knew instantly. He had Cai Jing seized and whipped. "Magu is a divine being," he said. "How dare you think of using her fingers to scratch your back?"

🧠 Mind-Reading as Moral Audit The immortals' ability to read minds is not presented as an invasion of privacy but as a natural consequence of their spiritual purity. In the Daoist moral framework, thoughts are as real as actions — perhaps more so, because they reveal the true state of the heart. Cai Jing's thought is not evil; it is merely mundane. And in the presence of the divine, the mundane is intolerable. The whipping is not punishment but correction — a reminder that one must elevate one's thoughts when in the company of the sacred.

The Paradox of Cai Jing 蔡经的悖论

The story's irony is exquisite. Cai Jing has "bones of immortality" — he is fated to become an immortal himself. Yet even he, in his mortal state, cannot resist a petty, bodily thought. The gap between destiny and present reality is the gap between the divine and the human. Cai Jing will transcend — but not yet. For now, he is still a man who thinks about scratching his back.

This tension — between the soul's potential and the body's limitations — is the central theme of the entire Shenxian Zhuan. Immortality is not a gift bestowed upon the worthy; it is a state achieved through the gradual purification of thought, body, and spirit. Cai Jing's whipping is one step on that journey.

Further Reading