Purification of the Vessel · 煉形 · lian xing
Level 31: Cutting the Grain
Bi gu — the reported end of dependence on ordinary food.
Description
Bi gu — the reported end of dependence on ordinary food. Historically attested as a practice; never verified as a physiology.
This entry is a reconstruction. Mo Pai publishes no curriculum for level 31, so what appears above is drawn from the classical stage this band corresponds to — the body-refining register of lian qi hua shen — the "washing" and "changing" literature — and from the shape the Mo Pai literature implies for the "Purification of the Vessel" band. It is a map of the territory that tradition describes, written by this archive and not taken from the lineage.
Practice
- Reconstructed. Bi gu, "avoiding grain", is among the oldest practices in the Chinese record — the Mawangdui tomb yielded a text on it, sealed in 168 BCE. In the classical accounts it is a consequence of the refinement rather than a diet, and the adept is described as no longer needing what they no longer take.
Signs and effects
- Historically attested as a practice; never verified as a physiology.
How it is tested
Not published. Teacher-verified, as at every level below — and unverifiable here in a second sense, since the classical account below is not Mo Pai's.
Obstacles
- Imitation. Every generation of practitioners contains people starving themselves toward a sign, and the literature — which repeats this claim elsewhere without a murmur — is unusually clear that fasting is not the practice.
Sources for this entry
- The classical neidan corpus — Zhong-Lü texts, Wuzhen pian, Longmen commentaries, and the wider internal alchemy literature — the actual technical parent of Mo Pai's methods.
- The Zhong-Lü corpus — The Tang–Song material attributed to Zhongli Quan and Lü Dongbin: the first systematic step-by-step internal method, and the source of the ten months, the three years and the nine years.
- The Baopuzi and the early alchemical record — Ge Hong, c. 320 CE, and the Great Clarity scriptures after him: the fullest early accounts of what Chinese alchemists actually did, before the work turned inward.
- Editorial reconstruction — Written by this archive from the classical material, where the lineage sources do not publish a curriculum.