Seven Taoist Masters Summary

The master that I chose is Sun Pu-erh. Since her troubles with attaining the Tao were that she thought she was a genius from the beginning and needed very little meditation and principle to attain the Tao. But she learned down the road that there is no such thing as knowing too much. She has shown the most perseverance to attain the Tao, by even scaring her face so that she could travel to a village so she could attain imortality faster. Her travels and hardships were very interesting to read and kind of reminded me of my troubles with my studies.

After Sun Pu-erh and Ma Tan-yang - her husband, were accepted as students of Wang Ch'ung-yang, they were instructed to meditate as much as possible and attain the enlightened path to the Tao. This task was assigned to the new students to rid themselves of the temptations of the world. This included sickness of spirit and body, the craving of liquor and sex, the desire for riches, bad temper and all other sorts of temptations. If these temptations can not be eradicated the path to the Tao will be much harder and will take a lot longer to accomplish, even though time is not of the essence when it comes to becoming an immortal being. With this great advice from their master they decided to start meditation, but since they were now brothers in the Tao, they could not share sleeping quarters because it would bring on the temptation for sex. So, Ma Tan-yang ordered the servants from his house to clean out a room for his wife where she would live from now on.

Once they were settled in their different rooms, Sun Pu-erh began to meditate from the instructions she attained from her master. During her meditation master Wang Ch'ung-yang came into the room and frightened Sun Pu-erh, he told her "the yin cannot manage without the yang" (Wong 47). The little conversation she had with the master annoyed her very much so and she decided to run out of the room and get her husband. When her husband arrived at her room, there was no one