Xu Xun (Xu Zhenjun) was a famous Taoist priest in the Jin Dynasty. His name was Jingzhi and he was a native of Nanchang. The reason for his determination to become a monk was a story he told when he was a boy. When Xu Xun was a boy, he went into the mountain to shoot a deer. When the deer fell to the ground, the mother deer, despite her arrow wound, turned back to lick her son and died of grief. Xu Xun was so impressed that he broke his bow and gave up his arrow. It is said that he had worshipped Chen’s mother as his teacher, and there are many miraculous stories of Xu Xun fighting against jiao and beheading snakes in various parts of Yuzhang, and eliminating harm for the people. On the first day of August, an immortal descended from the sky and said, “By the imperial edict of the Jade Emperor, I grant my son the ambassadorship of Taishis Gao Ming, the immortal of Kyushu”. On the fifteenth day of the eighth month, the whole family of forty-two people plucked their houses and ascended to heaven on the same day, and the chickens and dogs followed. Later, he was honored as the ancestor of the Pure Bright Way school.
When Xu Xun was eighty years old, he still looked like a young man in his thirties or forties, and he was praised for his high moral virtues from far and near. The longer he practiced, the more compassionate and benevolent he became towards the people of the earthly world.
In the second year of Emperor Ming of Jin (324), Wang Dun rebelled against the Eastern Jin court. Xu Xun could not bear to see the people being ravaged by the war, so when Wang Dun’s army reached Cihu, he asked Wu Meng and Guo Pu (who was also a Taoist) to pretend to be fortune-tellers and go to see Wang Dun together, trying to stop his military action.
On that night, Wang Dun happened to have a dream that a wood was breaking the sky, which he thought was an auspicious omen, meaning “pillar of heaven”, and he felt that he would be blessed to receive the meditation of the throne of Jin. The next morning, when he saw three fortune-tellers at his door, he was overjoyed and asked to enter to fulfill his dream.
After listening to Wang Dun’s dream, Xu Xun said seriously, “General, this dream is not auspicious!” Wu Meng interfaced and said, “Wood on the broken sky, is the word ‘un’, foretelling no success, do not move.” With a twinkle in his eye, he broke the general’s dream, “Emperor Jin’s Qi has not yet finished!”
Wang Dun was angry, but it was inconvenient to get angry. So he ordered Guo Pu to divine the trigram, but unexpectedly, the trigram was “no success”! This is clearly saying that the battle will be defeated without success? This Wang Dun or hold back not to seize, and asked how his life expectancy?
Guo Pu said: “If you do not rest, continue to rise, a great disaster will come. If the troops go to Wuchang, life expectancy is unpredictable!”
Finally, Wang Dun thought they were intentionally teasing him, could no longer hold back that full of anger, furiously ordered Wu Tu first Guo Pu out to be beheaded.
Xu Xun and other people see this general Wang Dun does not listen to advice, bent on the line, stay here also can not help, so throw a cup in the air, strange enough, the wine cup actually circled around the beam flying. When Wang Dun raised his eyes to look at the cup in amazement, the three immortals had already gone invisible.
People in a daze, it is difficult to know the essence of things, therefore, when there are people who understand for you to wake up, do not think before you say no, and do not make the same as Wang Dun’s bad behavior, put the advice of people in death. As the saying goes, if you listen to someone’s advice, you get half of it. It is a blessing to know the true meaning of things.
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