一个道教故事

It is a Chinese Taoist tale, I get it from the Steemit blog of @dbooster. In his blog, he mentioned that nobody knew where this Taoist tale came from, including its English translator himself. Being a Chinese, I have never read this tale before, so I feel curious where this tale comes from, too.

Here I only try to translate its English version back into Chinese version again. At the same time, I wish some Chinese who happen to know can tell us where it comes from.

For my part, I guess maybe it is from 聊斋志异/Strange stories from a lonely studiowritten by 蒲松龄/ Pu Songling lived in Qing dynasty. Pu Songling is also called "Ghost writer", he was good at writing the love and reincarnated story. All in all, the truth is I really don't know about this tale, maybe I am wrong.

(Tell you a secret. My late American husband was a person who was interested in Chinese Taoism. To some extent, I feel he was just like a Taoist whose specialty is to make the pills or the so-called elixir, since he was a pharmacist. When he passed away in China suddenly, I was afraid that he would be reincarnated into a Chinese, such kind of reincarnation religion is deeply rooted into the soul of every Chinese. He shouldn't be a Chinese, China is so poor a country compared to US, I mailed his bone ash back to US. In my mind he has become a saint in the heaven with God happily according to Christian.)

Yeah, "You overcame joy and sorrow, anger, fear, and evil desire, but not love".

A Taoist Tale
一个道教故事

Li Fu-yen told a story about Tu Tzu-chun, who lived from A.D. 558 to 618, during the Northern Chou and Sui dynasties. Tu’s examiner was a Taoist monk, who made him rich twice, and twice Tu squandered his fortune though it took him two lifetimes to do so. The third time the Taoist gave him money, he bought a thousand li of good land, plowed it himself, seeded it, built houses, roads and bridges, then welcomed widows and orphans to live on it. With the left-over money, he found a husband for each spinster and a wife for every bachelor in his family, and also paid for the weddings. When he met the Taoist again, he said, “I’ve used up all your money on the unfortunates I’ve come across.”

一日，李福仁讲了一个名叫图祝春的人的故事。图祝春生活在公元558-618年，即北周和隋朝期间。图的监护人是一个道士，帮助他富裕过两次，两次都挥霍一空，尽管他用了两辈子来消费这些财富。第三次，道士又给了他一些钱，他买了一千亩良田，自己耕种，建屋修路筑桥，邀约孤寡儿童来居住。又用剩余的钱，帮每一位老姑娘找到丈夫，单身汉找到妻子，并为他们支付婚礼费用。当他又遇到道士时，他说，“我已经用光了你给我的钱，那些钱都用来帮助我所遇到的不幸人身上了。”

“You’ll have to repay me by working for me,” said the Taoist monk. “I need your help on an important task.” He gave Tu three white pills. “Swallow these,” he said, pouring him a cup of wine. “All that you’ll see and feel will be illusions. No matter what happens, don’t speak; don’t scream. Remember the saying ‘Hide your broken arms in your sleeves.’”

“你必须为我工作来偿还我，”道士说道。“我需要你来帮我完成一项重要的任务。”他给了图三片白色药丸，又倒来一杯酒，说，“吞下它们后，你将看到的和感受到的，全是幻觉。无论发生什么，不要开口说话，不要叫喊。记住那句话‘把你受伤的胳膊藏进你的袖子里。’”

“How easy,” said Tu as he swallowed the pills in three gulps of wine. “Why should I scream if I now they’re illusions?”

“这容易，”图边说，边连喝了三大口酒直接把药丸吞下。“如果它们都是我的幻觉，我又为什么要叫喊呢？”

Level by level he descended into the nine hells. At first he saw oxheads, horsefaces, and the heads of generals decapitated in war. Illusions. Only illusions, harmless. He laughed at the heads. He had seen heads before. Soon fewer heads whizzed through the dark until he saw no more of them.

渐渐地他下到了九层地狱。看到许多牛头马面和在战争中被斩首的将军们的头颅。幻觉。只是幻觉而已，无碍的。他嘲笑着那些头颅。他以前也看到过头颅。不久那些头颅越来越少，飕飕地消失在黑暗里，直到他再也看不到为止。

Suddenly his wife was being tortured. Demons were cutting her up into pieces starting with her toes. He heard her scream; he heard her bones crack. He reminded himself that she was an illusion. Illusion, he thought. She was ground into bloodmeal.

突然他的妻子被折磨着。魔鬼正从她的足尖开始把她砍成两半。他听到了她的叫喊声；他听到了她骨头断裂的声音。他提醒自己这只是幻觉。是的，幻觉，他想着。她又被磨成血饼了。

Then the tortures on his own body began. Demons poured bronze down his throat and beat him with iron clubs and chains. They mortar-and-pestled and packed him into a pill.

接着轮到折磨他自己的身体了。魔鬼把铜液灌进他的喉咙，用铁棍和铁链打他。又用硏钵和硏杵捣烂把他打包成药丸。

He had to walk over mountains of knives and through fields of knives and forests of swords. he was killed, his head chopped off, rolling into other people’s nightmares.

他又必须越过刀山，穿过剑林。他被杀死了，他的头被剁下来，滚落进别人的噩梦里。

He heard gods and goddesses talking about him, “This man is too wicked to be reborn a man. Let him be born a woman.” He saw the entrance of a black tunnel and felt tired. He would have to squeeze his head and shoulders down into that enclosure and travel a long distance. He pushed head first through the entrance, only the beginning. A god kicked him in the butt to give him a move on. Sometimes stuck in the tunnel, sometimes shooting helplessly through it, he emerged again into light with man urgent things to do, many messages to deliver, but his hands were useless baby’s hands, his legs wobbly baby’s legs, his voice a wordless baby’s cries. Years had to pass before he could regain adult powers; he howled as he began to forget the cosmos, his attention taken up with mastering how to crawl, how to stand, how to walk, how to control his bowel movements.

他听到众神在讨论他。“这个人太坏，不能让他再生为男人，让他变成一个女人吧。”他看到一个黑烟囱口，感到非常疲惫。他将必须缩起他的头和肩膀进入到里面，旅行一段很远的路。起初，他只把头伸进烟囱口内，一位神仙朝他屁股踢了一脚，好让他整个人都能进去。有时被卡在了烟囱里，有时无助地向前蠕动着。他又看见光亮了，有要紧的事想要做，有好多话想要说，但是，他的手是无力的婴儿的手，他的腿是摇晃的婴儿的腿，他的声音是无言的婴儿哭喊声。数年过去了，他重获成人的力量。他咆哮着，因为他已经忘记了宇宙世界，他的注意力集中在如何爬，如何站立，如何走，如何控制排便。

He discovered that he had been reborn a deaf-mute female named Tu. When she became a woman, her parents married her to a man named Lu, who at first did not mind. “Why does she need to talk,” said Lu, “to be a good wife? Let her set an example for women.” They had a child. But years later, Lu tired of Tu’s dumbness. “You’re just being stubborn,” he said, and lifted their child by the feet. “Talk, or I’ll dash its head against the rocks.” The poor mother held her hand to her mouth. Lu swung the child and broke its head against the wall.

他发现他已经投胎变成一个又聋又哑的姓图的女人。当他成年时，他的父母把她嫁给了一个姓路的男人。一开始这个男人不介意。姓路的男人说，“她不需要会说话的，为什么非得需要开口说话来做一个好妻子呢？让她为女人做个榜样吧。”他们后来有了一个孩子。几年过去了，路厌倦了她的聋哑。“你真是太固执了，”说着，路就举起脚下他们的孩子，“说话，否则我就把他的头撞到石头上。”可怜的母亲只能把手按在嘴上。路掷起婴儿，把他的头撞裂到了墙上。

Tu shouted out, “Oh! Oh!”—and he was back with the Taoist, who sadly told him that at the moment when he had said, “Oh! Oh!” the Taoist was about to complete the last step in making the elixir for immortality. Now that Tu had broken his silence, the formula was spoiled, no immortality for the human race. “You overcame joy and sorrow, anger, fear, and evil desire, but not love.” said the Taoist, and went on his way.

图叫喊着，“哦，哦！”－－立即他又回到了道士跟前。道士难过地告诉他，当他哦哦地说着时，他正到了制成长生不老灵丹的最后一步了。可惜图打破了他的沉默，灵丹的配方被破坏了。人间不能有长生不老了。道士说，“你可以克服快乐悲伤，愤怒恐惧以及邪恶的欲望，但是唯独不能战胜爱。”说完，道士已经远走了。

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Longtime translator of many Chinese religious classics, Brian Browne Walker, often posted this story on his many social media accounts. I asked him about it once but he couldn’t tell me where it came from. I have long assumed it comes from one of the old Chinese folk tales he translated for a living.
---@dbooster

Braian Browne Walker先生是许多中国宗教故事的译者，经常把这个故事贴在他的许多社交网站上。我曾经问他这个故事源于何处，他也不记得来自哪里了。我猜想，它可能来自一本古代的中国民间故事集，Walker先生只是为谋生而翻译了它。

❦