Bigu (grain avoidance)

Terminology

Agricultural mythology

• Suiren "Firelighting Person" was a three-eyed sage who discovered how to make fire and invented cooking. This sui means "flint; bow drill; burning mirror".
• Shennong "Farmer God", also known as Wuguxiandi 五穀先帝 "Emperor of the Five Grains", taught humans agricultural techniques and herbal medicine. Shennong is specifically credited with teaching humans to cultivate and eat the five grains. The list of which grains were counted varied, but the various lists generally include the leguminous soybean, according to Lihui Yang. The Huainanzi describes Shennong transforming human society from hunter-gatherer to agriculture.

In ancient times, the people fed on herbaceous plants and drank [only] water, picked fruit from shrubs and trees and ate the meat of oysters and clams. They frequently suffered tribulations from feverish maladies and injurious poisons. Consequently, the Divine Farmer first taught the people to plant and cultivate the five grains. He evaluated the suitability of the land, [noting] whether it was dry or wet, fertile or barren, high or low. He tried the taste and flavor of the one hundred plants and the sweetness or bitterness of the streams and springs, issuing directives so the people would know what to avoid and what to accept. At the time [he was doing this], he suffered poisoning [as many as] seventy times a day.

• Houji "Lord Millet" is the god or goddess of agriculture and ancestor of the Zhou people. The Shijing poem Shengmin "Birth of the [Zhou] People" praises Houji for inventing both agriculture and sacrifices.
• Hou Tu "Lord Earth" was the god or goddess deity of the soil, and supposedly the progenitor of the giant Kua Fu. Worshipped at sheji altars.

In the earliest times... the people lived on fruit, berries, mussels, and clams – things that sometimes became so rank and fetid that they hurt people's stomachs, and many became sick. Then a sage appeared who created the boring of wood to produce fire so as to transform the rank and putrid foods. The people were so delighted by this that they made him ruler of the world and called him the Fire-Drill Man.

The ancients, in the midst of chaos, were tranquil together with the whole world. At that time, yin and yang were harmoniously still, ghosts and spirits caused no disturbances; the four seasons came in good time; the myriad things went unharmed; the host of living creatures escaped premature death. … This condition persisted until integrity deteriorated to the point that Torchman [Suiren] and Fuhsi arose to manage all under heaven, whereupon there was accord, but no longer unity. Integrity further declined until the Divine Farmer and the Yellow Emperor arose to manage all under heaven, whereupon there was repose, but no longer accord. Integrity declined still further until T'ang and Yu arose to manage all under heaven. They initiated the fashion of governing by transformation, whereby purity was diluted and simplicity dissipated.

Grains in Chinese agriculture and culture

Thus the people of the five regions … each had their several natures, which they could not be made to alter. Those of the east were called Yi; they wore their hair unbound and tattooed their bodies, and some of them ate their food without cooking it. [The people of] the south were called Man; they tattooed their foreheads and had their feet turned in toward each other, and some among them ate their food without cooking it. [The people of] the west were called Rong; they wore their hair unbound and wore skins, and some of them did not eat grain. [The people of] the north were called Di; they wore feathers and furs and lived in caves, and some of them did not eat grain.

The peasants depended entirely on agriculture and were forever tied to their land through all kinds of fiscal and administrative measures. As a result, the rural communities became an easy prey to all the ills of sedentary civilization: ever-higher taxes, enslavement to the government through corvée labor and military draft, epidemics, periodic shortages and famines, and wars and raids by non-Chinese tribes from across the borders.

Grain was, in short, a symbol and summation of culture itself, or rather of nature acculturated, as well as of the completely human community. A natural locus of nutritive "essence", grain nevertheless required cooperative, communal and differentiated stages of production—planting, tending, harvesting, storing, thrashing, milling, mixing, and cooking—to be transformed into food. Thus transformed, it was perhaps the most culturally celebrated food of humans and of gods.

Early textual references

Far away on Mount Kuyeh there dwells a spirit man whose skin is like congealed snow and who is gentle as a virgin. He does not eat any of the five grains, but inhales the wind and drinks the dew. He rides on the clouds, drives a flying dragon, and wanders beyond the four seas. His spirit is concentrated, saving things from corruption and bringing a bountiful harvest every year.

he five grains were planted within the palace in plots facing according to the color of each one. The seeds had been soaked in the marrow of the bones of cranes, tortoise-shell, rhinoceros, and jade, in all more than twenty constituents. One bushel of this grain cost one piece of gold. This was called Huang Ti's cereal method for becoming a holy immortal.

The vital essence of all things: it is this that brings them to life. It generates the five grains below and becomes the constellated stars above. When flowing amid the heavens and earth, we call it ghostly and numinous. When stored within the chests of human beings, we call them sages.

During the reign of Emperor Cheng of the Han, hunters in the Zhongnan Mountains saw a person who wore no clothes, his body covered with black hair. Upon seeing this person, the hunters wanted to pursue and capture him, but the person leapt over gullies and valleys as if in flight, and so could not be overtaken. The hunters then stealthily observed where the person dwelled, surrounded and captured him, whereupon they determined that the person was a woman. Upon questioning, she said, "I was originally a woman of the Qin palace. When I heard that invaders from the east had arrived, that the King of Qin would go out and surrender, and that the palace buildings would be burned, I fled in fright into the mountains. Famished, I was on the verge of dying by starvation when an old man taught me to eat the resin and nuts of pines. At first, they were bitter, but gradually I grew accustomed to them. They enabled me to feel neither hunger nor thirst; in winter I was not cold, in summer I was not hot." Calculation showed that the woman, having been a member of the Qin King Ziying's harem, must be more than two hundred years old in the present time of Emperor Cheng. The hunters took the woman back in. They offered her grain to eat. When she first smelled the stink of the grain, she vomited, and only after several days could she tolerate it. After little more than two years of this [diet], her body hair fell out; she turned old and died. Had she not been caught by men, she would have become a transcendent.

There are no instances of any one having obtained Tao, but there have been very long-lived persons. People remarking that those persons, while studying Tao and the art of immortality, become over a hundred years old without dying, call them immortals, as the following example will show. At the time of Han Wu Ti there lived a certain Li Shao Chün, who pretended that by sacrificing to the "Hearth" and [bigu] abstaining from eating grain he could ward off old age. He saw the emperor, who conferred high honours upon him.

The idea prevails that those who [bigu] abstain from eating grain are men well versed in the art of Tao. They say e.g. that Wang Tse Ch'iao and the like, because they did not touch grain, and lived on different food than ordinary people, had not the same length of life as ordinary people, in so far as having passed a hundred years, they transcended into another state of being, and became immortals. That is another mistake. Eating and drinking are natural impulses, with which we are endowed at birth. Hence, the upper part of the body has a mouth and teeth, the inferior part orifices. With the mouth and teeth one chews and eats, the orifices are for the discharge. Keeping in accord with one's nature, one follows the law of heaven, going against it, one violates one's natural propensities, and neglects one's natural spirit before heaven. How can one obtain long life in this way?

The votaries of Taoism studying the art of immortality abstain from eating cereals and take other food than other people with a view to purifying themselves. Ghosts and spirits, however, are still more ethereal than immortals, why then should they use the same food as man? One assumes that after death man loses his consciousness, and that his soul cannot become a spirit. But let us suppose that he did, then he would use different food, and using different food, he would not have to eat human food. Not eating human food, he would not ask us for it, and having nothing to ask at the hands of man, he could not give luck or mishap.

treats his body bitterly and harshly and goes deep into the mountains in search of hsien immortality, [if he] leaves behind his parents, casts aside his kindred, abstains from the five grains, gives up classical learning, thus running counter to what is cherished by Heaven and Earth in quest of the way of "no death," then he is in no way to communicate with this world or to prevent what is not right from happening.

Transcendent nobles differ from the vulgar in that they do not value glory, rank, or wealth. They value only "drawing sustenance from the mother"—that is, [from] their own bodies. In the interior of the body, the "mother" is the stomach, which governs the qi of the five viscera. Commoners eat grain, and when the grain is gone, they die. Transcendent nobles eat grain when they have it, and when they do not, they consume qi. The qi returns to the stomach, which is the layered sack of the bowels.

Therefore, by giving up starches one can become immune to weapons, exorcize demons, neutralize poisons, and cure illnesses. On entering a mountain, he can render savage beasts harmless. When he crosses streams, no harm will be done to him by dragons. There will be no fear when plague strikes; and when a crisis or difficulty suddenly arises, you will know how to cope with it.

By dispensing with starches a man can only stop spending money on grains, but by that alone he cannot attain Fullness of Life. When I inquired of people who had been doing without starches for a long time, they replied that they were in better health than when they were eating starches. When they took thistle and nibbled mercury and when they also took pills of brown hematite twice a day, this triple medication produced an increase in breaths, so that they gained the strength to carry loads on long trips, for their bodies became extremely light in weight. One such full treatment protected the patients' inner organs for five to ten years, but when they swallowed their breaths, took amulets, or drank brine, only loss of appetite resulted, and they did not have the strength for hard work. The Taoist writings may say that if one wishes Fullness of Life the intestines must be clean, and if immortality is desired the intestines must be without feces; but they also say that those eating greens will be good walkers, but at the same time stupid; that those eating meat will be very strong, and also brave. Those eating starches will be wise, but they will not live to an old age, while those eating breath will have gods and spirits within them that never die. This last, however, is only a biased claim advanced by the school that teaches the circulation of breaths. One has no right to claim to use this method exclusively. If you wish to take the great medicines of gold or cinnabar, they will act more quickly if you fast for the preceding hundred days or so. If you cannot fast that long, take them straightway; this will do no great harm, but it will take more time to acquire geniehood.

If you would not distress yourself, it is best not to dispense with starches but merely to regulate the diet, for which there are about a hundred methods. Sometimes, after a few dozen pills of interior-protecting medicines have been taken, it is claimed that appetite is lost for forty or fifty days. Refined pine and cypress as well as thistle can also protect the interior, but they are inferior to the great medicines, and last only ten years or less. At other times, fine foods are first prepared and consumed to utter satiation, and then medicines are taken to nurture the things that have been eaten, so that they may not be digested. This is claimed to remain valid for three years. If you then wish to revert to the eating of starches, it is necessary to start by swallowing mallows and lard, so that the fine food you prepared will pass from you undigested.

I have personally observed for two or three years men, who were foregoing starches, and in general their bodies were slight and their complexions good. They could withstand wind, cold, heat, or dampness, but there was not a fat one among them. I admit that I have not yet met any who had not eaten starches in several decades, but if some people cut off from starches for only a couple of weeks die while these others look as well as they do after years, why should we doubt that the fasting could be prolonged still further? If those cut off from starches grow progressively weaker to death, one would normally fear that such a diet simply cannot be prolonged, but inquiry of those pursuing this practice reveals that at first all of them notice a lessening of strength, but that later they gradually get stronger month by month and year by year. Thus, there is no impediment to the possibility of prolongation. All those who have found the divine process for attaining Fullness of Life succeeded by taking medicines and swallowing breath; on this they are all in perfect agreement. A moment of crisis, however, generally occurs at an early stage when medicines are being taken and starches abandoned and it is only after forty days of progressive weakening, as one uses only holy water and feeds solely on breath, that one regains strength.

"In a short time this man is going to starve to death." Then he had him locked up and guarded, and all that Shih Ch'un requested was two or three quarts of water for making holy water. It went on like this for more than a year, while his complexion became ever fresher and his strength remained normal. The emperor then asked him how much longer he could continue like this, and Shih Ch'un replied that there was no limit; possibly several dozen years, his only fear being that he might die of old age, but it would not be of hunger. The emperor then discontinued the experiment and sent him away. Note that Shih Ch'un's statement shows that giving up starches cannot protract one's years. Some today possess Shih Ch'un's method.

I have also frequently seen ignorant processors who, wishing to boast and amaze and acquire a reputation for not eating when they really knew nothing about such procedures, merely claimed not to eat gruel. Meanwhile, they would drink more than a gallon of wine daily, and dried meats, puddings, jujubes, chestnuts, or eggs were never out of their mouths. Sometimes they would eat large quantities of meat – several dozen pounds daily – swallowing its juices and spitting out anything that was unpleasant. This, however, is actually feasting. Wine drinkers will eat dried meats with their wine but not starches, and they can keep this up for six months to a year without stumbling or falling. Never yet, however, have they claimed that this was "cut off from starches!"

The Third Immortal King told the Emperor: In the old days I followed a dietetic regimen and attained immortality. My teacher made me increase the sweet spring in my mouth and swallow it in accordance with the following incantation: "The white stones, hard and rocky, are rolling on and on. The gushing spring, bubbling and pervasive, becomes a thick juice. Drink it and attain long life – Longevity forever longer!"
These twenty-two words—you should follow them! If you can actually do this and nourish on the True One without stopping, swallow from your flowery pond without interruption, then your inner energy will grow and remain strong, never to be weakened. You attain the Tao by avoiding all grains. You will never again have to follow the rhythm of the moon and plant or harvest. Now, the people of mysterious antiquity, they reached old age because they remained in leisure and never ate any grains. As the Dayou zhang says: "The five grains are chisels cutting life away, making the five organs stink and shorten our spans. Once entered into our stomach, there's no more chance to live quite long. To strive for complete avoidance of all death, keep your intestines free of excrement!"

One of the striking things about the texts we have reviewed is that most of them offer very little by way of an internalist critique of grains or other everyday foods. That is, they all recommend avoiding grains and offer what they tout as superior alternatives, but on the question of precisely why grains are such inferior nourishment they have little or nothing to say. What little internalist critique we do find comes quite late — apparently Eastern Han at the earliest — and does not seem well developed: ordinary foods, described as rotten and smelly, impurify a body that must be brought into qi-based resonance with heaven. This impurity is located specifically in the intestines. […] In most discussions, then, it is not that prescribers and practitioners of transcendence arts portrayed ordinary food as harmful; it is rather that they had what they considered superior alternatives to offer. [… But,] why these diets of qi or of rare herbs and minerals should be regarded as superior to one of ordinary food is a question that very often remains unanswered; we are merely, but repeatedly and in diverse ways, told that they are superior.

Daoist rejection of grain

The "cutting off" of grains, which were the basic staple food for the peasants, was also a rejection of their sedentary life and the peasant condition as such. This refusal should not solely be interpreted in the light of the miseries endured by farmers, but also in a much more fundamental way. Agriculture has occasioned, since Neolithic times, a radical break with the way of life that prevailed for almost the entire prehistory of humankind. Agriculture has also been the main culprit of the imbalances of human civilization over the last ten thousand years or so: the systematic destruction of the natural environment, overpopulation, capitalization, and other evils that result from sedentariness.

Nourishing the Vital Principle consists in suppressing the causes of death and creating in oneself the immortal body which will replace the mortal body. The causes of death are especially the Breath of Grains and the Breath of Bloody Food: hence the alimentary regimens which are designated by the generic name Abstinence from Grains. One must succeed in replacing vulgar food with the Food of the Breath, like an aerophagia which consists of breathing air in, holding it in as long as possible without allowing it to escape and, while it is held in, making it pass, in identical mouthfuls with great gulps of water, from the trachea into the esophagus, so that it can be sent on into the stomach like real food. The body is made of Breaths, like all things; but it is made of coarse breaths, whereas air is a light, subtle and pure Breath. Vulgar food, after digestion, supplies the body with the Breaths of the Five Flavors, common and impure Breaths which make it heavy. By contrast, Food of the Breath little by little replaces the coarse matter of the body with light, pure Breaths; and when the transformation is completed, the body is immortal.

This very severe diet was not without its painful moments. Without grains and meat, whoever practices it is undernourished; and the Taoist authors admit that at the beginning one may have numerous troubles, some of them general, others local. Nevertheless, they advise persevering, insisting that these disappear after several weeks and that the body soon feels as before, and even better: more calm and more at ease. They also advise practicing it only gradually, and they recommend a number of drugs for the period of transition and adaptation which, according to them, lasts thirty to forty days. The recipes for drugs to help in the practice of Abstention from Cereals are numerous: ginseng, cinnamon, pachyma cocos [i.e., Fu Ling], sesame, digitalis, licorice, and all the traditional Chinese tonics play a preponderant role in them.

The Three Corpses or Worms

It is also said that there are Three Corpses in our bodies, which, though not corporeal, actually are of a type with our inner, ethereal breaths, the powers, the ghosts, and the gods. They want us to die prematurely. Therefore, every fifty-seventh day of the sixty-day cycle they mount to heaven and personally report our misdeeds to the Director of Fates. Further, during the night of the last day of the month the hearth god also ascends to heaven and makes an oral report of a man's wrongs. For the more important misdeeds a whole period of three hundred days is deducted. For the minor ones they deduct one reckoning, a reckoning being three days. Personally, I have not yet been able to determine whether this is really so or not, but that is because the ways of heaven are obscure, and ghosts and gods are hard to understand.

• Qīnggǔ 青古 "Old Blue" dwells in the Muddy Pellet Palace within the Upper Dantian, "It is he who makes men blind, or deaf, or bald, who makes the teeth fall out, who stops up the nose and gives bad breath."
• Bái gū 白姑 "White Maiden" dwells in the Crimson Palace within the Middle Field, "She causes palpitations of the heart, asthma, and melancholy."
• Xuè shī 血尸 "Bloody Corpse" dwells in the Lower Dantian, "It is through him that the intestines are painfully twisted, that the bones are dried out, that the skin withers, that the limbs have rheumatisms..."

• The upper corpse, Péng jū 彭琚, lives in the head. Symptoms of its attack include a feeling of heaviness in the head, blurred vision, deafness, and excessive flow of tears and mucus.
• The middle corpse, Péng zàn 彭瓚, dwells in the heart and stomach. It attacks the heart, and makes its host crave sensual pleasures.
• The lower corpse, Péng jiǎo 彭矯, resides in the stomach and legs. It causes the Ocean of Pneuma … to leak, and makes its host lust after women.

Famine foods

It happened that, after the death of Emperor Ling, the world was in disorder. Since only Chiao-chou [a colonial district in the far south] remained relatively peaceful, otherworldly people from the north came en masse and settled there. Many of them practiced the methods of the spirit immortals, abstaining from grains to prolong life. These methods were popular then, but Mou-tzu unceasingly refuted them by employing the Five Classics, and none among the Taoist adepts or the Magicians dared engage him in debate.

Should you take to the mountains and forests during political troubles, you will avoid dying of starvation by observing the rule about starches. Otherwise, do not rush into this practice, for rushing cannot be very beneficial. If you dispense with meat while living among others, you will find it impossible not to desire it deep in your heart when you smell its fat or freshness.

Modern interpretations

One can advance positive explanations for this belief, and the practice that derives from it, if one thinks, for example, of the relative abundance of feces produced by cereals as compared to that produced by a diet of meat. The conclusion of recent studies on the harmful effect of excessive amounts of carbohydrates in the form of sugar and bread, have led some to see the Taoist abstinence from cereals as the result of an ancient empiricism in matters of diet.