a temple in the neighbourhood, and there he found a recluse apparently very old with white hair, but young in countenance like a child.  The man was sitting absorbed in Meditation.  There was something extremely calm and serene in that old man’s look and bearing that attracted the young scholar’s attention.  Questioning him as to his name, age, and birthplace, Wang found that the venerable man had enjoyed a life so extraordinarily long that he forgot his name and age, but that he had youthful energy so abundantly that be could talk with a voice sounding as a large bell.  Being asked by Wang the secret of longevity, the man replied:  “There is no secret in it; I merely kept my mind calm and peaceful.”  Further, he explained the method of Meditation according to Taoism and Buddhism.  Thereupon Wang sat face to face with the old man and began to practise Meditation, utterly forgetful of his bride and nuptial ceremony.  The sun began to cast his slanting rays on the wall of the temple, and they sat motionless; twilight came over them, and night wrapped them with her sable shroud, and they sat as still as two marble statues; midnight, dawn, at last the morning sun rose to find them still in their reverie.  The father of the bride, who had started a search during the night, found to his surprise the bridegroom absorbed in Meditation on the following day.[FN#265]

[FN#265] O-yo-mei-shutsu-shin-sei-ran-roku.

It was at the age of forty-seven that Wang gained a great victory over the rebel army, and wrote to a friend saying:  “It is so easy to gain a victory over the rebels fortifying themselves among the mountains, yet it is not so with those rebels living in our mind."[FN#266] Tsai Kiun Mu (Sai-kun-bo) is said to have had an exceedingly long and beautiful beard, and when asked by the Emperor, who received him in audience, whether he should sleep with his beard on the comforters or beneath them, be could not answer, since he had never known how he did.  Being distracted by this question, he went home and tried to find out how he had been used to manage his beard in bed.  First he put his beard on the comforters and vainly tried to sleep; then he put it beneath the comforters and thought it all right.  Nevertheless, he was all the more disturbed by it.  So then, putting on the comforters, now putting it beneath them, he tried to sleep all night long, but in vain.  You must therefore forget your mental beard that annoys you all the time.

[FN#266] Ibid.

Men of longevity never carried troubles to their beds.  It is a well-known fact that Zui-o (Shi-ga)[FN#267] enjoyed robust health at the age of over one hundred years.  One day, being asked whether there is any secret of longevity, he replied affirmatively, and said to the questioner:  “Keep your mind and body pure for two weeks, abstaining from any sort of impurity, then I shall tell you of the secret.”  The man did as was prescribed, and came again to be instructed in the secret.