What does Meng Po Tang mean?

What does Meng Po Tang mean? Speaking of Meng Po, most people should have heard the legend about her. According to fairy tales, people will cross the Naihe Bridge after death and be reborn again, but this is a fairy tale, not a fact. What does it mean to share Meng Po Tang?

What does Meng Po Tang mean? 1 Meng Po Tang is a kind of tea soup in China folklore, which can forget all your troubles, all your love and hate. According to legend, Meng Po Tang is a mixture of ghosts and people and herbs collected from the secular world. On the other hand, people's tears are collected and tortured into soup.

Legend has it that the practice of Meng Po Tang is to first send ghosts who have been sentenced to various places in the Ten Halls, and then add herbs collected from the secular world to make a soup similar to wine, which is divided into five flavors: sweet, bitter, pungent, sour and salty.

All ghosts who are going to be reborn have to drink Meng Po's ecstasy soup. If a sly ghost refuses to drink, a hook knife will trip his foot at once, and a sharp copper pipe will pierce his throat and force him to swallow it. No ghost can be spared.

To put it another way, I quote Meng Po-tang's eight tears: one raw tear, two old tears, three bitter tears, four cups of regret tears, five inches of lovesickness tears, six drops of illness tears and seven feet of parting tears. This eighth taste is a sad tear for Meng Po. Meng Po's soup is made by eight tears, so it takes a lifetime to make a good soup.

What does Meng Po Tang mean? China people like to say that after drinking Meng Po Tang, everything will be forgotten, including all the troubles and pains, all the cares, all the love and hate. Therefore, the English name of Meng Po Tang is FiveTea of forgetfulness. It is said that Meng Po Tang is a liquid that people must drink before crossing Naihe Bridge on their way to the underworld after death. When you leave this world for another place, it is in Meng Po's hand, in front of Naihe Bridge. Life is alive, no matter how hard it is, this bowl is a relief and a complete end to previous lives.

There is a Naihe Bridge on Huang Quan Road, beside the forgotten river. There are countless legends about Naiheqiao Mengpo Decoction, including beautiful love stories and serial evil spirits. China ancient folk and Taoism have specific descriptions about it. There are rumors about it at the national highway teaching point. It is said that ghosts in the underworld can forget the world of mortals and the memories of past lives as long as they board Naihe Bridge and drink Meng Po soup cooked by Meng Po himself, and then they can go back to life. In folk rumors, there have been several versions of the name of this bridge.

Legend has it that there is a Meng Po beside Naihe Bridge, which specially scoops Meng Po soup for passing ghosts. Once she drinks her soup, she can forget the past and all the promises and agreements in her previous life. In many legends, Meng Po is often portrayed as an old woman with a wrinkled face, silently cooking Meng Po soup by the bridge. As long as a ghost passes by, kindly advise her to drink a bowl of Meng Po soup and let her die.

In other rumors, Meng Po was described as a beautiful young woman. There is a Meng Po village next to Naihe Bridge. Under the guidance of Meng Po, several beautiful young women raised their hands to make tea. This tea is really refreshing, tempting these ghosts who are still immersed in the world of mortals to drink it, but once they drink it, they only see a layer of sludge left at the bottom of the bowl. Looking up again, everything just now was in ruins, and the woman next to it was just a few skeletons. Then he was pushed behind in a trance, and thus he entered the road of death, blank, and then became a baby, born and reincarnated.

What does Meng Po Tang mean? According to legend, after death, people will pass through a village in Meng Po on their way to reincarnation. There is an old woman sitting in Zhuangzi. She will pass a bowl of soup to the dying soul. After drinking this bowl of soup, all grievances and memories of people's past lives will disappear, and people's souls will become pure and flawless. After that, they will get a chance to be born again.

There are many records about Meng Po Tang, such as Past Dynasties (Wang Yiqing in Qing Dynasty), Biography of the Origin of Guanyin Bodhisattva in Nanhai (Zhu in Ming Dynasty) and Heheduo (Shen Qifeng in Qing Dynasty). Speaking of Meng Po Tang, we have to talk about Meng Po Tang first:

This old woman lives in Meng Po Pavilion near Naihe Bridge underground, and her duty is to extradite ghosts who are about to be reincarnated as adults, so that they can forget the past and what they saw and heard underground.

The old woman often collects colorful herbs in underground ponds and rivers. Then, she put these herbs into a big pot and made a cool Meng Po soup. Ghosts only need to drink the soup in the bowl and lose their memory immediately, and so do the rules of the underworld. If they want to cross the bridge and turn over a new leaf, they need a bowl of soup.

According to folk rumors, Meng Po, a native of the Western Han Dynasty, was proficient in Confucianism since childhood and came into contact with a lot of Buddhism and Taoism when he grew up. When Meng Po was alive, he never looked back or looked forward to the future. He just advised others not to commit crimes. The old woman was a virgin until she was eighty-one. Because she didn't know her name, she only knew her surname was Meng, so people around her called her Meng Po.

Later, the old man hid in the mountains and devoted himself to practice, until the later Han Dynasty died. After Meng Po's death, he was named Liu, who was in charge of losing Taiwan.

There is also a legend that when the HarmonyOS system was first opened, the world was divided into three areas: heaven and earth, and heaven was in charge of everything. This world is the so-called Yang world, and the earth is the underworld. The boundary of the three realms, whether in heaven or in the earth, the immortal and the yin official, each performs their duties. Meng Po was already on earth when he left the Three Realms. She used to be a scattered official in heaven.

Later, seeing countless grievances and enmities in the world, he refused to let go even if he died. He came to the Forgotten River in the underworld, set up a cauldron at the bridgehead of Naihe Bridge, and refined the lingering thoughts of the world into Meng Po soup for the ghosts to drink, thus forgetting the love and hate before his death, unloading the burden before his death and entering the next reincarnation. This statement first appeared in Taoist classics in the Spring and Autumn Period. In China's traditional thought, it means "people die like clouds", "die once" and "don't remember the kindness of the dead".

The imagination of ordinary people is very rich. In the Qing Dynasty, some scholars described in detail the encounter with Meng Po in the underground palace: when the spirits passed through Meng Po Village, an old woman took away all the lost ghosts, and a group of ghosts set foot on the steps and entered Meng Po Village, which was beautifully decorated and elegantly furnished. When Meng Po saw the ghost, he called out three young girls to tease the ghost. They wiped the dust off the table with their hands and put a stool for the ghost to sit down.

Then, the ladies-in-waiting brought tea and served tea to the dead with sandy jade hands. Who doesn't want to drink this cup of tea on such a fragrant occasion? The dead took the tea and drank it at once, feeling completely transparent and very cool. As soon as I drink this cup of tea, ghosts will look up again, and the whole beautifully decorated Meng Po Villa will be turned into rotten wood ruins, and all the beautiful young girls in Meng Po will be turned into skeletons, as if they had come to the wilderness.

This scene was so horrible that the deceased suddenly found himself unable to recall the past.

So, why bother to let these dead people drink this soup? There are several reasons:

First, it is to make the process of soul reincarnation smoother, so that countless undead can be reincarnated into this world to live again. If they still carry all kinds of memories of past lives, it will be very bad and the world will be in chaos.

Second, let the dead turn over a new leaf like a blank sheet of paper. The good and evil in the last life will not affect what they have done in this life.

Thirdly, Meng Po Tang has a "psychedelic" effect, which is recorded in novels of the Ming Dynasty. After the ghost was escorted to the nether world by the ghost, he drank Meng Po's soup, and the undead suddenly got drunk and told all the evil things he had done before his death.

Speaking of which, some people may ask. Yan is the highest interrogator in the underworld. They will investigate the actions of the dead in detail, and they will have magical insight into the past events of ghosts. So, why let the soul drink Meng Po Tang?

I think it's because there are so many undead waiting for extradition in hell. If everyone wants to go through the process in front of the king of hell, they will kill these interrogators. Because of this magical decoction, in the end, the steps of soul trial are simplified, the work efficiency of the underworld is greatly optimized, and Yan sitting on the high hall can rest.

In the novels of the Ming Dynasty that we talked about before, no matter how bad the evil spirits are, they will be thirsty in the underworld. A bowl of cold Meng Po soup can be swallowed without any torture or special trial. The undead will definitely tell their living behavior in detail. Meng Po recorded these dictation one by one, wrote down a confession, and then sent it to Yamaraja of Shidian for examination and approval.

As can be seen from here, this bowl of soup is simply the best polygraph.

There is also a legend that Meng Po is actually not an old woman, but a peerless beauty. The reason why Meng Po first made Meng Po Tang was to forget his past. Meng Po's only memory is to send a bowl of Meng Po soup to ghosts coming and going on Naihe Bridge.

Mengpo decoction has different effects in the stomachs of different souls. Good people who drink this bowl of soup will be reincarnated into a healthy body and their minds will be smart. Bad people are reincarnated as sick, confused and with low IQ. Some villains will even entrust their lives to livestock, and the most serious will stay in the underworld and be punished forever.

No matter whether you are rich or poor before your death, even if you are a high-ranking courtier, a piece of skin will eventually cool and rot after your death, and only good and evil before your death can take it away. The biggest function of Mengpo Decoction is to give people a chance to turn over a new leaf. As long as you behave well in the afterlife, you will still reap a happy life.