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Liber XXXI · Taoism & Chinese Religion

Liber XXXI · Taoism & Chinese Religion · Chapter V: Immortality & Inner Alchemy

The Three Corpses: Sanshi, the Gengshen Vigil and Kōshin

The Three Corpses (sanshi) of Taoist belief: body spirits that report sins to heaven, the Gengshen all-night vigil, Liu Zongyuan and Japan's Kōshin cult.

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The Three Corpses (sanshi), also called the Three Worms (sanchong), are spirits that Taoist tradition believed to live inside every human body, hoping for their host's early death. On each gengshen day of the sixty-day cycle they were said to slip out during sleep and report the person's sins to heaven, which shortened his or her life accordingly. The belief inspired dietary and medical efforts to expel them and the custom of staying awake all night on gengshen, which spread to Japan as the Kōshin cult.

Who Are the Three Corpses?§

In Chinese religious thought the body was a populated landscape, home to gods, spirits and energies. Most of these were benign, but the Three Corpses were the body's enemies within. They were thought to be present from birth, and their interest ran directly against their host's: when the person died, they would be released to wander, enjoy the offerings made to the dead and act as free ghosts. They therefore did everything they could to hasten death, by stirring up harmful desires and by denouncing the person to the heavenly authorities.

Later Taoist texts, especially of the Tang dynasty, gave them names and places. The upper corpse, Peng Ju, lived in the head and was blamed for desire for wealth and fine things and for ailments of the head and eyes; the middle corpse, Peng Zhi, lived in the chest or belly and fostered greed for food and drink; the lower corpse, Peng Jiao, lived in the lower body and stirred up sexual desire. Illustrations in the Taoist canon show them as strange human or animal figures. The scheme overlapped with the medical idea of the "nine worms", parasites that cause disease, and many texts discuss the two together.

The Three Corpses belong to the same moral universe as the Stove God, who was also believed to report on a household's conduct to heaven, and to the celestial bureaucracy that kept records of every person's deeds and allotted lifespan.

Ge Hong and the Director of Destinies§

The earliest systematic account comes from Ge Hong (283–343), in the chapter of the Baopuzi called "Subtle Points" (Weizhi). Citing older books, he explains that the Three Corpses, having no bodies of their own, want their host to die soon. On every gengshen day they ascend to heaven and report the person's misdeeds to the Director of Destinies (Siming). At the end of each month the Stove God does the same. Heaven then subtracts from the person's allotted life: a large offence costs a ji, reckoned as three hundred days, and a small one a suan, three days.

Gengshen is the fifty-seventh pair in the sexagenary cycle of ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches, the cycle used to count days and years in China and still printed in the Tong Shu almanac. Because the cycle repeats every sixty days, gengshen falls about six times a year. Shen is also the branch of the monkey among the zodiac animals of Chinese astrology, a fact that would matter in Japan.

Ge Hong's account shows how the quest for immortality was bound up with morality. He insisted that long life required good deeds as well as techniques, since sins recorded in heaven would cancel the benefits of any elixir or exercise.

Expelling the Worms: Diet, Drugs and Vigils in History§

Taoist literature describes three historical approaches to the Three Corpses. These are recorded here as history; several of them involved real risks to health.

Avoiding grains§

Because the corpses were believed to feed on cereals, some adepts practised bigu, "avoiding grains", replacing ordinary staples with other foods. Scholars such as Robert Campany and Stephen Eskildsen have studied the practice in early medieval sources. Modern readers should note that the extreme forms of food restriction described in some texts are dangerous and are of historical interest only.

Herbal and mineral drugs§

Recipes to kill the worms appear in Taoist and medical collections. Some used plant ingredients that also appear in Chinese medicine as remedies for intestinal parasites; others, in the alchemical tradition, used mineral compounds, including mercury and arsenic preparations that are toxic, as the history of Chinese alchemy makes clear.

Moral and meditative methods§

Many texts taught that the surest defence was a pure life: if there was nothing to report, the corpses could do no harm. Visualisation practices, particularly in the Shangqing tradition, invoked protective body gods to guard the gates through which the corpses might escape.

Keeping Gengshen: The All-Night Vigil in Tang China§

The most widespread response was simple: to stay awake. If the corpses could leave only while their host slept, a person who kept watch through the night of gengshen would prevent their ascent. This practice, called "guarding gengshen" (shou gengshen), is attested from the early medieval period and became popular in the Tang dynasty (618–907), among Taoists, Buddhists and laypeople alike. Texts promised that three consecutive vigils would subdue the corpses and seven would destroy them for good.

The vigil could be solemn, with recitation of scriptures and incense, or sociable, with friends gathering to talk and play games through the night. The Tang writer Liu Zongyuan (773–819) mocked the belief in an essay, "Scolding the Corpse Worms", in which he declared that heaven would never listen to such petty informers. His satire shows how familiar the custom had become.

Later morality books, such as the twelfth-century Treatise of the Most High on Action and Response, repeated that the corpses report sins on gengshen, making the belief part of popular ethics throughout late imperial China.

Kōshin in Japan: Waiting Parties, Stone Markers and the Three Monkeys§

The gengshen vigil reached Japan, probably through Chinese and Korean Buddhist and calendrical learning, and is recorded at the Heian court by the ninth and tenth centuries. In Japanese, gengshen is read kōshin, and the all-night watch was called Kōshin-machi, "waiting for Kōshin". Courtiers spent the night composing poetry, playing music and holding games. The specialists of Onmyōdō, Japan's yin-yang tradition, helped to keep the calendar of such observances.

From the Muromachi period and especially in the Edo period (1603–1868), Kōshin became a village and urban institution. Local associations (Kōshin-kō) met every sixtieth day to keep the vigil, with prayers to the deity Shōmen Kongō, a blue-faced Buddhist guardian, and shared meals. After completing a series of vigils, they often erected a stone marker, the Kōshin-tō, many thousands of which still stand at roadsides across Japan.

Because shin corresponds to the monkey, Kōshin markers frequently bear three monkeys covering their eyes, ears and mouth, "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil", which were read as a refusal to give the inner spies anything to report. The most famous carving of the three monkeys, at the Tōshō-gū shrine at Nikkō (seventeenth century), is part of this wider symbolism. Kōshin observance declined in the modern period, when the Meiji government discouraged many folk practices, but it survives in places as local custom.

Meaning of the Three Corpses: Morality, Medicine and the Inner Adversary§

Historians read the Three Corpses in several ways. As Livia Kohn and others have shown, they expressed a sense of the self as divided: inner forces that desire what is bad for us were imagined as hostile beings with their own agenda. They also gave concrete form to the idea that every action is observed and recorded, a powerful support of popular morality.

The belief linked Taoist cultivation to medicine, where intestinal parasites were a real affliction, and to the calendar, which marked the dangerous nights. Later internal alchemy tended to interpret the corpses symbolically, as the passions and distracting thoughts that the adept must overcome, rather than as literal beings. In this the Three Corpses resemble other personifications of inner obstacles in the world's religions, from the demons of the Desert Fathers to Mara in Buddhism.

Frequently asked questions§

What are the Three Corpses in Taoism?§

They are three spirits or worms believed to live in the human body and to want their host's death. On gengshen days they were said to ascend to heaven and report the person's sins, causing the heavenly authorities to shorten his or her life.

What is the Gengshen vigil?§

It is the custom of staying awake all night on gengshen, the fifty-seventh day of the sixty-day cycle, so that the Three Corpses cannot leave the sleeping body to make their report. It was popular in Tang China and later in Japan as Kōshin-machi.

Are the three wise monkeys connected with the Three Corpses?§

In Japan, yes. Because the day kōshin is linked with the monkey, the three monkeys who see, hear and speak no evil became an emblem of the Kōshin cult and appear on many of its stone markers.

Did Taoists really fast to starve the corpses?§

Some medieval texts describe grain avoidance for this purpose, alongside other longevity practices. These accounts are historical; extreme dietary restriction is dangerous, and the texts are studied today as evidence of religious beliefs about the body.

Sources and further reading§