In Chengdu, 1,370 li to the northeast, stands Yuntai Mountain, a famed Taoist sanctuary. Its peaks are cloaked in verdant pines and cypresses, sheltering a magnificent Taoist temple. White cranes and mystical monkeys roam the cliffs and ravines, while the ascetics there, with their immortal bearing and youthful faces, inspire deep reverence among Taoist devotees throughout the Ba-Shu region.
According to Daoist texts, Zhang Daoling, revered as the Celestial Master of Orthodox Unity, once led 370 disciples to Mount Yuntai for cultivation. After two years of training under the Celestial Master, all of them attained immortality and ascended to the heavenly palace.
Soon after, Celestial Master Zhang, seeing the temple lacked a caretaker, appointed his disciple Zhang Shen as the abbot of Yuntai Temple to oversee its incense offerings. So Zhang Shen arrived at the temple on Mount Yuntai, dressed in full Daoist robes, looking every bit like an immortal.
Under Zhang Shen's stewardship, the Yuntai Taoist Temple grew increasingly prosperous. Soon, people noticed he possessed a magical wine pot; when he chanted an incantation, the pot would reveal scenes of sun, moon, stars, blue skies, vast lands, towering mountains, flowers, trees, pavilions, and towers. Even more astonishing, at night Zhang Shen would place the pot on the ground, recite the spell, and then crawl inside to sleep, fully enjoying the immortal realm within. He called this inner world "Pot Heaven," and from then on, people referred to Zhang Shen as Master Pot.
Confucius once had a student named Shi Cun, who later abandoned Confucianism to pursue Daoism, seeking to become an immortal through alchemy. He first tried refining elixirs, but his skills were shallow, and after consuming the pills, he only learned minor spells for invisibility and transformation. Hearing that on Yuntai Mountain lived the immortal Master Hu, sent by Celestial Master Zhang, Shi Cun traveled thousands of miles to study under him. Moved by his sincerity, Master Hu accepted him as a disciple. Shi Cun devoted himself to rigorous cultivation, and legend says he eventually became an immortal himself.
Later, the idiom "A World Within a Gourd" came to refer to the immortal realm in Daoist teachings, or to describe a state of transcendence beyond worldly concerns.
Source: *Yun Ji Qi Qian*, Chapter "Twenty-Eight Residences"
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "壶中天地" came to describe a state of transcendence beyond worldly concerns.