Lady Meng and the Pool of Oblivion
The goddess who whispers, "Forget..."
Lady Meng, also known as Meng Po (whose name means “Dream”), is a significant figure in Chinese Buddhist folklore. She is associated with the realm of the afterlife and she oversees the “Pool of Forgetfulness” or “Pool of Oblivion” in Diyu, the realm of the dead.
After a person dies, their soul undergoes a process of reincarnation, but before being reborn, they must accept a drink from Lady Meng. Her mystical potion makes them lose all memories of their previous lives, which ensures they are reborn with a clean slate.
The only thing a soul carries from one incarnation to the next is its karma, like spiritual metadata.
Lady Meng is usually depicted as a compassionate figure, assisting souls in the transition between death and rebirth. Devotees may seek her assistance through prayers or rituals to ensure a smooth and favorable journey to the next life.
No Time to Forget
For those of us still very much embedded in our current incarnation, there is almost no greater fear than forgetting. The missed connection, the unset alarm, the panicked realization, to late, that we have neglected our obligations, or worse, let our loved ones down.
We live in a constant state of anxious attachment to the gears of the clocks that rule our lives, the morning rituals, the work calendars and class schedules daisy-chained with appointments, meetings and tasks, milestones and deadlines.
We strive to be on time, to be thoughtful and remember birthdays, anniversaries, bill payments, setting dates and reminders to connect with friends and family, subscribing to apps and services that promise to keep us aligned. Counting reps and calories, tracking sleep and recording dreams in the hopes of achieving the most elevated possible state of health and happiness.
Stealing Time
The most terrifying diseases of old age are those that take our memories, erasing our lives long before their physical culmination, the cruelest affront to everything we strive for through a lifetime of attention and repetition. Forgetting is a fate worse than death.
And there sits Lady Meng at the end of it all, dipping her ladle in the Potion of Oblivion, saying, now is the time to let go. And we drink, like the caterpillar driven by instinct to weave its cocoon, a tomb of its own making, from which it will emerge a totally different creature.
It’s almost incomprehensible what happens inside that cocoon; the transformation of fibers and cells into a liminal state that bears no resemblance to its previous form. It’s not that the caterpillar grows wings. It is that everything that was caterpillar breaks down into a kind of goo, then reconstitutes as a butterfly. Total transformation.
Who knows if the butterfly “remembers” its previous life. Perhaps it’s better to forget.
Midnight Butterflies
If you’re going to be in Vancouver on April 17, you can see me and my posse of butterflies opening the Garden of Delights show, a night of magical performance and transformation. Doors open at 7 pm, show starts at 8.
