The “Stele Inscription for the Altar at the Old Lodge of Senior Administrator Xu” (Xu changshi jiuguan tan bei 許長史舊館壇碑, hereafter “Xu Mi Stele”) is a record of Tao Hongjing’s 陶弘景 (456–536) largest construction project, the Scarlet Solarity Lodge (Zhuyang guan 朱陽館). Written in 519 CE, the “Xu Mi Stele” contains a short passage describing a reliquary stupa Tao built. This short passage is known to historians as the only extant text in which Tao mentions his Buddhist program at Mount Mao. The rest of the inscription, which includes a history of this sacred site and a long ritual hymn, remains largely unstudied and unknown.

One key theme of the inscription is the idea that the sacred mountains can be a locus for profound spiritual transformation. More specifically, the Scarlet Solarity Lodge, built at a site where Mount Mao’s earlier patriarchs once practiced, made liberation from the human world not only possible, but seemingly effortless. The poet describes an individual whose mind had become “cleansed” (qing 清) and underwent a “true awakening” (zhengjue 正覺). This, in turn, produced a supernatural state of consciousness whereby the subject of the hymn flew throughout the cosmos and brushed past rainbows:

Since this poem lacks pronouns and other grammatical markers, the identity of the individual experiencing this transformation is not clear.