Meng Po- Chinese GodDeity"Goddess of Forgetfulness"

The Tea of Forgetfulness

Meng Po dwells on Naihe Bridge in Diyu, the Chinese underworld, where every soul must pass on its way to reincarnation. She is an old woman, Grandmother Meng, and she offers each soul a bowl of tea. The tea erases everything: the name the soul carried, the face it wore, the people it loved, the pain it suffered, the judgment it just received from the Yama Kings. One drink, and the soul crosses to the far shore as a blank slate, ready for a new body and a new life with no memory of what came before.

Naihe Bridge

Meng Po's station places her at the last threshold. Naihe means "helpless" or "no recourse," the point of no return. Souls who reach her bridge have already been judged by the ten Yama Kings of Diyu's courts. The judgment is over; what remains is the crossing.

The bridge spans a river said to be filled with the tears of the living, those who mourned the dead too deeply, whose grief pooled into the waters below. Souls crossing may look down and glimpse reflected faces of the people who loved them, one final reminder of what they are about to forget. Then Meng Po offers the bowl. Some folk traditions describe souls who resist or evade the tea, carrying fragments of past-life memory into their next existence. But most drink. Most forget. And the cycle continues.