Chen Yingning陈撄宁

Style & Daoist names

originally named Zhixiang, also Yuanshan, courtesy name Zixiu, styled Yingningzi, also Yuandunzi

Period

Republican Era–Present

Dates

1880 — 1969

Role

Advocate of Immortality Studies (Xianxue)Daoist ScholarsPresident of the China Taoist Association

Birthplace

Huaining (present-day Anqing, Anhui)

Places of activity

White Cloud Temple (Baiyun Guan), Beijing

Life

Chen Yingning, a native of Huaining, Anhui, was the most important Daoist reformer and advocate of Xianxue (Immortality Studies) in modern times. As a youth he studied Confucian medicine, and turned to the study of the Dao owing to illness; after 1912 he read extensively through the Daozang at the White Cloud Temple in Shanghai, and in the 1930s edited the Yangshan Banyuekan (Fortnightly for Promoting Goodness) and the Xiandao Yuebao (Monthly of the Immortal Way) in Shanghai, putting forward the concept of "Xianxue," which held that the study of immortality cultivation should be made independent of religion and studied with a scientific attitude toward the nourishing of life and Neidan; he advocated "saving the nation through Xianxue," with an influence that spread both at home and abroad. He edited and annotated alchemical texts such as the Zhouyi cantong qi, the Wuzhen pian, the Huangting jing, and Sun Bu'er's Poems on Female Alchemy with Annotations, and placed great emphasis on female alchemy and quiet cultivation. After 1949 he served as a member of the Zhejiang Provincial Research Institute of Culture and History; in 1957 he took part in founding the Chinese Taoist Association, serving as vice-president and secretary-general, and became president in 1961; he founded advanced courses in Daoist knowledge and edited the Bulletin of the Chinese Taoist Association, and in his later years wrote Daoism and the Nourishing of Life. He was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, and died in Beijing in 1969. Chen Yingning has been called "the Supreme Venerable Sovereign of our age," and is the central figure in Daoism's twentieth-century transition from tradition to modernity.

Contributions & Influence

• Advocated Xianxue, promoting the modernization and secularization of Neidan life-nourishing studies
• Annotated alchemical texts and organized the literature on female alchemy and quiet cultivation
• Took part in founding the Chinese Taoist Association and served as its president, training a new generation of Daoist clergy
• Edited the Yangshan Banyuekan and the Xiandao Yuebao, forming a Republican-era community of Xianxue scholars

Works

• Daoism and the Nourishment of Life
• Essentials for Achieving the Study of Immortality (Chen Yingning)
• Sun Bu'er nüdan shizhu (孙不二女丹诗注, Commentary on Sun Bu'er's Poems on Female Alchemy)
• Cantong qi jiangyi (参同契讲义, Lectures on the Cantong Qi)
• Vernacular Commentary on the Song of the Great Dao from the Numinous Source
• Jinggong liaoyang fa (静功疗养法, Quiet-Sitting Methods for Convalescence)
• Koujue gouxuan lu (口诀钩玄录, Record of Hooking Out the Mystery from Oral Instructions)