Chen Zhixu陈致虚

Style & Daoist names

courtesy name Guanwu, sobriquet Shangyangzi

Period

Yuan

Dates

1290 — c. after 1368

School

Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) Daoism, Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir (Nanzong)

Role

Internal Alchemy MastersCommentator on Alchemical Scriptures

Birthplace

Luling (present-day Ji'an, Jiangxi)

Life

Chen Zhixu, style name Guanwu, sobriquet Shangyangzi, was a native of Luling, Jiangxi, and one of the great synthesizers of internal alchemy in the Yuan dynasty. At the age of forty (around 1329) he met Zhao Youqin (Yuandu zi), who transmitted alchemical methods to him; he claimed to have inherited both the Northern Lineage of Quanzhen and the Southern Lineage of Zhang Boduan, holding that "the way of the golden elixir is one, whether north or south," and explicitly proposed a genealogy in which the Southern and Northern Lineages of internal alchemy converged. He wrote the sixteen-chapter Jindan dayao (Great Essentials of the Golden Elixir), systematically discussing essence, breath and spirit, the cauldron and furnace and their ingredients, and fire phasing, while also drawing on theories of dual (yin-yang) cultivation; he further wrote commentaries on the Zhouyi cantong qi, the Wuzhen pian, and the Duren jing, and had many disciples. Chen Zhixu took the dual cultivation of nature and life as his central teaching while emphasizing lineage transmission and oral instruction, and was one of the most influential writers on alchemy in the Yuan and Ming. His date of death is unknown; he was still alive in the early Ming.

Contributions & Influence

• Wrote the Jindan dayao, a systematic summation of Yuan-dynasty internal alchemy
• Established a genealogy of alchemy in which the Southern and Northern Lineages converged
• Wrote commentaries on the Cantong qi and the Wuzhen pian, advancing the canonization of alchemical scriptures

Works

• Great Essentials of the Golden Elixir
• Commentary on the Zhouyi Cantong Qi Divided into Chapters (Fenzhang Zhu)
• Three Commentaries on the Wuzhen Pian (jointly with Xue Daoguang and Lu Shu)
• Commentary on the Wondrous Scripture of the Upper Chapters on Limitless Salvation (Duren jing)
• Commentary on the Most High Cavern Mystery Lingbao Wondrous Scripture of the Upper Chapters on Limitless Salvation