Guo Shouzhen郭守真

Style & Daoist names

Personal name Shouzhen, Sobriquet Jingyangzi, Perfected Ziyang (posthumous honorific title)

Period

Late Ming–Qing

Dates

1606 — 1690 (some say 1713)

School

Longmen (Dragon Gate) Lineage of Quanzhen, Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) Daoism

Role

Quanzhen Daoist PriestFounding PatriarchAbbot of a public monastery

Birthplace

Danyang, Nanjing (present-day Danyang, Jiangsu)

Places of activity

Taiqing Palace, Shenyang

Life

Guo Shouzhen, styled Jingyangzi, was a native of Danyang, Jiangsu, and the founder of Daoism in Liaodong in the early Qing. Fleeing unrest at the end of the Ming, he traveled north and lived in seclusion for many years, cultivating in the Babao Yunguang Cave at Tiecha Mountain, Benxi, in Liaodong. Finding his practice unsatisfying, he traveled south in the early Qing to seek the Dao further, became a disciple of the Longmen master Li Changming, and thereby became the eighth-generation transmitter of the Longmen Lineage of Quanzhen; during the Shunzhi era he received the ‘Three Altars of Great Precepts’ presided over by Wang Changyue at the White Cloud Temple, Beijing. In the second year of the Kangxi era (1663), when the Shengjing region suffered a great drought, the general Ukuri invited Guo Shouzhen to set up an altar to pray for rain, which was answered; the general accordingly donated land for the building of a ‘Hall of the Three Teachings’ in the northwest of Shengjing city, the predecessor of today's Taiqing Palace, Shenyang (destroyed by flood during the Qianlong era and renamed after reconstruction). Guo Shouzhen opened an altar here and took disciples, accepting eight students from Shandong, Zhili and Manchuria, who each founded branches descending from Patriarch Guo, enabling the Longmen Lineage of Quanzhen to take root in the Northeast and forming a network of Liaodong Daoism centered on Taiqing Palace in Shenyang, Tiecha Mountain in Benxi, and Wuliang Temple on Mount Qian. He is venerated as the founding patriarch of Quanzhen Daoism in the Northeast, and the generation-name poem of his lineage is still used in the temples of the Northeast today.

Contributions & Influence

• Founded the Longmen Lineage of Quanzhen transmission in Liaodong and is venerated as the founding patriarch of Daoism in the Northeast
• Built the Hall of the Three Teachings (today's Taiqing Palace, Shenyang) in the second year of the Kangxi era, which became a center of Daoism in the Northeast
• Trained eight major disciples, establishing the generation-name genealogy of the Northeastern branches of the Longmen Lineage
• Promoted the rise of Northeastern Daoist sacred sites such as Tiecha Mountain and Mount Qian

Legends

The account of his prayer for rain being immediately answered, leading to the land granted for the temple, appears in temple stele inscriptions and local gazetteers and is a religiously colored narrative; the claim that he lived to the age of 108 varies between sources and should be treated with caution.