Liu Yiming刘一明

Style & Daoist names

sobriquets Wuyuanzi and Supu Sanren (Simple and Plain Recluse), Recluse in Coarse Cloth

Period

Qing

Dates

1734 — 1821

School

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

Role

Internal Alchemy MastersCommentator on Alchemical Scriptureseleventh generation of the Longmen lineage

Birthplace

Quwo (present-day Quwo, Shanxi)

Life

Liu Yiming, sobriquet Wuyuanzi, was a native of Quwo in Shanxi, an eleventh-generation figure of the Quanzhen Longmen Lineage in the Qing and a celebrated theorist of internal alchemy. As a young man, illness led him to seek out the Dao, and he studied successively under the Old Man of Kangu and the Elder of Xianliu, later residing for forty years at Mount Qiyun (also called Xinglong Shan) in Yuzhong, Gansu, where he cultivated the Dao, wrote, restored temples, and practiced medicine for the needy. He annotated alchemical scriptures extensively, writing more than thirty works — including Elucidating the Truth of the Book of Changes, the Cantong Qi Zhizhi (参同契直指, Direct Pointers to the Cantong Qi), Direct Pointers to Awakening to Reality, the Xiuzhen Jiuyao (修真九要, Nine Essentials for Cultivating Perfection), the Xiyou Yuanzhi (西游原旨, The Original Intent of Journey to the West), the Xiangyan Poyi (象言破疑, Dispelling Doubts about Symbolic Language), and the Tongguan Wen (通关文, Text for Passing Through the Barrier) — combined into the Twelve Daoist Books. In clear and systematic fashion he expounded such internal-alchemical concepts as “nature and life,” “pre-celestial and post-celestial,” and “forward and reverse,” advocating “nature before life” and the Dual Cultivation of Nature and Life, and opposing heterodox practices such as the Bedchamber Arts, fire-based external alchemy, and attachment to the physical body. He is celebrated as one of the most systematic theorists of internal alchemy in the Qing dynasty. His writings were promoted after the Republican era by figures such as Chen Yingning, and remain required reading for students of internal alchemy today.

Contributions & Influence

• Wrote the Twelve Daoist Books, systematically and clearly annotating the alchemical scriptures
• Used works such as the Xiyou Yuanzhi to expound alchemy through fiction, broadening its dissemination
• Established a Longmen center for cultivation at Xinglong Shan in Gansu and practiced medicine for the benefit of the people

Works

• Twelve Daoist Books (Liu Yiming)
• Elucidating the Truth of the Book of Changes
• Direct Pointers to the Cantong qi
• Direct Pointers to Awakening to Reality
• Nine Essentials of the Cultivation of Perfection
• The Original Purport of the Journey to the West
• Dispelling Doubts on Symbolic Language
• Text for Passing Through the Barrier