Qiu Chuji丘处机

Style & Daoist names

courtesy name Tongmi, sobriquet Changchunzi, Perfected Changchun, Perfected Lord Changchun of Complete Virtue, Divine Transformation and Bright Response

Period

Jin–Yuan

Dates

1148 — 1227

School

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

Role

Seven Perfected of QuanzhenFounding Patriarch of the Longmen LineageQuanzhen Head of the OrderInternal Alchemy Masters

Birthplace

Qixia, Dengzhou (present-day Qixia, Shandong)

Places of activity

Mount Kunyu, White Cloud Temple (Baiyun Guan), Beijing, Mount Lao (Laoshan)

Life

Qiu Chuji, a native of Qixia, Shandong, renounced the household at nineteen and took Wang Chongyang as his teacher the following year, the youngest of the Seven Perfected of Quanzhen. After Wang Chongyang's death he lived in a cave dwelling at Panxi for six years and then on Mount Longmen for seven, practicing austerities with unwavering resolve and becoming known as 'Master Straw-Cape.' Both Emperor Shizong and Emperor Zhangzong of Jin summoned him for audience. In the chaos of the late Jin, the Song, Jin, and Mongols all vied to invite him, and he resolved to answer the summons of Genghis Khan: in 1220, at the age of seventy-three, he led eighteen disciples on a journey of ten thousand li to the west, meeting Genghis Khan at the Great Snow Mountains (the Hindu Kush of present-day Afghanistan) in 1222, where he counseled revering Heaven and cherishing the people and purifying the heart and reducing desire, urging him to cease killing — an episode recorded by his disciple Li Zhichang in the Xiyou Ji of the Perfected Changchun (Changchun Zhenren Xiyouji). On his return he was charged with overseeing Daoism throughout the realm, exempted the Daoist clergy from corvée and taxes, and took up residence as abbot of Changchun Palace (present-day White Cloud Temple) in Yanjing, under which Quanzhen Daoism entered its period of greatest flourishing. The Longmen Lineage he transmitted became the largest branch of Quanzhen. Qiu Chuji wrote the Panxi Ji and the Dadan Zhizhi, among other works, and died at Changchun Palace in 1227; his burial place is the present-day Hall of Patriarch Qiu at White Cloud Temple.

Contributions & Influence

• Traveled west to meet Genghis Khan and, with a single word, stopped the killing, winning Quanzhen Daoism political standing
• Oversaw Daoism throughout the realm, making Quanzhen the largest Daoist school in the north
• Founded the Longmen Lineage, the main line of later Quanzhen Daoism
• Wrote the Dadan Zhizhi, systematically expounding Quanzhen internal-alchemy practice

Works

• Anthology of Panxi (Qiu Chuji)
• Direct Pointers to the Great Elixir
• Treatise on Nourishing Life and the Rhythms of Growth and Decline
• Journey to the West of the Perfected Changchun (recorded by Li Zhichang)
• Anthology of Proclaiming the Dao (lost)

Legends

The episode of 'a single word that stopped the killing' has been much embellished in later retellings; legends of his austerities at Longmen and of 'transforming people through food' appear in Quanzhen steles and biographies.