Sun Bu'er孙不二

Style & Daoist names

personal name Fuchun, sobriquet Qingjing Sanren (Free Wanderer of Clarity and Stillness), Perfected Qingjing Yuanzhen Shunde

Period

Jin

Dates

1119 — 1182

School

Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) Daoism, Qingjing (Clarity and Stillness) Lineage of Quanzhen

Role

Seven Perfected of QuanzhenFounding Patriarch of the Qingjing LineageFemale Alchemist

Birthplace

Ninghai (present-day Muping, Shandong)

Places of activity

Mount Kunyu

Life

Sun Bu'er, a native of Ninghai, Shandong, and the wife of Ma Yu, was the only woman among the Seven Perfected of Quanzhen. She took Wang Chongyang as her teacher along with her husband in 1167, at first refusing to renounce the household, and did not formally enter religious life until 1169, taking the name Clarity and Stillness Wanderer (Qingjing Sanren). After Wang Chongyang's death she traveled west to Luoyang, where she practiced austerities for seven years in Fengxian Gu Cave (also given as Fengxian Cave), gathered many disciples, and founded Quanzhen's Qingjing (Clarity and Stillness) Branch, becoming the founding ancestor of the female-priest (kundao) lineage. Sun Bu'er was already venerated in her lifetime, and in the sixth year of the Zhiyuan era of the Yuan (1269) she was posthumously canonized as Perfected One of Clarity, Stillness, Profundity, Truth, Obedience, and Virtue. The poems attributed to her in later times, the Sun Buer Yuanjun Fayu and the Kundao Gongfu Cidi, are important classics of Ming–Qing female internal alchemy; although they may not have come from her own hand, they established her status as the founding ancestor of female alchemy. Her joint cultivation with her husband Ma Yu is regarded as a model of gender equality in Quanzhen Daoist practice.

Contributions & Influence

• The only woman among the Seven Perfected of Quanzhen; founded the Qingjing Branch, opening the female-priest lineage
• Venerated as the founding ancestor of female internal alchemy; works attributed to her influenced Ming–Qing female alchemy
• Practiced jointly with her husband Ma Yu, becoming a model of gender-equal cultivation in Quanzhen Daoism

Works

• Dharma Words of the Primordial Sovereign Sun Bu'er (attributed)
• Secret Book of Alchemy Transmitted by the Primordial Sovereign Sun Bu'er (attributed)

Legends

Legend holds that in Luoyang she disfigured her own face to escape the world, attained the Dao through quiet cultivation, and that when she ascended as an immortal her fragrance filled the city — this is legendary material.