Tan Chuduan谭处端

Style & Daoist names

originally named Yu, courtesy name Boyu, later renamed Chuduan, courtesy name Tongzheng, sobriquet Changzhenzi, Perfected Changzhen, Cloud and Water, Cultivator of Virtue

Period

Jin

Dates

1123 — 1185

School

Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) Daoism, Nanwu Lineage of Quanzhen

Role

Seven Perfected of QuanzhenFounding Patriarch of the Nanwu Lineage

Birthplace

Ninghai (present-day Muping, Shandong)

Places of activity

Mount Kunyu

Life

Tan Chuduan, a native of Ninghai, Shandong, was one of the Seven Perfected of Quanzhen. Originally a Confucian scholar, he suffered from a wind-paralysis affliction; hearing in 1167 that Wang Chongyang had arrived in Ninghai, he went to seek a cure, and tradition holds that Wang Chongyang gave him face-washing water to drink, which healed him, whereupon he took Wang as his teacher and renounced the household. He followed his master to Bianliang, and after Wang Chongyang's death observed the three-year mourning period together with Ma Yu, Qiu Chuji, and Liu Chuxuan, after which each went his separate way to cultivate the Dao. Tan Chuduan taught in Luoyang, devoting himself to enduring humiliation and converting the common people, advocating forgetting emotion, discarding desire, and living according to circumstance, and died at Chaoyuan Palace in Luoyang in 1185. His lineage was later called the Nanwu Branch. He wrote the Shuiyun Ji, largely consisting of poems exhorting the world. In the sixth year of the Zhiyuan era he was posthumously canonized as Perfected One of Everlasting Truth, Cloud and Water, Accumulated Virtue.

Contributions & Influence

• One of the Seven Perfected of Quanzhen; founded the Nanwu Branch
• Taught in the Luoyang region through endurance of humiliation, austerity, and verse converting the common people
• Wrote the Shuiyun Ji, preserving early Quanzhen verse exhorting the world

Works

• Collection of Clouds and Water

Legends

The account of being cured of wind-paralysis by drinking face-washing water appears in Quanzhen biographies and is legendary.