Wang Chongyang王重阳

Style & Daoist names

originally named Zhongfu, courtesy name Yunqing, later renamed Shixiong, then Zhe, courtesy name Zhiming, sobriquet Chongyangzi, Perfected Lord Chongyang Who Founded and Transformed Quanzhen (title conferred by the Yuan)

Period

Jin

Dates

1113 — 1170

School

Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) Daoism

Role

FounderFounding Patriarch of Quanzhen DaoismInternal Alchemy MastersPoet

Birthplace

Xianyang, Jingzhao (present-day Dawei Village, Xianyang, Shaanxi)

Places of activity

Zhongnan Mountains, Chongyang Palace (Ancestral Temple of Quanzhen), Mount Kunyu

Life

Wang Chongyang, founder of Quanzhen Daoism. Born into a wealthy family in Guanzhong, he sat for both the civil and military examinations in his early years but failed to advance in his career; in the fourth year of Zhenglong (1159) he claimed to have met an extraordinary person at Ganhe township (later held by tradition to have been Zhongli Quan and Lü Dongbin), who transmitted oral instructions to him, whereupon he abandoned his household to cultivate the Dao, first digging a "tomb for the living dead" at Nanshi village where he lived in solitude, and later moving to Liujiang village to build a thatched hut. In the seventh year of Dading (1167) he burned his hut and traveled east to Ninghai in Shandong, where he successively took as disciples Ma Yu, Tan Chuduan, Liu Chuxuan, Qiu Chuji, Wang Chuyi, Hao Datong and Sun Bu'er (the "Seven Perfected of Quanzhen"), and established five societies — including the Three Teachings Seven Treasures Society and the Three Teachings Golden Lotus Society — at Wendeng, Ninghai, Fushan, Dengzhou and Laizhou, advocating the "unity of the Three Teachings" and taking the Daodejing, the Heart Sutra and the Classic of Filial Piety as his canonical texts. He died in the tenth year of Dading while on the road to Bianliang, and was buried back at Liujiang village in Zhongnan, the site that later became Chongyang Palace. His teaching held that nature should be cultivated before life, advocated clarity, stillness and effortless action, and monastic ascetic practice, and opposed alchemical firing and talismanic incantation, making it the most important reform in Song–Yuan Daoism.

Contributions & Influence

• Founded Quanzhen Daoism, establishing the early forms of monastic residence and ascetic practice under the public-monastery system
• Advocated the unity of the Three Teachings, incorporating Confucianism and Buddhism into Daoism
• Established the internal-alchemical path of cultivating nature before life, and wrote the Fifteen Discourses of Wang Chongyang on Establishing the Teaching
• Took on the Seven Perfected of Quanzhen as disciples, laying the foundation for the religious order

Works

• Collected Works of Wang Chongyang on Complete Perfection
• Collection of Chongyang's Teaching and Transformation
• Chongyang's Ten Transformations of Dividing the Pear
• Fifteen Discourses of Wang Chongyang on Establishing the Teaching
• Twenty-four Instructions Transmitted by the Perfected Chongyang to Danyang
• Instructions of the Golden Pass and Jade Lock by the Perfected Chongyang

Legends

Episodes such as "encountering immortals at Ganhe," digging the tomb for the living dead, and "dividing the pear ten times" to convert Ma Yu and his wife are recorded in Quanzhen steles and biographies, and carry a legendary character.