Wang Zhijin王志谨

Style & Daoist names

Sobriquet Qiyunzi, Perfected Qiyun, Granted the title ‘Perfected of Profound Mystery and Broad Salvation’ (Chongxuan Guangdu Zhenren)

Period

Jin–Yuan

Dates

1178 — 1263

School

Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) Daoism, Huashan Lineage of Quanzhen

Role

Quanzhen Daoist PriestPatriarch, Grand MasterCompiler of recorded sayings

Birthplace

Dongming (around present-day Dongming, Shandong)

Places of activity

White Cloud Temple (Baiyun Guan), Beijing

Life

Wang Zhijin, sobriquet Qiyunzi, was a Quanzhen Daoist priest active during the Jin–Yuan transition, a disciple of Hao Datong (the Perfected Guangning) and one of the representative figures of the Quanzhen Huashan lineage. In his early years he studied the Dao under Hao Datong in Shandong, and later traveled north to Yanjing; for many years he served as abbot of the Qiyun Temple on Mount Pan in Jizhou (present-day Jizhou, Tianjin), where he gathered disciples and taught for decades. In his later years he was summoned to Yanjing, where he directed the restoration of Daoist temples and took part in the affairs of the Quanzhen order, receiving considerable favor under the Xianzong and Shizu emperors of the Yuan. His disciple Lun Zhihuan and others recorded his everyday teachings and compiled them into the two-fascicle Recorded Sayings of Wang Zhijin of Mount Pan (commonly called the Panshan Recorded Sayings), included in the Daoist Canon of the Zhengtong Era. The work expounds the Quanzhen teachings on mind and nature through highly accessible parables, advocating "working on the ground of the mind" and "clearing away the dust of the mind," taking the elimination of emotion and cognition and the severing of attachment as the initial task, stressing that "seeing one's nature" must be unified with practice in daily life, and opposing attachment either to outward ritual merit or to supernatural powers. The Panshan Recorded Sayings, together with Wang Chongyang's Fifteen Discourses on Establishing the Teaching and the Perfected Changchun's Journey to the West, ranks among the basic texts for the study of early Quanzhen doctrine and monastic life; it was long used as a teaching text in Quanzhen monasteries of the Ming and Qing, and had a clear influence on the theory of mind and nature in the Longmen lineage.

Contributions & Influence

• Inherited the transmission of Hao Datong, becoming an early core figure of the Quanzhen Huashan lineage
• Served as abbot of the Qiyun Temple on Mount Pan for decades, forming an important Quanzhen monastic center in the north
• His recorded sayings, the Panshan Recorded Sayings, became a representative text of Quanzhen teachings on mind and nature
• Expounded "working on the ground of the mind" through accessible parables, shaping the practical character of Quanzhen cultivation

Works

• Recorded Sayings of Wang Zhijin of Mount Pan (Panshan yulu)