Wu Yun吴筠

Style & Daoist names

chastity and integrity, Master Zongxuan (Zongxuan Xiansheng), Master Zongyuan (Zongyuan Xiansheng)

Period

Tang

Dates

? — 778

School

Shangqing (Highest Clarity) School

Role

Daoist TheoristPoet

Birthplace

Huayin, Huazhou (present-day Huayin, Shaanxi)

Places of activity

Mount Song (Songshan), Mount Tiantai, Mount Mao (Maoshan)

Life

Wu Yun, courtesy name Zhenjie, was a Tang-dynasty Daoist priest and man of letters. In his youth he was well versed in the classics and histories and skilled in composition; having failed the jinshi examination, he entered the Daoist priesthood on Mount Song, receiving the methods of Zhengyi from Feng Qizheng, a disciple of Pan Shizheng, and later traveled south to Tiantai, living in reclusion at Shanzhong with Li Bai, Kong Chaofu and others as one of the "Six Idlers of the Bamboo Stream." In the early Tianbao era Emperor Xuanzong summoned him and asked him about Daoist methods; he replied that "none who is deep in the Dao needs more than the five thousand words of the Laozi — all else is a waste of paper," and when asked about the cultivation of immortality he replied that "this is a matter for men of the wilds, to be sought through years of effort and practice, not something a ruler of men ought to indulge in." Xuanzong greatly esteemed him and appointed him an academician-in-waiting at the Hanlin Academy. Due to slander from Gao Lishi and others, he requested to return to Mount Song and Maoshan. He died at Xuancheng in the thirteenth year of Dali (778); his disciples privately conferred on him the posthumous title "Master of Ancestral Mystery." He wrote the Treatise on the Mysterious Guideline, Treatise That Immortality Can Be Learned, Treatise That Form and Spirit Can Be Made Firm, and Treatise on Mind and Eye, arguing that immortality can be learned and that form and spirit can be made firm, and stressing "guarding stillness and removing desire" and "treasuring essence and cherishing qi"; these are important works of Tang-dynasty Daoist cultivation theory. He was also a fine poet and essayist; one scroll of his poetry survives in the Complete Tang Poems.

Contributions & Influence

• Wrote the Treatise on the Mysterious Guideline and the Treatise That Immortality Can Be Learned, systematically arguing that immortality can be learned and expounding the principles of cultivating nature and life
• Combined literature with Daoism, representing the Tang-dynasty Daoist literatus

Works

• Treatise on the Mysterious Guideline
• Treatise on How Immortality Can Be Learned (Shenxian Kexue Lun)
• Treatise on How Form and Spirit Can Be Made Firm (Xingshen Kegu Lun)
• Treatise on the Mind and the Eye (Xinmu Lun)
• Collected Works of Master Zongxuan (Zongxuan Xiansheng Wenji)