Zhang Boduan张伯端

Style & Daoist names

Pingshu, Yongcheng, Perfected Ziyang, Ziyang, Master Wuzhen

Period

Northern Song

Dates

984 — 1082

School

Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir (Nanzong)

Role

Founding Patriarch of the Southern Lineage of Internal AlchemyAuthor of Alchemical Texts

Birthplace

Tiantai, Taizhou (present-day Tiantai, Zhejiang)

Places of activity

Mount Tiantai

Life

Zhang Boduan, styled Pingshu and later renamed Yongcheng, with the sobriquet Ziyang, was a renowned master of internal alchemy in the Northern Song, honored by the Southern Lineage of internal alchemy as its founding patriarch (foremost of the "Five Southern Patriarchs"). His birth year is given as either 984 or 987; he died in the fifth year of the Yuanfeng era (1082), reportedly at the age of ninety-nine. In his youth he studied for the civil examinations and was broadly versed in the classics of the Three Teachings as well as in law, calligraphy and mathematics, medicine and divination, astronomy and geography; he served as a prefectural clerk, and was banished to Lingnan for the offense of "burning official documents." During the Zhiping era (1064–1067) he accompanied Lu Shen to Chengdu, and in the second year of the Xining era (1069) he met, in Chengdu, a "Perfected" (later held to have been Liu Haichan), who transmitted to him the instructions on the medicinal substances and fire phasing of the golden elixir; he thereupon wrote the Wuzhen pian (Awakening to Reality). This work uses poetic forms — sixteen regulated verses in seven-character lines, sixty-four quatrains, twelve lyrics to the tune Xijiang yue, and others — to expound the internal-alchemy theory of the dual cultivation of nature and life, with life cultivated first and nature afterward, advocating "the body as the cauldron and furnace, essence and qi as the medicinal substances, and spirit as the fire phasing," opposing the minor techniques of side paths, and appending "hymns and ballads" that draw in Chan Buddhism; it came to be regarded by later generations, together with the Cantong qi, as one of the two great classics of elixir scriptures. He also wrote the Four Hundred Words on the Golden Elixir and the (attributed) Secret Text of the Azure Florescence (Qinghua miwen), among other works. He transmitted his teaching to Shi Tai, and from there, through Xue Daoguang and Chen Nan, it passed to Bai Yuchan, forming the Southern Lineage. In the Yuan dynasty he was granted the posthumous title "Perfected Ziyang."

Contributions & Influence

• Wrote the Wuzhen pian, establishing the internal-alchemy theoretical system of "dual cultivation of nature and life, with life cultivated first"
• Founding patriarch of the Southern Lineage of internal alchemy, whose methods were transmitted through Shi Tai, Xue Daoguang, Chen Nan and Bai Yuchan
• Drew Chan Buddhist teachings on mind and nature into internal alchemy, initiating a trend of internal-alchemy learning that united the Three Teachings

Works

• Awakening to Reality (Wuzhen pian)
• Four Hundred Words on the Golden Elixir
• Yuqing Jinsi Qinghua Miwen Jinbao Neilian Dan Jue (Secret Text of the Azure Florescence) (attributed title)
• Wuzhen Pian Shiyi (Gleanings Appended to the Wuzhen Pian)

Legends

Legend holds that Zhang Boduan once competed with a Buddhist monk in "sending forth the spirit" to fetch a branch of qionghua flowers from Yangzhou, and that he succeeded where the monk could not, thereby proving the superiority of dual cultivation of nature and life; there is also a tale that after attaining the Dao he underwent corpse-liberation (shijie). These are legendary material.