Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir (Nanzong)金丹派南宗

Also known as

Southern Lineage of Neidan, Ziyang School, Tiantai School, Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir (Nanzong)

Type

Sect

Period

Northern Song to Yuan

Founded

Zhang Boduan wrote the Wuzhen pian in the eighth year of the Xining era of the Northern Song (1075); a religious community took shape by the time of Bai Yuchan (c. 1194–?) of the Southern Song

Founder

Zhang Boduan, Bai Yuchan

Derived from

Zhong–Lü Internal Alchemy Tradition

Region

Mount Tiantai in Zhejiang, Mount Wuyi in Fujian, Mount Luofu in Guangdong, and various places across Jiangnan

Ancestral seat

Mount Tiantai, Lesser Grotto 16: Mount Wuyi, Mount Luofu

Status

Absorbed into Other Lineages — After the Yuan dynasty it was absorbed into the Quanzhen order and had no independent religious organization; its five patriarchs are honored by the Quanzhen order as the “Five Southern Patriarchs,” and its alchemical methods and scriptures continue to be transmitted within the Quanzhen order and among popular circles of internal-alchemy practice.

Overview

The Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir (Nanzong) is a Daoist school of the Song–Yuan period that takes Zhang Boduan as its founding patriarch and internal-alchemical cultivation as its central aim; it is so named because it flourished in the south, in contrast to the later Quanzhen order (the “Northern Lineage”). Zhang Boduan (987–1082), style name Pingshu, sobriquet Ziyang, was a native of Tiantai in Zhejiang; he is said to have met an extraordinary stranger in Chengdu who transmitted to him the oral formula of the golden elixir, and in the eighth year of the Xining reign (1075) he composed Awakening to Reality (Wuzhen pian), expounding in verse the internal-alchemical theory of “nature after life,” a text ranked alongside the Zhouyi cantong qi as one of the twin masterworks of alchemical scripture. Zhang Boduan transmitted the teaching to Shi Tai, Shi Tai to Xue Daoguang, Xue to Chen Nan, and Chen to Bai Yuchan; these five are known to later generations as the “Five Southern Patriarchs.” The first four patriarchs all cultivated in reclusion without establishing any religious organization; only with Bai Yuchan (original name Ge Changgeng, a native of Minqing or Qiongzhou) — who traveled through Jiangnan and Fujian–Guangdong, took in a large number of disciples including Peng Si and Liu Yuanchang, established Jinglu (quietude lodges), and composed numerous texts on alchemical formulas and Thunder Rites — did the Southern Lineage take on the scale of an organized school. Bai Yuchan further combined Shenxiao Thunder Rites with the Chan Buddhist doctrine of the mind and nature, advocating “inward cultivation to form the elixir, outward application to work rites,” so that the Southern Lineage came to encompass both alchemical practice and ritual magic. In the Yuan dynasty, Li Daochun, Chen Zhixu, and others promoted the merging of the Southern and Northern Lineages; Chen Zhixu, having received the transmission of both lineages himself, constructed a unified genealogy in which the teaching of Zhongli Quan and Lü Dongbin was said to have branched to Liu Haichan and thence to both south and north, and the Southern Lineage was gradually absorbed into the Quanzhen order, often called in the Ming and Qing the “Quanzhen Southern Lineage.” The alchemical methods of the Southern Lineage later divided into two branches: pure cultivation (the mainstream line of Zhang Boduan through Bai Yuchan) and dual cultivation of yin and yang (the line of Liu Yongnian and Weng Baoguang), the former exerting by far the greater influence. The Southern Lineage's Awakening to Reality and its commentaries are among the most central scriptures of internal-alchemy studies, still honored in common by every school of internal alchemy today.

Core Doctrine

The Southern Lineage takes Awakening to Reality as its foundational text, upholding the principle of “nature after life” and the “Dual Cultivation of Nature and Life”: first refining essence and qi to stabilize the body and vital force, then illuminating the mind to perceive one's true nature so as to complete the cultivation of nature. It takes “True Lead and True Mercury” and the “Pre-celestial One Qi” as its alchemical “medicines,” emphasizing that “like seeks like” and the “mutual resonance of yin and yang.” It incorporates the Chan Buddhist teaching of “illuminating the mind to see one's true nature”; Bai Yuchan proposed that “the mind is the root of the elixir,” attributing the efficacy of Thunder Rites to the power of internal alchemy.

Practice & Ritual

Practices include Quiet Sitting for internal cultivation, gathering the “medicine” to form the elixir, the Celestial Circuit and Fire Phasing, and the gentle nurturing that leads to the delivery of the embryo. The Bai Yuchan branch also practiced Shenxiao Thunder Rites, talismanic and incantatory prayer, and jiao rites. The lineage placed great weight on the oral transmission of formulas from master to disciple, speaking of the sequence of “ten months of gestation, three years of nursing, and nine years of wall-gazing.” The Weng Baoguang branch advocated dual cultivation of yin and yang, a practice that remains controversial. The first four patriarchs of the Southern Lineage were mostly reclusive cultivators who established no temples; only after Bai Yuchan did the institution of Jinglu lodges and a settled body of disciples emerge, along with a corresponding increase in ritual activity.

Transmission

The Five Southern Patriarchs: Zhang Boduan → Shi Tai → Xue Daoguang → Chen Nan → Bai Yuchan; among Bai Yuchan's disciples were Peng Si, Liu Yuanchang, Zhao Ruqu, and Ye Guxi. A side branch ran from Liu Yongnian to Weng Baoguang (the yin-yang dual-cultivation branch). In the Yuan dynasty, Li Daochun (of the Central Lineage) and Chen Zhixu (who received the transmission of both Southern and Northern lineages) promoted the merging of the two lineages, and the Southern Lineage was absorbed into the Quanzhen order.

Key Scriptures

Key Figures

Principal Temples