Mount Tiantai天台山
- Type
- Daoist Sacred Mountains
- Location
- China · Zhejiang · Tiantai, Taizhou · North of Tiantai County; the main peak, Huading, rises 1,098 metres
- Coordinates
- 29.25, 121.05 Map ↗
- School
- Shangqing (Highest Clarity) School, Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir (Nanzong), Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) Daoism
- First built
- Three Kingdoms Wu (Ge Xuan transmitted the teaching here) · Sixth of the Ten Great Grotto-Heavens, the “Shangqing Yuping Grotto-Heaven” (one account places it at Mount Chicheng); Sima Chengzhen of the Tang resided at the Tongbai Temple; Zhang Boduan of the Northern Song was the founding patriarch of the Southern Lineage
- Heritage status
- National Scenic Area (1988)Guoqing Temple, Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level (2006) (Buddhist)
Overview
Mount Tiantai is a famous mountain of both Buddhism and Daoism: Guoqing Temple, the ancestral court of the Buddhist Tiantai school, and the Daoist Tongbai Palace stand within it together. On the Daoist side, Ge Xuan of Wu in the Three Kingdoms period refined elixirs here, and from the Jin and Tang onward eminent Daoists such as Xu Mai, Sima Chengzhen, Xu Lingfu and Du Guangting all cultivated the Dao at Tiantai; Sima Chengzhen resided at the Tongbai Temple, where he composed his writings and was repeatedly summoned by Emperor Xuanzong. Within Mount Tiantai, Mount Chicheng is the sixth of the Ten Great Grotto-Heavens, the “Shangqing Yuping Grotto-Heaven”; the Yujing Cave is counted among the Thirty-six Lesser Grotto-Heavens; and Mount Tiantai itself is listed among the Seventy-two Blessed Lands. Zhang Boduan (the Perfected Ziyang) of the Northern Song was a native of Tiantai; he wrote Awakening to Reality and opened the Southern Lineage of neidan, and the Tongbai Palace at Tiantai is honoured as the ancestral court of the Southern Lineage. The principal Daoist remains include the Tongbai Palace, the Yujing Cave, the Qiongtai Immortal Valley, Mount Chicheng and Zhang Boduan’s native place; the original site of the Tongbai Palace was submerged by the Tongbai Reservoir in 1959, and the palace was rebuilt on a new site in the 2000s.
Highlights
- Tongbai Palace
- Yujing Cave, Mount Chicheng
- Qiongtai Immortal Valley
- Huading Peak
- Remains associated with the Perfected Ziyang