The Life and Alchemical Teachings of Chen Zhixu

SPREADING THE DAO, MANAGING MASTERSHIP, AND PERFORMING SALVATION: THE LIFE AND ALCHEMICAL TEACHINGS OF CHEN ZHIXU

Wm. Clarke Hudson

Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulllment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Religious Studies, Indiana University December 2007

UMI Number: 3297123

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Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulllment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Robert F. Campany, Ph.D.

Doctoral committee

Stephen R. Bokenkamp

John R. McRae

October 18, 2007

Lynn Struve

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© 2008 William Clarke Hudson II ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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This work is dedicated to .

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Acknowledgements This dissertation, and my views on the study of religion in general, are inspired rst and foremost by my doctoral mentorsProfessors Robert Ford Campany, Stephen R. Bokenkamp, and John R. McRae. I thank them for the personal support and encouragement they have given me over the years, and for the example they have set for me with their scholarship. During my time at Indiana University, Bloomington, I had the blessing to workin seminars, lecture halls, reading groups, and tutorials with six superb scholars of Chinese religion and thought Professors Campany, Bokenkamp, McRae, Jan Nattier, Robert Eno, and Lynn Struve, each of whom I try to emulate in my research and teaching. Would that I could transmit something of their xuefeng to later generations. I also am grateful to many others for teaching me, and, more importantly, for inspiring me: faculty of the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University whose courses I took David Brakke, Jim Hart, Richard Miller, Robert Orsi, and Steve Weitzman, scholars of Daoism Wang Ka , Prof. Ma Xisha , and Lu Guolong at the Daoism research section of the Institute of World Religions of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing who introduced me to the history of Daoism, Prof. Wang Zongyu of Peking University, teachers at Stanford University Lee Yearley, Carl Bielefeldt, and Arnold Eisen, and teachers at the University of Chicago Michael Murrin and Chihchao Chao . My thanks go to four colleagues Mark Graham, Steve Kory, Cuong Mai, and David Mozina whose comments I have incorporated into this dissertation. And also to Hsieh Shuwei, Michael StanleyBaker, Gil Raz, Erik Hammerstrom, Brian Flaherty, Hong Yue Guo, David Cockerham, Doug Padgett, Jonathan Pettit, Paul Amato, Graham Bauerle, Tad Cook, and David Allred for their fellowship in the study of things Daoist and Chinese at Indiana. And to my friend Prof. Liu Yi for his conversations in Beijing. And nally to Guo Lei for many years of training in Taiji Quan, which taught me so much about masterdisciple relations in Chinese traditions of selfcultivation. I dedicate this work to my wife Yikui, who a decade ago convinced me of the value of a scholarly career, and has given me moral support every day. Finally, thank you, dear reader, for reading this work.

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Wm. Clarke Hudson Spreading the Dao, Managing Mastership, and Performing Salvation: The Life and Alchemical Teachings of Chen Zhixu This dissertation describes and interprets the biography and teachings of Chen Zhixu 12901343+, styled Shangyangzi, a Daoist master and sexual alchemist from south China, and also the reception of his biography and teachings by later Daoists and other readers in the Ming and Qing dynasties. The dissertation describes his place within networks of patronage his supporters included both Daoist monks and interested laymen, and the pains he took to develop these networks. The dissertation pieces together an account of his sexualalchemical practices from cryptic references scattered throughout his writings, and situates this account within the elds of Chinese inner alchemy neidan and sexual cultivation. Secondarily, through the study of the life and work of one Daoist, this dissertation o ers new approaches to the reading of any Daoist gure or text. One new approach is to locate Daoists and their texts within marketplaces of teachings or economies of salvation drawing on Pierre Bourdieus sociology of culture; another is to study Daoists use of secrecy as a strategy within such competitive environment drawing on Hugh Urbans work on esotericism. Finally, this study is meant to be a contribution to the social history of religions. It is hoped that this general theoretical perspective emphasizing social conict will be useful for the study of religious gures or texts from other places and times beyond Chens world of premodern China.

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Contents Chapter 1. Orientations 4 1. Seven Perspectives in the Study of Inner Alchemy 4 1.1. Understanding 4 1.2. Explanation 5 2. Literature Review 8 2.1. Studies of Inner Alchemy 8 2.1.1. Studies in Chinese 8 2.1.2. Studies in Japanese 11 2.1.3. Studies in Western Languages 12

2.2. Studies of Sexual Alchemy 15 2.3. Studies of Chen Zhixu 17 3. Denitions 18 3.1. Inner alchemy 18 3.2. Daoism and Daoists 19 3.3. Religion 21 4. Themes and Theories 22 4.1. An Outline of Chens Religious Market 23 4.1.1. Theories of religious markets 24

4.2. Esotericism 25 4.3. MasterDisciple Relations 26 4.4. The Master Function 27 4.5. Speech Act Theory and Performativity 29 4.6. Syncretism: Imperialist Inclusivism 31 4.7. Primary Salvation and Secondary Salvic Eects 32 5. An Overview of the Dissertation Chapters 37 6. Conventions 39

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Chapter 2. Chen Zhixus Biography, Environment, Lineage, and Network 41 1.1. Chens Biographies 42 1.2. Chens Name 43 2. Chens Life until Forty, and the Environment at Luling 44 2.1. Chens Life until Forty 44 2.2. Lulings Geographical and Religious Environment 48 3. Meeting Master Zhao, and Enlightenment 53 3.1. Meeting Zhao Youqin 53 3.2. Chens Enlightenment 54 3.2.1. Chens major enlightenment 55 3.2.2. Two other enlightenments 59

4. Chens Two Masters: Zhao Youqin and the Qingcheng Master 60 4.1. Zhao Youqins Life 60 4.2. The Qingcheng Master 62 4.2.1. Doubts about the Qingcheng master 63

5. A Period of Preparation, 132931 65 5.1. Tian Zhizhai 67 6. Chens Teaching Career 70 6.1. The End of Chens Life 76 6.2. An Odd LateImperial Hagiography 76 7. Was Chen Zhixu a Quanzhen Daoist? 78 7.1. Quanzhen Daoism and the Southern Lineage 78 7.1.1. Comparison of Quanzhen Daoism with the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir 79 7.1.2. Did Chen have a real connection to a Quanzhen lineage? 80 7.1.3. In his genealogy, Chen venerates the Quanzen patriarchs above the SouthernLineage patriarchs 81 7.1.4. Is there any Quanzhen content to Chens teachings? 82 7.1.5. If Chen had no Quanzhen lineage or Quanzhen teachings, then what was he up to? 84 7.1.6. Chen represents a historical trend toward the fusion of the Southern and Northern Lineages of inner alchemy 84 7.1.7. Chen drew on Chan Buddhism in the same way that he drew on Quanzhen Daoism 85

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7.2. Quanzhen Daoism in Chens Time and Place 85 7.2.1. Quanzhen books 85 7.2.2. Quanzhen initiates 86

7.3. Chens Immediate Lineage 89 7.3.1. Song Defang 90 7.3.2. Li Taixu 91 7.3.3. Zhang Ziqiong 93 7.3.4. Zhao Youqin provides no evidence about this lineage 93

7.4. Chens Eective and Extended Lineages in DZ 1070 94 7.4.1. Comparing genealogies 94 7.4.2. Other points om DZ 1070 98 7.4.3. Reading the ritual 99

7.5. Conclusion on the Issue of Chens Quanzhen Aliation 102 8. Chens Students, Disciples, and Acquaintances 103 8.1. MasterDisciple Relationships 105 8.1.1. Ming Suchan, at Mt. Jiugong 105 8.1.2. Deng Yanghao, in Hongzhou 109

8.2. MasterPatron Relationships 115 8.2.1. Tian Zhizhai 115 8.2.2. Chens Three Networks 115 8.2.3. Luo Xizhu and the Jiaotai Hermitage 120

8.3. Literati association 126 9. Conclusion 129 Appendix 1 to Chapter 2. Places Chen Zhixu Is Known to Have Visited 133 Appendix 2 to Chapter 2. Chens Disciples and Acquaintances 135 Appendix 3 to Chapter 2. Translation of DZ 1070 137

Chapter 3. A Conict View of Daoist Mastership 161 1. A Conict View of Chen Zhixus Life and Work 163 1.1. Chens Teachings within a Field of Competition 163 1.1.1. Skeptics 163 1.1.2. The marginal traditions 164

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1.1.3. Sexual cultivators 166 1.1.4. The Three Teachings 169 1.1.5. Chen as marginal 173

1.2. The Field of Competition within Chens Teachings 174 2. Toward a General Conict Theory of Society 178 2.1. Conict 179 2.2. Why choose conict theory? 179 2.3. Why choose Bourdieu as a conict theorist? 184 3. Bourdieus Sociology of Culture 186 3.1. Bourdieu and Weber 187 3.2. Habitus 189 3.3. Field 193 3.4. Capital 199 4. Conclusion 202 Appendix to Chapter 3. Song on Judging Delusions 204

Chapter 4. What Is Inner Alchemy? 210 Prototypes, paradigms, and the standard account 212

Part 1. Toward a Denition of Inner Alchemy 214 Short Denitions 215 A Full Description: Inner Alchemy in Two Thousand Words 216 1. Roots 216 2. Social Contexts 217 3. Ontological Registers, and Language 217 4. Psychophysiological Elements 219 5. Symbolic Elements 221 6. Aegorical or Visionary Elements 222 7. A Historical Outline of InnerAlchemical Literature 223

Part 2. An Extended Discussion: Inner Alchemy in Forty Thousand Words 228 1. The Roots of Inner Alchemy 228 1.1. Roots in Daoism 228 1.2. Roots in Chinese society 229

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1.3. Roots in alchemy 230 1.4. Roots in qi cultivation 232 1.5. Roots in sexual cultivation 235 1.6. Roots in mind cultivation 236 1.7. Roots in literary mysticism 237

2. The Social Contexts of Inner Alchemy 238 2.1. Social institutions 238 2.1.1.1. Sma groups: the masterdisciple relationship 238 2.1.1.2. Sma groups: the patronclient relationship 239 2.1.1.3. Sma groups: the advisorruler relationship 240 2.1.1.4. Sma groups: relations of iendship and literati association 241 2.1.1.5. Sma groups: the family or clan and its related institutions 242 2.1.2.1. Midsized groups: monastery, temple, or cult association 243 2.1.2.2. Midsized groups: local practice and printing networks 243 2.1.3.1. Large groups: macroeconomies, social class, and the imperial state 244 2.1.3.2. Large groups: daos, traditions, teachings, schools, and sectarian movements 245

2.2. Selftransformation into masters within this world and transcendent beings beyond it 245

3. Ontological Registers, and Language 246 3.0. Ontological registers or levels of reality 246 3.1.1. The register of the microcosm: the human body 247 3.1.2. The register of the microcosm: the mind 252 3.1.3. The register of the microcosm: spirit or spirits 252

3.2. The register of the mesocosm of signs 254 3.2.1.1. The register of the mesocosm, abstract signs: yin and yang 257 3.2.1.2. The register of the mesocosm, abstract signs: the ve agents 260 3.2.1.3. The register of the mesocosm, abstract signs: the trigrams and hexagrams 262 3.2.1.4. The register of the mesocosm, abstract signs: the numbers of the River Chart 265

3.2.2. The register of the mesocosm, gurative signs: lead and mercury, and dragon and tiger 267

3.3. The register of the macrocosm of Heaven, Earth, and humanity 268 3.3.1. The register of the macrocosm: temporal aspects 269 3.3.2. The register of the macrocosm: spatial aspects 271 3.4.1. The register of other metaphysical realities: purposive action and nonaction 272 3.4.2. The register of other metaphysical realities: inherent nature and life endowment 273 3.4.3. The register of other metaphysical realities: the Dao or the One 276 3.5.1. Other dualistic, crossregister categories: xiantian and houtian 277

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3.5.2. Other dualistic, crossregister categories: prosaic and mysticizing interpretation 277 3.5.3. Other dualistic, crossregister categories: exoteric and esoteric interpretation 279 3.6.1. Exploiting crossregister ambiguities to convert the reader or listener 281 3.6.2. Exploiting crossregister ambiguities to create an air of authority for text, teacher, or lineage 281 3.6.3. Exploiting crossregister ambiguities: writing in a code that is only partia y transparent 281 3.6.4. Exploiting crossregister ambiguities to synthesize elements om many sources 282 3.6.5. Exploiting crossregister ambiguities to represent the protean nature of alchemical discourse 282 3.6.6. Exploiting crossregister ambiguities to directly cause salvic eects in the reader 282

4. Psychophysiological Elements 283 4.1.1. Psychophysiological terms 283 4.1.2. Soteriological terms 283

4.2. The dao of the golden elixir 283 4.3. The human body as the alchemical chamber 285 4.4. Dantian as the furnace and caldron 285 4.5. Inner tracts as the pathways of circulation 288 4.6. The three treasures essence, qi, and spirit as the pharmaca 291 4.7. Respiration, guiding intention, intense concentration, or formless samdhi as the re 292 4.8. Firing periods of low or high heat, or nonring, represented with trihexagram cycles 293 4.9. Firing over stages lasting days, months, and years 299 4.9.1. The standard account 300 4.9.2. Two general divergences 303 4.9.3. Other divergences, by era 305

4.10. Monitoring progress by cycles, responses, or inner vision 311 4.11. Creating, gathering, rening, crysta izing, incubating, purifying, and sublimating elixirs 312 4.11.1. Creating elixirs through gathering the pure yang qi om the time of cosmogenesis 315 4.11.2. Creating elixirs through inverting and uniting contrary principles 317 4.11.3. Creating elixirs through rening essence into qi, qi into spirit, and spirit into void 317 4.11.4. Creating elixirs through rening the postnatal three treasures into the prenatal three treasures 317

4.12. Stimulating and enlightening the inte ect 320 4.13. Grasping the handle of cosmic creation and transformation 321 4.14. Reversing cosmogonic devolution, and returning om a postcosmic to a precosmic state 322 4.15. Flowing backwards against the lifecurrent that leads toward death 323 4.16. Returning to a state of youth and health 323 4.17. Escaping om the round of birth and death sasra 324

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4.18. Perfecting inherent nature and life endowment 324 4.19. Giving birth to a new inner self, or spirit of pure yang 324 4.20. Seeking immortality or transcendence in the heavens and/or union with the Dao 326

5. Symbolic Elements 328 5.0. Symbolic terms om the Yijing, yinyang and veagent cosmology, RiverChart numerology, and other systems 328 5.1. Uniting contrary principles to recover perfection, caed pure yang, One, Taiji, or Wuji 329 5.2.1. Reversing the course of cosmogonic devolution leading om qian to kun 331 5.2.2. Extracting the yaoline om kan and applying it to li 332 5.2.3. Relying on agent earth in the form of wuearth and jiearth 333 5.2.4. Remaking the trigram qian 334 5.3.1. Reversing the devolution om Taiji to the ve agents to the myriad existents 335 5.3.2. Condensing the ve agents together into three, and then into one 336 5.3.2.1.1.1. Uniting the ve agents as abstract mesocosmic signs: turning the ve agents upsidedown 336 5.3.2.1.1.2. Uniting the ve agents in the microcosm: uniting the ve qi of the ve viscera 338 5.3.2.1.2.1. Condensing three into one as abstract mesocosmic signs: uniting the three cardinal agents 339 5.3.2.1.2.2. Condensing three into one in the microcosm: uniting the three owers 341 5.3.2.2. Uniting the ve agents numerologicay: condensing the three ves into one Taiji 342

6. Allegorical or Visionary Elements 343 6.1.1. Figurative mesocosmic signs: uniting mercury with lead 344 6.1.2. Figurative mesocosmic signs: uniting the dragon with the tiger 344 6.1.3. Figurative mesocosmic signs: uniting the gold suncrow with the jade moontoad or rabbit 346 6.1.4. Figurative mesocosmic signs: wedding the lovely girl to squire metal 346

6.2. The mediation of the yeow dame in the center 348 6.3. Bringing about the birth of the naked infant, the alchemists new self 348 6.4. Other aegories or visions: the goat, deer, and oxcarts 349 6.5. Other aegories or visions: the inner landscape of the body 350

Conclusion 350 Appendix 1 to Chapter 4. Questions for the Comparative Analysis of Any Inner alchemical Text 352 Appendix 2 to Chapter 4. Alternate Terms for Corporeal Sites, as Found in Inner alchemical Texts 359 Appendix 3 to Chapter 4. Li Daochuns Classication of Teachings 361

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Chapter 5. Chen Zhixus Path to Alchemical Salvation 367 1. But Was Chen Really a Sexual Alchemist? 368 1.1. Chinese Readers 368 1.2. Robinet 370 1.3. Alchemical Language 371 1.4. Orthodox vs. Heterodox Sexual Practices 374 1.5. SoloAlchemical Teachings? 380 1.6. Two Pieces of Evidence 383 1.6.1. Inconclusive evidence 383 1.6.2. Conclusive evidence 385

1.7. Prostitutes 386 1.8. The Sex Act 387 1.9. The Sex Organs 389 1.9.1. An alchemical litmus test 394 1.9.2. Xuan and Pin 395 1.9.3. Other texts 396

1.10. Apologetic statements 397 1.10.1. Lu Shu 398

1.11. Conclusion 400 2. The Field of Sexual Cultivation 400 2.1. Basic distinctions 400 2.1.1. Wile 400 2.1.2. Hao Qin 403 2.1.3. Cai Jun and Li Wenkun 404 2.1.4. Hu Fuchen 405 2.1.5. Ideal types and continua 406

2.2. The History of Sexual Cultivation 407 2.2.1. Wiles Four Tracers 407 2.2.2. Hao Qins historical narrative 409 2.2.3. Lists of texts 411

2.3. Ideal Types and Procedures of Cultivation 413 2.3.1. Type 1: Classical huanjing bunao, and sanfeng caizhan 413

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2.3.2. Type 2: Quasialchemical huanjing bunao 416 2.3.3. What is jing? 418 2.3.4. Type 3: Alchemical huanjing bunao 420 2.3.4.1. Jindan jieyao 420 2.3.4.2. Caizhen jiyao 422

2.3.5. Type 4: Lateimperial goldenelixir sexual alchemy 424 2.3.5.1. Lu Xixing and Li Xiyue 427

2.4. Comparison 428 3. Chen Zhixus SexualAlchemical Path 431 3.0. Stage Zero: Starting Out on the Path 431 3.0.1. Introduction: The Unity of the Three Teachings 432 3.0.2. Homily: The Saga of Devolution and Redemption 435 3.0.3. Pep Talk 439 3.0.4. Conclusion 440

3.1. Stage One: Rening the Self lianji and Equipping the Chamber 440 3.1.1. Inner preparation: rening the self 441 3.1.2. Outer preparation: nding mates and funds 446 3.1.2.1. The threeway exchange 448 3.1.2.2. Who is the partner? 452 3.1.2.3. Shoujing zhibao 455 3.1.2.4. How many partners are employed? 457 3.1.2.5. Longhu danfa 458 3.1.2.6. How does the adept get the partners agreement? By paying for it . . . 463 3.1.2.7. How does the adept get the partners agreement? By doing no harm . . . 465 3.1.2.8. How does the adept get the partners agreement? By being nice . . . 466 3.1.2.9. How does the adept get the partners agreement? She benets too . . . 467 3.1.2.10. Female sexual alchemy 468 3.1.2.11. Signs of conict 469

3.2. Stage Two: Gathering caiqu and Initial Fusion hedan 470 3.2.1.1. Timing the gathering: examining the water 470 3.2.1.2. Foreplay 474 3.2.2.1. What is the pharmacon? 476 3.2.2.2. Sex positions 477 3.2.2.3. Gathering and fusing 479

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3.2.2.4. Gathering the outer pharmacon: physiological aspects 480 3.2.2.5. Gathering the outer pharmacon: mental aspects 485 3.2.2.6. Gathering the outer pharmacon: abstract mesocosmic signs 488 3.2.2.7. Gathering the outer pharmacon: mixed symbology 492

3.2.3. Fusing the pharmaca 493

3.3. Stage Three: Forming the Elixir jiedan through Internal Firing 495 3.3.1. General descriptions 496 3.3.1.1. Caldrons, furnaces, and orbits 497 3.3.1.2. Reclusion and baoyi 502

3.3.2. Firing periods huohou 504 3.3.2.1. Chens huohou 507 3.3.2.2. Chens Matching Stems 509 3.3.2.3. The standard ring cycle 514 3.3.2.4. Firing as a secret teaching 516

3.4. Stage Four: Transformation into a Yang Spirit shenhua 518 3.4.1. General description 518 3.4.2. Meritorious labor, moral and psychophysiological 519 3.4.3. Further training, meditative or sexual 522 3.4.4. The yang spirit 523 3.4.5. Leaving the body 526 3.4.6. Celestial rank 529 3.4.7. Union with the Dao 532

4. Chens Adaptations of His Alchemical Dao 532 4.1. Apocryphal Buddhist Sexual Alchemy 533 4.1.1. Chen as an apocryphal Buddhist 544

4.2. NeoConfucian Sexual Alchemy 545 4.3. Solo Inner Alchemy 548 5. Conclusion 551

Chapter 6. Chens Legacy in the Ming and Qing Dynasties 557 First reason for studying MingQing traditions 557 Second reason 557

1. Quantitative Overview 560 xvi

1.1. The Printings of Chens Texts 560 1.2. Analysis of Bibliographies 563 2. Texts Mentioning Chen Zhixu, by Century 565 2.1. Fourteenth and Fieenth Centuries 566 2.1.1. Dai Qizong 566 2.1.2. Zhao Yizhen 567 2.1.3. Zhang Yuchu 568 2.1.4. Other Daoist texts of the era 568

2.2. Sixteenth Century 571 2.2.1. Wang Yangming 572 2.2.2. Luo Qinshun 572 2.2.3. Taishang bashiyi hua tushuo 574 2.2.4. Lu Xixing 575 2.2.5. Two Cantong qi commentaries 576 2.2.6. Wang Shizhen 576 2.2.7. Wang Qi 577 2.2.8. Peng Haogu 578 2.2.9. Summary: sixteenth century 578

2.3. Seventeenth Century 579 2.3.1. A gazetteer 579 2.3.2. A medical text 579 2.3.3. A Daoist hagiography 580 2.3.4. A sexual alchemist 580 2.3.5. Cantong qi studies 580 2.3.6. A Quanzhen Daoist author 581 2.3.7. Summary: seventeenth century 582

2.4. Eighteenth Century 583 2.4.1. Two literati sexualalchemist readers 583 2.4.2. Two Quanzhen Daoist readers 584 2.4.3. Imperial publications 585 2.4.4. Other reference works 589 2.4.5. Summary: eighteenth century 589

2.5. Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 591 xvii

2.5.1. The Western Lineage of inner alchemy 591 2.5.2. Other sexual alchemists 592 2.5.3. Quanzhen critics 594 2.5.4. Other Daoist readers 594 2.5.5. Other nonDaoist citations 596 2.5.6. Summary: nineteenth and twentieth centuries 596

3. Tracing Themes in Chen Zhixus Legacy 597 3.1. Early Reactions 601 3.1.1. Dai Qizong 601 3.1.2. Zhang Yuchu 602 3.1.3. Zhao Yizhen 606 3.1.4. Conclusions 608

3.2. Polemics by Two LayDaoist Literati 609 3.2.1. Wang Yangming 610 3.2.2. Wang Shizhen 614

3.3. Lu Xixing: Adopting and Extending Chens Dao 624 3.3.1. Conclusions 627

3.4. Literati Alchemists of the KangxiYongzhen Period 628 3.4.1. Tao Susi and Qiu Zhaoao 629 3.4.2. Chens teachings in imperial editions 633 3.4.3. Conclusions 636

3.5. Dissenting Views 637 3.5.1. Laboratory alchemy: Peng Haogu 637 3.5.2. Ignoring Chen Zhixu: Zhu Yuanyu and Dong Dening 638 3.5.3. Counterreadings, 1: Wu Shouyang 642 3.5.4. Counterreadings, 2: Liu Yiming 644 3.5.5. Counterreadings, 3: Li Xiyue 648 3.5.6. Dissenters: Conclusions 649

4. Conclusion 650 4.1. Historical narrative 650 4.2. Themes 653

Appendix to Chapter 6, Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian Commentary 657 Commentators on Cantong qi 657 xviii

Commentators on Wuzhen pian 659

Chapter 7. Conclusion 661 Seven perspectives in the study of inner alchemy 661 An outline of Chens religious market 664 Issues for future study 668 Where do we place Chen Zhixu on the map? 670

Appendix 1. A Comprehensive Bibliography of Editions of Works by Chen Zhixu and Zhao Youqin 675 A. Primary Texts by Chen Zhixu 675 B. Primary Texts by Zhao Youqin 687 C. Collectanea Containing the Primary Texts 689

Appendix 2. Text Criticism of Jindan dayao 702 1. The Various Editions of Jindan dayao 702 1.1. Extant Editions of Jindan dayao 703 1.1.1. Daozang edition 703 1.1.2. Zhengli edition 703 1.1.3. Jiyao edition 704 1.1.4. Shandong edition 705 1.1.5. Wuzhong edition 705 1.1.6. Shanzhuang edition 705 1.1.7. Daofan edition 706 1.1.8. Doga edition 706 1.1.9. Four modern editions 706

1.2. The Dating of the UrText 707 1.3. The Filiations of the Jindan dayao Editions 712 1.4. Choosing the Daozang Edition as the Base Text 714 1.5. Establishing Filiations 1 and 2 715 1.6. Which Extant Edition Is Earliest? 716 xix

1.7. The Wording of the Daozang Edition and Zhengli/Jiyao Filiation 717 1.8. Comparing the Shandong Edition with the Daozang Edition 724 1.8.1. Dating the Shandong edition 724 1.8.2. The Shandong edition is later than the Daozang edition 725 1.8.3. Sections missing om the Daozang edition ought to be replaced 726

1.9. Of the Zhengli and Jiyao Editions, Which Is Earlier? 728 1.10. Filiation 3: Daofan and Doga Editions 1.11. Filiation 4: Wuzhong and Shanzhuang Editions 729 2. The Contents of the Various Editions of Jindan dayao 730 2.1. The General Organization of Jindan dayao: Chapter Titles 730 2.2. The General Organization of Jindan dayao: Contents of the Chapters 731 2.3. The Organization of Jindan dayao in the Dierent Editions 733 2.4. The Segments Missing om the Daozang Edition 734 2.4.1. Missing segment 1 734 2.4.2. Missing segments 24 735 2.4.3. Missing segments 56 736 2.4.4. Missing segment 7 736 2.4.5. Missing segment 8 736 2.4.6. Missing segment 9 737 2.4.7. Missing segment 10 737 2.4.8. Missing segment 11 737 2.4.9. Conclusions regarding missing segments 737

2.5. Discrepancies in the Other Editions 738

Bibliography of Works Cited 740 A1.1. Works in the Ming Daoist Canon 740 A1.2. Daoist Primary Works Not in the Ming Daoist Canon, and Works on Sexual Cultivation 747 A2. Buddhist Works 757 B. Other PreModern Works in Chinese 758 C. Modern Works in Chinese and Japanese 761 D. Works in Western Languages 769 xx

Chapter 1, Orientations If you have not met a master, transmitting or discussing the dao is di cult; yet if you have already heard the mysterious wonders, it is but a leisurely task. If you send your spirit and qi back to your golden caldron as soon as possible, you can avoid dying and letting your body and bones be buried in the mountainous wilds! !

1

So spoke Chen Zhixu , a Daoist master and teacher of sexual alchemy a form of inner alchemy who was active in southcentral China in the rst half of the fourteenth century. This dissertation is a study of Chens career, and his teachings on salvation, as situated within his social world. As we see in the passage above, Chen taught salvation through alchemical practice, and this teaching was situated squarely within an institution of esoteric masterdisciple transmission. Studying the contents of Chens teachings should not be separated from studying the institutions within which his teachings were formed and transmitted. My main goal in this dissertation is to describe and interpret Chen Zhixus biography, his teachings, and his reception in later inneralchemical tradition. I piece together an account of Chens sexualalchemical practices from references scattered throughout his writings, and situate this account within the elds of Chinese inner alchemy and sexual cultivation. Secondarily, through this study of the life and work of one Daoist, I oer new approaches to the reading of any Daoist gure or text, approaches such as locating Daoists and their texts within economies of salvation, or noting how texts produce salvation by serving as vehicles for performative speech. Finally, this study is meant as a contribution to the social history of religions. My insights will be useful for the study of religious gures or texts from other places and times beyond Chens world of premodern China. * 1

*

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 9.7b12.

1

*

Like the adamantine sword, it has a great vigor Skt. vrya ; like the hundredfoot pole, it is straight and unbending; of all the armored warriors in the world, none could break it. This vigorous heartmind has great courage and erceness. When all of the gods in heaven and people on earth see this vigor, their joy will be measureless. Utilizing this vigor, one becomes a buddha and a patriarch. !0/* .)#-/*

%1 /*5')+$/*"2 What does this passage mean? The goal of my research is to nd meaning in inner alchemical passages such as the one aboveto nd the meaning of a passage within its own tradition, and to nd its meaning for us as scholars of religion. The bulk of this dissertation addresses the meaning of Chens language within his sexual alchemical tradition. I discuss the meaning of Chens teachings and person for religious studies mainly in this introduction, in chapter 3, and in the conclusion, but also in passing throughout the dissertation. Inner alchemy or interior alchemy; neidan is a form of selfcultivation, leading to transcendence, in which discourse drawn from laboratory alchemy and the Book of Changes Yijing , is applied to the practice of rening corporeal energies. It has been the main form of Daoist selfcultivation practice for more than a millennium, and yet relatively few scholars outside China have researched it. Scholars may feel it to be too forbidding a subject: alchemical texts are written using an obscure vocabulary, and in an abstract cosmological code based in part on Yijing trigrams. The texts also claim that they leave their deepest secrets unrevealed, that the inner secrets are not committed to writing at all, but may be learned only from the lips of a master. This may be discouraging to scholars, yet as I will show, claiming secrecy is itself a strategy, worthy of study in its own right. Scholars may also feel inner alchemy to be too boring or technical a subject. A reader may gain some familiarity with the language of these texts only to nd that they all sound alike. They can be tasteless: as Chen himself notes using a Chan Buddhist idiom , the reader of an alchemical classic will nd it like chewing wax throughout, without any place to make an entry into understanding (34)2&3 unless guided by a teacher, of course! . This problem of insipid or repetitive language can strike us 2


3

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Jiyao ed., 1.35a8.

2

when we read other genres of Daoist literature, but perhaps especially when reading inneralchemical literature. So my goal of nding meaning in these texts has two aspects. First, it must involve simply understanding the referents for alchemical terms. The passage above may strike the uninformed reader as a pastiche of Chan Buddhist references, but through research we can discover that it refers to the male alchemists sex organ, its use, and the state of mind he ought to have during sexual cultivation. Second, nding meaning involves nding new value and signicance of these texts for the study of Daoism, or for the study of religion in general. Some understanding of alchemical terminology can be gained through consulting modern Chinese secondary sources; but to discover the value of alchemical texts for the study of religion will require new approaches. In this dissertation I o er a number of such approaches; one new approach is to look for religious strategies and uses of language within alchemical texts. My interpretation of the passage above reveals the following: 1 Chen is cosmizing the body and the sex act, partaking in a sacred reality;4 2 he is reinterpreting the Buddha himself and all Chan masters of the past as having been sexual alchemists, a political strategy for justifying his own teachings; 3 he is assimilating the sexual alchemist Chen himself, and the male reader to the Buddha and the patriarchs; 4 he is describing the participation of deities in the alchemists sexual practice; and nally 5 he is enacting or performing of all these truths through an illocutionary speech act. Through written statements like this one, Chen is managing his authority as an alchemical master, and he is enacting salvation. It will take several chapters to esh out these ideas, but this is enough to illustrate my goal: to take seemingly formulaic inneralchemical writing and nd new meaning and value in it for scholars of religion. There have been so many writers and readers of inneralchemical literature during the past millennium of Chinese history5 that Western scholars ought to search for 4

Regarding the term cosmizing, see p. 35n98 below. The term comes from Berger, The Sacred Canopy, 2737.

5

I have made a rough study of Daoist commentarial literature in eight Daoist canons and collections. Of all the extant Daoist commentaries in my survey 623 , 16 percent of them 99 are on inner alchemical texts. If we consider inner alchemy texts as a percentage of all extant Daoist texts not just Daoist commentaries , the percentage may be comparable.

3

value and meaning in these texts too. This dissertation reects my e ort to translate inner alchemy according to our canons of meaning. In this introduction I will rst present my ideal picture of how we ought to study inner alchemy. Then I will o er a brief review of the literature, comparing the work of previous scholars to this ideal. Next, I will introduce my own theoretical approach, o er some necessary denitions, introduce my dissertation chapters, and list some conventions used in this dissertation.

§1, Seven Perspectives in the Study of Inner Alchemy A complete, critical study of any inneralchemical text6 ought to consider it from at least seven di erent perspectives. The scholar of alchemy must rst establish his or her texts or other materials; this is 1 the philological perspective. Next, the scholar must understand the specialized language of the material in its own terms, and translate it into an accessible modern idiom; this is 2 the exegetical perspective. Then, the scholar must approach the material from 3 historical, 4 structural/ institutional, 5 discursive, and 6 textuality perspectives. Finally, the scholar must remain 7 selfreective, conscious of his or her own stance and agendas. §1.1, Understanding.

Before translating the alchemical text into a modern

language, the rst step must be to understand it in its own terms. While our reading may involve some amount of misreading, readings are in fact constrained by social and institutional factors, and texts are not mere palimpsests, wantonly overwritten by later readers. As a modern Western academic reader, when reading an alchemical text, I can approach the text as a public document, and I can indeed approximate 6

In the following, I speak of texts, but I would argue that this account could apply equally to the study of persons, practices, or ideas. Cf. Ricoeurs discussion of meaningful action considered as a text in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, 197221. A critic of Ricoeur could argue that studying living people through ethnography cannot be reduced to the study of their actions as mere texts, but this critique does not apply to our study of people from past ages. We must study premodern alchemists through texts or other artifacts. To attempt to study premodern alchemists solely based on our own alchemical meditation experiences, for example, would be methodologically unsound.

4

how a pre modern educated Chinese layperson, from the author s own place and time, may have read the text. With more practice and experience in reading such material, I may even be able to approach the text as an initiate would have, though this is less certain. My reading of an alchemical text will never be fully objective or subjective, but neither would I want it to be so. According to Hans Georg Gadamer, understanding takes place through a fusion of horizons,7 an encounter between the reader s e ective history one s own prejudice and tradition as a forestructure of knowledge and the other tradition which confronts the reader in the text. When I read an alchemical text, I change the text to some extent in reading it, but the text also interrogates me, and I am changed in turn. Through this dialectic we may grow individually, and as a scholarly community. §1.2, Explanation.

Yet we must also be aware of the institutional and

structural background and makeup of the text. Despite Gadamer s distaste for that cold rationality which treats the text as an object and severs the I thou communion between reader and text, our reading of the text must involve this aspectmust involve explanation as well as understanding, must involve the social sciences as well as the human sciences.8 Here, the scholar of alchemy must attend to the historical, structural/ institutional, discursive, and textuality related contexts of the material. This aspect of reading must be more than a disinterested analysis of the text s background and makeup: it must also involve critique of the text s ideology. As Gadamer s critics would point out,9 texts are not merely our amiable conversation partners: texts are shaped by the desires, interests, and ideologies of the authors and their social worlds. Texts are produced by such interests, and serve to perpetuate or create such interests. We must be critical of the interests in the text, and our own interests, as we analyze the historical, structural/institutional, discursive, and textuality related contexts of the text.10 7

Gadamer, Truth and Method, 306.

8

Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, 14564. Ricoeur speaks especially of including Lvi Strauss s structural approach as a stage within interpretation. 9

For example, Jrgen Habermas. See Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, 7883.

10

For a systematic approach to the political interpretation of myth and cosmology, see Lincoln, Theorizing Myth, 14951; and idem, How to Read a Religious Text.

5

Placing the alchemical text in diachronic historical context, the scholar may illuminate its links to other texts, ideas, persons, groups, and events from before or after its time. Placing the text in synchronic sociological context,11 the scholar may study institutions and discourses, illuminating how the text deploys discourses in relation to social structures, institutions, or other constellations of power. By discourse, I refer to Michel Foucaults conception of discourses as highly regulated groupings of utterances or statements with internal rules which are specic to discourse itself, and not bound to any single institution.12 Sociologists of culture tell us that people develop and use discourses and other cultural elements in order to deal with the institutions and structures that make up human social lifeand perhaps this is even our main use of culture.13 Thus, we cannot understand cultural elements without understanding how they relate to institutions. When I analyze Chens social world from a historical perspective, I nd it populated by real persons, while when analyzing it from a sociological perspective, I see Weberian ideal types of master, disciple, patron, monastic, and spiritual seeker. From a historical perspective, I may study Chens relations with particular disciples such as Deng Yanghao , or his visits to monasteries at specic times, while from a sociological perspective, I may study the masterdisciple institution or other structures. From a historical perspective I may study Chens citations of previous masters, while from a sociological perspective I may study the patterns of his appropriation and manipulation of discourses. Placing the text in the context of material textuality, the scholar may study how the production and reception of alchemical knowledge is allowed or constrained by the media of printed, handwritten, or oral texts, each with their own eects. The scholar may also study the text as writing, which escapes from or transcends its site of production in ways dierent from speech. Finally, the scholar must always interrogate his or her own prejudices. 11

By sociological context I mean context as studied not merely by sociology, but also by social sciences such as anthropology, linguistics, or psychology. These social sciences may be diachronic too, of course, but their special contribution is synchronic structural or functional perspective. 12

Mills, Discourse, 48.

13

Swidler, Talk of Love, 17779.

6

Jonathan Z. Smith says that the historian of religion must be relentlessly self conscious. Indeed, this selfconsciousness constitutes his primary expertise, his foremost object of study.14 While Smith may be hoping primarily to avoid bad writing or thinking, Paul Ricoeur holds out the hope that this selfconsciousness will be part of our process of selfunderstanding and personal growth: the text is the medium through which we understand ourselves. . . . Henceforth, to understand is to understand oneself in ont of the text. It is not a question of imposing upon the text our nite capacity of understanding, but of exposing ourselves to the text and receiving from it an enlarged self . . .15 Translation of foreign thoughtworlds and critique of their ideologies enriches us as it reects and contributes to our own constructive selfcritique. These seven perspectives that I hold as essential for the study of inner alchemyphilological, exegetical, historical, structural/institutional, discursive, textuality, and selfreectivedo not exhaust the eld, of course. Other perspectives that I do not address in the dissertation include philosophy, ethics, the lived body,16 the sacred,17 psychology, metaphor theory,18 cognitive science, neuroscience, and biomedicine. The study of laboratory alchemy would also include the perspective of chemistry. Religion is also a necessary perspective for the study of inner alchemy, but I do not list it as an eighth perspective since it is related to all of the perspectives, especially the exegetical, institutional, and discursive perspectives. I want to make inneralchemical texts meaningful for scholars of religion. Other audiences, such as meditators, may nd practiceoriented, experiential, or spiritual approaches more meaningful. These approaches are worthy of both respect and critique. I know of no satisfactory way to apply them to the historical study of alchemy.

14

Smith, Imagining Religion, xi.

15

Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, 14243.

16

As in the work of Maurice MerleauPonty, Thomas Csordas, et al.

17

As in the work of Mircea Eliade.

18

As in the work of George Lako , Mark Johnson, et al.

7

§2, Literature Review §2.1, Studies of Inner Alchemy §2.1.1, Studies in Chinese.

Inner alchemy has never died out in Mainland China and

Taiwan, and new primary texts on inner alchemy and similar forms of selfcultivation continue to be published, even by staterun publishing houses. The academic study of inner alchemy in Mainland China began in the 1970s and 80s, when qigong qi training grew in popularity and received pseudoscientic legitimacy.19 Traditional selfcultivation practices such as inner alchemy have always been religious practices, existing within a religious matrix including monastic life, the masterdisciple institution, worship of deities, a sense of the sacred, cosmology, ritual, and ethics. Yet by treating qigong as a form of scientic medicine rather than religion, it became possible for Chinese scholars to research the history of inner alchemy even under a regime of state atheism. Nevertheless, most Mainland scholars of inner alchemy blend critical academic discourse with traditional discourses on selfcultivation, health, and ethics. I term this contemporarytraditional scholarship. Mainland scholars do not explicitly base their historiography on personal practice and experience, but their professional interest in inner alchemy is certainly informed by personal interests in health practices and spirituality.20 In Taiwan, the study of inner alchemy is almost completely practiceoriented. The rst generation of modern Chinese scholars of inner alchemy includes Li Yuanguo, Ma Jiren, Hao Qin, and Wang Mu.21 The books of Li, Ma, and Hao combine historical narratives with general discussions of inneralchemical practice and sections on the teachings of specic gures. Wangs commentary uses the text of the alchemical classic Wuzhen pian Chapters on Awakening to the Perfect to develop his own understanding of orthodox inner alchemy, based on Quanzhen Daoist 19

Palmer, Qigong Fever.

20

I do not mean this as a criticism. All scholars have subjective reasons for their choice of study, although some may protest that they practice science as a vocation, according to Max Webers ideal.

21

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue; Ma, Daojiao yu liandan; Hao, Longhu dandao; Wang Mu, Wuzhen pian qianjie. I do not mention here the books of Chen Yingning and Hu Haiya . Their work is valuable for understanding inner alchemy, but I consider their books to be primary sources rather than secondary sources.

8

teachings. While Li combines lifenurturing yangsheng and inneralchemical traditions into a single narrative, Ma and Hao separate lifenurturing from inner alchemy, each devoting one book to inner alchemy and a second book to life nurturing or qigong.22 The books by these four scholars are invaluable references for any student of the subject. Li and Ma betray a naturalistic attitude, a reluctance to accept inner alchemy as an ineluctably religious tradition. Li writes of one Daoists teachings, This type of interpretation is relatively scientic. It cuts down on the penumbra of mystic dazzlement which had surmounted inner alchemy for ages.23 Ma writes, Therefore, the elixir is an e ect reecting the repletion and cyclical transformation of essence, qi, and spirit. Its just that some men of old dressed this in mystical garb, making it hard for people to grasp, and thats all.24 However, in Chen Zhixus teachings, inner alchemy is absolutely inseparable from religious factors such as the worship of deities, participation in cosmic process, and ritual. In other words, the mystical or in my terms, esoteric aspect of inner alchemical teachings is not a mere robe which may be do ed, but the very skin of the traditionand if we call it a skin, then it is not just the epidermis, but the internal membranes as well. Before the modern period and the arrival of Western science and scientism, I doubt it would be possible to separate alchemy from religion in the teachings of any alchemist. Books by the second generation of modern Chinese scholars of inner alchemy include general works by Zhang Qin, Ge Guolong, Yang Lihua, and Shen Jie,25 and monographs by Zhang Guangbao, Yang Ming, Liu Zhong, Zeng Chuanhui, and Xie Zhengqiang.26 Inner alchemy is also discussed in every Chinese overview history of 22

Ma Jiren has written Daojiao yu qigong in addition to Daojiao yu liandan; Hao Qin has written Dao zai yangsheng in addition to Longhu dandao. 23

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 301.

24

Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 130.

25

Zhang Qin, Daojiao lianyang xinlixue; Ge Guolong, Daojiao neidan xue tanwei; Ge Guolong, Daojiao neidan xue suyuan; Yang Lihua, Niming de pinjie; Shen Jie, Neidan written by a Mainland author, though published in Hong Kong . I do not include primary sources and practitioneroriented works such as the books of Tian Chengyang and Zhang Xingfa . 26

Zhang Guangbao, JinYuan Quanzhen Dao neidan xinxing xue; Zhang Guangbao, TangSong neidan daojiao; Yang Ming, Daojiao yangshengjia Lu Xixing yu ta de Fanghu waishi; Liu Ning, Liu Yiming xiudao sixiang yanjiu; Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue; and Xie Zhengqiang, Fu Jinquan neidan sixiang yanjiu.

9

Daoism.27 The general works add little to the similar works by Li, Ma, and Hao of the previous generation, and repeat some of the same scientistic fallacies. Zhang Qins book aims to interpret inner alchemy in terms of modern psychology, and Ge Guolongs rst book aims to do so in terms of analytic philosophy, but neither attempt even gets o the ground. The historical monographs are of greater value than the general works. Until they are ready to rethink their historiographical assumptions, one hopes that Chinese scholars will concentrate their research on specic gures, movements, or texts, which would at least oer new historical data, rather than continuing to plow the same exhausted soil. When we review the study of inner alchemy in modern China in terms of the seven perspectives I call for above, we nd only three of the seven represented: philology, the perspective of translating alchemical terminology into a modern idiom, and the historical perspective primarily intellectual history. We might not expect to nd Chinese scholars employing theories of discourse or textuality which are recent Western trends, and it is not surprising to nd a lack of methodological selfcritique in such a cheerfully scientistic, positivistic, and forwardlooking academic culture, yet we might be surprised to see that Mainland Chinese scholars have never studied premodern Daoism or inner alchemy in terms of social structures or institutions. It is ironic that nominally Marxist Chinese intellectuals lack a sociological perspective, but state MarxLeninMaoism has little in common with Western academic Marxism, and critique is not encouraged in the Chinese academy unless directed away from modern Chinese society.28 Other defects of Chinese scholarship include scientism, a fondness for pseudosciences and parapsychology,29 a reluctance to view inner alchemy as thoroughly religious, and a linear riseandfall historiographic script 27

Worthy of mention are two major histories of Daoism edited in Beijing and Sichuan Ren Jiyu, Zhonuo daojiao shi; Qing Xitai, Zhonuo daojiao shi, and two histories of Daoist thought Qing Xitai, Zhonuo daojiao sixiang shigang; Kong Linghong, SongMing daojiao sixiang yanjiu.

28

There are sociological reasons why the postrevolutionary Marxism of China should dier from the pre revolutionary Marxism of the Western academy. Stanislaw Ossowski has noted how revolutionary ideologies change after the revolution is accomplished: before the revolution they portray the society as dichotomously divided, which justies the need for the revolution itself, but after the revolution, they are transformed into functionalisttype justications of the status quo Ossowski is paraphrased in Bernard, The ConsensusConict Debate, 200. 29

Cf. Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 114, 14546, 191.

10

according to which the MingQing period must necessarily be viewed as a time of stasis or decline. Although we nd only the philological, exegetical, and historical perspectives in Chinese scholarship on inner alchemy, these are in fact the most basic and important perspectives, and Chinese scholars have a great amount to contribute here. Western scholars will rarely be able to read as broadly in Daoist primary sources as Chinese scholars do, so Western scholars must rely on their superior breadth of reading. Also, as I argue in chapter 6 below, Chinese contemporary traditional scholarship on inner alchemy participates in the tradition of inner alchemy itself, and has much to o er to Western scholars. Inner alchemy is part of these scholars e ective history, and if Western scholars were to ignore their views, their own understanding would su er. In my chapter 4 on inner alchemy, I have absorbed the contemporarytraditional scholarship of Hao, Ma, and Li, and reconstituted it according to my own lights. §2.1.2, Studies in Japanese.

Japanese scholars have contributed specialized

studies related to specic inner alchemical gures, texts, and forms of thought. Unlike Chinese and Western scholars, Japanese scholars have produced articles but almost no books though some articles are of monograph length . Azuma and Fukui have studied the structure of the classic Wuzhen pian;30 Hachiya, Imai, Matsushita, Miyakawa, Sakauchi, and Yokote have studied earlier traditions of inner alchemy or traditions linked to inner alchemy ;31 Miura, Mori, and Yokote have studied later traditions;32 Mori has also contributed many textual studies on Daoist works from the MingQing period, often dealing with inner alchemy;33 Akioka and Ikai have

30

Azuma, Ch Hakutan Goshin hen no kenky to ksh; Azuma, Goshin hen no naitan shis; Fukui, Goshin hen no ksei ni tsuite.

31

Hachiya, Kindai dky no kenky; Hachiya, Chy shinjin kinkan gyokusa ketsu ni tsuite; Imai, Kintan dky kenky ; Matsushita, Zenshin Ky Nansh ni okeru seimei setsu no tenkai; Miyakawa, NanS no dshi Haku Gyokusen no jiseki; Sakauchi, ShRy dend sh to naitan shis; Yokote, Haku Gyokusen to NanS knan dky. 32

Miura, Gendai shis kenky josetsu; Mori, Kinsei naitand no sanky itchi ron; Yokote, Zenshin D no heny.

33

Cf. Mori, Identity and Lineage; Mori, Ds shy to Sh Yofu no Ryos fukei shiny; among others.

11

studied sexual alchemical teachings in the MingQing period;34 nally, Fukui, Kamata, Kubo, Yokote, and Yoshikawa have studied inner alchemists borrowings from Chan Buddhism.35 As is usual in Japanese Sinology, these studies are rigorous and limited in scope. Japanese scholars interest in the interactions between inner alchemical and Buddhist traditions is especially valuable, although they betray a preference for Buddhism. Reviewing Japanese scholarship in terms of the seven perspectives, we nd mainly the philological, historical, and textuality perspectives represented. Japanese scholars often prefer to produce positivistic philology rather than delve into the content of inner alchemical teachings, and are less interested in translating alchemical terminology and thought into a modern idiom. §2.1.3, Studies in Western Languages.

Western scholars of inner alchemy have

concentrated on philology and translation, and rightly so, since philology and translation into an accessible modern language are the most fundamental and important steps in the study of inner alchemy. But this also means that the eld has not advanced far beyond this stage. Dozens of books have been published which are nothing but translation, sometimes with the apology that these translations are meant to speak for themselves to the reader. This category includes the alchemical translations of Thomas Cleary, Eva Wong, and Lu Kuan Y a.k.a. Charles Luk .36 Other books, such as those by BaldrianHussein, Darga, Despeux, and Wilhelm, include an extended introduction with the translation.37 These introductions continue the task of translating alchemical language into accessible modern language, with some historiography as well. Only six books have been published which I would call critical or synthetic studies; these are by Despeux,

34

Akioka, Roku Seish no naitan shis; Ikai, J Samp no bchjutsu.

35

Fukui, Zenshind no Hannya shin ky juy ni tsuite; Kamata, Shin dky no keisei ni oyoboshita zen no eiky; Kubo, Rshi hachijichi ka to setsu ni tsuite 1968, 1972 ; Kubo, Zenshin ky to Rinzai zen; Yokote, Kanwa to naitan; Yoshikawa, Waki ha taku ni itarazu.

36

Cf. Pregadio, Review of Harmonizing Yin and Yang: The Dragon Tiger Classic, translated by Eva Wong.

37

BaldrianHussein, Procds secrets du joyau magique, a translation of DZ 1191, Michuan Zhengyang Zhenren lingbao bifa; Darga, Das alchemistische Buch von innerem Wesen und Lebensenergie, a translation of Xingming guizhi; Despeux, La Moee du Phnix Rouge, a translation of Chifeng sui ; Despeux, Trait dalchimie et de physiologie taoste, a translation of Weisheng shenglixue mingzhi; and Wilhelm, The Secret of the Golden Flower, a translation of Taiyi jinhua zongzhi and Huiming jing.

12

Esposito, Needham, Robinet, and Wile.38 These six studies all include translation, save Needhams. Below I will compare the books by Needham, Robinet, and Wile. Four books from Joseph Needhams project Science and Civilisation in China mention Chinese alchemy, and one book is devoted to inner alchemy. Needham and his collaborator Lu Gweidjen approach their study mainly from the philological and historical perspectives. Their alchemical typology and views on the evolution of alchemy from the laboratory to the oratory are at least as valuable as the theories of Mainland scholars. Needhams theory of the global spread of specically inner alchemy from China to the Arab and European alchemists, Indian yogis, and American Transcendentalists, while unproven, is fascinating. Another of Needhams controversial claims is that Chinese inner alchemy was in essence not psychological or spiritual, but physiological.39 He believes that inner alchemists were aiming solely at bodily longevity through biochemical means, and does not admit that inner alchemy was a religious practice aimed at spiritual salvation, transcendence of the human condition, and ascent to the heavens.40 I will show that, in fact, inner alchemy is inseparable from these religious concepts and hopes. Isabelle Robinets book is the best study of inneralchemical thought and discourse in a Western language. Robinet understands alchemical language on its own structural terms, and interprets it clearly. She is even able to notice contradictions within the use of inneralchemical symbols in any given text, and identify this transgression of the laws of logic as an important principle of alchemical thought.41 No other nonChinese scholar has been able to enter into the alchemical language to this extent. One of Robinets insights has been crucial for my thinking about inner alchemy: It is, in eect, as a k an that neidan acts upon the spirit of the adept. A brain teaser whose e cacy resides precisely in the sort of seduction and fascination 38 Despeux, Taosme et corps humain; Despeux, Immortees de la Chine ancinne; Esposito, L alchimia del soo; Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, part 5, Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Physiological Alchemy; Robinet, Introduction l alchimie intrieure taoste; and Wile, Art of the Bedchamber. 39

Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5:23.

40

Note Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5:23, where he translates, but tellingly leaves undiscussed, the line the embryonic qi released from its husk . . . , a man can ascend to the heavens as an immortal.

41

Robinet, Introduction l alchimie intrieure taoste, 95102.

13

that it obviously provokes in its usersmasters or adepts.42 It is Robinets insight, that inneralchemical language works like Chan Buddhist language, that I take as my starting point for applying the approaches and achievements of Chan Studies to the study of inner alchemy. Robinets book has a aw, however: it is ahistorical. Douglas Wile identies this aw in a book review: To answer fundamental questions about inner alchemy we must know something about the inner alchemists, about the men and their subculture as anthropologists and sociologists would describe them, or at least historians. . . . The book left me satised that we have cracked the linguistic and conceptual code of inner alchemy; we know what a strike, walk, and foul are, but we do not know why grown men play baseball.43 Robinet treats inner alchemy as a homogeneous thoughtworld rather than a discourse that was deployed by living people over time and in connection with social institutions. She studies the alchemical langue, but not its parole. She does oer a General Historical Survey at the beginning of the book, but does not tie this to her study of inner alchemical thought. In fact, many of her insights are based on a close reading of a single alchemical author, Li Daochun d. 1306 , and thus do not take account of dierent teachings within the tradition. She also misreads alchemists views about sexual cultivation, and even asserts that Chen Zhixu was not a sexual alchemist. Robinets strength is her keen perception of inneralchemical thought; her weakness is her conscious prescinding from inneralchemical practice. Douglas Wiles book on sexual cultivation in China,44 while not exclusively devoted to the subject of inner alchemy, nevertheless contains a reliable description of inner alchemy as part of Wiles study of sexual alchemy. Wile translates texts on sexual cultivation from throughout Chinese history; about half of his material is 42


43

Wile, Review of Introduction l alchimie intrieure taoste, 89, 91. In a rejoinder to Wiles review, Robinet says that she avoided consideration of physiological teachings because each alchemist oers a somewhat dierent system making a general summary di cult , and because she thinks that many of the alchemists themselves downplay the physiological side she is probably thinking of Li Daochun in particular . She also says that the alchemists intimate and ultimate mover . . . clearly . . . is not a sociological or political mover, which in their eld of action would be a supercial one; Robinet, Response to Douglas Wiles Review of Introduction l alchimie intrieure taoste, 14647. I show in this dissertation. among other things, that 1 it is worthwhile to study the physiological teachings of intellectual alchemists, and 2 their abstract teachings can be thoroughly political, i.e., micropolitical. 44

Wile, The Art of the Bedchamber.

14

sexual alchemy from the MingQing period. Wile is able to combine philological, exegetical, and historical perspectives in his book. He o ers a history of the discourse of sexual cultivation, but does not attempt to locate it within the social worlds of the cultivators. He does not analyze the institutional background of sexual alchemy hinted at in the alchemical texts themselves. Mention must also be made of Judith Berlings book on the Mingdynasty sectarian founder Lin Zhaoen 151798 , which includes a section on Lins own odd form of inner alchemy, called stilling in the back genbei .45 During the past few years, at least seven dissertations in English related to the history and practice of Chinese inner alchemy have appeared, so the future for this eld of study looks promising.46

§2.2, Studies of Sexual Alchemy Relatively few secondary studies on sexual alchemy in Chinese religion and society have been published in any language, and Wiles section on the subject has yet to be equalled. General discussions of sexual alchemy can be found in Chinese by Li Yuanguo, Hao Qin, Cai Jun and Li Wenkun, and Zhong Laiyin;47 and in English by Furth, Needham, Ruan, and Van Gulik.48 The sexual alchemy of the Ming gure Lu Xixing has received special attention, and has been studied in some depth by Yang Ming, Liu Tsunyan, Wile, and Akioka,49 and in less detail by Qing Xitai et al.,

45

Berling, The Syncretic Religion of Lin Chaoen, 11637.

46

Bellamide, SelfCultivation and Quanzhen Daoism, with Special Reference to the Legacy of Qiu Chuji; Crowe, The Nature and Function of the Buddhist and Ru Teachings in Li Daochuns . ca. 1288 Wondrous Way of Peerless Orthodox Truth; Komjathy, Cultivating Perfection: Mysticism and SelfTransformation in Early Quanzhen Daoism; Liu Xun, In Search of Immortality: Daoist Inner Alchemy in Early Twentieth Century China; Skar, Golden Elixir Alchemy: The Formation of the Southern Lineage and the Transformation of Medieval China; Valussi, Beheading the Red Dragon: A History of Female Inner Alchemy in China; Wang Li, The Daoist Way of Transcendence: Bai Yuchans Inner Alchemical Thought and Practice. 47

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 397417; Hao Qin, Longhu dan dao, 285350; Cai Jun and Li Wenkun, Xing kexue yu Zhonuo chuantong xing xiulian; Zhong Laiyin, Longhu ji, 2:589666. 48 Furth, A Flourishing Yin, 187223. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5:186 , 284, and passim; Ruan Fang Fu, Sex in China, 4968; and Van Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China, passim. 49

Yang Ming, Daojiao yangshengjia Lu Xixing yu tade Fanghu waishi; Liu Tsunyan, Lu Hsihsing: A Confucian Scholar, Taoist Priest and Buddhist Devotee of the Sixteenth Century; Liu Tsunyan, Lu Hsihsing and His Commentaries on the Tsantungchi; Wile, The Art of the Bedchamber; Akioka, Roku Seish no naitan shis;

15

Li Yuanguo, Hao Qin, and Xu Zhaoren.50 The Qing sexual alchemist Fu Jinquan has been studied by Xie Zhengqiang.51 Contemporarytraditional scholars are ambivalent about sexual alchemy, accepting it as a legitimate form of selfcultivation while warning against over indulgence. Li Yuanguo cites Needhams opinion that Chinese sexual cultivation is healthyminded,52 a case of feedback between East and West. Liu Tsunyan accepts Lu Xixings sexual alchemy as orthodox, but rejects some of his texts also translated by Wile as vulgar, and is ultimately ambivalent about sexual alchemy: the di erence between the Taoist dualcultivation and the comparatively degenerate arts of love was very tenuous at that time, in fact it was so vague that even Taoist priests themselves would have some confusion in interpreting it.53 Liu here comes close to the realization that the line between orthodox and heterodox practices was constructed as a site of contestation. Isabelle Robinet is mistaken on this point as well. She criticizes Li Yuanguo for interpreting certain inneralchemical terms such as other, bi ; and self, wo as referring to paired cultivation. She argues that any seemingly sexual terms in the literature are merely metaphorical, and that the classic inner alchemists rejected sexual alchemy, citing Chen Zhixu himself as an example.54 Robinet fails to recognize that, when Chen excoriates practitioners of sanfeng caizhan gathering and battling at the three peaks, he is not rejecting sexual alchemy per se, but only rejecting a more vulgar form involving tangible bodily secretions I address this issue in chapter 5, §1. As I show in chapter 6, readers in the Chinese alchemical tradition have never forgotten that Chen taught sexual alchemy. Li Yuanguo represents this tradition of interpretation, and Western scholars such as Robinet or ourselves should think twice before rejecting this traditional perspective. 50

Qing Xitai, Zhon uo daojiao shi, 4:2358; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 52026; Hao Qin, Longhu dan dao, 33538; Xu Zhaoren, Daojiao yu chaoyue, 33055. 51

Xie Zhengqiang, Fu Jinquan neidan sixiang yanjiu.

52


53

Liu Tsunyan, Lu Hsihsing and his Commentaries on the Ts an t ung ch i, 227.

54


16

§2.3, Studies of Chen Zhixu Most surveys of the history of Daoism mention Chen Zhixu as a pivotal gure in the history of inner alchemy. The standard history of inner alchemy begins with the Southern and Northern Lineages of the Golden Elixir Jindan Nan Bei Zong arising separately within the northern and southern regions of a China divided by foreign conquest dynasties. The Southern Lineage was said to have begun with Zhang Boduan 984?1082 , author of the Wuzhen pian

Stanzas on Awakening to the Perfect , and been later codied by Bai Yuchan 1194 1229+ ; and the Northern Lineage refers to early Quanzhen Daoism. When the Mongols conquered the whole of China, and the populations of North and South China began to mingle once again, Quanzhen Daoism moved into the South, and absorbed the Southern Lineage.55 The standard view is that Chen Zhixu absorbed elements of both traditions and blended them in his own thought and practice.56 But this description of Chen is wrong. While Chen claims descent from a Quanzhen sub

lineage, and cites Quanzhen gures now and again, his writings actually contain not a hint of distinctively Quanzhen teachings or Quanzhen spirit, and instead represent a native Jiangxi tradition. Chens false claim to this lineage re ects the name

recognition value that Quanzhen Daoism possessed in South China at this time, but Chens teachings do not represent a blend of Northern and Southern elements. Chen Zhixu is discussed in some depth by Zeng, and Zhou, and in less depth by Davis and Chen, Eskildsen, He and Zhan, Kong, Li Yuanguo, and Reiter.57 Zeng is studying the history of Zhouyi Cantong qi studies, and is exclusively interested in Chens Cantong qi commentary. I have seen Zhou Yes work mentioned online, but have not read it. Davis and Chen merely published some biographical information. Eskildsen has translated a ritual text by Chen as an example of early Quanzhen ritual 55

This history is studied in Skar, Golden Elixir Alchemy.

56

Cf. Robinet, Introduction l alchimie intrieure taoste, 43, as one example of this common natrrative.

57

Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue; Zhou Ye, Shangyangzi Chen Zhixu shengping ji dandao sixiang yanjiu; Zhou Ye, Shangyangzi Chen Zhixu shengping ji Jindan dayao de dandao sixiang; Davis and Chen, Shang Yang

Tzu, Taoist Writer and Commentator on Alchemy; Eskildsen, The Beliefs and Practices of Early Chan Chen Taoism, 395408; He Naichuan and Zhan Shichuang, Lun Chen Zhixu de Jigong leixing shi; Kong Linghong, Song Ming daojiao sixiang yanjiu, 27581; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 41631; and Reiter, Die Synkreitistischen tendenzen der zeit.

17

this is misleading, since Chen does not represent an authentic Quanzhen tradition. Reiter rightly takes Chen Zhixu as an example of the syncretic trend of his times. He and Zhen have studied several of Chens poems, and Kong studies Chens thought. My approach to Chen Zhixus life and teachings departs signicantly from these previous studies.

§3, Denitions §3.1, Inner alchemy Chapter 4 of this dissertation is an extended answer to the question What is inner alchemy? For the moment, I o er three brief denitions. The rst is my own, the second is by Hao Qin, and the third is by Robinet. Denition 1:

Inner alchemists aim to join yin and yang, and recover primal perfection, through contemplative practice. Denition 2:

Inner alchemists borrow the experience, theory, and technical terms of laboratory alchemists to rene their life endowment ming . They take the human body as the chamber, heart and kidneys as furnace and caldron, essence, qi, and spirit as the pharmaca, intention and breath as the ring, to create an elixir within the body, and seek immortality and transcendence.58 Denition 3:

Interior alchemy texts are always characterized by these features: 1. a concern for training, both mental and physiological, with the mental aspect often tending to predominate; 2. a synthesizing tendency bringing together various Taoist elements breathing exercises, visualization, alchemy , certain Buddhist speculations and methods speculations on the wu and the you, Chan gonganthe kans of Japanese zen , and references to Confucian texts; 3. a systematized use of the trigrams and hexagrams of the Book of Change, already used metaphorically in laboratory alchemy and ritual; and 4. references to chemical practices, of a purely metaphorical nature, following an interiorized interpretation we have already seen in less developed form in the

58

From Ge Guolong, Daojiao neidan xue tanwei, 5, citing Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 23 p. 7 in Beijing ed. . My two thousandword description in chapter 4 is partially based on this denition. Hao literally says that intention and breath are the huohou , which I translate here as ring, but usually translate as ring periods.

18

Shangqing school.59 A denition of inner alchemy must mention continuities between inner alchemy and laboratory alchemy, as well as other older Daoist traditions, yet ought to reserve the name inner alchemy for a tradition which applies alchemical, cosmological, and Yijing discourse to the rening of corporeal energies. Inner alchemy must be dened, rst and foremost, in terms of discourse, as Robinet would do. Practicebased denitions of inner alchemy, like Needhams, turn inner alchemy into a tradition which had been practiced throughout the history of Daoism, an impossibly broad denition.60 Actually, Chen Zhixu does not use the term neidan inner elixir; thus, inner alchemy to describe his teachings. He does use the term neidan to refer to an aspect of his practice,61 but even so, the term hardly occurs in his writings. Chen instead says that he teaches the golden elixir jindan , translated metallous enchymoma by Joseph Needham and others. But because we need to remember that this is an alchemy62 carried out within the human body, and not in a laboratory, we will term Chens teaching inner alchemy. §3.2, Daoism and Daoists In his 1978 article, Nathan Sivin argues that the term Daoism has been used sloppily in the past. For example, the term can be used to refer to a religion, a philosophy, or a mystic and natureloving sensibility. He believes that a more satisfactory state of aairs will depend not on imposing a standard denition but on being explicit about which of the many senses of Taoism we are invoking in each instance.63 Another oftcited attempt to dene Daoism is Michel Strickmanns. 59

Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion, 127.

60

Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5:34: The neidan palace was in fact a house of many mansions, and over the two millenia of its existence there grew up a multiplicity of teachers, schools, and sects, embodying the traditions of a number of Taoist centres. By a narrower and more common denition, inner alchemy has existed for one millennium only.

61

Usually, for Chen, the neidan is equivalent to the neiyao inner pharmacon, but sometimes the neidan is equivalent to the elixir within the Yellow Court, a.k.a. the holy fetus shengtai .

62

Alchemy waidan was the art of making elixirs of immortality, perfected substances which brought about personal transcendence and eternal life . . .; Sivin, Chinese Alchemy and the Manipulation of Time, 513.

63

Sivin, On the Word Taoist as a Source of Perplexity, 304.

19

Strickmann denes as Daoist those who 1 recognize the historical position of Zhang Daoling; 2 worship the pure emanations of the Dao rather than the vulgar gods of the people at large; and 3 safeguard and perpetuate their own lore and practices through esoteric rites of transmission.64 Throughout this dissertation, I will be referring only to Daoism as an institutional religion, though an institution may be merely a codied practice rather than a chartered organization. My analytical denition of Daoism is polythetic, based on an openended set of elements, and does take our naturallanguage, uncritical, English language use of the term Daoism into consideration. The set of elements by which we dene Daoism includes the gure of the saint and qicosmology these two are the basis for Robinets general view of Daoism,65 a discourse on sometimes means the Dao, sometimes a dao, a discourse privileging life, physical transcendence or immortality, selfcultivation, salvation of ancestors, correspondences between micro and macrocosm or corporeal and celestial spirits, rituals for communicating with a celestial bureaucracy, and more. None of these elements need be unique to Daoism, and some forms of Daoism may lack some of the elements. By this denition, Daoism would have no sine qua non, no singular essence, but rather, dierent cases would be farther from or closer to an ideal type.66 More relevant to this dissertation is the question of who is a Daoist, and I will not oer my nal answer until the conclusion. Chen Zhixu considered himself a Daoist, and was probably ordained, but spent much of his career outside the monastic network. Chens main Daoist institution is the uno cial institution of master and disciple, not the monastic system. Some of his disciples may have had few direct links to the system of ordained Daoist monastics, yet we would not call them any less Daoist for that. When speaking of religious Daoism, our prototype for a Daoist is an ordained Daoist priest or monastic, though nonprototypical lay Daoists ought still to be 64

Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 14, citing Strickmann, On the Alchemy of Tao Hungching, 16467.

65

Pregadio, In Memoriam Isabelle Robinet, 19322000, xi.

66

For another polythetic denition of Daoism, see Raz, Creation of Tradition: The Five Talismans of the Numinous Treasure and the Formation of Early Daoism, 2223.

20

considered Daoist. Yet ironically, Chen Zhixu, a prototypical Daoist, sometimes does not think of himself rst and foremost as a Daoist! His views of his relations with other traditions such as Chan Buddhism or NeoConfucianism are elastic, stretching or contracting according to strategy and circumstance. Chen is not always contrasting one religion with another. In our terms, he is not always contrasting Buddhism with Daoism, or, in his own terms, he is not always contrasting the tradition of the Buddha with the tradition of Laozi. Chen focuses almost exclusively on selfcultivation; sometimes he treats selfcultivation as the primary category, which includes various forms of practice that we would distinguish as Daoist or Buddhist. Within the category of selfcultivation, he may ally himself more closely to a true form of Buddhism than to a false form of Daoism, or he may not speak of these forms of selfcultivation as Buddhist or Daoist at all. In studying Chinese religions, the emphasis should not always be put on religions, but instead it may often be better put upon traditions, practices, discourses, or repertoires, which may cut across the boundaries of various religions.67

§3.3, Religion Finally, we must dene religion. According to J. Z. Smith, Religion is not a native term; it is a term created by scholars for their intellectual purposes and is therefore theirs to dene.68 And yet Western scholars always come to their study with a pre existing folk understanding of religion, a prototype, based on their familiarity with Christianity or Judaism. Benson Saler argues that Christianity and Judaism have always served as prototypes for Western anthropologists studying foreign religions. Many anthropologists who study religion implicitly and sometimes explicitly compare what strikes them as religious in nonWestern societies with what they suppose to be the religious traditions of the West. Indeed, they rst recognize religion among nonWestern peoples by nding professed convictions and other behaviors that they interpret as analogues of those that they assign to the domain of religion in Western societies, past and present. In short, ideas about the natures and histories of religions in the West serve as . . . prototypesas the rst or original modelsguiding anthropologists in their development of models of 67

For the concept of repertoires, see Campany, The Meanings of Cuisines of Transcendence in Late Classical and Early Medieval China 1n1, 3. Also cf. Swidler, Talk of Love, 24; idem, Culture in Action. 68

Smith, Religion, Religions, Religious, 281.

21

religion among nonWestern peoples.69 Saler argues that Western scholars of religion should acknowledge that the academic study of religion owes its form and, I would add, its raison dtre to the prototypical Western religions, Christianity and Judaism. This is not acknowledging a failing, but acknowledging the way the human mind constructs categories. The human mind constructs categories such as fruit, bird, or furniture, based on prototypes. Naturallyconstructed categories do not have strictlydened boundaries, but rather are made up of collections of more or less prototypical individuals. For example, we seem to see apple as a more prototypical fruit than olive, robin as a more prototypical bird than penguin, and chairs as more prototypical furniture than radios. Applying this theory about human cognition to the study of religion, Saler proposes that we consciously treat Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as exemplars of religion; on the opposite pole, as a distant and doubtful case, would be something like communism. Saler proposes that we not set up sharp boundaries around the category of religion, so the question of whether or not communism is a religion would be answered dierently in dierent situations. Saler proposes a polythetic, multifactorial denition of religion based on the prototypes of Western monotheism. He recommends that we conceptualize religion for analytical purposes in terms of a pool of elements that often cluster together but that may do so in greater or lesser degrees.70 Saler does not give an absolutely xed pool of elements, but would include elements like belief in gods, a moral code with supernatural warrant, eschatology, and rituals with extrahuman referents.71 I recommend Salers approach for dening religion, Daoism, and inner alchemy.

§4, Themes and Theories 69

Saler, Conceptualizing Religion, 199200.

70

Saler, Conceptualizing Religion, 213.

71

Saler, Conceptualizing Religion, 213. He mentions lists of elements proered by other authors such as William Alston nine elements and Martin Southwold twelve 17071.

22

§4.1, An Outline of Chens Religious Market In my research on Chen Zhixu, I view his teachings and career in terms of an economy of salvation. I organize my religiousmarket perspective around the following six questions, and their many answers: 1 What is Chen selling? • He is selling salvation, and harmony with the sacred; • he is selling a unique religious worldview including such elements as cosmology, anthropology, theory of transcendenthood, myth, theology of various types of spirits or deities, metaphysics, ethics, theory and uses of scripture, ritual, social institutions such as the masterdisciple relationship, and way of life; • and nally, he is selling specic alchemical teachings. 2 To whom is he selling? • He is selling to laymen Confucians, literati, and o cials, • religious seekers, • Daoist monastics, • and even to Buddhist monastics. 3 What needs is he meeting? These include the needs for • avoiding death and dissolution, • for rebirth and renewal, • participation in sacred anthropocosmic creation and transformation zaohua , • feeling special or elect, • prestige, • agency or controlling ones destiny, • transference between disciple and master, • cognitive solutions to philosophical issues, • and probably also the need to manage ones sexuality and emotions. 4 How does he market and sell it? He does this • by establishing and managing his mastership and authority, • by establishing correspondences to other known truths a strategy I term extension, • through the esoteric assumption that truth is secret, • through an esoteric strategy of managing secrecy and display, • by making violent misreadings, • and by ex cathedra pronouncements and speech acts which I call secondary salvic e ects. 5 How does salvation work for Chen? 23

There are two forms of salvation in Chens teachings: primary salvation, and secondary salvic eects. Primary salvation is achieved through • alchemical selfcultivation, • amassing karmic merit, • and intercession by spirits and deities. Secondary salvic eects are produced through • achieving gnosis itself, • recreating the cosmogonic state in text or discourse, • reenacting the actions or lives of heroes or sages, • repeating the actions of the gods, • emphasizing correspondence of microcosm to macrocosm, • participating in cosmic creation, cosmizing the body, and through a whole array of speechact eects enactments or performance eects, such as • performing salvation, enlightenment, wisdom, • performing status as one of the elect, • performing the receiving of blessings from deities, • or performing cosmogony itself. 6 Why does he sell it, and what does he receive in payment or exchange? He oers his teachings • for nancial gain, • from a sense of duty, • to save others, • because like all people he craves prestige, • in order to manage his mastership, • and ultimately for his own salvation. While this religiousmarket perspective stands in the background of my research on Chen Zhixu, I have not used it explicitly to structure the dissertation. Because no one else has studied Chen in depth, the bulk of the dissertation is taken up with groundwork on Chens alchemical teachings, situating them within the elds of inner alchemy and sexual cultivation. Throughout the dissertation, I refer to many of the points in the religiousmarket perspective outlined above, but not to all of them. In the conclusion, I revisit this outline, eshing it out with cases drawn from my chapters. §4.1.1, Theories of religious markets.

The religiousmarket perspective I have

outlined above is informed by a number of theorists, but is not taken directly from any one of them. Currently there are quite a few scholars in the eld of sociology of religion who use a market model to study religious life; Rodney Stark is the most 24

wellknown exponent of this approach.72 While I may make some use of this body of work in future research, I have not used it at all for this dissertation, instead using Pierre Bourdieus sociology of culture, especially his concepts of eld and capital. Bourdieus work is more directly applicable to smallscale social interactions, and his focus on intellectuals makes him more appropriate for my material. By applying Bourdieus approach, I am able to emphasize the competitive and conictual nature of Chens life and teachings. I discuss Bourdieus conict sociology at length in chapter 3. My religiousmarket perspective is also informed by the work of Gernet and Cole on economies of religious merit in Chinese Buddhism,73 though I do not employ their work directly. §4.2, Esotericism Within Chens competitive market economy of religious teachings, many of his strategies for success involve claims, or assumptions, that the true path to salvation is secret, known only to a few initiates. My thinking on this aspect of Chens career and teachings is informed by the work of Hugh Urban. When we are faced with the problem of discovering the secret teachings of an esoteric tradition, Urban advises us to study the sociology of secrecy rather than esoteric content.74 In one article, Urban discovers three strategies employed equally by two esoteric groups in unrelated societies. These three strategies are 1 the creation of a new social space or private sphere, which promises equality and liberation for all classes, while at the same time constructing new and more rigid hierarchies; 2 a hermeneutical strategy called stealing the lightning , which appropriates the authority of traditional scriptures, while at the same time asserting the superiority of esoteric exegesis; 3 a ritual strategy, which creates a homology between the body of the initiate, the hierarchy of the cosmos and the 72

Stark and his coauthors have honed their perspective in many publications; Stark and Finke, Acts of Faith, is a primer. Jelen, Sacred Markets, Sacred Canopies, is a volume of critique and justication. For alternative religious market approaches, see Ekelund, et al., Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm; Eno, Selling Sagehood: The Philosophical Marketplace in Early China; Goossaert, Taoist Masters and Spiritual Teachings, in The Taoists of Peking, 18001949, 274320.

73 Gernet, Buddhism in Chinese Society: An Economic History; Cole, Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism. Also see Benavides, Economy; Walsh, The Economics of Salvation. 74

Urban takes his cues from Bellman and Lindstrom here, with Bourdieu supplying an overall framework; Urban, Elitism and Esotericism, 34. Cf. Bellman, The Language of Secrecy, 3 .; Lindstrom, Knowledge and Power in a South Pacic Society, 119 .; Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power.

25

hierarchy of the esoteric sect, inscribing the individual into the body of the order, and inscribing the order onto the human body.75 In another article, he discovers four strategies used within an esoteric Hindu Tantric tradition I will number them 47 :

4 The rst and most basic strategy is the advertisement of the secretthe claim to possess very precious, rare, and valuable knowledge, while simultaneously partially revealing and largely concealing it. . . . 5 The second of these strategies is to construct a graded hierarchy of levels of truth and then to restrict access to these truths by means of initiation. . . . 6 The third of these strategies we might call the intentional and systematic use of ambiguous language. . . . 7 The fourth of these strategies we might call . . . the power of semantic shocknamely, the e ect that deliberately jarring, unusual, weird, or even o ensive juxtapositions of words have on their audience.76 Robert Campany shows how seekers of transcendence in early medieval China employ strategies 4 and 5. Campany notes that strategy 1 is irrelevant for his material,77 and the same is true for Chen Zhixus case. I would also discard strategies 3 and 7 as not essentially esoteric though they are certainly found in Chens case . I have found Chens most important esoteric strategy to be the strategy 2 claiming that the classic texts are teaching a secret, in code , followed by strategy 5 restricting secrets to graded initiates . Chen also employs strategy 6, dissimulating for the sake of avoiding social censure or persecution. All of my answers to question 4, How does he market and sell it?, in the religiousmarket outline above, are related to Urbans strategies 2 and 46. §4.3, MasterDisciple Relations Texts are elements of culture. If sociologists of culture are correct when they tell us that peoples main use of culture is to deal with institutions and social structures,78 then practices of textual interpretation in any society must be studied in relation to these social structures. The unrestrained interpretation of texts or oral traditions is most likely to be found in social settings where social institutions do not depend 75

Urban, Elitism and Esotericism, 1.

76

Urban, The Torment of Secrecy, 23539.

77

Campany, Secrecy and Display, 29394.

78


26

directly upon the xed interpretation of texts. The esotericism of Chen Zhixu, or the cases studied by Urban and Campany, are specic examples of this more general rule. This is not to say that these are social settings where there is no stable authority; rather, they are settings in which authority lies somewhere besides the xed meaning of the canon. Social stability may lie in ritual, or the personal charisma of leaders or scholars, rather than in the narrowly determinate meaning of a canon. For example, traditional Jewish scriptural exegetes enjoyed much more interpretive leeway than Christian scriptural exegetes did, presumably because Christian authority relied relatively more on a determinate meaning of scripture, and Jewish authority rested relatively more on other sources. Within Judaism or Islam, the most unrestrained forms of scriptural exegesis would be found in social settings where exegetical authority rested mainly on the charismatic authority of the master, such as in the traditions of Kabbalah or Susm. In such settings, the masterdisciple relation, or the network centered on a master, carries the weight of social structure. Esoteric interpretation of texts is often found in such social settingsthe strong master disciple bonds and lineages make esoteric strategies more successful, and esoteric strategies help to keep these bonds strong. The sociology of inner alchemy is based squarely on the masterdisciple bond. My attention was rst drawn to the importance of masterdisciple relations and lineage by scholarship on Chan Buddhism, such as McRaes work on encounter dialogue.79

§4.4, The Master Function In Chens social world, inneralchemical authority rests on mastership. The case of inneralchemical mastership bears comparison with Faures account of mastership in Chan Buddhism: The denition of masters and disciples, and of what is supposed to be transmitted through them, is primarily social. . . . Chan masters . . . are not masters because they have realized the truth and can now teach it although, of course, this may be the case; rather, they can teach the truth because, having been socially dened as Chan masters, what they teach has the performative power of being the truth. Like the author function analyzed by Foucault, the 79

McRae, Seeing through Zen. Steiner, Lessons of the Masters, discusses masterdisciple relations in Western intellectual history. Also see Wach, Master and Disciple.

27

master function is a position determined by discourse . . . In this sense, its performative power requires a broad social consensus.80 Foulk makes a similar point regarding the practice of commenting on koans, as in Biyan lu or Wumen guan: The mark of the master, or rather the formal position of master, is to have the last word and pronounce ultimate judgment. The voice of awakening is a matter of positioning in a formal ritual or literary structure: whatever the voice of the judge in a dialogue says, regardless of its semantic content, represents the truth, or the standpoint of awakening. In a social context, whoever can work himself by whatever means into the position of speaking as a judge of old cases will thereafter be deemed a worthy spokesman of the awakened point of view, regardless of what he says.81 Within these specic facetoface or textual contexts in Chan Buddhism, truth is dened as whatever the enlightened master says, and the enlightened master is anyone able to occupy that position in a social institution. In Chens social arena, the master function, or the authority of the masterinstitution, is never as strong as in Faure and Foulks accounts. Chen would like to achieve such unquestioned mastership, but lacking the support of a monastic institution as in the Chan Buddhist case, he can only try his best, using esoteric or other strategies. In Chens situation, the charisma of mastership has not been routinized and institutionalized as in Chan Buddhism, so he must put more eort into managing his mastership.82 In addition to Bourdieus sociology of intellectuals, and the study of Chan Buddhism by Faure and Foulk, my thinking about mastership has also been informed by the work of Peter Brown on the authority of the saint in early Christianity. Just as religious truth resides in the position of the Chan master in Faure or Foulks accounts, religious power resides in the position of the saint in Browns account: The holy man was expected to establish himself almost as a blessed object in the midst of his fellows. . . . Right down to his rigid stance, his gure was a precipitate of the unfullled needs of an illoriented and highly competitive society. What needs, therefore, did his person fulll? . . . 80

Faure, The Rhetoric of Immediacy, 22.

81

Foulk, The Form and Function of Koan Literature, 34, 35. T 2003, Biyan lu, is by Yuanwu Keqin 10631135, and T 2005, Wumen guan, is by Wumen Huikai 11831260. 82

Palmer, Hsu, and Goossaert also make valuable contributions to the study of mastership, masterdisciple relations, and authority in Daoism and Chinese society; Palmer, The Grandmasters, in Qigong Fever, 86101; Hsu, The Transmission of Chinese Medicine; Goossaert, The Taoists of Peking, 18001949.

28

Power gained in this way had to be seen to exist. . . .

Such power was built up by hard, unobtrusive and so, for us, partly obscure work among those who needed constant and unspectacular ministrations.83 Browns formulation of the master function allows more agency for the masters audience than Faures or Foulks do, and rightly so. For Brown, and for Bourdieu, master and audience constitute one another. As Bourdieu says, the representative creates the group which creates him.84 The master is dened by his audience, and serves as the linchpin of a group. §4.5, Speech Act Theory and Performativity Speechact theory was begun by J. L. Austin, then developed by John Searle, Jacques Derrida, Bourdieu, and many others; currently, Judith Butlers work represents the state of the art in this eld.85 According to Austin, any utterance has locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary aspects. The locutionary act is the act of saying, with its propositional content. The illocutionary act is what we do or enact in saying, the performative aspect of an utterance. The classic example of an illocutionary act is the promise. To say I promise is not a statement about promising: the utterance is itself the promise. Finally, the perlocutionary act is what we do by the fact that we speak, such as arousing reactions of fear or embarrassment in an interlocutor. These aspects are also found in written texts, though texts escape from the control of the writer in ways that an oral utterance usually does not. When we think about texts, we usually are only thinking about them in their locutionary aspectthe information they presentyet they also have an illocutionary aspect. Chen Zhixus texts are full of illocutionary acts: when he tells his disciples that the gods have blessed them, or that they have achieved enlightenment, he performs this as truth through illocutionary speech acts. I rely mainly on the work on performative speech by Bourdieu in Language 83

Brown, The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity, 143, 137, 1056.

84

Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 105.

85

A short list should include: Austin, How to Do Things with Words; Searle, Speech Acts; Searle, Expression and Meaning; Derrida, Limited Inc.; Felman, The Scandal of the Speaking Body; Miller, Speech Acts in Literature; Butler, Excitable Speech; and Butler, Performativitys Social Magic. There was also a spate of performative studies of ritual in past decades; these are discussed in Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, 68 .

29

and Symbolic Power and Faure. Bourdieu tells us that performative language is pervasive in everyday social behavior, such as in the act of naming: By structuring the perception which social agents have of the social world, the act of naming helps to establish the structure of this world . . . There is no social agent who does not aspire, . . . to have the power to name and to create the world through naming: gossip, slander, lies, insults, commendations, criticisms, arguments and praises are all daily and petty manifestations of the solemn and collective acts of naming . . . which are performed by generally recognized authorities.86 Bourdieu is talking about the process by which social reality is produced, reproduced, managed, contested, or transformed by its participants through their acts of naming, with their speech acts having more or less e ect depending on the symbolic capital they mobilize behind their speech. Bernard Faure speaks of Chan texts as possessing a performative thus illocutionary aspect. In Japanese Zen, apparently the custom of leaving death poems often became an emptybut not less ecientritual by the thirteenth century. . . . Yet it had important ideological and political consequences. A departing verse was not simply intended to testify to the masters enlightenment as a locutionary act ; it was producing it as an illocutionary act and contained . . . its essence. As such, it was also a relic embodying ultimate truth . . .87 The Zen masters death verse proved to his disciples and anyone else in the Zen world that he was an enlightened master. If we assume that enlightenment is a human, intersubjective quality, rather than a hardwired quality of the masters mind or otherwise part of the furniture of the natural world, then we can say that the death verse even produced or enacted the masters enlightened status. Whenever Chen says something like only the virtuous, wise, or those destined for transcendence will receive these teachings, and then bestows the teachings on a disciple, he is pronouncing the disciple to be in fact virtuous, wise, and destined for transcendence. Chens pronouncement will have force in dening reality if his audience views him as an authoritythat is, it will have force if he is able to exercise his master e ect upon them.

86

Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 105.

87

Faure, The Rhetoric of Immediacy, 189.

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§4.6, Syncretism: Imperialist Inclusivism Chen Zhixu often cites Buddhist gures and concepts. It should not be surprising to nd a Daoist citing Buddhism, or Buddhist elements within Daoist teachings. Daoists throughout history have adapted elements from Buddhism, and if we accept the views of some Japanese scholars, Buddhism served as an example for Daoists as they thematized Daoism as a religion as such. The late scholar of Daoism and Tantric Buddhism, Michel Strickmann, complained that, although Western scholars have seen BuddhoDaoist syncretism as a particularly Mingdynasty phenomenon, in fact the same sort of syncretism was already in evidence in Daoist texts as early as the fth century. Shall we then speak of primary and secondary syncretism? Strickmann asks. This is a problem that students of the later dynasties should at least come to perceive.88 Actually, syncretism in the narrow sense, as a full, systematic, and reective combination of religions, which does not merely subsume one into another, was a rare phenomenon in Chinese history. Timothy Brook has proposed a schema of six dierent terms for interreligious mixtures in China: syncretism full and systematic integration ; ecumenism which says that truth is universal, but its expressions vary ; inclusivism explaining elements of one religion in terms of another ; compartmentalism restricting dierent religions to dierent purposes or areas of reality ; eclecticism the pick and choose approach ; and condominium religions living together in political or social harmony .89 Chens use of Buddhism should be called, not syncretism, but inclusivism, or better yet, imperialist inclusivism, a violent incorporation of Buddhist elements within a Daoist framework. But actually, Chens misreading of elements within Daoism which is nominally his own tradition is no less violent. This violent misreading is made possible by Chens claim to secret understanding of the true meaning of the Buddhist teachings Urbans strategy 2 , backed up by his authority as a master the master function . By the Ming Dynasty, the doctrine of the Unity of the Three Teachings had 88

Strickmann, The Consecration Stra: A Buddhist Book of Spells, 7677.

89

Brook, Rethinking Syncretism, 1415.

31

become a mainstream idea within Chinese culture. According to this doctrine, truth is unitary: the Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist sages teach the same fundamental truths regarding ethics, inherent nature, selfcultivation, or the Dao. The roots of this idea are ageold, but it perhaps rst became a central point of doctrine for Daoists with the Northern Quanzhen Daoist movement during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Slightly before this, in South China during the Song Dynasty, there was also a separate wave of interest in Chan Buddhism by Daoist inner alchemists. Chen Zhixu is the heir of both of these trends: the Quanzhen Daoist advocacy of the Unity of the Three Teachings, and the Southern alchemists interest in Chan Buddhism. Chen shows far more interest in Buddhism than in Confucianism, and for the most part this is an interest in Chan Buddhism. Chen seems mostly to have been dealing with Chan in the form of texts, but he also had cordial relations with Chan Buddhists. Chen was a participant in a greater cultural dialogue about spiritual practice, and had his own opinion of what proper Chan practice ought to be. §4.7, Primary Salvation and Secondary Salvic Eects In this dissertation, I study Chens specic alchemical procedures leading to apotheosis. This is what I would call primary salvation, salvation as we often understand the term, that is, rescue from the mortal realm and assumption into heaven. In addition to salvation through alchemical selfcultivation, Chen also alludes to other forms of primary salvation, such as salvation through amassing karmic merit, or through intercession by spirits and deities. Actually, he includes these latter two forms as moments within the alchemical process, at its end. Yet I also identify secondary salvic e ects throughout Chens writing and practice, both within primary salvic process and outside it. The germ of the idea of two forms of salvation came to me from Sivins description of Chinese laboratory alchemy: Alchemy waidan was the art of making elixirs of immortality, perfected substances which brought about personal transcendence and eternal life, 32

and yet, the dominant goal of Chinese alchemy was contemplative, even ecstatic. . . . The alchemists constructed their intricate art, made the cycles of the cosmic process accessible, and undertook to contemplate them because they believed that to encompass the Dao with their minds . . . would make them one with it.90 This gnosis itself is salvic: as Sivin says, to grasp the unchanging reality that underlies the chaos of experience is to rise above that chaos, to be freed at least for the moment from the limits of personal mortality. I call this a secondary salvic e ect. I call it secondary because it is subtle, only semiconscious to the adept, and usually found together with a more selfconscious and commonsense form of salvation, through ingesting the elixir and rising to the heavens. I think of secondary salvic e ects primarily in terms of Mircea Eliades hermeneutic of the sacred, the power of performative language, and, to a lesser extent, Peter Bergers concept of cosmization as I will explain presently. In my outline on Chens religious market above, I list six salvic e ects, and four performance e ects; this is meant to be an openended list, not an exhaustive one. Salvic e ect number 1 is the e ect of gnosis itself: for example, sometimes Chen says that one may escape from samsra merely by realizing ones own buddha nature. In Chan, this would be primary salvation, but for Chen it is a side e ect, which actually contradicts the inherent gradualism of most inner alchemy. Number 2 is the salvic e ect of repeating a saga of degeneration and redemption, a narrative by which the cosmos originates in a state of primal wholeness, degenerates from that state, and then the alchemist is able to return to the primal state. As I will argue, merely by repeating the cosmogonic story itself, Chen is in e ect recreating this fall and return within the text or discourse. This idea comes from Eliades discussion of cosmogony in The Sacred and the Profane. Eliade says that The cosmogony is the supreme divine manifestation, the paradigmatic act of strength, abundance, and creativity. Religious man thirsts for the real. By every means at his disposal, he seeks to reside at the very source of primordial reality, when

90

Sivin, Chinese Alchemy and the Manipulation of Time, 513, 524.

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the world was in the state of being born .91 In a traditional society, when the cosmogony was repeated in an annual ritual at the turn of the New Year, for example, by participating ritually in the end of the world and in its recreation, any man became contemporary with the iud tempus; hence he was born anew, he began life over again with his reserve of vital forces intact, as it was at the moment of his birth.92 By repeating the cosmogonic narrative of fall and return, Chen forges a temporary link between himself or his listeners or readers and the sacred cosmogonic state. Number 3 is the salvic e ect of reenacting the actions of sages. Whenever Chen quotes an ancient master, deity, or the Buddha, he is subtly assimilating himself to the holy person he is quoting. Whenever he recounts a legendary masterdisciple encounter for the edication of an audience of students, he is subtly assimilating his relation with that audience to the relation between the legendary master and disciple. When Chen cites the story of Mazu Daoyis 70988 lesson from Nanyue Huairang 677744 ,93 Chen is Nanyue, and his disciples are Mazu, both parties receiving a subtle salvic benet from this association. I have taken this idea from Gri th Foulks argument that, when the Songdynasty abbots of Chan monasteries took the stage before the assembly and instructed the monks with stickblows and shouts, the abbots were in fact reenacting the deeds of the mythical Tangdynasty masters, or playing the role of the living Buddha. Foulk calls this ritualized antinomianism.94 Similarly, the ceremony of entering the chamber rushi for a personal audience with the abbot was a ritual reenactment of mythical master disciple encounters as described in the genealogical histories.95 Foulk views this 91

Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 80.

92

Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 80.

93

When Mazu was living in a cloister on the Southern Marchmount, he would only do zazen all day long, seeking to become a buddha. Chan Master Huai rang then took a brick over to the front of the hut, and began to polish it. Ma zu said, Why are you doing that? Huairang answered, Im polishing it to make a mirror. Ma zu said, How could you make a mirror by polishing a brick? Huai rang said, Thats right! How could you become a buddha through zazen? Mazu was suddenly enlightened, receiving the import of these words. # ( $, .,%+(* *- *+"!-. ',"!# ) &DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 16.7b69. 94

Foulk, Myth, Ritual, and Monastic Practice in Sung Chan Buddhism, 17779.

95

Foulk, Myth, Ritual, and Monastic Practice in Sung Chan Buddhism, 181. McRae makes a similar point,

34

behavior as a way of achieving social cohesion and prestige for Chan institutions. Foulk also makes the same point in regards to Chan textual practices.96 We nd similar textual practices in Chens writing. In my own reading of similar behavior by Chen Zhixu, I draw on Eliades idea that human beings seek to participate in the sacred, and I argue that this behavior is not just for the sake of social prestige and authority, but is also a way to participate in the sanctity of the Buddha, Laozi, or the holy masters of the past. Number 4 is the salvic eect of repeating the actions of celestial deities at the beginning of time. In his commentary to the Duren jing, for example, Chen often compares the actions of the alchemist with the actions of the Celestial Worthy of Primordial Commencement.97 This idea also comes from Eliade. Number 5 is the salvic eect of emphasizing cosmological or numerological correspondences between the microcosm of the body and the outer macrocosm of the cosmos. By cosmizing the body or mind, Chen is able to, in a limited sense, tap into the sacred reality of the cosmos. This is simultaneously a salvic act as Eliade would emphasize, and a political act as Berger would emphasize.98 One variation of this is envisioning the body as a cavern heaven, a closed space containing multitudes of gods, landscape features, mountains. Number 6 is the salvic eect of participating in cosmic creation and transformation zaohua . When he combines the two pharmaca to create the arguing that the Zutang ji of 952 must have been used to provide models for training, with the goal not of an exalted state of spiritual attainment but reenactment of the archetypal drama that takes place between each patriarch and his successor; McRae, Encounter Dialogue and the Transformation of the Spiritual Path in Chinese Chan, 353. 96 A commenting master such as Xuedou stands in an interesting position visvis the old patriarchs, one that remains fundamentally subordinate and yet manages to evince ultimate authority. On the one hand, it is clear that the patriarchs, being ancestral gures, have seniority in the Chan lineage. . . . To be a living heir in the lineage . . . is to benet from association with the eminent patriarchs of old. To comment on the words of the patriarchs, similarly, is to be on the receiving end of the prestige with which those words are invested. On the other hand, the master as commentator, is always able to nd fault with the masters on whom he is commenting; Foulk, The Form and Function of Koan Literature, 34. Xuedou Chongxian 980 1052 wrote the commentary Baize sonu , which became the basis for T 2003, Biyan lu, by Yuanwu Keqin. 97

Chen did not invent this idea: Chens Duren jing commentary draws on earlier inneralchemical Duren jing commentaries, such as DZ 90, Yuanshi wuliang duren shangpin miao jing neiyi, which he cites more than a dozen times. 98

For Berger, cosmization, or identication of the human world with the worldassuch, is a strategy for legitimating social institutions, hiding their arbitrary and constructed character by grounding them in ultimate reality; Berger, The Sacred Canopy, 27 37.

35

elixir, the inner alchemist is handling the same cosmic forces that generate all the transformations of heaven and earth. By handling them, the adept can participate in a sacred reality. In my outline of Chens religious market, I also include four speechact eects as salvic eects: performing salvation, enlightenment, or wisdom; performing the disciples status as one of the elect; performing the receiving of blessings from deities; and performing cosmogony itself. These are enactments of reality through the masters pronouncements, depending on the master eect for their power. Lets revisit a passage from the beginning of the dissertation, translating it into this new theoretical vocabulary. Here is the passage: Like the adamantine sword, it has a great vigor; like the hundredfoot pole, it is straight and unbending; of all the armored warriors in the world, none could break it. This vigorous heartmind has great courage and erceness. When all of the gods in heaven and people on earth see this vigor, their joy will be measureless. Utilizing this vigor, one becomes a buddha and a patriarch.99 On page 3 above, I claim that the passage contains the following religious strategies and uses of language: 1 the cosmization of the body and the sex act, and participation in a sacred reality; 2 the reinterpretion of the Buddha himself and all Chan masters of the past as having been sexual alchemists, a political strategy for justifying Chens own teachings; 3 the assimilating of the sexual alchemist to the Buddha and the patriarchs; 4 the description of the participation of deities in the alchemists sexual practice; 5 and the enacting or performance of all these truths through a speech act. Here is an extended reading of this passage, using the themes and theories just introduced above. While the primary salvic goal of alchemical apotheosis lies in the background ostensibly, the passage is describing a state of sexual power and control the male adept must attain so he may stimulate and gather the female partners sexual qi without losing his own seminal essence, the main function of the passage is to enact secondary salvic eects through speech acts. Chen compares the male adepts sex organ to a mighty sword wielded by a vajrapi a Buddhist dharma 99


36

protecting deity , or an impossibly long pole cited in a Chan kan. He is giving the male adepts many of whom were older men a psychological handhold for empowering their sexual practice leading to primary salvation , but he is also setting up a correlation between the adepts and holy Buddhist gures. In Eliades terms, this slakes homo religiosuss craving for the sacred; in Bergers terms, it legitimates the social order, the cosmic order, the religion, the masterdisciple relation, the relation between the sexes, or between gods and human beings, and so on. When Chen describes how the gods rejoice in the adepts prowess, he is attempting to enact this state of a airs; the power to enact reality through speech acts depends on the power of his master e ect. At the end of the passage, Chen is describing the future attainment of primary salvation, but also, in a more subtle and unconscious way, enacting this reality in the present, bringing the sacred quality of these holy Buddhist gures to the recipient of the poem, and making this quality available to any later reader willing to accept Chens pronouncements. The success of these speech acts depends on Chens authority, but may also contribute to his authority. Through this imperialistinclusivist misreading of Buddhist elements, Chen aims to convince the skeptic or steel the believers faith that sexual alchemy is also the underlying truth of Chan Buddhism, stealing the lightning of this other prestigious tradition to advance his own claims. If successful in convincing the interlocutor or reader, Chen can extend his regime of truth to this other tradition. This is an example of how I read Chens texts. The bulk of this dissertation is on Chen Zhixus biography, his teachings, and the history of their reception. So, for most of the theoretical points introduced above, I can only allude to them in the dissertation, and not develop them at length. The one exception is Bourdieus conict sociology, which I develop fully in chapter 3.

§5, An Overview of the Dissertation Chapters In this introductory chapter 1, I introduce themes that will appear throughout the 37

dissertation. Chapter 2 treats Chen Zhixus biography and social environment. I discuss Chens name and titles; the dating of his life and activities; his two masters, Zhao Youqin , and the Old Man from Mt. Qingcheng Qingcheng Weng ; Chens several enlightenment experiences; and Chens teaching career and his many lay and monastic disciples. I draw a concrete picture of the social backdrop of the sexualalchemical teachings and practices of Chen and his circle among the cities and mountains of southcentral China during the Mongol reign. In chapter 3, I argue that Pierre Bourdieus sociology of culture o ers the best conceptual framework for studying a case like Chens. Bourdieus sociological work on culture, knowledge, and art provides a welldeveloped vocabulary, and will help me frame my picture of Chen Zhixu and his world, and organize its parts. After introducing Bourdieu, I present Chen competing for economic, social, cultural, symbolic, and religious forms of capital, within the concentric elds of social power, religion, and selfcultivation. Chens teachings are the tools he uses in his struggle to achieve three interrelated goals: 1 achieving recognition and authority as a master, or managing his mastership; 2 spreading his teachings in the religious eld; and 3 attaining personal salvation. In chapter 4, in answer to the question What is inner alchemy?, I o er an analytical overview of inneralchemical tradition, building on and criticizing previous overviews of inner alchemy by Chinese and Western scholars. In my discussion, I take the lateimperial or modern standard account as a paradigm of what inner alchemy ought to look like, and then test this paradigm against other forms of alchemy that diverge from the standard account. Throughout the chapter, I compare di erent forms of inner alchemy in terms of dozens of di erent criteria, on microcosmic, mesocosmic, and macrocosmic and other registers, within a denitional framework of my own design. This is an extended proposal for future work in the comparative study of inner alchemy. In chapter 5, I prove that Chen Zhixus alchemy is indeed sexual alchemy, I describe his alchemical path in detail, from nding partner and patron, to gathering the pharmaca, to rening them, generating the yang spirit, and ascending to the

38

heavens. Finally, I compare Chens alchemy with other forms of sexual cultivation, sexual alchemy, and inner alchemy in Chinese history. In chapter 6, I study the postmortem career of Chen and his writings. From Chens time on, inner alchemists debated whether the elixir should be harvested by the male adept through coition, or whether it should be sought entirely within the mans own person, and Chens works were central to this debate. Chens teachings were known to all major later gures in the history of inner alchemy, and advocates of both positions had to address his teachings, whether to declaim them, advance them, or merely acknowledge them. Later alchemists used Chens writings as a landmark, and perpetuated or reinterpreted his teachings, as they shaped the eld of inner alchemy into the tradition of today.

§6, Conventions I have silently converted WadeGiles romanization to Pinyin when quoting the words of others, except in the cases of titles of works, or names of people, and the words Taoism or Taoist. In most cases, the Chinese characters for the titles of works cited in footnotes are listed only in the bibliography of works cited at the end of the dissertation. DZ refers to the numbering system used for texts in the Zhengtong daozang by Schipper and Verellen, The Taoist Canon. H.Y. refers to HarvardYenching numbering systems for various classics; for these HarvardYenching editions, look under the name of the editor, William Hung, in the bibliography. Because Chinese authors are di cult to recognize by surname alone, in references to sources by authors with Chinese names, I list the authors full name. I do not do this for sources by authors with nonChinese names. When reading Jindan dayao, I use the Zhengtong daozang edition DZ 106770 as a base text, supplementing it with variants from the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao editions as necessary. I justify this approach in dissertation appendix 2. 39

When quoting Jindan dayao, I do not list every character variant between these three editions, only a few important variants. Often, a passage missing from DZ 106770 will be found in both of the other two editions. Because the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao editions are usually quite similar in even their small details, yet the former is slightly more complete and reliable that the latter, I usually cite only the former as a supplement to DZ 106770. For Chens other three texts, and for Zhao Youqins Xianfo tongyuan, I have consulted only one edition for each text. When quoting and translating passages from Chens three commentaries on Cantong qi, Wuzhen pian, and Duren jing, I often set isolated words or phrases in boldface. By this I mean to highlight the correlations between his commentary and the passage he is commenting upon. In his commentaries, Chen sometimes writes in a relatively freeranging style, but usually he picks his words so as to include words and phrases from the original passage within his own sentences. By setting these echoes in boldface, I show the intertextual nature of his writing. Also, we may note that, just as in Jindan dayao Chen reinterprets or misreads common cultural symbols to advance his own countercultural teachings the strategy of extension, when writing a commentary Chen uses the original words of the classic while turning them to new meanings. Actually, nonDaoist traditional Chinese commentary is often like this too. I romanize as qi, and as Qi. Sometimes these two characters are equivalent, and sometimes refers to precosmic or prenatal .100 I romanize as either Dao or dao; my reason for this is spelled out on page 175 below.

100

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 183.

40

Chapter 2, Chen Zhixus Biography, Environment, Lineage, and Network Chen Zhixus life is not well documented. He receives short biographical notices in a handful of Ming and Qing encyclopedias and gazetteers, as well as hagiographical notices or mentions in at least two Daoist works. Chens own writings especially Jindan dayao are the best source of information on Chens life, though they still do not oer enough information about Chen to write a continuous biography of the man. From Jindan dayao we can learn something about Chens peregrinations during the decade from 1334 to 1343, and something about the searchers and selfcultivators who took Chen as their teacher, and the discourses Chen imparted to them. As for the practices he taught, I will save this topic for chapter 5. Although the sort of information we can learn about Chen Zhixu from Jindan dayao and other sources is insucient to write a proper biography, it is extremely valuable for studying the concrete social contexts of inner alchemy. Many other Daoist lives are better documented with biographical and hagiographical material than Chen Zhixus; there are even other Daoist inner alchemists whose lives are better documented such as the Quanzhen patriarchs, or Bai Yuchan; yet I know of no other Daoist whose writings document the links between social activities and the details of alchemical teachings so well as do the writings of Chen Zhixu. Chen Zhixus transmission epistles and the other biographical material do not tell us nearly enough about the lives of Chen or his disciples and acquaintances, but they tell us more than perhaps any other source about the social context of a single masters inneralchemical teachings. In this chapter I present basic biographical and sociohistorical data about the life and activities of Chen and his disciples, lling this out with information about the religious and social environment of the late Yuan dynasty. I will portray Chen as an itinerant and selfmade man, competing in a marketplace of daos, and 41

achieving some success within monastic and literati circles of Jiangxi and Hubei, as well as the hinterland of Guizhou. In this chapter I also analyze Chens genealogy with a critical eye, and test the usual view within the historiography of Daoism that Chen was a new breed of Southern Quanzhen Daoist. I will take the controversial position that Chen was Quanzhen in only the barest sense, without any Quanzhen lineage, experience, or learning to speak of. I will also argue that Chens immediate lineage was a ction, and even that one of his two masters was a ction. Chen invented these patriarchs and master to boost his authority within the marketplace of daos, and he could only get away with this because Quanzhen Daoism was not well known within his core area of operation. Chens invented patriarchs and master are mythical echoes of other gures from his tradition. In this chapter I will also discuss some hagiographical material on Chen, though there is not enough of this material and there probably was never very much to undertake a full study of Chens hagiographical legacy. Although Chens life was not widely remembered in later hagiography, his alchemical texts and teachings were widely remembered by later commentators, so I will present a full study of the legacy of Chens texts and teachings in chapter 6. §1.1, Chens Biographies.

I know of seven di erent biographies or

hagiographies of Chen Zhixu, some of them in multiple versions. They contain some errors such as using the wrong characters to write Chens name, or claiming he lived in the Tang dynasty, and add little to the information we can nd in Jindan dayao. I list them here and draw from them as necessary in this chapter. 1. Wang Qi, ed., Xu wenxian tongkao 1586, 243.30a in Xuxiu siku quanshu, 767:50. Based on Xu wenxian tongkao: 1a. Chen Jiaoyou, Changchun daojiao yuanliu 1879, 6.8b9a. 2. Guo Zizhang, ed., Qian ji 15731620; Guizhou, 54.1b. Similar to Chens entry in Qian ji: 2a. Da Qing yitong zhi 16861842, j. 396 in Siku quanshu. 2b. Zheng Zhen, ed., Zunyi fuzhi 1937 ed., based on eds. of 1841 and 1892; 49 juan; Guizhou, 38.1a in Su Jinren and Xiao Lianzi, Lidai shidao renwu zhi, 1018. 3. E Ertai, ed., Guizhou tongzhi 1741; 47 juan, 32.13b. Contains some material like 42

Qian ji, and some not found in Qian ji. 3a. Minguo Guizhou tongzhi 1948, 7.1a in Su and Xiao, Lidai shidao renwu zhi, 1001. 4. Wang Jianzhang, ed., Lidai shenxianshi 1693, j. 5. 5. Ji Yun, ed., Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 178189, j. 146. 6. Fu Xieding, ed., Jiugong Shan zhi 1882, 4.6a8b1 7:9596. 7. Dacheng jieyao author unknown, pre1929; Wudao zhenji ed., 15758; Yongcheng yinshu guan ed., 1.34b36a; Xiuxian baodian ed., 11314. §1.2, Chens Name.

Chen Zhixus full title as listed at the head of each chapter

of the Zhengtong daozang edition of Jindan daoyao, for instance is Zixiao Jianggong $, Shangyangzi , Guanwu ', Chen Zhixu . It is not immediately apparent what sort of name Zixiao Jianggong Crimson Palace of the Purple Empyrean is, but it is probably a choronym, a placename taken as a personal moniker. Shangyangzi Master of Highest Yang is a Daoist stylename daohao # ". Guanwu Viewing Myself is a byname zi , Chen is a surname, and Zhixu Arriving at Void is a personal name ming . Each of these names can tell us something about the man. I will discuss the possible meaning of Zixiao Jianggong on page 52 below. The name Shangyangzi indicates an emphasis on the cultivation of yang energy, distinctive to alchemy. Chens personal name Zhixu and byname Guanwu are both drawn from Daode jing, chapter 16: I do my utmost to attain void zhi xu; I hold rmly to stillness. The myriad things all rise together, and by this I watch wu guan their return &%! '.1 Chen was not born with the name Zhixu, but chose it or received it based on a mature interest in Daoism. He writes: Long ago, an elder gave me the byname Guanwu '2 This elder from long ago would not have been a Daoist elder, but rather an elder within Chens birthfamily about which nothing is known, who recognized or encouraged Chens interest in Daoist learning or moral cultivation. I expect that Chen chose the name Zhixu for himself after receiving the name Guanwu from the elder, since Zhixu is even more Daoistsounding than Guanwu. Both names could 1

Translation based on D. C. Lau, Tao Te Ching, 20, with changes.

2

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 12.11a10.

43

be interpreted in terms of selfcultivation: Guanwu could refer to concentrating on cultivation, with the goal of a return fu to perfection, and Zhixu refers to the ultimate state to be attained through cultivation. Zhixu must have been a relatively common Daoist name: the contemporaneous master Peng Nanqi, also active in Jiangxi, had a disciple named Gong Zhixu , for example.3

§2, Chens Life until Forty, and the Environment at Luling §2.1, Chens Life until Forty Chen Zhixu was born in the summer of 1290, a native of Luling County, in Jian Circuit , Jiangxi Province.4 The year of Chens birth may be calculated from his age at the time he received the transmission of alchemical teachings from his master Zhao Youqin. As he writes in his hagiography of Zhao Youqin, Chen received Zhaos teachings in the fall of a jisi year.5 As I show in appendix 2 to the dissertation, Chens writings were published in the 1330s and 1340s. For example, Ouyang Tianshu dates his preface to early 1336.6 The closest previous jisi year was 1329, so 1329 must be the year Chen received Zhaos teachings. Chen writes that he was forty years nian old at the time of Zhaos transmission.7 If Chen were forty nian or sui in age in the fall of 1329, he would actually have been thirtynine years old by our reckoning, which would put his birth year in 1289 or 1290. That he was in fact born in 1290 can be conrmed by a statement he makes in a transmission epistle to one of his disciples, Yu Shunshen . In the essay, Chen remarks that both he

3

Chen Yuan, Daojia jinshi le, 1201.

4

The Luling county seat was a little to the south of the presentday city of Jian. Luling City was also the seat of Jian Circuit, the larger territorial division. In the Yuan Dynasty, Jiangxi was a provincial branchsecretariat xing zhongshu sheng , with a territory including most of presentday Jiangxi Province, together with half of Guangdong and a small part of Hunan. 5

DZ 1069, Shangyangzi jindan dayao liexian zhi 9a2.

6

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao, preface, 5a57. Ouyang dates his preface to the last month of the rst year of the Zhiyuan reign period, an yihai year. This month corresponds to between Jan. 15 and Feb. 12, 1336.

7

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 1.2b78.

44

and Yu were born on the same hour of the same summer day, in a geng ) year.8 The year 1290 was a gengyin ); year, so this corroborates the calculation of Chens birth year as 1290. Chen Zhixu did not become a Daoist until adulthood. Before becoming a Daoist, he led the life of a school student for years. The following passage comes from a dialogue in which Chen teaches a student about the ultimate form of study xue zhi zhi J

. This is probably an essay composed on paper rather than a

record of a reallife encounter. Shangyangzi said: Come! I have more to say to you. Now, at one time I was engaged in study. Back then, what I called study involved working hard at my parallel prose, training in prosody, exhaustively researching the present and the past,9 happily writing commentaries and expositions, conversing on inherent nature and principle, and distinguishing the correct from the incorrect. When I studied big issues, it was the Book of Changes; when I studied small things, it was occult? techniques; I did not tire of this study. I selshly called this the ultimate in study, and never knew how far away I was from the ultimate. Whats more, I did not know there were perfected beings in the worldI did not trust that there was a dao in this world by which one could achieve transcendenthood or buddhahood. D '#BG #FJ<(,5J 0L N>M3HAC6I*=41 -?9 7J &K5J %/(+ 0 /: 0$2"!E0 10 Chen Zhixu began his education by learning how to write prose, read history with a Confucian eye, write commentaries probably to Confucian classics , and study the Book of Changes. He may have had a side interest in mantic of metaphysical learning or techniques Yi - and shu ? , but was not actively seeking salvation from this world. Because there were no civilservice examinations in the Yuan dynasty until 1315, and the career path in government for a Han man from southern China was restricted throughout the dynasty, it is likely that Chen Zhixu was studying in school 8

Chen says they were born in a shangzhang @ year. In calculating years, shangzhang is a way to say geng; DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 12.11a6.

9

This could easily be a reference to the practice of gewu 8. investigation of things as advocated by Zhu Xi. Zhu Xis learning was orthodox for all men in the exam system during Chen Zhixus era.

10


45

more for personal cultivation than for a public career. He may have been studying at a NeoConfucian academy in his native Luling, such as the famous academy on White Egret Island Bailu Zhou 2 in the Gan River 1. This particular academy was founded in 1241 to venerate the NeoConfucian philosophers Cheng Hao !3 1032 85 Cheng Yi !. 1033 1107 and their father.11 The ChengZhu teachings of the Cheng brothers plus Zhu Xi -, 1130 1200 were adopted as state orthodoxy during Chens generation the new exam system of 1315 was based on ChengZhu learning,12 and remained so until the twentieth century. Some of Chen Zhixus disciples were followers of ChengZhu learning, and Chen himself praises the Cheng brothers teachings on the Book of Changes.13 Chens relatively advanced study sounds like training at an academy, but he also could have received an education in ChengZhu NeoConfucianism Daoxue #+ at a governmentsponsored school. Kublai Khan r. 1260 94 made a commitment to universal schooling from the beginning of his reign, and in a proclamation of 1261 he ordered the establishment of schools on the local level and appointed regional superintendents of education to oversee the eort.14 These governmentsponsored schools also spread Daoxue, teaching the Four Books with Zhu Xis commentaries. At some point in his youth, Chen developed an interest in alchemy: From my youth I had this aim, but had not encountered a true teacher, and did not understand the essentials. I read the various elixir scriptures, but found them distant and dicult to grasp. By cogitation I could not achieve the teachings , and I had no method for exhaustive research. I lost sleep and forgot to eat, ever and again feeling this regret. $*)"0& ( '%/,15 When he was a student getting a Confucian education, Chen was not interested in alchemy. But then, perhaps after leaving his school yet while still a young man, he developed a sincere desire to study alchemy, but could nd no one to help him, and 11

Walton, Southern Sung Academies as Sacred Places, 343.

12

De Bary, The Rise of NeoConfucian Orthodoxy in Yan China, part 1 in his NeoConfucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the MindandHeart, 1 66.

13

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 1.32b9 10.

14

De Bary, NeoConfucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the MindandHeart, 48.

15

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 1.10b10 11a2.

46

found it impossible teach himself alchemy by reading books perhaps books such as Zhouyi Cantong qi % or Wuzhen pian !#3 . Chen says that he wandered through the world of men until he nally encountered his master Zhao Youqin at the age of forty: I wandered through the human realm, enjoying the karmic benet of the merit amassed by my ancestors, and the pity and blessing of Heaven and Earth. At the age of forty, I undeservedly received the correct dao from my teacher Zhao Youqin . -($4,7+". 2

' 116

As for meeting his master and perhaps other good fortune he enjoyed during this period , Chen explains this as the result of spiritual merit passed down to him from his ancestors. This merit would not be karma in a strictly Buddhist sense, which is transmitted along a single chain of individual rebirths irrespective of family relationship, but rather a native Chinese conception of clan karma. The earliest instance of this concept is found in the Taiping jing /, which speaks of inherited burden chengfu , a sort of negative clan karma. Clan karma was an important concept in the fourthcentury Shangqing scriptures, in which Succeeding generations were tied to their ancestors . . . through hidden or dark virtue yinde , the good deeds of an ancestor which inuenced the fortune of his descendants. . . . Misdeeds likewise a ected the fate of descendants.17 Unfortunately, Chen never records the names of any of the worthy ancestors who might have left him this karmic inheritance. This is all that is recorded of Chens life until he received Zhao Youqins transmission in 1329 at the age of forty. Yet we can still round out the picture with some background information. Chen Zhixu was a man of Luling Lulingren 6) , and probably grew up there. Anne Gerritsen has studied the religiosity of the common people of Jian including Luling in the Southern Song, Yuan, and Ming 16


17

Bokenkamp, Death and Ascent in Lingpao Taoism, 6. In one Yuandynasty Daoist hagiography, for example, positive clan karma is called owing fragrance liufang . Zhang Liangs & unseen spiritual merit and eremitic practices transmitted good karma to later generations * 50, down to Zhang Daoling &1) DZ 296, Lishi zhenxian tidao tongjian 18.1a . When the term owing fragrance occurs in common Chinese writing, it refers merely to a persons glorious reputation after his or her passing, not necessarily to spiritual merit passed down to descendants.

47

Dynasties,18 and I will draw on her research to describe Lulings environment. §2.2, Lulings Geographical and Religious Environment In preQin times, Jiangxi was part of Chu , a nonHan kingdom originally distinct from the homeland of the Han people in the central plains of China. Luling is mentioned as a town as early as the Qin dynasty, yet it was not a HanChinese town at that time. Jiangxi as a whole did not become a HanChinese region until many centuries after that: it was not until the period from the third to the sixth century that Han Chinese started to emigrate southwards to Jiangxi, and it took until the eighth century for Jiangxi to become predominantly Han Chinese.19 By the Song dynasty, Jiangxi had become a very important region within China, and by the Yuan, about a quarter of the population of China lived in Jiangxi. This was due to the arrival of refugees and migrants from the north, and to Jiangxis rich harvests.20 Though situated far from the imperial capitals, Luling was not a backwoods town. It was located on the Gan River, one of the most important northsouth shipping routes in the province. While Nanchang was the most important city in Jiangxi, Luling was also a major cultural center: During the Yuan, according to one contemporary observer, Jian was the most culturally prominent prefecture in Jiangxi, and Luling was the most outstanding county in Jian.21 Gerritsen lists a number of religious and cultural sites in the region of Luling. There were many shrines to deceased worthies, warriors, or literati built there during the Southern Song. As mentioned above, NeoConfucian academies also functioned as shrines to early Confucian sages and NeoConfucian worthies. Although Chen Zhixu never mentions shrines in his writings, he certainly would have visited them while growing up. Chens writings are full of Chan Buddhist elements. While Chen may have 18

Gerritsens 2001 Harvard dissertation is entitled Gods and Governors: Interpreting the Religious Realm in Jian Jiangxi during the Southern Song, Yuan, and Ming Dynasties.

19

Gerritsen, Gods and Governors, 22.

20

Xu Huailin, Jiangxi shi gao, 397.

21

Gerritsen, Gods and Governors, 28.

48

adopted this inclusivist attitude mainly from his master Zhao Youqin whose imperialistinclusivist use of Buddhist ideas in Xianfo tongyuan is even more pronounced than Chens in Jindan dayao, it is also likely that Chen learned about Buddhism in his native Luling before he met Zhao. The most famous Buddhist temple in Luling County was Jingju Monastery, situated in the Qingyuan

Mountains about nine miles southeast of the county seat. During the Song dynasty, this monastery was occupied by Chan monks of the Huanglong branch of the Linji lineage. The monastery burned down at the end of the Yuan dynasty, and was not rebuilt until the seventeenth century. The Huanglong lineage seems not to have been transmitted into the Yuan dynasty, and no names of Jingju Monastery monks from the Yuan dynasty are recorded, so we cannot know exactly which Chan teaching tradition Chen Zhixu would have encountered if he visited there, though it would have been within the broader Linji tradition.22 Chens writings show that he was especially interested in the teachings of the Yuanwu Keqin ! 10631135, of the Yangqi branch of the Linji lineage, also centered in Jiangxi, and he may have developed this interest during later travels. There would have been hundreds of other Buddhist temples or monasteries within the county: thirtyseven are listed in the Jiangxi provincial gazetteer of 1881, and 147 are listed in the Luling gazetteer of 1781.23 The 1781 Luling gazetteer mentions twentytwo Daoist temples,24 while the 1881 Jiangxi gazetteer mentions none in Luling. I have also found records of several Daoist temples from the Luling region in other sources. There is an inscription describing the founding of a Jiahui Abbey

in Luling County in 1312; this

temple was founded as a place to worship the Three Transcendents of Mt. Huagai , an important cult centered in Fuzhou , northeastern Jiangxi.25 Another local 22

Cf. Xiaofeng Daran, Qingyuan zhi le, j. 2 1:95112; Foguang da cidian, s.v. Qingyuan Shan , 37023.

23

Liu Kunyi, Jiangxi tongzhi 183.18 6:255760; Ping Guanlan and Huang Youheng, Luling xian zhi 10.1a29b 3:785842.

24

Ping Guanlan and Huang Youheng, Luling xian zhi 10.30a34b 3:84252. The ratio of Buddhist to Daoist temples in this gazetteer is about 6.5 Buddhist temples for every 1 Daoist temple.

25

This Jiahui Abbey inscription by Feng Yiweng is partially translated in Hymes, Way and Byway, 92. Hymess book is an extensive study of the Huagai cult. The three tutelary deities of Mt. Huagai are Earl Fuqiu , and his disciples Wang Daoxiang and Guo Daoyi .

49

temple, Chaoxian Abbey ( on Mt. Xiangcheng was said to have been founded by the Three Transcendents.26 The Huagai cult must have been an important cult in Luling as the Jiahui Abbey inscription says, the gentlemen and commoners of the whole prefecture rushed eagerly to pay reverence and make obeisances below the altar , and Chen mentions the main cult deity a few times in his writings. It appears that the most prominent regional cults in Chens eyes were cults to Zhang Daoling $,27 Ge Xuan #,28 and Xu Xun &,29 with the Perfected Lord of the Floating Hill Fuqiu Zhenjun , from Mt. Huagai as fourth in prominence.30 Zhang, Ge, and Xu were all saints associated with the region of presentday Jiangxi Province. Another temple in Luling, Zhenchang Abbey, is mentioned as the home of a priest named Li Jundi who printed a certain number of juan of the

26

Ping Guanlan and Huang Youheng, Luling xian zhi 10.34a 3:851 .

27

Zhang Daoling . 141 is remembered as the founding patriarch of the Celestial Master lineage headquartered at Mt. Longhu in presentday Jiangsu. Pregadio makes the important point that Zhang Daoling was remembered as an alchemist: If one reads the account of Zhangs life in the fourteenthcentury DZ 1473 Lineage of the Han Celestial Masters Han tianshi jia with no knowledge of the crucial role that he played in the history of Daoism, one might indeed take that account to refer to an alchemist; Pregadio, Great Clarity, 151. The Shenxian zhuan emphasizes Zhangs knowledge of the Elixirs of the Nine Tripods of the Yellow Emperor Huangdi jiuding dan !% ; Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, 350. It is also primarily as an alchemist that Chen Zhixu remembers Z*hang Daoling. Also see the longer footnote on Zhang Daoling below, pp. 14748n82. 28

Ge Xuan was Ge Hongs greatuncle, and was remembered as an alchemist at Mt. Gezao in presentday Qingjiang County, Jiangxi Province . His cult must have been alive in Jiangxi during Chen Zhixus era. According to Ge Xuans hagiography in DZ 296, Lishi zhenxian tidao tongjian, j. 23, Ge tried to rene his elixir for a long time without success, leaving traces of his alchemical platforms in twentytwo di erent spots on di erent mountains. He used to sing about how he was already sixty years old and had still to successfully complete his elixir. Finally, he was able to ingest it and ascend to Heaven at the age of eightyone. Chen Zhixu seems to have been a ected by Ge Xuans story. A halfdozen times Chen cites Ges lament at being sixty years old and still unsuccessful at his elixir. For Chen, the moral of the story is that even a great transcendent like Ge had to face old age and failure, before nally succeeding, so lesser mortals should be prepared for the same. Also see the longer footnote on Ge Xuan in appendix 2 to this chapter. 29

Xu Xun 23992/374? , byname Jingzhi ", a.k.a. Xu Jingyang , lived in Yuzhang ' a.k.a. Hongzhou , presentday Nanchang . After his mortal career, he was worshiped locally as a healer and dragonqueller, later becoming seen on a national scale as a paragon of lial piety and patron of the Jingming Zhongxiao Daoist tradition. Also see the longer footnote on Xu Xun in appendix 2 to this chapter. 30

Chen lists Zhang Daoling, Ge Xuan, and Xu Xun as alchemical exemplars regularly throughout his writings. He lists these three gures together in the same sentence at least six times in his extant corpus; DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 8.2a6, 13.19a9; DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie 1.29b12; Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 1.23a4, 1.34a4; DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 5.17b89. In four passages, he adds Fuqiu as a fourth name; DZ 1067, 8.2a6; Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu 1.23a4, 1.34a4; also, DZ 91, 3.19a6.

50

Daozang in about 1337.31 This shows that Daoist texts were printed openly in Jiangxi despite the 1281 imperial ban on Daoist scriptures, and also that there was a market for Daoist scriptures in the region. Chens own writings were printed at almost exactly this time, but this printing probably took occurred at other places: in Hongzhou, the Lu Mountains !, and Mt. Jiugong . Another Daoist temple in Yuandynasty Luling is mentioned in the biography of Peng Nanqi 1284 1335. A commemorative inscription by the famous literatus Yu Ji 32 1272 1341 describes Pengs life. Peng rst gained an interest in Daoism when he visited West Mountain the center of the Xu Xun cult with his father at the age of six. At the age of twelve he became a Daoist novice at Ziji Palace in the prefectural seat i.e., Luling. During his life, Peng also dwelt in temples in other parts of Jiangxi, but spent his later years at Ziji Palace. He practiced a form of inner alchemy, but it was probably not like Chens sexual alchemy. Like Chen, Peng studied Buddhist teachings with a critical eye, though unlike Chen, Peng was more interested in comparing Buddhist and Daoist rituals than comparing self cultivation practices. Xu Yi 1291 1350 was another Daoist from Luling who contributed to the textual development of the Xu Xun cult. Xu Yi was a disciple of the Jingming Daoist master Huang Yuanji 1271 1325 and an editor of DZ 1110, Jingming zhongxiao quanshu, the largest collection of materials on the Xu Xun cult. Xu Yi was born in Luling, but was ordained as a Daoist in Fuzhou Fengcheng

, about

ninety miles to the northeast. Xu Ziqi was another Luling Daoist who studied the Jingming tradition after failing to receive a government post in the capital.33 The Xu Xun cult was very prominent in Chen Zhixus place and time. Gaoming Palace , on Mt. Zhenjun near the Luling prefectural seat, was another Daoist temple with links to the Xu Xun cult. By one account Xu Xun founded Gaoming Palace personally, and by another account it was founded by local people after they 31

Van der Loon, Taoist Books in the Libraries of the Sung Period, 56 57, quoting a preface written by Chen L

1287 1342. 32

Yu Ji , Jiuwan Peng Jun zhi bei , reprinted in Chen Yuan, ed., Daojia jinshi le, 1201 2.

33

Ping Guanlan and Huang Youheng, Luling xian zhi 34.28b 7:2400.

51

made a sacrice to Xu Xun, praying that he would exterminate a hornless dragon jiao that was bothering them, and the dragonhaunting ceased.34 Chen himself sometimes mentions Xu Xun and other cult deities such as Wu Meng or Chenmu % in his writings, though he interprets them in a way that would not be recognized by most devotees of the cult. Chen intimates that Xu Xun and Chenmus true teaching was none other than his own form of sexual alchemy.35 This is a violent misreading of the Xu Xun tradition. The last Yuandynasty Daoist temple in Luling that I will mention is of special signicance, because Chen may have been ordained as a Daoist there. Although Chen does consider himself a Daoist,36 it is nowhere recorded that Chen Zhixu was formally ordained as a Daoist priest. Of course, for Chen, the most important initiations he received in his life would not be public ordinations, but rather the private transmissions of alchemical secrets from his two masters, Zhao Youqin and the Old Qingcheng Master. But was Chen a professional Daoist in the eyes of the law? If he were, he was probably ordained at a place called Zixiao #, or called Jianggong , or called both together.37 There was a Zixiao Abbey #( in Luling, another Zixiao Abbey about sixty miles east of Luling,38 and a Zixiao Peak # in the Lu Mountains '. Chens choronym may refer to one of these three places, and if so, that would likely be where he got his start as a Daoist. Zixiao Abbey in Luling is recorded in a commemorative inscription by the fortythird Celestial 34

Ping Guanlan and Huang Youheng, Luling xian zhi 10.30b 3:844 .

35

For example, Chen mentions the gripping of Jingyangs Xu Xuns sword, and the gulping of Chenmus elixir !% ; Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.35a missing from DZ 1067 .

36

In a passage criticizing ignorance and corruption among templedwelling Daoists, Chen writes Why dont they reect on what it is that we study in our religion! $ Soon after, he writes My our Most High Lord Lao said . . . . I translate this passage below. As Campany notes, in medieval China, The names, partial names, or titles of founding or paradigmatic gures are sometimes used synecdochally to refer nominally to what in Western discourse would be called an entire religion or tradition; Campany, On the Very Idea of Religions, 299. This may be the only page on which Chen explicitly calls himself a Daoist. 37

Jiang Gong does not sound like the name of a Daoist temple or ordination hall within a temple complex . A proper name for a Daoist temple or hall would have three syllables XY Gong . Jianong may be some sort of reference to the middle dantian in the body cf. p. 250 below , or to some feature of the heavens perhaps the pole star, or the central region of the rmament , rather than to a Daoist temple. 38

Cf. Wu Cheng ", Zixiao Guan ji #(, in Chen Yuan ed., Daojia jinshi le, 115859. Wu says that this Zixiao Guan was located eighty li southwest of the Nanfeng & county seat, which would put it about sixty miles east of the Luling county seat.

52

Master Zhang Yuchu * 13591410 .39 Zhang writes that the abbey was founded in the Northern Song, and destroyed in 1324; although restorations were planned in the 1340s, it was not rebuilt until 1370.40 If Chen was once a Daoist from Zixiao Abbey, this would have been before the destruction of the place in 1324, when he was thirtyfour years old. I have found Zixiao as the name of a peak in the Lu Mountains, but no record of any Daoist temple on that peak. Of these three Zixiaos, a link to the Zixiao Abbey in Luling is the most likely. Chen probably rst entered the Daoist life there.

§3, Meeting Master Zhao, and Enlightenment §3.1, Meeting Zhao Youqin Chen Zhixu met Zhao Youqin at the age of forty sui, in 1329, and received his transmission at or near Mt. Heng 7 , the Southern Marchmount

8.

In the autumn of the jisi year 1329 , while lodging in Hengyang, Zhao gave the complete transmission of the wondrous dao of the golden elixir to Shangyangzi. #.71 3+1 41 My master, the perfected Yuandu, received the true instructions of Zhongli Quan , L Dongbin , Wang Chongyang , and Ma Danyang . On the side of the Southern Marchmount I took him as my master and received his full transmission; I was forty years old. Although he was living in a monastery,42 he was addicted to poetry and books. &42',9) 39

8%+!,$0

On pp. 568 and 6026 chap. 6, §2.1.3, §3.1.2 , I discuss Zhang Yuchu and his criticism of Chen Zhixu.

40

Gerritsen, Gods and Governors, 28586, citing Zhang Yuchu, Zixiao guan ji /5<(, in Luling xianzhi ;-6 1873 , 45.40ab.

41

DZ 1069, Shangyangzi jindan dayao liexian zhi 9a23.

42

The subject who was living in a monastery is Zhao, not Chen this is clearer in the context of the whole passage . Linxia is a term found in Chan Buddhist texts, meaning within the conglin : Buddhist monastery Foguang da cidian, s.v. linxia , 3311 . In general, Daoists have used the word conglin exclusively to refer to Buddhist monasteries, never to Daoist ones. Yet I have found the term lin used to refer to a Daoist monastery at several points in Jindan dayao; DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao, preface, 4b7; 11.11b10. So it must refer to a Daoist monastery here. The Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds. have " instead of , an editorial error.

53

()!"43 My master Zhao the Perfected came from his selfcultivation at Mt. Dadi and transmitted the dao of the golden elixir to me, together with the teachings on the current and reverse current of the River of Heaven.44 &$ # %45 It is unclear whether Chen and Zhao were lodging at Mt. Heng, or in the city of Hengyang '

about thirty miles southwest of the mountain. Certainly they did

visit Mt. Heng together, because Chen records an enlightenment experience he had while attending Zhao at Mt. Heng discussed below. Perhaps they moved between the two places. Mt. Heng was a major Buddhist center, but there were also many Daoist monasteries on the mountain, and over the centuries there was much contact between the Buddhist and Daoist monks there.46 Both Zhao and Chen taught that the highest truths could be found equally in Buddhism and Daoism, so they would have appreciated opportunities for religious exchange at Mt. Heng. However, few Buddhists and Daoists would have agreed with them that the highest form of practice involved sexual alchemy. Before coming to Mt. Heng, Zhao had been doing cultivation work at Mt. Dadi $, the thirtyfourth grotto heaven, near Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province. While there is a gazetteer for this mountain, DZ 782, Dadi Dongtian tuji ca. 1299, it does not tell us what sort of Daoist practices Zhao Youqin may have encountered there. All we can discover is that some or all of the Daoists there belonged to the Zhengyi Daoist tradition.47 I argue below that sexual alchemy was practiced at the Zhengyi Daoist center at Mt. Jiugong, so it is possible that the same was true at Mt. Dadi. §3.2, Chens Enlightenment 43

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 2.3a68.

44

The current and reverse current of the River of Heaven probably refers to the lesser microcosmic orbit see chap. 4, §4.5, pp. 28891, but it could refer to some technique for transporting seminal essence, or the partners qi, by means of urethral suction see pp. 41920, 4805 below or guiding intention see pp. 29293, 53839.

45

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 14.12b10a2.

46

Robson, Imagining Nanyue.

47

There is an entry on a Zhengyi Daoist from Mt. Dadi named Jin Changqing . 129497 in Zhou Yongshen, Lidai zhenxian gaodao zhuan, 290.

54

The idea of personally receiving esoteric transmission of alchemical teachings from a master plays a paramount role in Chens teaching. Chen mentions often that he received esoteric transmissions both from Zhao Youqin and from an unnamed Old Man from Qingcheng. At two points in Jindan dayao he describes an epiphany he had under the guidance of Master Zhao; I will present these two passages, with my own commentary interposed. I will also mention two later enlightenment experiences which Chen discusses more brie y. It is unusual to nd this sort of Chanstyle enlightenment so strongly emphasized in Daoism. §3.2.1, Chens major enlightenment.

At two points in Jindan dayao Chen tells us

that he had a profound epiphany at the time of formally receiving his transmission from Master Zhao, and he describes this enlightenment experience, using a mixture of ChanBuddhist and inneralchemical tropes. My master, the perfected Yuandu, received the true instructions of Zhongli Quan, L Dongbin, Wang Chongyang, and Ma Danyang. On the side of the Southern Marchmount, I took him as my master and received his full transmission; I was forty years old. Although he was living in a monastery, he was addicted to poetry and books. He once spoke of nirva48 and voidnonexistence, and his talk was profound, distant, indistinct. After I undeservedly received a single instruction from my master, I felt prickles in my esh and a feeling of liberation. Not until I looked down did I realize that my feet had always been standing on solid ground. It was like the sudden dispersal of clouds oating in the empty sky, to reveal the precious moon full and bright. I also got the Daode jing as interpreted by Zhao, and burned incense to attract the gaze of the gods. . . . /RF27V3#'U,6)7+@ W" XCJ0MT4E@=P!.Z(O/*:> 9 & $HK SN?% 1B;YD 5IL QG<-8A49 This encounter has a fourstep structure: 1 a pithy lesson, which 2 precipitates enlightenment, followed by 3 formal transmission, and then 4 an exploration of the signicance of the new knowledge in inneralchemical terms. 1 First, Chen receives a single instruction yizhi * from Master Zhao. Chen does not record the content of this pithy lesson, which is a valuable esoteric secret, but we can infer its content. Accounts of the similar enlightenment 48

Ch. jimie 4E translates Skt. vyupaama calmness and extinction, an epithet or description of nirva.

49

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 2.3a6 b2.

55

experiences of Chens students emphasize the shock they feel, so in both cases the lesson probably involved something shocking, thus, sexual alchemy. As I will show below, Zhao Youqin was also a sexual alchemist. 2 Then, Chen experiences enlightenment. This event is very Chanlike in its phenomenology, doctrinal content, and reportage by Chen. Its phenomenology involves a prickly feeling and a sense of liberation; this sort of phenomenon is not found in other, earlier Daoist conceptions of masterstudent transmission. The doctrinal content of the single instruction is presumably related to Zhaos talk of nirv a and voidnonexistence, which Chen mentions immediately before it in the same passage; nirv a signies Buddhist doctrine and voidnonexistence signies Daoist doctrine. Finally, Chens reportage of the event uses Chan language. The Chanlike elements in Chens writings are drawn from specic Chan texts, especially the discourse records yulu of Yuanwu Keqin. Chanimbued enlightenment experiences in Jindan dayao show how mental and physical experience can be conditioned by tradition in this case, Chan tradition.50 Chen may have studied Chan texts on his own, but he certainly received this sort of training from Master Zhao. Zhao Youqins Xianfo tongyuan devotes equal time to Daoism and Buddhism, giving both a sexual interpretation.51 Zhao also acted like an eccentric Chan master.52 3 Then, Chen receives Zhaos interpretation of the Daode jing, and the initiation is announced to the deities. Throughout the history of Daoism, Daoist ordinations have involved the transmission of texts, including the Daode jing.53 In the

50 Cf. Steven Katz, Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism. Of course, Chens reports of his encounters with masters and students should not be taken as objective and merely factual. Objective reporting itself is an impossibility, strictly speaking, and Chens reportage is relatively less objective it is highly structured, didactic, and selective. Yet I assume as a matter of course that when Chen reports an encounter between himself and Master Zhao, this encounter did in fact take place, and I assume that some avor of the encounter is indeed represented in the report. I have found no grounds in the texts themselves for treating Chens reportage as essentially ctional. 51

On pp. 93 94 and 459 62 below, I discuss some evidence of sexual alchemy in Xianfo tongyuan.

52

Cf. DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 15.4b6 5a3.

53

Benn, The CavernMystery Transmission, 73 98; Schipper, Taoist Ordination Ranks in the Tunhuang Manuscripts.

56

earliest period of Celestial Master Daoism, initiations and ordinations54 involved the transmission of spirit registers lu , lists of spirits the new ordinand could command , but from early on the fourth century at the latest , the ordinand would also receive specic scriptures at the time of ordination. The Daode jing was the scripture transmitted at the lowest stage of Daoist ordination. I do not think that Master Zhao was ordaining Chen Zhixu as a Daoist of a certain rank by transmitting the Daode jing to him as part of this initiation. I think that Zhao transmitted the Daode jing, both to echo traditional Daoist ordination, and to use this classic as a handy and authoritative vehicle for expressing his own unique teachings the strategy of extension or stealing the lightning . I think that Master Zhao presented Chen with a written copy of his personal commentary on the Daode jing or perhaps he allowed Chen to write out a new copy . Zhaos commentary on the Daode jing is lost, but Chen has included his own commentarial material on the Daode jing in several sections of Jindan dayao.55 4 Finally, Chen explored the signicance of his new realization in inner

alchemical and Chan terms, applying the new teaching he received from Master Zhao to his previous knowledge of inner alchemy and Chan kan discourse: As for this the two appear together but have dierent names,56 all along this was the twin themes of xing and ming inherent nature and life endowment . I felt even more that my whole body was bathed in sweat. I felt that when I sat I was facing Laozi, and when I walked I was walking together with Laozi. I felt that the buddhas and patriarchs were beneath my heels, and it was as if among the three realms of the Buddhist cosmos I was truly the most revered being i.e., like the Buddha . Transcending, I asked what birth and death could there be? Thus there are the sword of the Three Pure Ones, and the mitre of the Five Marchmounts; existence and nonexistence, the thing and the aperture; quicksilver within vermillion cinnabar, and silver within water; the sun hare and the moon crow, male and female, black and white. Then we come to the vajra

protector? and oating stra pillar; the lantern and the buddha hall; the treasure of the true eye of the dharma; the wondrous mind of nirva; the pole a hundred 54

Benn distinguishes initiation from ordination: in his account of Daoist ranks, based on DZ 1125, Dongxuan lingbao sandong fengdao kejie yingshi, he calls ranks one through three initiations, and ranks four through eleven ordinations; Benn, The CavernMystery Transmission, 7398. 55

See the sections Daode jing xu DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 2.1a37b7; the current passage I am discussing comes from this section , Dao ke dao zhang jie DZ 1067, 2.7b812b6 , and Daode jing zhuanyu DZ 1067, 10.1a313a6 . Also see texts A1e and A6 in dissertation appendix 1.

56

Daode jing, chapter 1.

57

chi in height; the water of the western river; bamboo, hemp, and reeds;57 the habitual use of stickblows and shouts; and the number of grains of sand in the Ganges River. The buddhadharma is ever thus: once the buddhanature is revealed and the Buddhist is enlightened, one is always peeping at it day and night, and there is great dynamism and great application. At times one reaches a place to stop and rest, bringing great elation. Why is this? Just because of these terms double meaning. The masters just want people of these times to understand they take this as their hope. :1LX*8t+.`PN H`3@7@;)7 ;=n,O%? cCVz|/>"2\ s [/U0¤DKx$:Yhl ¡=!TumA5e<46y¢~{ #]SE=Tvd`Fj £ #/krM& wbBa>_ b1XWf Rb}58 In this remarkable passage, Chen treats terms from Daoist and Chan Buddhist discourse as completely interchangeable. He is also adding a sexual interpretation to Buddhist and Daoist terminology in lines such as existence and nonexistence, the thing and the aperture /U . I will analyze similar material below.59 On page 393 I show that for Chen the lantern and the buddhahall refer to the sex organs of the male adept and female partner respectively. Note how Chen begins with a sentence from the Daode jing: this may come from Zhaos Daode jing interpretation. There is one more passage in Jindan dayao describing the phenomenology of Chens enlightenment experience with Master Zhao: Studying buddhahood and cultivating transcendenthood: this is the single greatest thing. After I received a single word from my master, it was like a radiant, bright mirror hanging in a lofty hall. Of the objects coming and going, none were not reected in it. =g'I C9riG-(R^QoqUUJ 60 This sounds like a report of mystic experience. I believe that Chen is describing a 57

These refer to famous kans, such as Yunmen Wenyans Zp 864 949 three jin of hemp ma sanjin y

. This has been taken as an example of a Zen non sequitur, but it originally just meant Buddhist monk wearing a robe made of three jinpounds of hemp . 58

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 2.3b2 4a1. Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds. have xK. DZ 1067 ed.s Kx would seem to be backwards, but this could be intentional.

59

See pp. 391 94, and 533 44 chap. 5, §4.1 .

60

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 4.9a5 6.

58

nondual state in which the usual division between self and things, or subject and object, did not apply. But also note that, once again, this is Chaninected language. Chen learned how to feel this way, or learned how to talk about it, or learned how to feel this way by learning how to talk about it, by reading Chan texts, and receiving Chan teachings.61 §3.2.2, Two other enlightenments.

Finally, Chen also describes two other,

perhaps lesspowerful enlightenment experiences. One actually seems to be Master Zhaos account of his own enlightenment experience. While attending Master Zhao at the Southern Marchmount, Shangyangzi heard a person chanting the Duren jing, and asked: What does The vajrabeing rides up to heaven mean? The Master replied: Dont get muddledup! Try to say it again from the beginning. First, I ask you, what kind of things are Red Writ and Turbid Cavern? Shangyangzi then arose, bowed, and again asked his question. The Master said: When I heard these four words Turbid Cavern Red Writ , I began to sweat all over. I was enlightened by these words, and read this scripture once through deeply. ;)E$B0? @* =3 '/. 0 -6C<4DA%35,"+& 92:30 ?7(#+! 1 =8> 62 Note that this experience is based on and expressed in Daoist elements only, unlike the mixed Chan/Daoist enlightenment above. In light of what I will show in chapter 5, it is very likely that the line Red Writ and Turbid Cavern hundong chiwen 5," is being given a sexual interpretation here: perhaps it refers to the female partners sex organ and menses.63 I think that this episode occurred after Chens Chan/Daoist enlightenment. I think that Chen rst comprehended the sexual alchemical teachings from Zhao at the time of the Chan/Daoist enlightenment, and in this episode, Zhao expects Chen to be able to gure out the sexual interpretation of any religious scripture by himself. 61

Cf. Katz, Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism.

62

DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie 2.42a4.

63

DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie 2.3a7. Bokenkamp translates hundong chiwen as the red script that penetrated the turbulent void idem, Early Daoist Scriptures, 415 . John Lagerweys interpretation of this passage is very di erent: Apparently Chen understands the hundong chiwen, revealed at the beginning of time, to be comparable to the cold sweat that covers the microcosm of the adepts body when he or she is sublimating the elixir; in Schipper and Verellen, The Taoist Canon, 2:719. But Chens cold sweat is a trope related to enlightenment, not to inneralchemical experience. Sweating may occur during the stage of internal ring, when the adept bathes the elixir at the mao and you points, but this is not cold sweat; see pp. 296, 311, and 51316 chap. 5, §3.3.2.3 .

59

Chen also very briey alludes to another later enlightenment experience he had under the guidance of his anonymous master from Mt. Qingcheng: After I received my masters transmission, I had a shocked feeling, even when eating and sleeping. #64 I argue in the next section that Chen made up this tale of a Qingcheng master; the brief, highlystylized quality of this enlightenment report accords with my argument.

§4, Chens Two Masters: Zhao Youqin and the Qingcheng Master §4.1, Zhao Youqins Life I draw on Volkovs work on Zhao Youqin for this section,65 as well as the three primary sources for Zhaos life.66 Zhao came from Poyang

, Rao Commandery

", presentday Jiangxi Province, and was born on July 26, 1271.67 According to Song Lians ! account, Zhao studied astronomy while preparing for an o cial career, and later received a secret alchemical book from Shi Dezhi .68 Song says that Zhao passed on his astronomical learning to Zhu Hui ,69 but that Zhu had no disciples. It is also said that Zhao taught divination to Wang Gang , Wang Yangmings forefather, and predicted that Wang Gang would have an illustrious

64

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu, preface, 5b6.

65

Volkov, Scientic Knowledge in Taoist Context, 2:525; Volkov, Science and Daoism: An Introduction, 3438.

66

These are Zhaos entry in Jindan dayao DZ 1069, Shangyangzi jindan daoyao liexian zhi 8b9a ; Wang Weis $ preface to Chongxiu Gexiang xinshu text no. B2a in dissertation appendix 1 ; and Song Lians ! 131081 preface to Gexiang xinshu text no. B2 dissertation appendix 1 . There are also entries on Zhao in later gazetteers; these appear to be derivative, or reect standard tropes, so I do not consider them here. 67 Name Youqin, bynames Yuandu , Jingfu or Jing and Zigong or , stylename Yuanduzi Master of Following the Middle . 68

Shi Dezhi is identied by others as Shi Tai , the second patriarch of the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir. After he died in 1158, Shi Tai appeared again two years later to someone named Yijie at Luofu Shan; Skar, Golden Elixir Alchemy, 245. Thus, Shi Tai was known as a transcendent being active in this world. 69

Byname Deming .

60

descendant i.e., Wang Yangming himself .70 Zhao was buried at Mt. Jiming MF in Longyou K7, Zhejiang Province. Volkov argues that Zhao must have died before Jindan dayao was published thus before 1331 or 1336 . According to Chen Zhixus account,

Zhao Youqin was a son of the Zhao lineage71 E". As a boy he encountered the res of civil war,72 and from an early age had an interest in mountain and forest

eremitic retreat . He was extremely bright, and had a thorough and accurate knowledge of astronomy, Confucian classics and wefttexts jingwei AH , geography, and arts and calculations. He was able to receive the great dao of the golden elixir from Master Ziqiong, and then he combed through scores of books, scriptures, and biographies, and wrote . . . Xianfo tongyuan. He also wrote Jindan nanwen, and other books circulating in the world. . . . 'E" J! % I?L2AH35G4 D609N)1& C=B*A< @ & O-8*$73 Zhaos works are listed in dissertation appendix 1. While both accounts agree that Zhao was learned in astronomy, they di er on the issue of Zhaos alchemical lineage. By Songs account, Zhao received his alchemical secrets from Shi Tai +, the second patriarch of the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir, traditionally said to have died in 1158 , while by Chens account, Zhao received his secrets from Zhang Ziqiong /9N, a member of a Quanzhen lineage reaching back to Ma Danyang , ;. This Quanzhen lineage claim was a fabrication, probably by Chen and not by Zhao himself, as I argue below. In later times, Zhao was known equally as an alchemist, and as an expert on astronomy, mathematics, calendrics, and the camera obscura. His Gexiang xinshu (:>* New writing on the alteration of images discusses practically all traditional topics related to astronomy and the calendar, such as, for example, the structure of the universe, that is, the shape and relative 70 Liu Tsunyan, Wang Yangming and Taoism, 155; and Wang Xingchang Xiansheng zhuan #.<, in Wang Yangming, Wang Yangming quanji, 38.1 2:1380 . 71

Rather than being a mans name, Zhao zong probably means the former SongDynasty imperial Zhao clan. Song Lians preface states this more clearly. In this dissertation, I have not explored the possibility that Zhao, Chen, or others around them could have been Song loyalists. At least one reader has spotted a Songdynasty taboo character in the Zhengtong daozang edition of Jindan dayao, which suggests that it this edition or liation was printed by Song loyalists; Zhonghua daozang, 27:521n1. Yet Chen Zhixus disciples and patrons included many men who were associated with the Yuan government, such as Zhang Shihong and his friends cf. no. 9 in appendix 2, pp. 13536 below , or Zhenxi no. 21 . Also see my note on the Song loyalist Zhao Daoyi, p. 137n5 below. 72

Jiehuo !, literally, the apocalyptic ames at the end of a kalpa.

73

DZ 1069, Shangyangzi jindan dayao liexian zhi 8b79a2.

61

position of the earth and the heavens . . . The book also contains descriptions of astronomical instruments devised by Zhao . . . and a section devoted to the . . . approximate values of .74 In his commentaries to the Duren jing and Zhouyi Cantong qi, Chen quotes or paraphrases dozens of passages from Gexiang xinshu on topics such as the relative positions of Heaven and Earth, so we know that Chen studied astronomy with Zhao and received a copy of Gexiang from him. Volkov has studied these passages, and concludes that the text of Gexiang xinshu that we have today is actually partially based on Chens Duren jing commentary: it was reconstituted in part using Gexiang quotations drawn from Chens commentary by later editors.75 Zhaos religious teachings can be found in his Xianfo tongyuan, which discusses Buddhist and Daoist positions on various inneralchemical and selfcultivation topics, and has the ultimate goal of showing that Buddhism and Daoism teach a single truth and a single alchemical practice. Many of Chens teachings are clearly based on Zhaos; sometimes Chen copies long passage verbatim from Xianfo tongyuan. §4.2, The Qingcheng Master Chen claims that, after receiving Zhao Youqins transmission at Mt. Heng or Hengyang in 1329, he received higher secrets from a Qingcheng master.76 He esteems the Qingcheng master no less highly than he does Master Zhao. Master Zhao clearly had a major e ect on Chens thinking, because Chen mentions and quotes Master Zhao in his works so often. Yet Chen also raises the Qingcheng master above Master Zhao when he says that his alchemical learning was incomplete and not yet rm until he met the Qingcheng master: When I rst received the words of Squire Zhao Yuandu, although my intent had long been set on alchemy , I could not avoid hesitancy. Later, while staying in an unfamiliar land, I again paid my respects to an ultimate man, who transmitted the most secret writs of Qingcheng to me without holding anything back. Since reverently receiving them, I have been in training day and night, without taking a break. 74

Volkov, Scientic Knowledge in Taoist Context, 2:52627.

75

Volkov, Scientic Knowledge in Taoist Context, 2:53135.

76

Chen Zhixu calls this master Old Man from Mt. Qingcheng Qingcheng Weng , Qingcheng Master Qingcheng Laoshi , Saintly Qingcheng Master Qingcheng Shengshi , or Old Transcendent from Qingcheng Qingcheng Laoxian .

62

&EUK%$N77 When I, Zhixu, rst heard the instructions of Master Zhao, I did not dare to be satised with myself. Later after I encountered the secret techniques of the Old Transcendent of Mt. Qingcheng, and knew the principle by which yinyang or creation and transformation zaohua follows the current to produce a human baby or advances against the current to produce a transcendent, I did not engage in further discussion. As for mysteries such as the image of the moon appearing in the region of geng,78 or the generation of yang and the ring periods, the Qingcheng masters advice is the most accurate and easy to follow. Now I dare not keep it a secret. 2F3PR5D#.M+-7*AH@ I,: ,?EC"WG'H4J+-91B)( D779 Chen is saying that Zhaos teachings were insu cient, and that the Qingcheng masters teachings were betterperhaps they were a clearer version of the same general theory and practice. Both masters taught sexual alchemy, but the Qingcheng master may have emphasized the sexual aspect of alchemy to an even greater extent. Actually, I have deep suspicions about Chens story of the Qingcheng master. He may never have met a Qingcheng master, or he may have met some such personage, yet still be inating the importance of this person for his own learning. What does Qingcheng master mean? It must mean a master from Mt. Qingcheng, the famous Daoist center in Sichuan, the fth grotto heaven dongtian 0 . Chen never actually identies Qingcheng as a mountain in Sichuan, and the name Qingcheng +- does occur as a toponym in other parts of China besides Sichuan,80 yet I have no doubt that Chen means Sichuans Mt. Qingcheng. §4.2.1, Doubts about the Qingcheng master.

I have two reasons for doubting

that Chen actually had a Qingcheng master. The rst reason is that, unlike Chens encounter with Zhao Youqin, we get no details about his encounter with the Qingcheng masterChens report of this encounter sounds more like myth than 77


78

Geng is the third day of the lunar cycle, when the outer pharmacon rst appears. See pp. 26970 chap. 4, §3.3.1 , 47980 chap. 5, §3.2.2.3 , and 50913 chap. 5, §3.3.2.2 .

79

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu, preface, 5a25.

80

In addition to Qingcheng mountain or county in Sichuan, Zang Lihe, Zhonuo guji diming da cidian, 570, lists Qingcheng towns, cities, and counties in the regions of presentday Henan, Anhui, Shandong, and Jiangsu Provinces.

63

autobiography.81 Compare, for example, the elaborate account of Chens enlightenment under Master Zhao with the minimal and stylized report of Chens reaction after receiving the Qingcheng masters teaching. I am only aware of one passage in which Chen quotes the Qingcheng master,82 whereas he quotes Master Zhao many dozens of times. Basically the only thing Chen ever says about the Qingcheng master is that Chen got teachings from him the Qingcheng master is not a fullydeveloped character, but a mere function. The second reason for my doubts is that the idea of meeting a mysterious master at Mt. Qingcheng in Sichuan probably came to Chen from reading the hagiography of Zhang Boduan ?%S 984/871082/84,83 patriarch of the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir. I think that Chen wished to model his own life on the life of Zhang Boduan, and I think that the mysterious Qingcheng master of both Zhang Boduan and Chen Zhixu was the same person: he was the transcendent Liu Haichan U9[. Lets look for a moment at the development of the Zhang Boduan / Liu Haichan myth.84 In his original preface to Wuzhen pian 8:W from before 1082, Zhang Boduan ?%S writes that he met a perfected person in Chengdu: Afterward, in the jiyou year of the Xining reignperiod 1069 , because I had followed Squire Lu Longtu85 into Chengdu, and due to my longstanding and unagging desire and my everdeepening sincerity, I attracted a perfected person to bestow me with secret instructions on the ingredients and retiming for the golden elixir. 4$RP*IYZOF !E'/KH5MG:B 81

I believe that Daoist myths do inform the everyday lives and everyday teachings of Chen and others like him. Daoists may recount or understand the veriable events of own their lives in mythical terms. Yet the episode of the Qingcheng master is more mythical than other parts of Chens story of himself. 82

Furthermore, the Old Man from Qingcheng bestowed upon me the true secret instructions, and then exhorted me, saying: In the future there will certainly be a prince, marquis, or great man who seeks to take you as his teacher. Now, the dao must not be kept secret, but neither must you leak it out inappropriately. Who can judge when to keep it secret or transmit it ? I have a method for testing students , which does quite a good job of capturing the true situation or, their true feelings , and now I will transmit it to you. You can use it to sift out the gold from the sand. 13=V&"],T@+AQB)`C0DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu, preface, 5b47. 83

The traditional dates for Zhang;s life are 9871082. Liu Tsunyan proposes 10761155 as alternative dates; Liu Tsunyan, Zhang Boduan yu Wuzhen pian, 795.

84

I have taken this chronology from Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 57.

85

Lu Shen F_ a.k.a. Scholar of Longtu \OX , 101270 was Zhang Boduans patron, and Administrator zhi . of Chengdu; Zhang Huizhi, Zhonuo lidai renming cidian, 1307.

64

=

)86

By the time of Weng Baoguang %2 . 1173 , this anonymous perfected person had received the more specic title of Qingcheng Zhangren , and by the time of Bai Yuchan > 11941229 , Zhang Boduans teacher had been positively identied as Liu Haichan 8#> Liu Cao 8< , the fourth transcendent patriarch of the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir, and one of the Eight Immortals of Chinese popular culture. Chen Zhixu was familiar with the works of Bai Yuchan and his circle, so he knew that Zhang Boduans master was said to be Liu Haichan. Chen even compares his own masterdisciple encounter with Zhangs: Pingshu Zhang Boduan encountered the sageteacher at Chengdu, and wrote Wuzhen pian in order to instruct those to come. The meaning of his instructions is detailed and accurate. . . . After meeting the sageteacher, I, Shangyangzi, wandered throughout the back corners of the country, meeting cultivators all over the place and drawing widely on their teachings , and all of it was mendacious chatter. 51!*"$: &03/51 !64,.9'+(-7;87 Because he mentions his own encounter with his Qingcheng master soon after mentioning Zhang Boduans encounter with Zhangs master Liu Haichan , we may infer that Chen links the two episodes in his thinking. I argue further that Chen Zhixu modeled his encounter with the Qingcheng master on Zhang Boduans encounter with Liu Haichan, and implied that his Chens master was in fact the transcendent Liu Haichan too! Just as, in Gri th Foulks description,88 the Song dynasty abbots of Chan monasteries reenacted the deeds of the mythical Tang dynasty masters, or played the role of the living Buddha, Chen Zhixu reenacted the patriarchal myth of Zhang Boduan.

§5, A Period of Preparation, 132931

86


87

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 1.5b96a2.

88

Foulk, Myth, Ritual, and Monastic Practice in Sung Chan Buddhism.

65

We may not believe that Chen Zhixu actually met the immortal Liu Haichan at Mt. Qingcheng, but we may accept that he could have journeyed to the mountain during the period between his initiation at Mt. Heng and the composition of Jindan dayao. In his preface, Chen tells us that he wrote Jindan dayao two years after meeting his masters: At the age of forty, I undeservedly received the correct dao from my teacher

Zhao Youqin . After this, I furthermore encountered the Old Teacher from Mt. Qingcheng, who personally transmitted the goldenelixir principles of the one precosmic qi and the kan moon and li sun, and the secrets of timing the re by subtracting or adding fuel he bestowed all his teachings without reserve. . . . But as for lling my sack with elixir material, I knew not how to proceed wangcuo *8 . For two years I visited companions and sought friends, with the intention of jiang 6 bringing together my a air. Then I did not dare keep the teachings a secret . . . and wrote this Jindan dayao. E#29D<.=,-2FA3"H+

(:C1479?G/I $*8'B 5 ;!%)6@ &>4+ 089 The chronology for this period of Chens career is thus: 1 Fall of 1329: Received Zhao Youqins transmission at Mt. Heng; 2 Unknown date: Supposedly received the Qingcheng masters transmission in Sichuan; 3 Twoyear period of cultivation; 4 Wrote Jindan dayao: one internal preface is signed Sept. 21, 1331.90 This chronology gives us another reason to doubt the Qingcheng master story. Although Chen claims to have met this master two years before he began to write Jindan dayao, the composition of Jindan dayao suggests that most of the work had already been written before Chen began to speak of the Qingcheng master, and therefore that this story is a late addition. Within the body of Jindan dayao, Chen only mentions the Qingcheng master in his preface dated 1335 , and in his transmission epistles to his various disciples some of which are dated as late as 1343 . Zhao Youqin, on the other hand, is quoted or cited in many of the chapters of Jindan dayao. I think that when Chen was writing the technical chapters of Jindan dayao, the story of the Qingcheng master had not yet come to the fore in his thinking. During this twoyear period, Chen was trying to cultivate his elixir, and ll his 89

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 1.2b63a5.

90


66

sack with material by visiting companions. In addition to the usual kinds of meditational training such as calming the mind, sharpening the internal vision, or waiting for physiological signs of progress in training, he was probably seeking suitable female partners for sexual cultivation. As I discuss in chapter 5,91 in sexual alchemical discourse, companions might refer to fellow male cultivators who help the alchemist to proceed on the correct path, or to female sex partners. These female partners would probably have been bondmaids rather than female alchemist colleagues. In order to have access to female partners, the time and space for cultivation, and protection from interference, alchemists required the sheltering patronage of wealthy men. In the preface to his Wuzhen pian commentary after 1331, Chen says that his Qingcheng master predicted he would nd the wealthy and powerful patrons he needed: Furthermore, the Old Man from Qingcheng bestowed upon me the true secret instructions, and then exhorted me, saying: In the future there will certainly be a prince, marquis, or great man who seeks to take you as his teacher. (+79B6;-P,*#1 92 Chens rst disciple, Tian Zhizhai J, was just such a man. Chen may have put this prediction into the mouth of the Qingcheng master after the fact. §5.1, Tian Zhizhai.

Chen says that he set out on his peripatetic teaching career

after completing Jindan dayao: After the book was completed, I furthermore worried that if people of the times did not receive oral transmission, how could they enlighten themselves by simply using the book ! Thereupon I stumbled about in a rush,93 carrying my book under my arm. I stooped myself to seek others disciples . Whenever there was a person who could be beckoned or grabbed, I always bent my head and stooped over bending down to their level , with words of praise and warnings to repent, hoping they would enter upon this dao. 5,F)8 >C2AO5QK% #< &4':!/0$GLN3H=@94 This passage describes the circumstances in which Chen Zhixu met most of his 91

See pp. 44648 chap. 5, §3.1.2.

92


93

Qiejue QK must be a variant of jiejue DK, for which Hanyu da cidian has M?. "IE with the appearance of tumbling and falling while walking with hurried steps; Hanyu da cidian, s.v. jiejue DK. 94


67

disciples, yet I believe that he met Tian Zhizhai during the twoyear period before he nished Jindan dayao. Tian was Chens rst disciple, and he transmitted his teachings to Tian before starting out on a longer circuit: I rst transmitted it to Marquis Tian, Zhiyangzi, then wandered throughout Yelang, Qiongshui, Yuanzhi, Chenyang, Jingnan, the two Es, Changsha, the Lu Mountains, and east and west of the Yangtze. Overall, I transmitted to a hundred persons or more . . . ,3';B@!+J$;1(:%I& # 3F95 Zhiyangzi ;, Tian Zhizhai H, lived in Sizhou *, in the northern part of presentday Guizhou Province.96 Here is what Chen says about him: When I traveled west, while on the road I lodged with the pacication commissioner97 of Siguo.98 While I was there, Marquis Tian Zhizhai99 kowtowed before me again and again, desiring to hear the ultimate dao. After a year, when he did not tire of this, I bestowed it on him, saying: . . . With my words, Zhizhai had a violent enlightenment. I expected that he would practice assiduously, and I changed his stylename to Master of Ultimate Yang. C/7*2)9H',5DA> -3 H 6.8<" ?;100 I think that Chen Zhixu stayed with Tian Zhizhai for at least one year out of the twoyear period between 1329 and 1331. It does not say here whether Tian provided Chen with the necessities for sexual alchemy, but this would have been a reason for Chen to stop over as the client of a wealthy and powerful man. Chen and Tian are mentioned in several gazetteers from Guizhou. The oldest record I have seen is in Qian ji of the Wanli =G reignperiod, 15731620, which says that Chen wandered all over Yelang,101 and reached Sitang, where he rened the elixir with 95


96

Sizhou is presentday Wuchuan K County, Guizhou Province.

97

One would expect )E instead of )9.

98

The toponym Siguo was not found. Siguo was probably Sizhou when it was Marquis Tians marquisate houguo '2. 99

Marquis was a title of nobility, usually next in prestige after Prince wang and Duke gong, . . . usually conferred for special merit Hucker, A Dictionary of Ocial Titles in Imperial China, p. 225.

100

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 11.1a10b2, 2a910.

101

This is presentday Tongzi 04 County, Guizhou Province.

68

Tian Qi Zhiyangzi , the younger brother of the pacication commissioner, within a cli on Mt. Wansheng. Afterward, they both departed as transcendents. . . . The stone spring on the summit is still there today. >;*%+@#A537 89-B$( 1' /102 This passage is repeated in several other Guizhou gazetteers,103 but the Guizhou tongzhi of 1741 also adds the following details: Shangyangzis Elixir Terrace: It is to the east of the prefectural seat, on the back side of Mt. Wansheng. It is said that there was a man of the Dao, Chen Zhixu, styled Shangyangzi, who, on his own, entered a bamboo cage, and oated on the river. He encountered the pacication commissioner, who hauled the cage over and extricated him. They rened the elixir here: their furnace and mallet both still exist today. 5 ?" 82$6<0)4:5E, =#A&E 7 DC (104 Sizhou and Mt. Jiugong are the only places where Chen Zhixu made his mark on the local landscape. As I show in chapter 6, Chen Zhixu made his mark on the history of alchemy through his texts, but there are only these two places where he was remembered as a local gure. The traces of the implements of halfforgotten alchemists can be found all over south China. In Jiangxi, Zhang Daoling, Ge Xuan, and Xu Xun left the most such traces.105 I will return to the detail of the bamboo cage on page 77 below. Chen Zhixu met Tian Zhizhai while staying with the pacication commissioner of Siguo, and the later Guizhou local histories say that Tian was the younger brother of the commissioner. Hucker tells us that pacication commissioner rank 3b was one of the most prestigious titles granted aboriginal tribes in southwestern China and their natural, mostly hereditary chiefs.106 According to the Yuanshi , the pacication commissioner of Sizhou was named Tian Ren , and he was invested with this o ce in 1327.107 Tian Zhizhai Tian Qi 102

Guo Zizhang, Qian ji 54.1b 43:929 .

103

See the chart on pp. 4243 above.

104

E Ertai, Guizhou tongzhi, j. 7.

105

We can see this from Zhang Yuchus .! 13591410 essay, translated on pp. 6035.

106

Hucker, A Dictionary of Ocial Titles in Imperial China, no. 2682, p. 251.

107

Luo Xianyou, Yuandai minzu shi, 470; Yuan shi 30:683a.

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was probably Tian Rens younger brother or cousin. Most of the residents of Sizhou were Hmong Miao people, and the powerful ruling Tian clan, although originally a Han clan which had migrated to the area in the seventh century, had become like the Hmong too.108 So Chens rst disciple was a relative of a HanHmong warlord.

§6, Chens Teaching Career During his period of preparation 132931, Chen drafted Jindan dayao. He may have done part of this work while staying in Sizhou, but wherever he did the work, he would have needed access to a few dozen Daoist and Buddhist works. He composed Jindan dayao because he felt his cultivation was incomplete, or perhaps composing the work was itself part of his cultivation: From the moment I was able to encounter an Ultimate Man or Men , and receive transmission of the great dao under oath, I immediately planned to complete my aairs of selfcultivation . But because my merit and karmic conditions109 were not yet established, I therefore yongshi searched through the various transcendent scriptures, seeking out the unusual, plucking the best passages , and compiling these as Jindan dayao. $*# "% ( ) ! &'110 Composing Jindan dayao was a duty Chen felt before the gods, the transcendent patriarchs of his lineage. Yet it was also potentially dangerous to write the book, as to leak secrets improperly would be to invite karmic retribution, or personal retribution from the gods: Then I did not dare keep the teachings a secret: I burned incense and made my report to Heaven, informed the holy teachers, the Seven Perfected, and the Five Patriarchs, and thereupon, drawing upon the various elixir scriptures of the ranks of transcendents, wrote this Jindan dayao. In this book I have hazarded the prohibitions to give a detailed account, revealing and making things clear in lists and discussions, directly opening the door for gentlemen of aftertimes who wish to study transcendence, and guiding 108

Luo Xianyou, Yuandai minzu shi, 47890.

109

Gong yuan ( could also be translated eorts and fortune.

110


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them along the road. `PaH+V!lJMOq }#k)'< D4?jmEdW{8yB2p=n111 The danger of revealing the teachings to the wrong person is a common trope in Southern Lineage texts.112 The trope comes from the story of Zhang Boduans life. Zhang Boduan was punished by the gods three times for transmitting his inner alchemy to the wrong student: This is the greatest a air between Heaven and Earth. If serious vows are not made, who would dare to leak the secret trigger? By the time you have bestowed it to the wrong person, the punishment of the netherworld is already manifest. Ziyang Zhang Boduan transmitted it to the wrong person three times, and three times he met with tribulations from this. The transcendent scriptures all record it: how can one not take it as a warning? But on the other hand, if one only keeps it as a taboo and secret, then this is to refuse and obstruct the will of the transcendents. %e'1]>FizR`7U> sIbf g > 4k3o-TjNg@C5/113 Revealing the teachings to other cultivators was not just a duty, but something Chen desired to do: Since I gained the elixir , I have not dared to keep it a secret, and have desired to discuss similarities and di erences with true friends. Recently, how many are the people of this generation who take it upon themselves to discourse vacuously upon all things between Heaven and Earth! All these side doors and perverse paths are briey but exhaustively listed in Cuixu yin Chant of Mr. Kingsher greenVoid .114 Besides teachings on the one point of precosmic perfected qi , all strands of teaching beyond this are, overall, perversions of the truth. .S2`PXr9G~$Z;2 ^w :(|{%}K =C0[xc,YuQA"M&v0 115 Chen wishes to spread his teachings for two reasons: to help others achieve transcendence, and also to stamp out what he sees as heretical teachings. A more 111


112

This is also an ancient trope within Daoism.

113


114

Cuixu yin is the polemical poem Niwan Zhenren Luofu cuixu yin 6M Lxc, The MudPill Perfecteds Chant of Mr. KingshergreenVoid of Mt. Luofu , attibuted to Chen Nan \h d. 1213 , a patriarch in the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir. The poem is collected in DZ 1307, Haiqiong Bai Zhenren yulu 4.16, and DZ 1090, Cuixu pian 712. 115

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 9.3a69. These are two couplets from the Song on Judging Delusions Panhuo ge *_t , translated as the appendix to chapter 3.

71

important reason is to manage his mastership, to gain authority for himself as a master, though Chen never openly admits this as a goal. In chapter 3, I discuss what I call a threeway feedback loop of propagation, authority, and salvation in Chens career. We see the rst two terms in this loop here: spreading his teachings would help Chen gain authority, and, in a circular manner, authority would in turn help him spread his teachings. After his time with Tian Zhizhai in Sizhou, Chen made a circuit through parts of presentday Guizhou, Hunan, Hubei, Henan, and Jiangxi: I rst transmitted it to Marquis Tian, Zhiyangzi, then wandered throughout Yelang, Qiongshui, Yuanzhi, Chenyang, Jingnan, the two Es, Changsha, the Lu Mountains, and east and west of the Yangtze.116 !% *-, 117

8 *#)5

Most of these places or regions are located on tributaries of the Yangtze, but Chen would have had to travel overland to visit them in succession. For a full list of every place Chen traveled to, see appendix 1 of this chapter. For many of these places, there are no records of Chens encounters and activities. The transmission epistles included in Jindan dayao are mostly to disciples from Hongzhou, Jiujiang, and the Lu Mountains in Jiangxi, or Mt. Jiugong in Hubei. Chen describes his approach to nding students: After the book was completed, no matter where I was staying, whenever I passed by a wellknown mountain or any of the various walled towns, wherever I was at I made friends. I lowered my head and my heart stooped my dignity to enlighten and guide the people of the times, and entice them to enter this dao. For the past three or four years, those seeking my teachings have been many, yet in the end I have not met anyone who used great force to put forth sincere 116 1 Yelang is presentday Tongzi "' County, Guizhou Province. 2 Qiongshui is Zhenyuan 4/ County, Guizhou. 3 Yuanzhi is Zhijiang TongEthnicity Autonomous County 9&2, Hunan. 4 Chenyang is Chenxi + County a.k.a. Chenyang *, Hunan. 5 Jingnan is in the region of presentday Nanping and Jiangling (2 County, Hubei. 6 The Two Es are regions in Hubei and Henan. 6a East E Dong E ) refers to Wuchang , part of Wuhan ., Hubei. 6b West E Xi E refers to the region of Nanyang City *7 and Dengzhou 1 7 City, Henan. Zeng Chuanhui locates these Yuandynasty places somewhat dierently. He identies 1 Yelang as Cenfan County, Guizhou; 2 Qiongshui as Sansui 3 County, Guizhou; 3 Yuanzhi as Huaihua 6 City, Hunan; 4 Chenyang as Fenghuang 0$ County, Hunan; and 6 the Two Es as the Wuhan region; Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue, 48. For nos. 2, 3, 4, and 6, Zengs identications and my own diverge by 50 miles or less, but he places Yelang in eastern Guizhou, while I place it in the northwest. I stand by my identications, which come from Zang Lihe, Zhonuo gujin diming da cidian. 117


72

e orts. E!?@KP-] i>0o(g)B Xm eU$\ 1.;HH2/# V&aU;118 Chen had a di cult time nding worthy disciples: Having undeservedly received my masters secret transmission, and henceforth knowing what the perfected transcendents and sagemasters intended, how could I not wish but for all people to achieve realization, and become totally complete?

But what can one do about the fact that there is a large group of people in this generation who do not reach the mark, and a great many who go too far, with a hundred di erent kinds of obscurations and obstructions, and no way to perceive the truth ? cCLM+&?:F[CZJNfD``Y!94 ;O]; %Ih
M%kA\,"'8Q53Gd;%T=^ 7Sp6l#*W_121 Chen taught techniques for nourishing life yangsheng j to many people he met on his travels, but reserved his ultimate teachings for a select handful of worthy men. Chen adapted alchemical discourse to express di erent messages and to suit di erent audiences. In chapter 5, §4, I discuss this issue again: Chen could translate his sexual alchemy into Buddhist or Confucian language, or even give solo rather than sexual teachings, as necessary. Not only did Chen face the di culty of nding worthy disciples, he was often berated in public by those who regarded his teachings as heretical: I came traveling through Yuzhang122 in order to nd people of correct heart and 118


119


120

Note that a technique shu Q is presented as being more valuable than a dao here. Usually daos are considered superior to mere techniques. 121

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu, preface, 5b96a2.

122

Yuzhang nR was a SuiTang period commandery with its seat in modernday Nanchang city, Jiangxi Province. Yuzhang here could refer to Nanchang city or county.

73

sincere intent, so I could tell them about the dao of cultivating the self and long life. But as soon as I would express a single idea, I would arouse a riot of slander and acrimony. .+3#" )'/ &,956: %123 Sometimes people would berate me, and I would hide and forbear it for a time. Gaining by chance the appreciation of one or two men, I would then bring upon myself the slander of a thousand or ten thousand. I only wished to practice the dao, and did not care about disputes over who is right and who is wrong. When I encountered various forms of mockery, I suered it glady. 2*0 7!4(6", 8-1 $ 124 Reading Chens accounts, we get a picture of him as a teacher traveling from town to town, oering his teachings to strangers wherever he found a circle of self cultivators. These seekers practiced quiet sitting, Chan meditation, Daoist inner alchemy, and perhaps other forms of Buddhist or Daoist meditation. He does not say how he found selfcultivators other than by word of mouth. Perhaps he sought them in temples, or even in the marketplace. He would suer derision for his views, but endure it stoically in hopes that, after the critics had said their piece and departed, a curious seeker might linger behind to learn more about these strange teachings, and Chen could test his worth and try to convert him. Most of the time, when Chen encountered derision, it seems to have been in a public arena, but he also seems to have gotten a similar reaction in some Daoist monastic circles as well. He criticizes some Daoist priests for obstructing him when he tried to teach selfcultivation to some of the priests among them: O! Those people of this generation who wish to wear towering headpieces enter the school of Mr. Lao Laozi and study his dao. Now, the dao of Mr. Lao is to treasure essence and qi, and cultivate by returning and recyling. It is to esteem the clear void, reduce lust, reduce eating and drinking, distance oneself from dusty worldly entanglements, extend compassion and pity, establish hidden virtuous deeds, reduce again and again, until one reaches nonaction. Someone who does this may be called a follower of Mr. Lao. Nowadays, how can it be that they live in vermillion palaces and bedrape themselves in cranequill robes , yet when you ask them about a dao, they become bashful and discomted! Why dont they take a good hard look at what is 123

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.42a12 missing from DZ 1067.

124

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 8a10b3.

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studied in our religion! And then when one or two amongst them wishes to learn selfcultivation teachings, the others gather around in packs and laugh at them! Our Most High One Lord Lao said: When an inferior gentleman hears of the Dao, he has a big laugh.How could this be merely an old saying? Now, one who has entered the school but does not practice its dao is a vermin. A vermin is one who wears the clothing of an institution but envies its teachings, chomps down its food like a ravenous silkworm but slanders its dao. This is like wearing the vestments of the sageking Yao but criticizing Yaos words. I dont know how that could be acceptable! Even if there were a Daoist made of truly outstanding stu , and who was also willing to cast his pure, lofty, and most precious self into a dirty and hateful place, this would cause the vulgar men who talk a lot to call him a heretic. Alas! What a pity! 8O5D?'A'q'quQM @7\ism{lLr|yndazo o); eJIE'P]`RN9=WqJ_JU?, G-Z8,k% /M}x?Ew(S0 vqST fFH5A(*5qEJ' ?+5<(.5Z5L(p5qIg5K:h1?"!\V)j3[;c$ 4C%?6J^tP#XF125 Chen is exasperated with the Celestial Master priests in the temples of his region who would interfere whenever he would try to pass on his selfcultivation teachings to a few curious Daoists among them. Chen identies himself as a Daoist too, a follower of Lord Lao, but not a Daoist like the priests he sees in his day. He makes it sound as if most of these priests scorned Daoist selfcultivation as such, but it may be that they had their own practices, and were merely scornful of Chens sexual alchemy. Yet despite all of these trials and travails, Chen was successful: look at how many students he had. He has left record of at least twentythree students, some of them ardent disciples, some of them sometimestudents, some of them near equals, but all of them accepting what he had to tell them. Chens claim that he transmitted to a hundred persons or more shou baiyu ren Y&~

may be inated, but is not impossible. I list these students in chapter appendix 2, and will introduce several of them below.

125


75

§6.1, The End of Chens Life It is not known exactly when Chen died. The latest internal date in Jindan dayao is 1343, when Chen would have been ftythree years old.126 One hagiography says that he died just before the end of the Yuan dynasty, thus before 1368: Shangyangzi saw that the Yuan dynasty was at an end and the world would soon be in chaos, and was unwilling to respond to the imperial summons. Then one morning he ducked away into the Numinous Wastes and into parinirva,127 relying on transformation to make his departure. M0FNHWLRZSEUC)128 Another hagiography says that he lived from the Song into the Yuan, over a hundred years in total: He was in the world for a hundred and some dozens of years, from the Song dynasty to the Yuantruly an old transcendent. *.D$(T%9< 129 However, as we have seen, Chen was denitely born in 1290, and did not live during the Song dynasty. Since these hagiographies are highly stylized, we need not take them as literally true. For example, the trope of a recluse who refuses to serve a ruler who has lost the mandate of Heaven is as old as Chinese historiography itself. The hagiographer is portraying Chen as a famous and virtuous hermit, and Chens ability to choose his own death is the sign of an accomplished Daoist or Buddhist master. Perhaps Chen did die around 1368, though, when he would have been seventyeight years old. §6.2, An Odd LateImperial Hagiography 126

Here are the two mentions of 1343. 1 On February 3, 1343, when I was about to go into deep reclusion on Mt. Mei, a man styling himself Zhenxi made a special trip to visit me and inquire about the dao :FIX G '*P@>6?2JQ; Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.53b34 missing from DZ 1067 . 2 Dongyangzi 5M , Tao Tangzuo =,K, in the month of pure yang fourth month , 1343, because he was in Dongping County following his lord Xiangfu, paid a most reverential visit to me on top of Mt. Heer

Mt. Crane Chick , and asked me about the mysteries of the old man from Mt. Qingcheng +:4A M#5!-1;OV/Y3 &/78B ; Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.55a910 missing from DZ 1067 .

127

Jiwei EU was not found in Hanyu da cidian or a CBETA Taish search. It probably means shiji "E, a Buddhist term for the passing of an enlightened master literally, parinirva . 128

Wang Jianzhang, Lidai shenxianshi, j. 5; quoted in Kubo, R shi hachij ichi ka to setsu ni tsuite, 37; and Volkov, Scientic Knowledge in Taoist Context, 544n12. 129

Fu Xieding, Jiugong Shan zhi, 4.6b1 7:96 .

76

Dacheng jieyao is an undated inneralchemy orilegium which some say was compiled by the Quanzhen master Liu Huayang 5MN 1736? , but was probably compiled sometime between 1911 and 1929, and contains a full hagiography of Chen Zhixu.130 This passage occurs within a section on alchemical lineages. After briey introducing the patriarchs in Chens selfconstructed lineage from Ma Danyang to Zhao Youqin, the passage recounts Chens life:

Chen had the byname Guanwu, and had the stylename Shangyangzi. After he heard the dao, he wished to cultivate it, but had no resources, so he sought all over for someone fated to meet him . He roved to the southwest region of Yue.131 The Lao people there sought his dao by force; unable to gain it, they got him drunk, placed him in a drum, and tossed it into the Pacic Ocean. The Consort of Heaven Mazu was startled into action, and ordered the sea spirits to guard him, and deliver him to the southern shore. There he encountered Marquis Tian, who was following orders to come and perform a sacrice to the Consort of Heaven. Marquis Tian saved him from the waters, questioned him to nd out exactly how he had been put in such a predicament, and brought him back to the capital. Marquis Tian aided him with resources and funds, and Chen thereafter was able to complete his dao and achieve perfection. Chen thought to himself, My not having perished in that drum in the water, and being able to be alive today, is because Heaven will rely on me to transmit the dao. Thereupon he sought all over for anyone fated to meet him , and opened wide the gates of the dao. Of the disciples he transmitted to, there were more than twenty who transcended the realm of the profane and entered the realm of the holy. At the end of the Yuan dynasty, in the guiwei year of the Zhizheng reign period of Emperor Shun,132 his fame was heard in high places. Emperor Shun ordered that he be summoned and employed at court , but Chen the Perfected knew that the fate of this nation was coming to an end, and displayed his transformation133 before the fact, ducking away into the Numinous Wastes. The above is a record of the line of transmission from Patriach Ma Danyang. The patriarchate thereupon ceased and was not transmitted further . b#RN(YT3GOLSWIZK !1Pc D%(T EBb#>_\QX $6a?*9; )`= 1]V0+*'/- F@.H^C& 8"S
Jiangnan Ke, Zhongguo gudai qigong yaoji daodu.

131

Yue P comprises presentday Guangdong and Guangxi Provinces.

132

The guiwei year of the Zhizheng reign period was 1343. This was during the reign of Emperor Hui Huidi J2 . I do not know of any Yuan emperor named Shun. Note that the latest internal references in Jindan dayao are from 1343. 133

I.e., died. Note that the Lidai shenxian shi hagiography has jiwei A[, while the Dacheng jieyao hagiography has shi . Perhaps the sentences in both texts are derived from a sentence in the original text which had the more familiar term shiji A.

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4@E &-G;K=E*%@9 < B(L ?,.MI&&?, "$C0'!5D6: HNJ831 >2%@7!1F@134 This hagiography combines elements from three sources we have seen already: material from Jindan dayao, the tale in the Guizhou gazetteer of Chen oating in the river in a bamboo cage and being found by Marquis Tian, and the tale in Lidai shenxian shi of Chen dying to avoid the call to court because the Yuan dynasty had lost the mandate of Heaven. There are some elements here not seen before, such as Chens being thrown into the water by the Lao O people, or his rescue being orchestrated by the maritime goddess Mazu A1. The author of this hagiography seems to have scrambled or changed the date of Chens demise, locating it in 1343 which happens to be the latest internal date in Jindan dayao , when the date probably should be the end of the Yuan dynasty. This odd story may represent an attempt by the author of Dacheng jieyao or his sources to link Chen Zhixu to the Mazu cult of southeastern China. Chen is also quoted three times in Dacheng jieyao, but all three of these quotes are sheer fabrications. The author is trying to lend Chens authority to his own practices by placing them in the mouth of a hazilyknown Daoist master of the past.

§7, Was Chen Zhixu a Quanzhen Daoist? §7.1, Quanzhen Daoism and the Southern Lineage The question of Chen Zhixus relation to Quanzhen Daoism is a very important one. For most historians of Daoism, Chen Zhixus main signicance in the history of Daoism is as a leading example of a trend during the Yuan dynasty toward the fusion of the Southern and Northern Lineages of the Golden Elixir Jindan nanbei zong )

+# i.e., the fusion of the lineages of Wang Chongyang /> and Zhang Boduaninto a single tradition. Yet historians views on how Chen was a Quanzhen Daoist diverge on a number of important issues. Before oering my own analysis at 134

Dacheng jieyao, 15758 Wudao zhenji ed. ; 1.34b36a Yongcheng yinshu guan ed. ; 11314 Xiuxian baodian ed. .

78

length below, I will summarize these various perspectives. The goal of section 7.1 is to root out some misconceptions concerning Chen Zhixus lineage and teachings, which, despite being refuted generations ago, continue to be perpetuated in new works. I will discuss six main issues, with representative positions by various scholars, and my own position. I prefer the position of Qing Xitai and/or his co author Chen Bing on all of these issues, though my own position is even more skeptical than theirs. §7.1.1, Comparison of Quanzhen Daoism with the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir.

In chapter 4, What Is Inner Alchemy?, I oer many specic comparisons

between the alchemical teachings of the Southern Lineage, early or later Quanzhen Daoism, and other alchemical traditions. While I will defer alchemical comparisons until chapter 4, it would be helpful to oer a brief sociological comparison at this point. Li Yuanguo compares the two traditions on four points:135 1 Unlike the Northern Lineage i.e., Quanzhen Daoism, the Southern Lineage had no temples or systematic precepts.136 Teachings were transmitted in secret, unknown to the public. 2 Unlike in traditional Daoism, and in the Northern Lineage, Southern Lineage patriarchs did not leave the life of the householder chujia to become celibate monastiscs, but rather roamed within the world, or even did craftwork, saying that The greater hermit dwells in the marketplace dayin ju chanshi 137 rather than in the mountains. The idea of selfcultivation in the marketplace had additional signicance for those who were sexual alchemists, and needed to nd companions in urban areas. 3 Southern Lineage masters were poor and unknown, but left a wealth of invaluable books. 4 Although the Southern Lineage was swallowed up by the Northern Lineage, its inneralchemical teachings actually became dominant. Every later Quanzhen teacher quoted Southern Lineage works. Also, Southern 135


136

Perhaps this is why Skar speaks about the Southern Lineage as if it were not actually Daoist: Regarding the Southern Lineage patriarchs, none show any links to a Daoist movement or tradition, but some, including Zhang Boduan, had clear connections to Buddhist traditions; another studied classical medicine Skar, Golden Elixir Alchemy, 248. It was Chen Zhixu who propelled the Golden Elixir alchemy, for the rst time, to explicitly become integral to Daoist tradition ibid., 189. Skar does not explicitly dene what Daoism would mean here.

137

This phrase also as chanshi comes from Zhang Boduans Wuzhen pian, and is much repeated in Southern Lineage texts; e.g., DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 1.15b3.

79

Lineage alchemy was popular beyond the boundaries of Daoism, among Confucians, Buddhists, and literati. §7.1.2, Did Chen have a real connection to a Quanzhen lineage?

The two main

issues in this section are 1 whether Chen had a Quanzhen lineage, and 2 whether he possessed Quanzhen teachings. In answer to the rst question, Chen Jiaoyou, Wang Mu, Ma Jiren, and Qing Xitai, et al., say no: As for Chen Zhixus system, it was yet another oshoot of Shi Tais disciples, advocating the union of the two lineages the Southern Lineage, and the Quanzhen lineage . He at once advocated pure cultivation and spoke of yin and yang sexual cultivation , and was in truth a false pretender runtong of the Southern Lineage.138 For the sake of parading his true Quanzhen transmission, in Shangyangzi Jindan dayao liexian zhi and other books, he asserted that his own lineage had been transmitted from Qiu Chujis disciple Song Defang , and a master by the name of Li Jue had taken Huangfang Gong i.e., Song Defang as teacher . . . This claim is historically baseless, and Chen Minggui in his Changchun daojiao yuanliu already suspected that Chen was using these names falsely.139 As early as 1879, Chen Jiaoyou 182481 in his history of Quanzhen Daoism, Changchun daojiao yuanliu, criticized Chen for claiming to belong to a Quanzhen lineage.140 Nevertheless some contemporary scholars e.g., Hao Qin and Kong Linghong sti havent gotten the message, and take Chens pretended lineage at face value: In 1329 Chen was able to encounter the Quanzhen Daoist Zhao Youqin, . . . and subsequently taking Zhao as his teacher, obtained the technical instructions of Northern Lineage inner alchemy. Zhao Youqins alchemical transmission had come from Ma Yu, the head of the Seven Masters qizi of Quanzhen. . . . So, Chen ought originally to belong to the Northern Lineage of inner alchemy, which has a strictly pure solo alchemical system. Yet Chen later met a certain Daoist from Mt. Qingcheng in Sichuan, and received transmission of technical instructions of the Southern Lineage school of the dual sexual cultivation of yin and yang.141 In 1329, Chen Zhixu carried on the teachingline of Zhao Youqin. Zhao had 138

Wang Mu, Wuzhen pian qianjie, preface, 9.

139

Qing Xitai, et al., Zhonuo daojiao shi, 3:375.

140

Chen Jiaoyou, Changchun daojiao yuanliu, 2:16668.

141

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 126. Both editions of Hao Qins book have 1320. is 1329 the correct date, so 1320 must be a typographical error.

80

carried on the teachinglines of Song Defang of the Northern Lineage, and Shi Tai of the Southern Lineage, possessing the learning of both lineages together, so Chen Zhixu also received the learning of both Northern and Southern lineages.142 Hao Qin thinks that Chen Zhixus fusion of Quanzhen and SouthernLineage alchemy is due to his having had two masters, a Southern master from Qingcheng, and Zhao Youqin the Quanzhen Daoist. Kong Linghong thinks that this fusion goes back one generation earlier, to Zhao Youqin himself, who received transmission from the Southern Shi Tai, and the Quanzhen Zhang Ziqiong .143 Qing Xitai and others deny that Zhao Youqin was a Quanzhen Daoist. Qing Xitai says that it was Chen Zhixu who forged the connection between Song Defang and Li Jue. I agree that it was Chen who forged the link between Song Defang and Li Jue, and that Zhao Youqin was not a Quanzhen Daoist. But I will go farther than that. I will argue that, not only did Chen not have a Quanzhen lineage, he may have had no lineage extending beyond Zhao Youqin. I will argue that, like his Qingcheng master, Chens patriarch Li Jue and perhaps also the other intervening patriarch, Zhang Ziqiong was ctional. §7.1.3, In his genealogy, Chen venerates the Quanzen patriarchs above the SouthernLineage patriarchs.

This has been noted by Kong Linghong, Li Yuanguo,

Pregadio and Skar, and Qing Xitai, et al.: Chens written genealogy . . . grafts the line of Zhao Youqins two immediate predecessors onto a leading line of Quanzhen patriarchs. Simultaneously he places the patriarchy stemming from Zhang Boduan in an inferior position, thereby eectively identifying the Golden Elixir heritage which had developed and circulated in the south with the Quanzhen heritage. While Chen sometimes refers to himself as a Complete Perfection master, the signicance he intended by this term is hard to determine.144 Precisely because Chen Zhixu himself came from the Southern Lineage, and furthermore was posing as heir to a direct Quanzhen transmission, he became an active midtolateYuandynasty advocate of combining the two lineages. Furthermore, while combining the two lineages, he strove to the utmost to raise the positions of the Quanzhen patriarchs and suppress the positions of the 142

Kong Linghong, SongMing daojiao sixiang yanjiu, 274.

143

Kong Linghong suggests that Zhaos master was in Shi Tais lineage, but, as we have seen above, Zhao Youqins hagiography says that he received a visit from Shi Tai, the second patriarch of the Southern Lineage, in person. Zhao Youqin was born in 1271, and Shi Tai died in 1158, so Shi would have visited Zhao as a spirit or immortal. 144

Pregadio and Skar, Inner Alchemy Neidan, 480.

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Southern Lineage patriarchs.145 Chen showed his reverence for Quanzhen patriarchs over the Southern Lineage patriarchs by calling the former perfected lords zhenjun and the latter merely perfected persons zhenren , and by placing the former ahead of the latter in the genealogy within his ritual for the birthdays of Zhongli Quan and L Dongbin see below, and chapter appendix 3 .146 §7.1.4, Is there any Quanzhen content to Chens teachings?

Setting aside the

question of whether Chen had an authentic Quanzhen lineage, does Chen teach Quanzhen avored self cultivation practices at all? Ma Jiren, and Qing Xitai, et al., say no: Although posing as a transmitter of the Northern Lineage, in regards to his alchemy, he venerated and upheld the tradition of Zhang Boduan instead.147 Chen Zhixus alchemy belongs to the school of dual cultivation of yin and yang of the Southern Lineage, in the same line as Weng Baoguang , and vastly dierent from Quanzhen Daoisms philosophy of pure cultivation qingxiu .148 Hao Qin, Kong Linghong, and Zhang Baoguang say yes: In terms of thought and theory, his teachings take the Northern Lineage as their bones, while in terms of practice and technique, his teachings take the Southern Lineage as their esh. His proposal for combining the two lineages received the approval of all of the schools within Daoist inner alchemy, and thereby the various schools, seeking union while preserving dierences, gradually followed the trend toward becoming mutually consistent. . . . This was very signicant for the development of inner alchemy.149 In regards to the specic means of cultivation of his methods, he tended toward the Southern Lineage, carrying on the teaching line of Wuzhen pian, but in regards to his doctrinal thought, he tended toward the Northern Lineage. This reects the trend of the time for the Southern Lineage as an independent school to be incorporated into the Northern Lineage.150 Chen Zhixu, originally holding a traditional Quanzhen attitude, and taking the 145


146

Kong Linghong, SongMing daojiao sixiang yanjiu, 28081; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 418; Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 8990.

147


148


149


150

Kong Linghong, SongMing daojiao sixiang yanjiu, 274.

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theory of the Northern Lineage as his basis, at the same time adopted the Southern schools training method for actualizing the lifeendowment zhengming , and brought the Quanzhen school a step closer to perfecting their thoughtsystem for the dual cultivation of inherent nature and lifeendowment xingming shuangxiu tixi .151 None of these three scholars give explicit examples of Quanzhen elements in Chen Zhixus thought, but we can guess why they are saying this. Immediately after saying that 1 Chen had Quanzhen doctrinal content, they say that 2 he contributed to the fusion of Northern and Southern Lineages. I think that their assumption of 2 , which I agree with, led them to assume 1 , which is groundless. Zhang Guangbaos chapter discusses Li Daochun and Chen Zhixu together, often without distinctions, as if they were the same person. He may have the following sorites in mind: Li Daochun is a Quanzhen thinker ; Chen Zhixu is like Li Daochun; therefore, Chen Zhixu is a Quanzhen thinker. One problem with this sorites is that we cannot say with condence whether or how Li Daochun was a Quanzhen Daoist. As Robinet says, It is not completely clear whether Li Daochun was associated with the Quanzhen school to which he seems to refer DZ 249, 3.28b or with the southern school, to which his master belonged. 152 The other problem with Zhangs argument is that, even if Li Daochun were a Quanzhen Daoist, and there were similarities between him and Chen Zhixu there wereboth are sophisticated and theoretical writers , this does not mean that Chens thought must be Quanzhen. He Naichuan and Zhan Shichuang o er the best characterization of Chens Quanzhen thought :

Because Li Jue came from Mt. Wuyi, where Bai Yuchan had been active, the teachingline that Chen Zhixu carried on ought to come from the Southern Lineage, yet, from various traces and signs, Chen Zhixu had also done plenty of cursory reading shelie of Northern Lineage learning.153 Although I will not be able to make a full consideration of this issue, since I do not have the space to o er a pointbypoint comparison of typical Quanzhen teachings with Chen Zhixus, I will argue below that Chen Zhixu probably only learned about Quanzhen Daoism from hearsay and reading rather than from taking a Quanzhen 151

Zhang Guangbao, JinYuan Quanzhen dao neidan xinxing xue, 156.

152

Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Tradition, 225; idem, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 43.

153

He Naichuan and Zhan Shichuang, Lun Chen Zhixu de Jigong leixing shi, 219.

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master, and that his Quanzhen reading was very cursory, perhaps limited to only a couple of books. §7.1.5, If Chen had no Quanzhen lineage or Quanzhen teachings, then what was he up to?

Most of the authors surveyed merely explain Chen Zhixus behavior in terms

of general historical trends: it was the zeitgeist to combine the Northern and Southern Lineages, so Chen went with the ow or, as they often seem to say, actively promoted the ow . But historical trends are made up of individuals acting on their own will, so what did Chen think he was doing? Qing Xitai, et al., and Skar attempt to explain Chens behavior within the framework of his own career. Qing, et al., say that, after Kublai Khan reunited North and South China, Quanzhen Daoism began to penetrate the South, and many southern alchemists jumped into the Quanzhen fold, either seeking a Quanzhen master, or parading their own version of Quanzhen Daoism. The Southern Lineage had a loose structure, unable to compete with the tight organization of Quanzhen Daoism, so ocking to Quanzhen was to their competitive advantage. To combine with Quanzhen Daoism was a universal desire of the SouthernLineage Daoists.154 Skar says that Chen shortcircuited rival claims by Bai Yuchan and Zhang Boduans followers I am not sure what this means, but still used their teachings. Chen could hope for support from the Mongol Khan who ruled China by appealing to Quanzhen lineage there is no textual evidence that Chen ever aimed at imperial patronage. At approximately the same time, several groups challenged Chens claims about the priority of these two legacies could Skar be speaking about the early Ming dynasty?.155 I will argue that Chens appeal to a Quanzhen lineal connection was part of his attempt to manage his mastership, and thus part of his threeway feedback soteriological loop, with authority, patronage, and alchemical attainment reinforcing each other in a threeway virtuous circle. §7.1.6, Chen represents a historical trend toward the fusion of the Southern and Northern Lineages of inner alchemy.

Nearly every scholar surveyed says this, and I

concur. This is Chens main claim to fame in most historiography of Daoism. 154


155

Skar, Golden Elixir Alchemy, 203. See pp. 60124 chap. 6, §§3.12 below.

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§7.1.7, Chen drew on Chan Buddhism in the same way that he drew on Quanzhen Daoism.

It is remarkable how few scholars link Chens Quanzhen pretensions with

his Chan pretensions. While many scholars discuss Chens use of Chan elements, and discuss Chens Quanzhen pretensions, they do not note the connection between these two features.156 Chens claims to Chan Buddhist and Quanzhen Daoist authority should be seen together, since both are examples of his general strategies of extension establishing correspondences between his dao and other known truths and stealing the lightning appropriating the authority of traditional scriptures, while asserting the superiority of esoteric exegesis. §7.2, Quanzhen Daoism in Chens Time and Place If Chen did not learn Quanzhen Daoism from a Quanzhen lineageholder, where would he have gotten his interest in it? I will argue that Chen was not really interested in the teachings of Quanzhen Daoism at all, only in the cachet of this tradition, and the authority he could thereby gain in the eyes of potential disciples and patrons. Chens ctional link to Quanzhen Daoism was a strategy for managing his mastership. §7.2.1, Quanzhen books.

Removed from the Quanzhen heartland in northern

China as he was, Chen would have encountered Quanzhen Daoism rst through texts. Throughout his entire corpus, Chen cites hundreds of texts and persons, but cites Quanzhen texts or gures only relatively infrequently. Two major sections of Jindan dayao are devoted to the Quanzhen lineage.157 Yet aside from these sections, Chen only refers to Quanzhen gures in two contexts: 1 citing them as exemplars, as his lineal patriarchs,158 even as tutelary gods of alchemy to whose portraits a frustrated reader of Jindan dayao may pray for help;159 and 2 brief quotations from 156 Boltz A Survey of Taoist Literature, 18486 and Eskildsen Emergency Death Meditations for Internal Alchemists, 408n76 make this connection, but I am not aware of any Chinese scholar discussing these two issues together. 157

These originally were two parts of juan 8, but in the Zhengtong daozang they have become independent texts, DZ 1069 and 1070. 158

E.g., my Wang Chongyang ; DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 1.1b5; DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu, xu preface, 5a10; 4.18b9.

159

And, if someone has obtained this Jindan dayao, yet cannot understand the deep instructions within it, then

85

Ma Danyangs discourse record yulu JN . By my count, Chen Zhixu quotes the words of Ma Danyang nine times, and eight of these quotations can be traced to DZ 1057, Danyang Zhenren yulu. It is as if Chen Zhixu only read this one book of Quanzhen teachings. I believe that Chen Zhixu was not very well read in the Quanzhen literature. If Chen Zhixu learned about his Quanzhen patriarchs from books, then he could conceivably have read, not a small library of Quanzhen texts, but only two books: an illustrated hagiography such as DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan which would be the source for his own DZ 106970 , and Ma Danyangs yulu, DZ 1057 which was the souce for his few meager quotations . §7.2.2, Quanzhen initiates.

Could Chen Zhixu have encountered Quanzhen

Daoists in the esh? Lets look for some Quanzhen activity that he could conceivably have encountered in person. Where would Chen have met a Quanzhen Daoist? Chen did the majority of his teaching activity in Jiangxi, Hubei, Guizhou, Hunan, and Jiangsu Provinces, with some activity in Guangxi, Sichuan, Henan, Anhui, and Zhejiang too see chapter appendix 1 . Here is what I judge to be his core area of operation: Luling, Hongzhou Yuzhang , Jiujiang, and the Lu Mountains in Jiangxi; Mt. Jiugong and Jingnan in Hubei; Sizhou and Qiongshui in Guizhou; Mt. Heng or Hengyang in Hunan; and Jinling in Jiangsu. What kind of Quanzhen activity could he have encountered in these places? The rst traces of Quanzhen Daoism in southern China date to around the middle of the thirteenth century, in the third generation after the passing of the founder, Wang Chongyang 111270 , and two generations before Chen Zhixus time. We can nd evidence of northern Quanzhen Daoists transmitting their tradition in he may paint images of the true shapes of the three transcendent patriarchs Chunyang L Dongbin, Wang Chongyang, and Ma Danyang. Morning and evening oering incense and owers, with singleness of mind face the portraits and chant aloud this Jindan dayao one time through, or even a hundred times, or a thousand, building up many repetitions over the days and months. If his initial will does not decrease, and he becomes even more concentrated and assiduous, then he will stimulate the perfected transcendents to personally descend to bestow teachings. For a student of transcendent hood, this is sudden enlightenment, when the path of principle penetrates all the way through, and the ground of the heart mind becomes void and numinous. 93&

)1#">'DP/,0<*<< . 5 +$EDI!(&

)B BBBL6%2@H=?.MO4(KCG; -7A8F:Q. DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 1.12b510.

86

southwest China before 1250. For example, Ji Zhiqiang . ca. 1170 1240 transmitted Quanzhen Daoism in Yunnan,160 and Quanzhen Daoism came to Mt. Qingcheng in Sichuan not long after.161 We see evidence of southern Daoists traveling north to meet Quanzhen masters as early as the 1270s. Lu Dayou " d. 1285 may have been the one who rst brought Quanzhen Daoism to Mt. Wudang in modern day Hubei. Lu was a Wudang Daoist who traveled north to Mt. Yin Yinshan 162 to nd traces of Quanzhen Daoism. When he returned to Mt. Wudang in 1275, he attracted hundreds of disciples.163 Mt. Wudang subsequently became a Quanzhen center. Some Daoists from Jiangxi traveled to and from Mt. Wudang, such as Li Mingliang b. 1286; from Anfu in Jiangxi, Luo Tingzhen %

! . Yuan dyn.; from Nanchang, and Wang Daoyi . ca.

1350 70. Wang Daoyi was a Zhengyi Daoist from Mt. Longhu who traveled to Wudang Shan to study Quanzhen. There was Quanzhen Daoism at Mt. Longhu, the ancestral mountain of the Zhengyi lineage of Celestial Masters in Jiangxi. The eccentric Jin Zhiyang 1276 1336, a.k.a. Jin the Dishevelled Jin Pengtou #,164 may have been the one who rst brought Quanzhen Daoism to Mt. Longhu. Chen Zhixu never mentions visiting Mt. Longhu himself, but it was only about ninety miles from his home, so it would have been well known to Daoists throughout Jiangxi. Two disciples of Jin Pengtou, in turn, were teachers of Zhao Yizhen d. 1382, an important gure whom I will discuss again in chapter 6.165 Zhao Yizhen was learned in Qingwei thunder rites, and both Quanzhen and Southern Lineage self cultivation. 160

Guo Wu, Daojiao yu Yunnan wenhua, 130, citing Xu wenxian tongkao, j. 243.

161

Quanzhen Daoism began to come to Mt. Qingcheng during the time of the Quanzhen Daoist Li Daoqian $ 1219 96; Wang Chunwu, Qingcheng Shan zhi, 197. 162

There is a Mt. Yin near Macheng in present day Hubei, but this is southeast of Mt. Wudang, so it is unlikely that this was Lu Dayous destination.

163

Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. Lu Dayou ", 157; Goossaert, La cration du taosme moderne, 107.

164 Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. Jin Zhiyang , 162. Jin Pengtous masters were Li Yuexi in the south, and Li Zhichang in the north. Zhonghua daojiao da cidian says that Jin died in 1276, but I follow Schipper for Jins dates; Schipper, Master Chao I chen ? 1382 and the Ching wei School of Taoism, 730. 165

See pp. 567 68 and 606 8 chap. 6, §2.1.2, §3.1.3.

87

Robinet compares Zhao Yizhen with Chen Zhixu: By the time of Chen Zhixu, . . . the northsouth division had ceased to be meaningful. This is shown, for example, by the case of Zhao Yizhen in the fourteenth century: he was trained by two masters, one coming from the northern school, the other from the southern. Like Chen, Zhao Yizhen combined Northern and Southern lineages, but unlike Chen, Zhao really had a Quanzhen master.166 In Chen Zhixus familiar territory within Jiangxi, I have found record of only two Quanzhen Daoists who would have been his contemporaries, Liu Zhixuan . 132427 and Gui Xinyuan .167 Both were active in the Lu Mountains, so he could easily have crossed paths with them there. As I show in chapter appendix 2, Chens known acquaintances there included Daoists from the grand temple Taiping Xingguo Gong , and literati dilettantes. There is no indication that Chens supporters at Taiping Xingguo Gong were Quanzhen Daoists. I also have record of a number of Quanzhen Daoists in Jiangxi from beyond Chens core region. The most important of these is Li Jianyi , the author of DZ 245 preface of 1264, whom I discuss below.168 DZ 245 is the earliest Southern inneralchemical text to make much mention of Quanzhen teachings. Li Jianyi was probably not a Quanzhen Daoist himself, but rather, like Chen, a SouthernLineage alchemist who read some Quanzhen literature. Mt. Jiugong in Hubei was another of Chens core sites. I have found no record of Quanzhen Daoism there during his era. There was a lot of Quanzhen activity at Mt. Wudang in northwest Hubei of course, but Chen probably never went to that Daoist center. I also have no record of Quanzhen Daoism in Chens core region in Hunan Mt. Heng or Hengyang, and Changsha, only of local Daoists who traveled from Hunan to Mt. Longhu to study Zhengyi Daoism, to Mt. Wudang to study Qingwei Daoism, or whose a liation is not known. In Chens core region within Jiangsu, I have record of several Daoists in Li 166

Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Tradition, 225; idem, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 4344.

167

Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. Liu Zhixuan , 180, and Gui Xinyuan , 162. Zhonghua daojiao da cidian says that Gui Xinyuan died in 1276, but I reject this, based on Schippers dates for Jin Pengtou. 168

See pp. 9697 below. Li Jianyi, author of DZ 245, Yuxizi danjing zhiyao, was from Yuanzhou presentday Yichun , Jiangxi; Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. Li Jianyi , 139.

88

Daochuns lineage. Li Daochun may be listed together with Chen Zhixu, Li Jianyi, Wang Jichang, Yu Yan, Mu Changchao, Niu Daochun, Chen Chongsu, and Wang Daoyuan Wang Jie ,169 as an examplar of a trend during the Yuan and early Ming period toward the integration of Northern and Southern inner alchemical traditions. Ke Daochong was one of Li Daochuns students in Jiangsu;170 he was active in Jinling around 132427, so he could have crossed paths with Chen Zhixu when Chen was visiting his Jinling network after 1335. The history of the rst few generations of Quanzhen Daoists, or Quanzhen Daoist texts and ideas, or as in the case of Chen Zhixu Quanzhen Daoist cachet, has yet to be written. This history ought to involve a careful reading of texts by these tradition crossing gures, as well as research into dates, places, and social trends. We may tentatively conclude that the number of Quanzhen initiates in Chen Zhixus core area of operations was quite small. Chen could conceivably have met a few Quanzhen initiates during his lifetime, but there probably were no Quanzhen teaching centers south of Mt. Wudang. §7.3, Chens Immediate Lineage I think of Chens lineages in terms of three concentric categories: extended, eective, and immediate lineages. The genealogies in DZ 1070 see chapter appendix 3 are devoted to Chens extended lineage, rather than his eective lineage. The Xianpai and ritual list in DZ 1070 include some gures that never show up again in his writings, such as the avatars of Laozi, or the Louguan patriarchs. The hagiographical text DZ 1069, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao liexian zhi, represents Chens eective lineage.171 This is: the Five Patriarchs wuzu

of Quanzhenthe Sovereign Lord of Eastern Florescence Wang Xuanfu, Zhongli Quan, L Dongbin, Liu Haichan, and Wang Chongyang; 169 Li Daochun . ca. 1288 ; Wang Jichang . 122040 , Yu Yan 12531314 ; Mu Changchao . ca. 1294 , Niu Daochun . ca. 1296 , Chen Chongsu Chen Xubai , . Yuan

dyn. , and Wang Daoyuan Wang Jie , . ca. 1360 . I situate these gures within the history of inner alchemy in chapter 4, part 1. 170

Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. Ke Daochong , 180.

171

For the names and characters of all of these gures, see chapter appendix 3.

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the Seven Masters qizi of QuanzhenMa Danyang, Tan Chuduan, Liu Chuxuan, Qiu Chuji, Wang Chuyi, Hao Datong, and Sun Buer; and Chens immediate lineage, his nominally Quanzhen sublineageSong Defang, Li Taixu, Zhang Ziqiong, and Zhao Youqin. Chens accounts of the Quanzhen wuzu qizi are conventional. I have not attempted to discover which text Chen took them from, but the illustrations in DZ 1069 suggest that he drew on an illustrated text like DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan. I call this Chens e ective lineage because he relies on this lineage for his authority as a master. I will have a lot more to say about Chens extended and e ective lineages in section 7.4 below. More curious though, is Chens immediate lineage. I argue that Chen invented this lineage himself, and may even have invented the gures Li Taixu Li Jue and Zhang Ziqiong. Zhao Youqin discussed on pages 602 above and Song Defang are wellattested in other sources, but Li Taixu and Zhang Ziqiong are mostly unknown outside Chens writings. §7.3.1, Song Defang.

Song Defang 11831247 , personal name Youdao

Defang is his byname , was an eminent Quanzhen master of the second generation after Wang Chongyang, a disciple of Wang Chuyi 11421217 and then Qiu Chuji 11481227 . Song was one of the eighteen worthies who accompanied Qiu Chuji to the court of Qinggis Khan in Afghanistan in 122223, and was coeditor of the Yuan Daoist canon Xuandu baozang in 123744.172 Chen mentions Song in about eight di erent passages, consistently using his stylename Sire Yellow House Huangfang Gong . Chens hagiography of Song Defang in DZ 1069173 mentions Songs journey to Afghanistan, but considers Song to be a disciple of Ma Danyang 112384 rather than Wang Chuyi or Qiu Chuji. From the dates of Mas death and Songs birth, we know they could never have met while alive Chen may not have heeded these dates . Chen interprets Songs monicker Perfected Who Parts the Clouds Piyun Zhenren as a reference to Songs power to dispel rainclouds with talismans. Apparently, there was some confusion in the hagiographical literature regarding the three names Song Defang, Song Youdao, and 172

Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. Song Defang , 153.

173

DZ 1069, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao liexian zhi 7a6b6.

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Huangfang Gong.174 Chens hagiography of Song shows no insider knowledge of Songs life, and even some misconceptions, which were echoed in later hagiographical literature. §7.3.2, Li Taixu.

Li Taixu ! : personal name Jue ' is mentioned in eight

passages throughout Chens corpus, plus the hagiography in DZ 1069.175 In the hagiography, Chen writes that Li Taixu came from Chongqing, and traveled to Mt. Wuyi & in presentday Zhejiang Province to rene his elixir for seven months. Chen describes an encounter between Li Taixu and some Zhengyi Daoists at Mt. Longhu, after Li left Mt. Wuyi: After seven months, when he was about to complete his dao, he returned, and on the road passed by Mt. Longhu E*. The night before, someone had had a dream at the Rain Altar that a perfected person would arrive. That season there had been a long drought, and they had prayed for rain without any response. The next day, Taixu the Perfected actually did arrive, but no one among the assembly knew it. Only the person who had had the dream saw that a poor Daoist had arrived, and said: This is the man. The assembly begged him to pray for rain, and when the response came, the rain was heavy. Then he departed. B=36=1 )0 . HF1 %4-(2>)"5= #, 4A.+F0CI After completing his elixir in reclusion in the Jade Void Hermitage :9 at Zhenzhou,176 he transmitted his dao to Zhang Ziqiong and then vanished into Mt. Qingcheng in Sichuan. I believe that Chen Zhixu forged the hagiography of Li Taixu, at least partially. He probably took the story of Li Taixus rainmaking exploit at Mt. Longhu from a hagiography of Bai Yuchan: According to Peng Si s account, . . . Bai went across the river to the east and resided in Mount Longhu . . . It was that year that the region was a icted with a drought. Many Daoist priests had attempted to chant the Mulang zhou /$, an incantation for supplicating rain; however, they gained no response and Bai 174

The later recension of DZ 1070 changed by other hands considers Song Defang and Huangfang Gong to be two dierent gures see p. 152n95 below. This distinction is repeated in Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, and compounded by a separate entry on a Huang Youdao ;=, who sounds the same as Song Defang in most respects. Like Chen Zhixus view of Song Defang, in this entry, Huang Youdao is a disciple of Ma Danyang. For the entry on Huang Youdao, see Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. Huang Youdao ;=, 142. For the idea of Song Defang and Huangfang Gong as two gures, see ibid., s.v. Li Jue !', 131, citing Xu wenxian tongkao.

175

Li Jue !', originally named Jue, changed his personal name to Qizhen 81. His byname was Taixu :, and his stylename Shuangyu G; DZ 1069, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao liexian zhi 7b89.

176

Zhenzhou 1 is presentday Yizheng City ?@, Jiangsu Province, northeast of Nanjing.

91

Yuchan then provided the correct way to chant the incantation, which resulted in rain.177 Just as Chen invented his Qingcheng master based on the hagiography of Zhang Boduan, he invented Li Taixu based on Bai Yuchan. Both are mythical echoes. Of the other eight passages mentioning Li Taixu, ve simply mention that he transmitted the teachings to Zhang Ziqiong, or that he rened the elixir at Mt. Wuyi.178 The emphasis on Mt. Wuyi is another clue that Li Taixu is an echo of Bai Yuchan, since Bai was the most famous inner alchemist ever to dwell at Mt. Wuyi. Of the eight passages mentioning Li Taixu, the remaining three are: 1 a brief exchange between Li Taixu and Zhang Ziqiong on the Zhouyi learning in the Cantong qi;179 2 Li Taixus comment that Buddhists can teach but not do, while we Daoists can do but not preach;180 3 An exchange between Li Taixu and a debater, in which the opponent reveals his ignorance of sexual alchemy, and Li calls him a worthless monk probably a Chan monk .181 The two common themes in these passages are encounter dialogue either enigmatic, as in no. 1, or harshly competitive, as in no. 2 ; and a sense of competetion with Chan Buddhism in nos. 2 and 3 . I argue that Chen Zhixu invented the character of Li Taixu, partially based on Bai Yuchan, and partially as an expression of Chens own sense of conict within a competitive market of daos. Is there evidence that Li Jue or Li Taixu was a real person before Chen adopted him as a patriarch? A database search reveals that Li Jue was a rather common name, and Li Taixu was also used by dierent men in various eras. I have not sifted through these references, though I note the record of a 177

Wang Li, The Daoist Way of Transcendence, 64, citing Peng Si, Haiqiong Yuchan Xiansheng shishi & ' , in Song Bai Zhenren Yuchan quanji, 71617. A more widely available edition, also containing Peng Sis text, is Bai Yuchan Zhenren quanji, in Daozang jinghua, coll. 2, no. 2.

178

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 1.2b10, 14.8b5; DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4.18b10, 4.29b7; Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 1.18a24. In the last passage, Li battles mara obstacles mozhang (#, mental demons during meditation by repeating a mantra from the Duren jing. 179

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 1.30a57.

180

After my patriarch Taixu, Li the Perfected, had attained the elixir, he heard the sound of a stra lecture at a Buddhist monastery, and slipped into the assemply to listen to it. When he came out, he sighed, saying, They can talk it up, but not put it into practice; we can put it into practice, but we cant talk it up. !%$) "" DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 3.12a35

181

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4.22a57. I translate and discuss some of this passage on p. 475.

92

transcendent named Li Jue in the Tang dynasty.182 I found several references to Zhang Ziqiong that also mention Li Taixu; these were obviously based on Chens Jindan dayao itself.183 I have found no evidence that the Li Taixu described by Chen Zhixu was known to anyone before him, either as a historical person or as a legend. §7.3.3, Zhang Ziqiong.

Chen never mentions Zhang Ziqiong in his corpus

except together with Li Taixu see the passages mentioned above. According to his hagiography in DZ 1069, Zhang Mu byname Ziqiong 184 rst met Li Taixu at Xichun Hall at Anren.185 Later, when they met again in a marketplace, Li nally agreed to transmit his dao to Zhang after seeing him donate cash to a beggar. Zhang completed his ring periods this could be internal ring, or external ring, i.e., gathering the next year, at Zhenzhou. Later, Zhang transmitted his dao to Zhao Youqin, and went into eremitic retreat. That is all Chen ever tells us about Zhang Ziqiong. I have argued that Li Taixu was a ction created by Chen Zhixu; as for Zhang Ziqiong, Chen never says enough about him to judge whether Chen invented him or not. There is no record of Zhang Ziqiong in other texts outside Chens corpus except the two accounts in which he appears together with Li Taixu. §7.3.4, Zhao Youqin provides no evidence about this lineage.

Chen probably did

not get the idea of claiming a Quanzhen connection from his own master, Zhao Youqin. In his Xianfo tongyuan, Zhao Youqin whom Chen calls a Quanzhen master not only does not include any distinctively Quanzhen language, concepts, virtues, or attitudes, but he only cites a Quanzhen gure twice, by my count.186 These two citations are both references to Ma Danyang. The second reference is in the context of a discussion about the wonder of dual cultivation by husband and wife fuqi shuangxiu zhi miao here Zhao is not talking about the alchemical husband and wife the two pharmaca, but rather about a human husband and wife. 182

Yu Yin, Tong xingming lu 10.38a. This gure was from Jiangyang , in presentday Hubei Province.

183

Yu Yin, Tong xingming lu 10.38a; Huang Tinggui and Zhang Jinsheng, Sichuan tongzhi 38.3 .

184

Zhangs personal name was Mu, his byname was Junfan . After becoming a Daoist, he changed his personal name to Daoxin .

185

Anren was about twentyve miles northwest of presentday Guixi , Jiangxi Province. This is near Mt. Longhu, the home of the Celestial Master lineage. 186

Xianfo tongyuan 16b3, 40a3, in Daoshu quanji, Zhongguo Shudian ed., 470, 482.

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Zhao Youqin is saying that Ma Danyang and his wife Sun Buer practiced sexual alchemy together, bringing advantage to both self and other zili lita . I have never heard of a Quanzhen Daoist teaching sexual alchemy. Not only does Zhao pay little attention to Quanzhen Daoism, but when he does mention it, he violently misreads it. Let no one henceforth mistake Zhao Youqin for a Quanzhen Daoist. In contrast to his two citations of Ma Danyang, Zhao cites another man named Ma, the Chan patriarch Mazu Daoyi 70988 , at least eight times. Zhao Youqin would call himself a Chan Buddhist before he ever called himself a Quanzhen Daoist. Although Chen Zhixu traces his Quanzhen lineage back through Zhao Youqin, Zhao does not consider himself a Quanzhen lineageholder, so Chen got the idea of a Quanzhen link from somewhere besides Zhao. Chen Zhixu invented his connection to Quanzhen Daoism, and probably even invented two of the masters supposedly linking him to Quanzhen Daoism. Song Defang and Zhao Youqin were real enough, but between Song and Zhao there was no connection. Zhao Youqin did not consider himself to have any connection to Quanzhen Daoism, and neither did Zhao consider Zhang Ziqiong and Li Taixu to be his lineal masters. Zhao Youqin never mentions any of his teachers in his extent works. If Zhao did have a teacher named Zhang Ziqiong, he was not important within Zhaos religious worldview. §7.4, Chens Eective and Extended Lineages in DZ 1070 Appendix 3 to this chapter is a complete translation of DZ 1070, The Master of Highest Yangs Great Essentials of the Golden Elixir: Stream of Transcendents Shangyangzi jindan daoyao xianpai

. DZ 1070 is valuable for two reasons: it oers the best record of Chen Zhixus selfcreated lineage, and it contains a manual for a communal ritual, in which the participants petition Zhongli Quan and L Dongbin to aid them in their sexual alchemy. I will analyze the genealogies in DZ 1070 here, as part of my argument against Chens claim to be a Quanzhen Daoist. §7.4.1, Comparing genealogies.

Chen Zhixus complex lineage is listed twice in

this text, once as a Stream of Transcendents Xianpai

and once as a sub

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section of the section entitled Ritual for Celebrating the Birthdays of the Two Transcendents, Zhong and L ZhongL erxian qingdan yi . The Stream of Transcendents appears to be based on another genealogy, the Correct Lineage of the Great Dao Dadao zhengtong , dated 1260, and composed by Xiao Tingzhi , a secondgeneration heir of Bai Yuchan.187 I know of no closely comparable rituals in the Daoist canon, though the ritual in the Ming text DZ 793 could be a distant relative.188 Xiao Tingzhis genealogy begins with the nameless Dao, then includes seven distinct groupings, descending in time and sacrality from celestial deities down to Xiao Tingzhis own master Peng Si 1185 after 1251 : A1 a cosmogonic grouping of four celestial worthies tianzun ; A2 a Laozi lineage, from Laozis mother, to Laozi, to Yin Xi, to the patriarchs of the Louguan tradition;189 A3 a waidan lineage from Heshang Gong to Wei Boyang, the supposed author of the Zhouyi Cantong qi; A4 Zhang Daoling, the founder of the Celestial Master movement, and his two famous disciples; A5 a neidan lineage of four patriarchs, including Zhongli Quan and L Dongbin; A6 the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir, with six patriarchs from Zhang Boduan to Peng Si; A7 the Quanzhen lineage, with Wang Chongyang and his six disciples. Chen Zhixus rst genealogy, the xianpai, has four groupings: B1 the precosmic Laozi, and his avatars in ancient times; B2 A5, with di erences the historical Laozi, and the ve neidan patriarchs wuzu ; B3 A7 the seven masters qizi , disciples of Wang Chongyang; B4 the ve masters of Chen Zhixus own sublineage: Song Defang, Li Taixu, Zhang Ziqiong, Zhao Youqin, and Chen Zhixu himself. This is a standard Quanzhen lineage of 2 wuzu and 3 qizi, sandwiched between 1 Laozis precosmic avatars, and 4 Chen Zhixus own immediate lineage. The genealogy of patriarchs invited to the ritual space includes eight groupings: C1 A2 Laozi and the Louguan patriarchs; 187

Dadao zhengtong, in DZ 687, Daode zhenjing sanjie, preface, 5a10 7a1.

188

DZ 793, Taiqing daode xianhua yi is a ritual for the birthday of the deied Laozi. Unlike DZ 1070, the deities invited to the ritual area in DZ 793 are cosmic deities rather than patriarchs. 189

Louguan Daoism was a SixDynasties Daoist movement, active at the Platform of the TowerAbbey Louguan Tai in Shaanxi, where Laozi bestowed the Daode jing to Yin Xi before leaving for the western regions.

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C2 A3the waidan lineage from Heshang Gong to the authors of the Cantong qi although Wei Boyang is missing from the list in DZ 1070 ; C3 A4Zhang Daoling and his disciples; C4 the cult deities Ge Xuan, Xu Xun, and Xu Xuns associates;190 C5 A5, with di erencesthe ve neidan patriarchs wuzu ; C6 A7the seven Quanzhen masters qizi ; C7 A6, with di erencesthe ve Southern Lineage patriarchs, from Zhang Boduan to Bai Yuchan; C8 the masters of Chen Zhixus immediate lineage. Comparing this list of gods to be invited to the ritual area with Chens genealogy proper Xianpai , we note that there is a common core shared by both lists: Laozi, the Quanzhen wuzu qizi, and Chens immediate lineage. Is Chen Zhixu claiming to be a Quanzhen Daoist then? He claims a direct lineage back to Wang Chongyang, so the short answer is, yes, he is claiming to be a Quanzhen lineageholder, if not an ordained Quanzhen monastic. But in the ritual list, he is also claiming links to ve other groups: the transmissionlineages of his three most important scriptures, C1 Daode jing, C2 Cantong qi, and C7 Wuzhen pian, and the cults to C34 local patron saints of alchemy. The ritual list is not a Quanzhen genealogy at all: it is a list in which only one group C6 out of eight is distinctively Quanzhen. Lets compare Chens two genealogies with Xiao Tingzhis Dadao zhengtong. Is Chen drawing directly on Xiao Tingzhi? I would argue that he is. I have compared the Dadao zhengtong and Chens two genealogies against four other examples of the genealogical genre: 1 Bai Yuchans brief genealogy in DZ 1309 after 1218 , 2 Li Jianyis long genealogy in DZ 245 preface of 1264 , 3 the genealogy of the Qingwei tradition, DZ 171 preface of 1293 , or 4 a Quanzhen genealogy/hagiography such as DZ 174 preface of 1241 , The Dadao zhengtong and Chens two genealogies stand much closer to one another than they do to any of these other examples.191 Li Jianyis 2 Hunyuan xianpai zhi tu Chart of the stream of transcendents from the turbid prime i.e., 190 Zhang Daoling was a third major cult deity in Chen Zhixus native region, and he is in the immediately preceding group 3. The fourth major cult, to the Huagai deities, is not represented in Chens lineage lists. 191

See Bai Yuchan, Xianpai, in his DZ 1309, Haiqiong chuandao ji 9a59; Li Jianyi, Hunyuan xianpai zhi tu , in his DZ 245, Yuxizi danjing zhiyao 1a4b; DZ 171, Qingwei xianpu; DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan. Chens DZ 1069 is inspired by the Quanzhen DZ 174 or something like it , however.

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Taishang Laojun in DZ 245 is the most likely candidatesince Li was active in Jiangxi like Chen Zhixu, or like Xiao Tingzhis patriarch Bai Yuchan , and since Lis genealogy includes both Southern Lineage and Quanzhen guresyet the content of Li Jianyis genealogy has very little in common with Xiao Tingzhis and Chen Zhixus. It appears that Chen is drawing on Xiao Tingzhis Dadao zhengtong in DZ 687. Although DZ 687 is a SouthernLineage text, Dadao zhengtong includes Wang Chongyang and the seven masters qizi of the Quanzhen order. Zhang Boduan and Wang Chongyangs lineages are listed together at the end of the chart, and weighted equally in the layout on the page, with neither one given pride of place to the other. Quanzhen Daoists have also been listing the Southern Lineage patriarchs within their own documents for a long time.192 This reects the incorporation of the Southern Lineage teachings into Quanzhen Daoism. Yet the incorporation of lineage does not always reect the incorporation of teachings. In the case of Dadao zhengtong, although this genealogy venerates the Quanzhen patriarchs, I know of no evidence that Xiao Tingzhi or his circle adopted any Quanzhen teachings. While Chen Zhixu and Xiao Tingzhi di er in that Chen claims a personal connection to the Quanzhen lineage and Xiao does not, I think that we should consider Chens lineage in the light of Xiao Tingzhi. Not only does Chen Zhixu objectively have no lineal connection to Quanzhen Daoism, but sometimes, like Xiao Tingzhi, he lists the Quanzhen lineage without even giving it pride of place. The Quanzhen qizi do receive emphasis in the Xianpai, or in DZ 1069, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao liexian zhi, but in the ritual genealogy they do not. The place of the Quanzhen qizi in Chens ritual genealogy is exactly the same as their place in the nonQuanzhen Dadao zhengtong. Chen Zhixu bases his ritual genealogy, and perhaps also his Xianpai, on Xiao Tingzhis Dadao zhengtong. It is even conceivable that the Dadao zhengtong was where Chen got the idea of claiming a connection to the Quanzhen lineage in the 192

Li Yuanguo notes that Quanzhen Daoist now generally list the Southern Lineage patriarchs within their genealogy, in a subsidiary position to Wang Chongyangs qizi. To ll out the Southern Lineage to the number seven to match the qizi , Peng Si and Liu Yongnian . 113856 are added. Li cites the Qingdynasty text Daomen gongke by Liu Shouyuan as an example of this; Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 418. I have not been able to examine this text.

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rst place. I have argued that Chen probably did not get the idea of claiming a Quanzhen connection from his own master, Zhao Youqin, since Zhao does not consider himself a Quanzhen lineage holder. I have also argued that Chen was not well read in Quanzhen literature, and may have met few live Quanzhen Daoists. We cannot know for sure whence Chen got the idea, but Xiao Tingzhis Dadao zhengtong is as likely a source as any other. Would it not be ironic if it were from a Southern Lineage text that Chen Zhixu got the idea of calling himself a Quanzhen Daoist? §7.4.2, Other points from DZ 1070.

There are several other points of interest in

the genealogies of DZ 1070. In my translation, I include some material in angle brackets and a smaller fontthis is material included in two later editions of Jindan dayao, but not included in DZ 1070. There are enough errors or anachronisms in this material to indicate that it was interpolated by later hands. One minor but telling dierence is the way Chen Zhixus name is used in the dierent editions. In DZ 1070, Chens name is listed in the Xianpai, but not in the list of spirits to be summoned to the ritual area. In the other two editions, his name is included in the list of defunct patriarchs. In DZ 1070, Chens given name Zhixu is used, while in the other two editions, his respectful byname Guanwu is used instead this should be a third rather than a rst person form of address. In the two later editions, two long genealogies of Daoist and Buddhist gures are interpolated in the Xianpai. The additional Daoist list adds the Louguan and waidan lineages C12, a lineage related to Ge Hong , Lan Yangsu alone, and the Southern Lineage C7, including Peng Si and Xiao Tingzhi. The additional Buddhist list is a single lineage, beginning with kyamuni Buddha. Apparently this list ends with Huanglong Huiji, an eighth generation descendant of Qingyuan Xingsi d. 740, but actually, it leads to L Dongbin. According to a tale in T 2035, Fozu tongji, L Dongbin attacked Huanglong, but ended up conceding defeat, attaining enlightenment, and becoming Huanglongs disciple, implicitly giving up his alchemy.193 This is not a story favorable to inner alchemy, yet a later hand has inserted it into Chen Zhixus Xianpai in order 193

T 2035, Fozu tongji, 49:390b414. Also see p. 141n40 below.

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to assert a true transmission from the Chan patriarchs, through L Dongbin, to Chen. Chen Zhixu himself never asserted such a historical connection between the Chan lineage and his own lineage; rather, both the true masters of both lineages shared an esoteric communion, both knowing that the true dao is sexual alchemy. Another reason that the later hand inserted this Buddhist list might be that it re ects a local Jiangxi legend. As I note on page 49 above, the Huanglong lineage was active at Qingyuan, in Chen s native Luling. Here we see a later redactor stirfrying Chen s lineage, much as Chen did to his own sources. Turnabout is fair play. Finally, Chen lists, after Zhao Youqin, a Preceptor Liu, the Perfected of ValleyCloud Dushi Guyun Liu Zhenren .194 Could this be the name of his fabled Qingcheng master? Or was it Chen s rst preceptor, from when he began his Daoist career? I have argued that Chen may never have had a Qingcheng master, so I nd the latter possibility more likely. I have never been able to nd any additional material on Mr. Liu Guyun. §7.4.3, Reading the ritual.

There are also several points worth mentioning

within the text of the Ritual for Celebrating the Birthdays of the Two Transcendents, Zhongli and L. The ritual celebration of Zhongli and L s birthdays was a Quanzhen practice.195 I suspect that it was also practiced outside Quanzhen circles. Almost no liturgical material from Yuandynasty Quanzhen Daoism has survived,196 so we cannot know the links between Chen s ritual and Quanzhen rituals. If Chen had no real connections to Quanzhen Daoism, as I have argued above, then he would have gotten the idea of celebrating the birthdays of Zhongli Quan and L Dongbin from nonQuanzhen southern monasteries, such as those at Mt. Jiugong or the Lu Mountains. Perhaps these were Zhengyi monasteries that were also, in some sense, Southern Lineage monasteries. In high style and wellchosen phrases, Chen and whoever participated in the 194

DZ 1070, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao xianpai 5a5.

195

Goossaert notes that the practice of celebrating L Dongbin s birthday at the Quanzhen center Yongle Gong in Shaanxi was inaugurated by the monastery s director, Pan Dechong 11911256; Goossaert, La cration du taosme moderne, 34954.

196

Goossaert, La cration du taosme moderne, 353, says that DZ 1069 is one of only two surviving pieces of Quanzhen liturgy from the Yuan dynasty. I would not call DZ 1069 Quanzhen.

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ritual with him, or used it thereafter supplicates the inneralchemical tutelary gods Zhongli Quan and L Dongbin for their aid in completing the elixir. As I argue throughout this dissertation, the elixir is produced by fusing male and female pharmaca, the male adepts seminal essence, and the female partners sexual qi. Asking for aid, the ociant says: I look up in expectation that you, in compassionate mercy will look down with pity on my petty lowliness, and give me relief with your expedient means, helping me to enter the chamber without demonic hallucinations .197 When Chen intones words like these, he is asking for Zhongli or L to descend and support him during the moment of gathering the partners pharmacon, during sex. The vital thing is to make marvelous use of a splitsecond. The hardest thing is to be truly tranquil and respond to things. How much the more dicult is the great danger of what is referred to by the phrase supreme treasure of the rst passing shoujing zhibao , and the deep fear from when the virile tiger reduces its passion!198 I hope that there will be hidden scrutinizing of this mortal body, and it will soon receive substances and pharmaca. I will gather the the initial crossing of the ultimate treasure. Looking up, I beg . . . that you make it such that I enter the chamber and achieve success, without deviating from the great ring periods; that my fetus will soon be born and transform into a spirit, and be promoted on high to be among the ranks of the transcendents. When Chen says this, he is praying for the pharmacon that is coincident with the menarche of a pubescent partner. In my reading, this rened ritual has become very strange indeed. The proof for my argument that Chen is a sexual alchemist must wait until later chapters, especially chapter 5, §1. In the nal passage, Chen also prays that his internal ring and yangspirit training will be successful. Internal ring is stage 3 of the alchemical path, or forming the elixir jiedan , and yangspirit training is stage 4, or transformation into a spirit shenhua . This ritual functions through performative speech. On pages 29 30 above, I argue that Chen Zhixus texts are full of illocutionary acts: when he tells his disciples 197

These translations all come from chapter appendix 3, so I do not cite line numbers or include Chinese characters here. 198

Supreme treasure of the rst passing is the female partners pharmacon at menarche. See pp. 455 57 chap. 5, §3.1.2.3. The erce tiger is usually the female sex organ, in its threatening aspect as a robber of the male adepts seminal lifeessence; see pp. 389 90 below.

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that the gods have blessed them, or that they have achieved enlightenment, he performs this as truth through illocutionary speech acts. Examples of this abound in the ritual: Now, the candles one point of numinous radiance has not been lacking in the past or today. Throughout the whole world, it pervades places both visible and inaccessible. The ignorant believe that it is the ame that is transmitted. Those who are in the know say: the wisdom of the inherent nature causes the dark chamber of ignorant consciousness to sprout a heart mind and know awe, and to return the radiance. We trust that there is a path to Heaven, and we can approach it; that we can transcend the mundane and enter into the holy. Chen is performing the wisdom of the ritual participants, performing their status as members of the spiritual elect. In the second passage, he establishes salvation as a possibility merely by speaking of it. In another passage, Chen performs a meeting with L Dongbin: You wish to succor the world, and the people do not recognize you; I wish to seek you, but my fortunes have not yet succeeded. I dare to recall that I do not understand the principles of xuan and pin; I have been fortunate to have had the chance to receive a sworn transmission from you, perfected teacher. You have enlivened this declining body, and made me familiar with the re

timing. Although I have naught with which to repay you, I rely on your fondness for life i.e., for helping people live longer. The themes that it is dicult to recognize L Dongbin in disguise as he wanders through the mortal world, and that only those worthy of receiving his teachings will be able to recognize him, occur often in L Dongbin hagiographies.199 Because it is so hard to meet Patriarch L in real life, Chen and his fellows perform this meeting. They even manage to cadge a transmission from L, obsequiously arrogating the status of pure hearted disciples worthy of Ls condescension. All of these performative statements are what I have termed salvic eects: subtle, semi

conscious, and secondary to the primary salvation of the alchemical path. Performative speech is often constitutive of ritual. In a study of performative utterances in African healing ritual, Benjamin Ray describes how illocutionary speech 199

According to Katz, in DZ 305, Chunyang dijun shenhua miaotong ji, compiled by Miao Shanshi . 1288 1324 , 43 percent of the stories involve the theme of recognition of the transcendent by mortals; Paul Katz, Images of the Immortal, 173.

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works: In telling the spirits to leave o a icting people, the priests emphasize that the command to do so is su cient to separate and release them from the ailing persons. . . . From the Dinka point of view, the e cacy of the priests command lies in his institutional authority over the spirits, together with the added authority of the divinity Flesh and the spirits of his ancestors.200 Chens speech act works the same way, though his authority may be less secure, based on his continuing eorts to manage his mastership, and backed up by the master eect. Chen cannot command Zhongli Quan and L Dongbin to descend and aid the ritual participants, so his performative speech is more uncertain than in the African case, but the way it works is quite similar. §7.5, Conclusion on the Issue of Chens Quanzhen Aliation Chen Zhixu was not a Quanzhen Daoist. He probably did not know many Quanzhen Daoists personally, and probably did not even read many Quanzhen texts. His interest in Quanzhen may have been stimulated by other SouthernLineage Daoists rather than directly from a Quanzhen source. Rather than being a Quanzhen Daoist himself, he merely used the Quanzhen marque as a freshsounding, prestigious, and in Yuan China socially dominant source of authority. My conclusions thus diverge somewhat from the standard line within Daoist historiography that Chen Zhixu represents the lateYuandynasty historical trend toward the fusion of the Northern and Southern lineages. While I agree that there was such as trend, and that he represents it, his own fusion was of the shallowest sort. Rather than a master of cultural fusion, Chen was more like a karate instructor in an American suburb who decides to hang out his shingle as an authentic teacher of kungfu or, these days, Brazilian JiuJutsu . He is like a Beijing fastfood franchiser selling Californiastyle Chinese noodles. Such folk can achieve commercial success with their mislabeled products because their clientele knows only enough about the foreign marque to respond to its appeal, and not enough to question its zhengzong authenticity. Chen Zhixu represents only the barest 200

Ray, Performative Utterances in African Rituals, 26. Ray is able to make a strong case for a performative reading of Dinka ritual, due in part to articulate native concepts that correlate well with the theory of speech acts. I have not found analogous concepts in Chens writing, so my use of speechact theory is tentative for now.

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trickle of Quanzhen Daoism into Yuandynasty Jiangxi.

§8, Chens Students, Disciples, and Acquaintances Chens students include ordained Daoist monks or priests,201 and laymen. Among the Daoist monks, he instructed both powerful abbots and common members of the assembly. Among the laymen, he taught powerful o cials, lesser o cials, and una liated seekers. Many of them were also Confucian, and some were Buddhist. One is a Mongol, one a Hmong, and the rest are presumably Han. All are men. The ages of the students are distributed more or less evenly across a range between twentytwo and seventytwo years old. Each of these students received a new Daoist stylename daohao from Chen Zhixu, in the form Xyangzi , by which Chen acknowledged him as his disciple. Some of these disciples had powerful conversion experiences under Chens guidance e.g., Ming Suchan, Deng Yanghao, while others may have accepted the stylename only as a courtesy and kept their distance from Chen e.g., Zhao Renqing, or just regarded Chen as a conversation partner or drinkingbuddy e.g., Yu Shunshen. I provide a full list of Chens disciples and acquaintances in chapter appendix 2. The main source of information on Chens contacts is his transmission epistles. Eight of these are included in juan 1011 of the Zhengtong daozang edition of Jindan dayao, but fteen more are included in the Jindan zhengli daquan edition fourteen in the Daozang jiyao edition. In dissertation appendix 2, I defend the authenticity of these texts missing from DZ 1067. Chen wrote each epistle to a disciple except in the case of Luo Xizhu, who is not a disciple, to recount their meeting, and to serve as a formal record of Chens transmission of lineage to the disciple. They were not just certicates for the recipient to store away, but essays 201

The professional Daoists we meet in Chens epistles were neither Quanzhen monks nor married Celestial Master priests huoju daoshi . They were probably under the jurisdiction of the Celestial Masters but perhaps leading lifestyles more like Quanzhen monks, having left the householders life chujia . I call them monks, but one might also call them priests. The Mt. Jiugong gazetteer, written centuries later, tells us little about their daily activities.

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polished for posterity, to be savored by a future readership, and reinforce Chens reputation as a true master forever. Other sources of information on Chens contacts are the prefaces to texts by Chen and Zhao Youqin, some other materials preserved in Jindan dayao, and the Mt. Jiugong gazetteer. In this section, I will discuss a handful of Chens disciples under three headings: masterdisciple relationships, patronage, and literati association. I relate masterdisciple relationships and patronage to the overarching themes in this dissertation, managing mastership, spreading the teachings of sexual alchemy, and achieving salvation. In chapter 3, I discuss Chens threeway feedback loop of propagation, authority, and salvation. Here is my denition of this concept: Chens teachings are the tools he uses in his struggle to achieve three interrelated goals: 1 achieving recognition and authority as a master, or managing his mastership ; 2 spreading his teachings in the religious eld; and 3 attaining personal salvation. These three goals are complementary. Why does he seek authority? Proximately, for the sake of advantages in this world; ultimately, for the sake of his own salvation. The authority he gains will help him attract a support network and audience base of patrons, disciples, or readers. This support network in turn will help him nance his personal quest for salvation. In addition to this, his teaching activities within his network, and his successes in spreading his teachings to new audiences, will generate karmic merit for him, which will further contribute to his salvation. The relationships that Chen forged with disciples and patrons allowed him to develop his authority as a master, and spread his teachings. He could spread his true dao to one person at a time as we see in most of his transmission epistles; or he could attract the patronage of wealthy laymen Zhang Shihong and Wang Shunmin or powerful abbots Che Kezhao and Pan Taichu, who could subsidize the publication of his writings, and thereby allow him to reach a much wider audience. Spreading the teachings is a duty to the gods, and would bring karmic merit, or count as good deeds in the celestial register, ultimately helping Chen achieve salvation. Establishing authority and spreading his teachings would also help Chen attract patrons who could nancially support his sexual alchemical practice. The third heading, literati association, does not contribute as much to the threeway feedback loop, and I will discuss it only briey. 104

§8.1, MasterDisciple Relationships §8.1.1, Ming Suchan, at Mt. Jiugong.

Mt. Jiugong was an important place in Chen

Zhixus career because of the support and acclaim he received from the Daoist monks there. Although Daoists had dwelt on the mountain from early times, the great Daoist center at Mt. Jiugong, Qintian Ruiqing Gong , was founded in 1184 by the Zhengyi Daoist Zhang Daoqing 11311207 .202 Zhang also founded the Zhengyi ordination sublineage Yuzhi Pai , which was centered there. Zhang and his disciples were summoned to the Song court to heal emperors and their family members several times, and received imperial largesse. Ruiqing Gong was one of the ve great Daoist centers of the Song Dynasty.203 Zhangs mummied body was preserved in a seated position in a cave near Ruiqing Gong and worshiped there for over six centuries as the focus of a major local cult.204 In 1855, a warlords army stormed the mountain and tried to burn the body along with the temple buildings; the body resisted the re, but the bandits did cut it into six pieces, so the priests buried the body for safekeeping.205 Ming Suchan ,206 styled Zongyangzi , was a monk from Ruiqing Gong, and perhaps Chens closest disciple. Ming contributes one of the prefaces to Jindan dayao, so we can read the accounts of their relationship in both Mings preface and Chens epistle. Ming met Chen Zhixu for the rst time in 1335, and they hit it o

immediately: In the fth month of the summer of 1335, in the SquareJug Heaven, I chanced to meet my master, the Perfected Man of Highest Yang of the Crimson Palace of the Purple Empyrean. I opened my breast and tipped my canopy when we met for the rst time, joyous as if we had known each other our whole lives. I steeped tea 202

Byname Deyi, stylename Sanfeng, from Yingpu , Zao Li presentday Jingshan County, Hubei Province . While still alive, Zhang was honored by Song Ningzong r. 11941224 with the title Taiping Huguo Zhenmu Zhenren . In his deied or ancestral form he was known as Zhenmu Jun . 203

Liu Sichuan, Jiugong Shan yu daojiao Yuzhi Pai ; Fu Xieding, Jiugong Shan zhi, passim.

204

Fu Xieding, Jiugong Shan zhi, 4.12a 7:89 .

205

Fu Xieding, Jiugong Shan zhi, 3.11b 7:72 .

206

Byname Tiancong !, original name Chen Zongming ? . Zongyangzi is identied as Chen Zongming, and given a biographical entry in Fu Xieding, Jiugong Shan zhi, 4.4a 7:91 . This biography seems to be a conation of Zongyangzi with one of Zhang Daoqings disciples, so Chen Zongming is probably not his name.

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and burned incense, and together we discussed alchemy. When the crucial point was slightly revealed, we became naturally drawn together. Anh'DZs[B]G0V d{_l} ~JW@qgup`|L4?(207

Living on Mt. Jiugong, Ming had seen dozens of alchemical teachers come to o er their teachings to the monks: Generally, regarding those who came from the four directions, although they followed sidepaths and narrow ways, in all cases he listened to their discourses to the end with an open mind and manifest sincerity. In all there were several dozen of these men; they believed that they had completely attained the way of the golden elixir. -3zEy UT \*ek.m#:8:ro $=RM5g208 Ming had accepted some teachings from these teacherswho were charlatans to Chen but whom we ought merely to call rivals so Chen had to disabuse Ming of his false learning: I inquired unhurriedly about the teachings he had received, which included transporting spirit and qi within the body. This seems to be true, but is not. The teachings also included tempering the lead and mercury in the dantian, which seems to be the same as the true teachings but is not. At their most extreme, if these teachings werent about gathering and battling, then they were about roasting the yellow gold and boiling the white silver ; if they werent about sitting dazedly, then they were about concentrating the thoughts on empty words.209 Now he had slacked o , believing that the dao of the golden elixir was like this and nothing more. He was wellsuited to alchemical scriptures,210 and his chanting of them aloud was like owing water. Furthermore, his crooked interpretations were successful though from a sideangle, their words almost reasonable. When he surveyed those of his own generation below him, it was as if no one could match him; others had the hope of encircling him, but they could not check his arguments . jNCK./Mm9"bf, HF3X%;#6"Qc i)3%#S>#6Ot9v^Y6 &91a2+I! 207

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao, preface, 1a10b2. The Square Jug Heaven is a building at Mt. Jiugong: the Pavilion of the Jug Heaven Hutian zhi Ting V7 ; Fu Xieding, Jiugong Shan zhi, 9.13a9 7:235 . The idiom qinai _l goes back to Han literature, and refers to two friends meeting each other on the road, then drawing their carriages close together so they may converse. Qinai also came to refer to a rst meeting; Hanyu da cidian, s.v. qinai _l. The idiom zhenji xiangtou L4?( refers to the supposed phenomena of pins being attracted by magnets, and mustard grains by amber; Hanyu da cidian, s.v. zhenji xiangtou L4?(. 208


209

It appears that Chen Zhixu is here referring to the principle forms of selfcultivation associated with the Caodong P< and Linji xw Chan lineages, respectively. Both lineages were active in this period.

210

Alternative translation: As for alchemical scriptures, talismans and tallies, . . .

106

T"x9 k^! &+4 jW;Hr@6FZ 8UCduFAaQ | _! l211 After convincing himself of Ming Suchans intelligence and worthiness, Chen agrees to transmit his teachings to Ming at Luo Xizhus Jiaotai Hermitage JR: Because at the time I was busy in coming and going, I could not fully investigate his qualities. Afterward, I waited and looked into the distance for the purple qi,212 and chased the yellow crane, arriving at the Jiaotai osite hall. I kowtowed and made my request, repeatedly and sincerely. Then we smeared213 cinnabar on a written document and made vows to Heaven, spread out bluegreen silk214 and swore upon the Earth. With multitides of perfected beings supervising the ordination, Shangyangzi bestowed his secrets in toto. G]X'O>!}DcIPyf#J$zB t{`b= h3:sVKo

212

This refers to Yin Xis \ encounter with Laozi at the Hangu ,( Pass.

213

Sha refers to the ancient practice of drinking the blood of a sacricial victim to seal an agreement. In Daoism, blood sacrice is replaced with writing or other practices. 214

Daoist ordination rites may involve oering silk and other goods to the spirits as a pledge. Cf. Benn, The CavernMystery Transmission.

215

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao, preface, 1b26.

216


107

Chens describes Ming Suchan as being a talented young writer of some renown while living the life of a Daoist monk: When I climbed Mt. Jiugong, there was a man named Ming Suchan. From the age of capping twenty years old when he abandoned his family and went forth from the householders life, he was bright and fond of learning. At the age when he was established thirty years old , he towered above the rest. Selecting widely and reading mightily, he modestly made visits to the vast records, discussing the present and investigating the past, and producing literary writings. Galloping madly across the scene, his writings pleased peoples sensibilities, though he was not free from the fault of becoming full and overowing, or raising a whirlwind with his burning, so good and understanding friends were few. c[ G*?217 Ming adopted his odd name in homage to Bai Yuchan. I asked him: Does Ming Suchan mean something? He replied: I, Cong, often admired Bai Yuchan, so with my surname I thanked Heaven and Earth, with my name I thanked my family, and with my byname I thanked my friends. Ming bright is Bai white ; Su undyed is like Yu jade; su and yu both connote purity ; and chan toad is chan toad ; therefore I am called Ming Suchan. P
DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 12.1a9b3.

218


219

Liu Sichuan, Jiugong Shan yu daojiao Yuzhi Pai.

220

The term oneavor yiwei 7 is used in classical Buddhist as well as Chan Buddhist texts to refer to a highlyrened state of mind which does not discriminate or thematize separate objects or concepts.

108

<W\'E,=") ;Q&221 I believe that in the account of Mings encounter with Chen, we see Chen convincing a monk chujia ren 9, presumably celibate of the truth of sexual alchemy. Chen initiated Ming at Jiaotai Hermitage, and perhaps Ming was able to practice sexual alchemy at Jiaotai; I suggest below that Jiaotai Hermitage was a secret site for sexual alchemy. Also note that Chen was one of dozens of peripatetic teachers who climbed Mt. Jiugong over the years to oer their teachings to the monks. Because Chen secured the temples nancial backing for publishing his books, he must have been more successful than most of his rivals from the marginal traditions pangmen B1. I will argue in chapter 5 that Chens practices may not have been so much dierent than those of his rivals, but I would not say the same about his writing. I do not think that Chens oeuvre was also just one among dozens of others that have since slipped through the cracks and been lost. Chens oeuvre is of rare quality. §8.1.2, Deng Yanghao, in Hongzhou.

Chen Zhixu also spent a good deal of time

in Hongzhou or Yuzhang, modernday Nanchang, in Jiangxi. In chapter appendix 2, I list three or four disciples that Chen met there: Zhao Boyong, Zhao Renqing, Deng Yanghao RS:, and possibly Zhou Yunzhong. Three of these four men were disciples in name only: Chen may have conferred Daoist stylenames on them, but they seem not to have been ardent followers like Deng Yanghao. Deng Yanghao was not a Daoist monk like Ming Suchan, but a layman and a spiritual seeker. Chen describes Dengs character: Nanyangzi is a scion of the Deng clan of Old Hong Hongzhou. His byname is Yanghao. His father named him Ximeng #*, but at one point he changed his avoidancename to Yi U. From birth his superiority stood out, and he cared little about the details of his conduct. Because he lacked the dao of correctness in heart and sincerity in intent, he ended up taking a tumble, behaving outrageously and searching wildly. Although the aspirations in his heart were lofty and not shallow, among the benighted persons of the marketplace there was not a single one who was suitable. It is impossible to avoid making comparisons between self and others, or to avoid you and me mocking one another. Why? Because you never heard the dao. 2D05R S:( #*M/T UL -V@>HF JK7[Z %X< .8GG ?]^ CA!+IN$6Y3POJ4 221

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 12.5a67, 5a9b2.

109

222 Chen addresses Deng directly, discussing his character and biography quite frankly: Deng is a talented man, but he initially lacked direction. His career or projects were blocked by petty men chan an zhi ren . I came traveling through Yuzhang in order to nd people of correct heart and sincere intent, so I could tell them about the dao of cultivating ones person xiushen N6 and long life. But as soon as I would express a single idea, I would arouse a riot of slander and acrimony. Yanghao would come and go, hearing what he heard, seeing what he saw. I knew that he was a person who was always coming to chime in about this dao, so Yanghao would certainly exhaust his knowledge yun , and then cease.223 Sure enough, the next day, he came again and spent the whole day inspecting these teachings of mine, but I was not able to get him to enter the gate i.e., completely accept my teachings. In the space of more than a month, he came and went three times, both doubt and trust

mingled in his heart. When he asked me for some teachings, I unhurriedly answered him with a few words. Because of this, he told me all of the teachings he had received from his teachers. He had once experienced enlightenment after hearing the teachings of the monk Youtan , and nally he denitely did receive a transmission from old man Huayang o.224 Now all had become clear to Deng Yanghao. Whenever he entered a calm and settled state, he had the sensation of something like qi or cloud within the doublepass of his Spinal Straits, rising steadily upward and reaching the Muddy Pellet. The sensation would be similar to the state hou M

called three owers gathering in the crown, and the ve qi paying court to the prime sanhua juding, wuqi chaoyuan DeSk .225 After Deng Yanghaos claims, everyone who came from every direction to discuss this all expressed their wildfox imp views. y7uc`3%tr N6nv;W l,TC&<,74<4,!8#Rjv,.C T$}<,I >?i7d0j)[8F,K

:|GLw*ay\O^ ']m8V<_P5 Cz=x5*QfI=oXB*
Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.41b742a1 missing from DZ 1067 .

223

I.e., after a while Deng would run out of impudent comments, and begin to listen to Chen.

224

I have yet to identify this Daoist teacher.

225

For wuqi chaoyuan, see pp. 33839; for sanhua juding, see pp. 34142. Deng is claiming a high state of attainment.

226

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.42a110 missing from DZ 1067 .

227

This is likely a reference to the famous preQin transcendent Pengzu hU.

110

errors. I was deeply aware that he was wrong, but did not dare to straighten out his wrongheadedness. How could it be said that I was slow of speech or chickenhearted and did not dare? We may say that if you wish to draw someone in, you must gradually soak zi him in order to melt shi him. The next day he came back with his cloud companion Zhang Shouqian228 ^ 9 to invite me over to his house, where he laid out his clauses liekuan n, begging me over and over for the teachings of my Qingcheng master . I again inquired about what he had learned previously from his teachers, and based on this, quizzed him on point after point. Yanghao revealed all without privileging anything,229 so I was well able to show him that suchandsuch were marginal teachings , soandso were blind teachers, suchandsuch were perverse trails, suchandsuch were merely qicirculation, suchandsuch were gathering and battling caizhan, and suchandsuch were vacuous stillness. Among all of these, he had only taken one of Huayangs teachings as a given, and in the end missed the single principle threading through them all, and furthermore nally had no place to settle upon. Now, when he sought my instruction, he was full of this willingness. I praised him, saying: Your lofty aspirations like this will lead to your soon receiving the teachings of the old transcendent from Qingcheng. But then, why would the teachings only be openly exposed230 between Jintang and Zhongling?231 You must overleap the eight limits of space, and gallop after the tracks of Zhong li Quan and L Dongbin ! 7T)L)O*)NlV N0#&~"7 (mL7cA7G(m@7GX~gm b S6] e4v>^9*; P n /.FJ%~|7H<_=QPC!{TGU <W7MCNkEMCN?QMCN3RMCN}MCNa MCNB\7tùNyp8_hdjoqz f/K2&~-[:#&5T$_FJ '%IX+YDxit]sr Z,(1232 Chen says that he came to the Nanchang region near his home in the Lu Mountains seeking worthy disciples to receive his teachings. As he says elsewhere, Chen came looking for disciples after writing an initial version of the Jindan dayao.233 He says that when he rst began to teach, he suered signicant ridicule. It seems that Chens 228

I have yet to nd any other information on this gure.

229

For the meaning of the word feite GU, dictionaries give only bujin w not only, but I read feite as meaning not regarding anything as privileged, not regarding anything as particular.

230

The specic meaning of xuanbao Y is unclear. Xuan can open and spacious. bao, to explode could conceivably be a loan for bao, to expose. 231

By Jintang Dx Chen may mean a city about twenty miles southeast of Changsha, Hunan Province. Zhongling i was part of presentday Nanchang County, Jiangxi Province. 232

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.42a10 43a4 missing from DZ 1067.

233

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 11.6a5 6.

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audience recognized that his teachings are sexual, and heckled him for it. Deng was among this largely hostile audience. Over time he was drawn to Chen, yet Deng remained boastful of his own prowess. Chen hooked Deng with carefully chosen words, and reeled him in slowly. Then Chen disabused Deng of his illusions, showing him that all the things he had learned were only minor techniques, not a great dao of the same caliber that Chen o ered. Chen accuses Deng of practicing coarse sexual practices, which is probably what Chens hecklers were saying about Chen. When Deng describes his sensation, he is not describing a heterodox or merely trivial practice: other inner alchemical authorities describe the sensations of orbital circulation in the same way. Chen probably rejected Dengs alchemical experiences because he was doing mostly solo cultivation, and some coarse sexual cultivation, but not the true practices of the golden elixir. One of Deng Yanghaos erstwhile teachers is Youtan, i.e., Pudu 1255 1330, a.k.a. Youtan Zongzhu , a Buddhist monk who established a White Lotus cloister in the Lu Mountains, and wrote defenses of the White Lotus Buddhist movement.234 We may imagine Deng Yanghao as drifting between rival teachersthe Buddhist preacher Pudu, the alchemist Huayang about whom I know nothing more, and then Chen Zhixuwith each teacher extolling his own tradition, and excoriating his rivals. Chen Zhixu criticizes his rivals, but not Pudu per se. However, Pudu would have criticized Chen Zhixu, had he known of him. Pudu did know of Daoist or quasiDaoist sexualcultivation networks in Chens exact place and time, though he would not have known of Chen, since Pudus deathdate 1330 and the date of Chens enlightenment 1329 overlap by only one year. Barend ter Haar discusses several of Pudus attacks on his rivals; these attacks seem to deal with sexual techniques and can be connected with each another. One attack is as follows: Nowadays there is a bunch of stupid people who habitually practise a divergent religion yijiao and assume the name of Pupils of the Lotus Tradition lianzong dizi . They falsely point to dual cultivation and engage in dirty acts. Dual cultivation can be short for The dual cultivation of the inner nature and 234

Foguang da cidian, s.v. Pudu , 49901; and ter Haar, The White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History, passim.

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life xingming shuangxiu , i.e. inner and outer alchemy sic , which can apply to the Complete Perfection Teachings. In Yuan Daoism it could also refer to sexual disciplines, short for the dual cultivation of Yin and Yang. Pudu uses the second interpretation here, and below I shall suggest an explanation for his doing so. Elsewhere, he again attacks sexual techniques being practised by people who used the name of the Lotus Tradition. According to one such attack, these people distorted the Lotus Tradition with Daoist methods of cultivation daomen xiuyangfa . . . . Pudus criticism on the practice of sexual techniques by Pupils of the Lotus Tradition, therefore, served two purposes: he defended his own tradition against potential suspicion and at the same time raised doubts about a competing and supercially similar tradition.235 Here we see Chen Zhixu, or his ilk, criticized from a Buddhist point of view. Pudu is attacking Daoist sexual cultivation in exactly the same way, and for exactly the same reasons, that Chen Zhixu attacks the marginal traditions and minor daos pangmen xiaodao of his own nameless rivals. In his book, ter Haar argues convincingly that most of the attacks on popular religious movements in late imperial China by secular ocials, or Buddhists like Pudu involved stereotyping these movements. Thus, a common criticism of these movements was that they encouraged the sexes to mingle together in nocturnal assemblies, or even engage in unregulated sexual activity. Some of Pudus attacks on rival movements may use stereotypes, but there certainly were Daoist sexual cultivators practicing and teaching in his place and time, so there is a grain of truth to his attacks. Chen does not attack Pudu, because he is a respected Buddhist leader, and Chen respected Buddhism as much as he did Daoism. Note that, in his speech to Deng Yanghao, he does not thematize Dengs erstwhile teachers as Buddhist or Daoist : they are all just masters. Chen and Deng would agree that the learning and experience that Deng gained from the Buddhist Pudu complemented what he gained from Huayang who was probably what we would call a Daoist. Next, Chen describes his conversion of Deng, and transmission to him: I understood Yanghaos sincere intent and knew about his human relations and

235

Ter Haar, The White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History, 1067, citing Lushan lianzong baojuan 10:49b.

113

entanglements.236 I probed his shortcomings, and blunted his wildness. I corrected his doubts, and saved him when he strayed. I caused him to repent his past deeds, and straightened out his errors. Then I made him swear a compact with the revered teachers, and we made vows to one another. Yanghao was pierced through with sincere feelings, and unwittingly began to weep streams of tears, experiencing a great enlightenment while weeping pitifully. I then bestowed him with the secret contents of the Qingcheng teachings , saying: . . . 07!. /645* 2$ 9(3-&)8+7!/1;, (%'# ": 237 Chen straightens Deng out, and Deng experiences a tearful moral conversion and enlightenment. Chen has successfully enacted his mastership, and convinced Deng to accept his dao. Then Chen presents Deng with the secret teachings, and with it a long lecture, lasting until the end of the essay. I believe that this lecture is not reportage of Chens speech to Deng, but a piece of writing composed for this essay. The essay may have been presented to Deng at the time of the transmission of the secret teachings, or soon thereafter. I discuss the content of this homily on pages 43140 below. What were the secret teachings? Chen is always managing the boundary between revealing his teachings and retaining some things as too secret to put in writing.238 While many secrets can be deciphered from Chens texts as I show in chapter 5, he would have reserved his ultimate secrets for oral transmission only. Whatever it is that Chen passes to Deng is something which can be summed up briey, and is not transmitted over a period of months through a regimen of training. Like in Chan Buddhism, it is the transmission of an essence, rather than careful, handson instruction. However, it is probably not as nonrepresentational or mystical as the mindtomind transmission of Chan Buddhism.239 Chens 236 Human relationships and entanglements yuan shu 64. In Quanzhen texts of this period, students are enjoined to sever their yuan, i.e., to sever family ties. I read shu as meaning shouren 4, or acquaintences. 237


238

Urban describes this esoteric strategy as the advertisement of the secret the claim to possess very precious, rare, and valuable knowledge, while simultaneously partially revealing and largely concealing it ; Urban, The Torment of Secrecy, 235; also see pp. 2526 above. 239

Thus alchemical transmission diers from Chan tranmission as we see it in McRaes description: As is frequently stressed in the texts of Chan, there is no thing such as enlightenment, the Buddhamind, or whatever that is actually passed from one patriarch to the next ; McRae, Seeing through Zen, 6. Of course, Chan lineages also often transmitted objects of a more public nature, such as robes, bowls, certicates, or kirikami <

114

transmissions to his various disciples would have varying depths of content; most were related to sexual alchemy, but some might involve solo alchemical teachings, Buddhist kans, or NeoConfucian moral cultivation. Here are some things we may learn about Chen Zhixu and his religiosocial environment from this transmission epistle to Deng Yanghao: 1 Some of Chens disciples are spiritual seekers, consumers of both Daoist and Buddhist teachings within a spiritual marketplace. 2 Chen rejects practices that are close to his own. We may say that he is trying to sail a narrow strait between the Scylla of false sexual cultivation caizhan and the Charybdis of false meditation zuochan

. In chapter 5, I show that Chens own practice actually outwardly resembles both caizhan and zuochan: we could even say it is call it about 70 percent zuochan.240 3 Conversion and enlightenment are a central feature of Chens masterdisciple relations. 4 Chen justies all of his teachings through allusion to scriptures and sages, the esoteric strategy of stealing the lightning. 5 The key to Chens authority is the esoteric assumption that the truth is known only to a master. §8.2, MasterPatron Relationships §8.2.1, Tian Zhizhai.

Chens rst patron was Tian Zhizhai, the younger brother of the

pacication commissioner of Siguo, Guizhou. I have already discussed him on pages 6770 above, suggesting that he could have provided Chen with alchemical requisites, i.e., shelter and female partners. §8.2.2, Chens Three Networks.

Looking at the prefaces to the books by Chen

and his master Zhao Youqin, we nd several prefaces written by Chens disciples.241 These prefaces tell us about how these books came to be published. Jindan dayao has prefaces by Ming Suchan of Mt. Jiugong, and Ouyang Tianshu of Taiping Xingguo Gong in the Lu Mountains. Ouyang Tianshus preface dated 1336 reveals that the publication of Jindan dayao was arranged by Chens lay disciple Wang esoteric texts , to accompany the formless mind transmission xinchuan . 240

See p. 444 below.

241

Chen also writes his own prefaces to each of his texts, plus one to Xianfo tongyuan. His preface to Jindan dayao has been displaced to become a section of juan 1. Also, there is a preface by Zhao Youqin for Xianfo tongyuan.

115

Shunmin < zi Bingtian , and by Pan Taichu M $, the abbot of Xingguo Gong: The teatransport o cial242 Sir Wang Bingtian hides his transcendent potential in a clerical career, and has long felt a profound attachment to alchemy. Having met a friend and condant, he wanted to spread his transmission.

Pan Taichu, the mountain chairman, is superintendent of the Daoist monastery. With its high roofs and quiet eaves, its deep pools that reward slow enjoyment, here was the redoubled mystery rst expounded. When the exquisite printing of Jindan dayao reached its gates, the phoenix ed and the dragon coiled, the cicada exuviated and the tip pierced through. We lay out all the prefaces, hoping to receive some fame. I, my humble self, have entrusted my steps to the purple prime, and my mind remains set on the mystic gaze. My seed karma already ripe, I have been able to hear some leftover traces. 0G V6&#*F'L ? , $ 9WE">:R56/!)+2X4A- %(K=SZY B\8J@U113C;.[HONT7I P243 It appears that Wang Shunmin nanced an initial printing of Jindan dayao; this would have been in 1335 or early 1336. Then Pan Taichu contributed to a subsequent printing in 1336, with Ouyangs and Ming Suchans prefaces.244 Does Ming Suchans preface to Jindan dayao indicate that his own temple, Ruiqing Gong, also contributed to the printing of the book? Not necessarily; yet Che Kezhao of Ruiqing Gong probably did contribute to a related publishing e ort, Wang Shunmins printing of Xianfo tongyuan in 1337: My preceptor Shangyangzi gave me the oral instructions in a facetoface transmission, and thereupon composed Jindan dayao among other books in order to enlighten and guide people of these times. Chuyangzi Wang Shunmin is one of his senior disciples. He was able to plumb the depths even with his beginners mind. He only feared that others would be unable to achieve transcendenthood, so he engraved and printed this book, Xianfo tongyuan in order to spread the teachings widely. In the past Mou Pufu from our mountain Mt. Jiugong was deeply committed to doing this, but met with great changes in the passing of time, and his strength did not equal his intention. There was a book called Yigui jince 242

Mingcao 0G. Wang Shunmin may have been employed in the Transport O ce Caoyun Si GD , though the main sort of good managed by this o ce was grain, not tea.

243

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao, preface, 4b510. Chantui yingtuo YB\8 comes from the idiom tuoying er chu 8Q the tip of the awl pokes through the bag: talent will out . \ in this passage must be a loan for Q.

244

I discuss the printing history of Chen Zhixus texts in chapter 6, §1.

116

Golden writingstrips on the return of the One that was transmitted in this generation. Although I discussed and chanted Yigui jince?, I had not fully understood their wonders. Now I have undeservedly received my masters bestowal of the essentials of the truth, and only now have I realized that the secrets are in oral transmission. . . . Written in the month of the MidAutumn Festival, 1337, by lineal heir, the Master of Azure Yang, Che Shuke, with the tabooname Langu. ?J f EU Yn/> DaMe{R2=f <=4TLVw7h:0*)\|39_Fj Nôd3(&>b-9yu+$q71sJ UOD;P' h,CiAKHrf 6M }5M245 Che Kezhao 6

c was the abbot zhuchi .@ and imperial superintendent tidian

] of Ruiqing Gong during the period of Chens visits. He was probably about sixty years old at this time, and he died at the age of ninetytwo.246 He oversaw the rebuilding of the complex after res in 1314 and 1321.247 In addition to buildings for the monks, and for visiting Daoists and selfcultivators, he built lodgings for lords, ministers, and great men from the four directions "G and for o cials t . These lodgings were occupied by pilgrims coming to the birthday festival of the mummied founder of the mountain, Zhang Daoqing. We know of at least several great men who did visit, and who left stele inscriptions for the templethe calligrapher Zhao Mengfu v8z 12541322 , and the literatus Yu Ji lg 12721341 , both of them devotees of Daoism. Finally, DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu has a preface by Zhang Shihong S# Zhang Yifu x of Jinling >Z Jurong !I, near Nanjing , stating that it was he who edited and printed Chens Wuzhen pian commentary, together with commentaries by Xue Daoguang ~m% actually, this is by Weng Baoguang Qk% and Lu Shu [p: While listed in the Secretariat zhongshu sheng MB I had my will set on this. I always suspected that transcendents and buddhas each had their own dao, and

the cultivation of inherentnature and lifeendowment were two paths. Later, I 245

Xianfo tongyuan, preface, 2b610, 3a12; Zhongguo shudian ed., 461. Gengji 4 means wellrope or drawing water by means of a wellrope. A related idiom is gengduan jishen `4W the rope is short, and to draw water one must reach down the well a long way; ones abilities are not up to the task . The text has X, which I emend to 2. 246

Che had been a Daoist for over forty years, so was probably over sixty years old. Fu Xieding, Jiugong Shan zhi, 4.7b7 7:98 says he died at age ninetytwo.

247

Fu Xieding, Jiugong Shan zhi, 9.15a 7:239 .

117

received the transmission of my master, and only then did I receive guidance on which way to go, and realize for the rst time the principle that there are not two di erent daos in this world. Whatever is not the instruction of a teacher is mendacious chatter. I have read the various books one after another, and also traveled to every quarter in search of learning. I may have seen thirty or more commentaries to the Wuzhen pian. . . . Now, I have collected the commentaries of the Xue Daoguang , Lu Shu , and Chen Zhixu , and had them printed for circulation. Their meanings and instructions are in unisontruly a stair for latter day students! . . . Written by Zhang Shihong, Minister of the Ministry of Works. +f/819!5_)JB_@xZdqo\ ®CO vbSd-`^¢§¤f"<1e g UZ¯#= ¥c«|{ cKs 3A* 2-(Z¦riyGfn$f248 In his transmission epistle to Zhang Shihong, Chen mentions that it was Wang Shunmin who rst introduced them, by the grace of Providence :249 Zhang is ftyseven years of age. The Creator of All Things, desiring that he should hear of the exalted a air, is going to treat him generously. My friend Chuyangzi Wang Shunmin , seeing that his virtue was pure and his qi abundant, o ered up the exalted a air and displayed it to him. When I was lodging in Jinling, Zhang paid his respects to me, boldly resolving to make eternal progress. He vowed, I dared to hold a position at court, of the third rank. My will has been deeply xed upon this a air of the golden elixir , but I had never encountered an enlightened teacher. I saw that his words were genuine and his expression true. After more than ten days, I ascertained that he was indeed sincere, resolute, and in good faith. Then I chided myself privately, saying: How deep are this mans roots of faith! 3, HwNP_t?jG>m W7Q ²AhaªjG> °}RzE~0V:'/ ±4IF Y¨8>&MdApg]. ¥%lT[£;¬6 T¡u Zhang was a high ocial, who had risen to the third rank, and his name appears once in the Yuanshi 32.719.7 , for the period 132829. Chen describes him as an intelligent and uncorrupt ocial. Perhaps when he and Chen met in 1335, Zhang was already in retirement. At home in Jinling, Zhang Shihong had a small network of friends, and it seems they were all interested in selfcultivation, perhaps also in reading Daoist and Buddhist texts with Zhang. In his transmission epistle addressed 248 DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu, preface, 7a8b2, b67, 8a12 preface entitled Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian quandi g eg ³© . 249

I think this Creator of Things is an echo from Zhuangzi, as in the following passage: Amazing! said Master Yu. The Creator is making me all crookedly like this! kXalt. wNPm _1LL; chapter 6, Da zongshi Dd, H.Y. 6.4950; translation from Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 84.

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to another disciple, Li Tianlai , Chen mentions that Li Tianlai and Zhang were friends, together with three other men: From time to time, your good friends and auroral companions250 such as the four gentlemen, Zhang from the Ministry of Works, Zhang Tailang, Wang Jiujiang, and Wang Jiage, will have to straighten you out and line you up, as you make concentrated eorts to advance. Im telling you clearly: having already had a chance to hear of the dao of the golden elixir, can you now achieve it without rening yourself lianji /? '!7 )-)4&%6 "(,2. + 5# 1$*3 / Li Tianlai and the other men must have been of the same class as Zhang Shihong, and perhaps of the same age and station. Were they encouraging Li Tianlai in his sexual practice, or just in the basics of rening the self ? Rening the self lianji is stage 1 of the alchemical path; the adept must avoid losing energy through strong emotion or seminal expenditure, and must work to replenish his seminal essence and train his spirit or mind through inner circulation and/or concentration meditation. Wang Shunmin was the linchpin of Chen Zhixus new triplestrength network of disciples in Jinling, Mt. Jiugong, and the Lu Mountains. It was Wang Shunmin who introduced Chen Zhixu to Zhang Shihong in Jinling; Zhang subsequently edited and published Chens Wuzhen pian commentary. It was also Wang Shunmin who brought Jindan dayao to the attention of Taiping Xingguo Gong in the Lu Mountains, where it caused quite a stir. And it was Wang Shunmin who brought Xianfo tongyuan to the attention of Qintian Ruiqing Gong on Mt. Jiugong. Wang Shunmin himself was an o cial on the point of retirement: How mighty is Chuyangzi, Wang Shunmin! Hes a great man. He has been in and out of government service for around thirty years. I have heard that in his service, even when there is personal gain to be had, Shunmins heart did not waver, and even when he was weary, he did not alter his integrity. He is decisive and yet conservative. Generally, even to those lodging with him who have underestimated him, he has shown no sign of any small aws or defects. In the winter of 1335, we met at his o ce on the Pen River.251 After a single bow, it was as if we had known each other for a long time. He wanted to take my hand and talk about how in his heart he did not really want to be an o cial. I saw that his bearing was lofty and free, and his bonephysiognomy was suited for 250

I.e., companions on the path of selfcultivation leading to ascension to the skies.

251

The Pen River usually called Penshui 8 is a small river in northern Jiangxi Province of fewer than sixty miles in length, originating in Ruichang 0 County and owing into the Yangtze at Jiujiang City.

119

transcendenthood. He had had the fortune to run into me, and sought my alchemical dao. Thereupon we made vows before Heaven, and I bestowed upon him my Qingcheng masters secrets of the metal caldron and ring periods one after another. :Y XI= R*abX0 FN51F35fhW+) 7S$ /?9!Vi[M K"Zj-#7U,A BTdLV68a]5D(H gG@&'ceQ42^_\<>.C;`PE, OJ252 Perhaps Wang Shunmin cut back on his ocial duties soon thereafter, and spent his talents and energies in promoting Chen Zhixus career, allowing Chen to strengthen his position as a master, bring the dao to others, and gain patrons for sexual alchemy. This may have been a way for Wang Shunmin to gain prestige for himself, too. He was a li %, a sub ocial functionary, but his discovery of Chen Zhixu gave him an excuse to meet higher ocials such as Zhang Shihong. I do not know if Wang and Zhang could have met under normal circumstancesperhaps they could have. I discuss this issue in sociological terms on page 197 below. This bears some resemblance to Urbans esoteric strategy number 1, the creation of a new social space or private sphere, which promises equality and liberation for all classes.253 This is not to say that any of the gures mentioned in this dissertation professed ideals of social equality, but that esoteric self cultivation may have created a sort of communitas, where literati of dierent ranks could have mingled and formed unusual networks. §8.2.3, Luo Xizhu and the Jiaotai Hermitage.

The extant Mt. Jiugong gazetteer

from 1882 possibly based on 156773, 164462, or 173696 editions records the history of the Daoist center there, and mentions Chen Zhixu, Ming Suchan, Che Kezhao, Luo Xizhu, and many others from before and after Chens time. Many of these Daoists received purple robes and imperial titles during their lifetimes. Because it was a relatively small Daoist center, which achieved one of its peaks of activity during the time Chen visited, it is much easier for us to grasp the relationship between Chen Zhixu and the Daoist center at Mt. Jiugong than it would be to understand Chens status vis vis the Daoist temples in the Lu Mountains, or his 252


253

Urban, Elitism and Esotericism, 1. Also pp. 2526 above.

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place in an urban setting like Hongzhou or Jiujiang. Luo Xizhu L

, stylename Dongyun %=,254 was a fthgeneration lineal

heir of the founder Zhang Daoqing. When Ruiqing Gong was destroyed in a 1259 battle between Kublai Khan and other Mongol princes, Luo spent more than thirty years helping his master Feng Taiben # to rebuild it from the ground up. Luo was later summoned by Kublai and given an imperial title. Luo met Zhao Mengfu at the capital, and got him to write a 1287 stele inscription about the rebuilding of Ruiqing Gong, which would have contributed to the temples acclaim and attracted muchneeded donations from visitors. Luos rst contact with Chen Zhixu was when he sent an attendant to ask Chen to write a commemorative essay for his satellite temple, Jiaotai Hermitage. Chens essay Record of Jiaotai Hermitage at Mt. Jiugong (-1/, is the most formal and rococo of all the essays he wrote. It is said that Chens essay contributed to Luos own fame: Shangyangzi, Chen Zhixu wrote the Record of Jiaotai Hermitage, and also gave Luo a letter. Its the hermitages name was wellrespected for a time. <5sic:&-1/; ,'+255 Luo solicited this essay from Chen, and Chen wrote it before he had ever visited the place. Perhaps this is what drew Chen to Mt. Jiugong for the rst time: When I was staying in old Hong zhou , I happened to run into his disciple Tingzhang )6, and thereby was able to hear about his daily activities. Furthermore, Tingzhang besought my words as a record. I was delighted with Tingzhangs simple and not irritating manner , his directness and love of justice. Although I had never set eyes upon that splendor which is Jiaotai Hermitage, I thought from afar of what would be writable about its dimensions, and made a general record of it. D.$H?*)6230! F / D8)6K A"CJB-1 7E>4G ,<@/

256 In this essay, Chen depicts the hermitage as a rustic retreat, though it may have been a highroofed and nely decorated temple: 254

Byname Jingshan 9, Daoist stylename Mibian Xiansheng IM; Fu Xieding, Jiugong Shan zhi 4.7a5 7:97. 255

Fu Xieding, Jiugong Shan zhi, 4.7a9 7:97.

256

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed. 6.33b14 missing from DZ 1067.

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Luo Dongyun, of Qintian Ruiqing Palace on Mt. Jiugong, approached the stream and parted the clouds, slew the thatchgrass to build a hut. His gate, though made of sticks, is without vulgarity. His mind is far and his place of dwelling is distant. 0 >CK0T*B<BD,P'2$?%J8257 Chen gently chides Luo for neglecting his selfcultivation training: Now, his cranium is seventytwo years old.258 His brows are expansive, and his hair is sti , his face is peachy and his skin is lustrous. Ordinarily, he must dash about on business, and he is sparing with his inner cultivation. How could things be like this?

QUVG+;N:R4LO/19IHW"M 65-(&259 One long section of the essay is full of sexualalchemical signals. Chen is acknowledging that Luo practices sexual alchemy at Jiaotai Hermitage, giving his approval, and telling Luo to have more restraint: Letting wu ow to reach ji , controlling the four and bulging the three, seeking the mystery beyond the usual pattern, practicing the dao of the Yijing, uniting the strip of qian with the track of kun , using the nine to circulate the six, knowing the male but maintaining the female, leaving small and returning large, in order to collect and summon good fortunethese are the correct activities of Jiaotai Hermitage. It would be well for you to have continence.260 There is even the gripping of Jingyangs Xu Xuns sword, and the gulping of Chenmus261 elixir. The moon appears in the geng region, and the ingredient comes home into the caldron. . . . The one above and the one below have intercourse with a shared intention; the roof is stable, and the celestial light shines forth. With ones awakening, one awakens the one behind; beneting oneself, one benets the other.This is how Zhimu Zhang Daoqing is constantly present, and this is the thing that Jingyang transmitted secretly. This is gaining the peaceful state of the hermitage. It is meet that you should single mindedly glorify thishow could it be so suitable without belonging to Jiaotai Hermitage? )=

A3 # F7@! .E

257

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed. 6.33a34 missing from DZ 1067 .

258

I.e., seventytwo sui, between seventy and seventyone years old.

259

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed. 6.33b67 missing from DZ 1067 .

260

Wu is wuearth wutu , and ji is jiearth. These are the kan and li S aspects of the catalytic agent earth, and correlate with the female and male pharmaca or sex organs; see pp. 33334, 48892. Four is agent metal, i.e., the outer pharmacon of the female partners sexual qi; three is agent wood, the male adepts inner pharmacon of seminal essence; cf. pp. 34243, 49091 and chap. 5, §3, passim . Whip and track are technical terms related to the adding of yaolines from hexagrams; here, they may have a sexual connotation. Nine and six refer to qian and kun respectively, but must have an additional meaning here. Geng is the third day of the lunar cycle, when the outer pharmacon rst appears. 261

Chenmu was a deity who aided Xu Xun. See the footnote on Xu Xun below, pp. 14950n87.

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@[#a 9& 2\&:%LQ c07 $# G&WUZ b,g V8jh^. &" 6&XllD'++%?> P!&UZ ;MTAE FSQ L7 OH)e&BLQA262 Note how Chen reinterprets sexual alchemy in terms of the Jiangxicentered Xu Xun cult, and also in terms of the local Zhang Daoqing cult. Zhang Daoqing may have become associated with sexual alchemy at some point in time: in Mingdynasty texts, Zhang Sanfeng RI is the name of a sexual alchemical master and transcendent, and this was also Zhang Daoqings nickname he chose the name himself based on the three peaks near Ruiqing Gong. Some later said that Zhang Daoqings nickname was the origin of this Mingdynasty master.263 Of course, sanfeng is also a term for a form of sexual cultivation see pages 41416 below. There can be no doubt that Chen Zhixus commemorative essay is talking about sexual alchemy. He took some of the wording from an epistle written by Luo for Che Kezhao, in which Luo describes the teachings of Jiaotai Hermitage.264 Chen must have been presented with this essay when Luos attendant visited him in Hongzhou with the commission for Chens own essay. The essay is ostensibly about the technical Yijing studies that take place at Jiaotai Hermitage, but does contain some faintly suggestive language, such as With a shared intention, the one above and the one below have intercourse. &.

The site was known in aftertimes as a place for Yijing studies, as is recorded in the Mt. Jiugong gazetteer: Luo built Jiaotai Hermitage, and discussed the Yijing with his disciples. Relying on the positions of precosmic qiankun, postcosmic likan, precosmic kanli, and postcosmic zhendui, they actualized the interlocking hu of tai L and guimei h5 , and thereby illuminated the meaning of one life after another without cease. CLQ_3Jd<1N4Di--iDf* ( kLh5=K ]265 262

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.35a4b2 missing from DZ 1067.

263

Liu Sichuan, Jiugong Shan yu daojiao Yuzhi Pai.

264

The Teachings of Jiaotai Hermitage, as Revealed to Che Kezhao LQ`/Y, in Jiugong Shan zhi, ed. Fu Xieding, 4.7a9 7:97.

265

Fu Xieding, Jiugong Shan zhi, 4.7a57 7:97.

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Jiaotai Hermitage may have been built or christened for sexual alchemy from the beginning. Jiaotai could be a pun for tai intercourse. Guimei is a standard Yijing hexagram, but literally means bringing home the maiden; and the guimei hexagram is a red ag because it is mentioned only extremely rarely within inner alchemical discourse it would only be mentioned as part of a set of sixty or sixty four hexagrams. From comparing the phrase interlocking of tai and guimei with the name of the temple Jiaotai, I suspect that the temple s name itself was meant to be a double signi er of Yijing studies and sexual alchemy. The later editors of the gazetteer passage would have had no idea what Chen and Luo were talking about. It is possible that Luo Xizhu had been practicing sexual alchemy for his whole career, and not just at the end of it. In an essay on the rebuilding of the temple complex, Che Kezhao cites several important turning points in the ongoing feedback loop of fund raising, temple construction, temple fame and glory, and further fund raising. Important points include the enfeoment of founder Zhang Daoqing s parents, the post mortem ocial promotions of Zhang Daoqing and his disciples, Zhao Mengfu s essay, and Luo Xizhu s sojourn at the imperial court. In 1286, Tiemuer Buhua 266 put out a general call, and Luo Xizhu traveled to the palace gates at a gallop, accepting the duty of applying the talismans and ritual methods fufa . Xizhu also promoted in court the secrets that he had kept as part of his family transmission. Through this, the silken sounds of imperial commands descended in layers, and tax and corve requirements were dismissed. $+'& 267

#(! %*",

What were these family secrets that Luo Xizhu was teaching to the courtiers and/or the imperial clan? They could have been something like macrobiotic practices, or medicinal recipes, or prestidigitation, or . . . sexual cultivation. I suspect that the imperial largesse bestowed upon Qintian Ruiqing Gong during Luo Xizhu s time at court was thanks for Luo s instruction in the arts of the bedchamber, or even sexual alchemy. Extending this admittedly tenuous line of inference, the guesthouses that 266

This must be a confusing reference to Chengzong , Borjigin Temr ) r. 1294 1307. There was also a Tiemuer Buhua who lived 1286 1368.

267

Fu Xieding, Jiugong Shan zhi, 8.13a10 b27 7:205 6.

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Che Kezhao built at Ruiqing Gong could also have been lodging for V.I.P.s seeking the same sort of instruction. I am less condent in this latter supposition, though, because we should note that Ming Suchan was shocked to learn Chen Zhixus sexual teaching, thus, shocked even to consider that sexual alchemy could be the true dao. Luo Xizhus activities in his osite hall could have been kept secret from the monks at Ruiqing Gong, but I dont think Che Kezhao could have kept the secret from Ming Suchan if it were being practiced in guesthouses right beside the main temple. It seems that, when Luo rst sent his attendant Tingzhang to visit Chen in Hongzhou, he invited Chen to come to visit Jiaotai Hermitage. Chen promises: Another day, I will follow the river back to Jiujiang city, climb Mt. Jiugong, roam at leisure, pay a call at the Yulong Palace, and borrow from Jiaotai Hermitage , in order to cultivate my elixir. In setting the furnace and choosing the caldron, one meets the right person. I ought to see what can be seen, and encounter what I have heard of. I will consider this. %' &(# !$" *268 Because he speaks of borrowing something at Jiaotai Hermitage, I think Luo Xizhu was oering Chen the use of female partners at his Daoist temple. Were Daoist temples used as private sites for sexual alchemy? I have seen no account of this in the secondary literature, but it seems to have been so.269 We see that Chen and the monks from Mt. Jiugong contributed to each others reputations: Chens essay for Luo Xizhu brought glory to Jiaotai Hermitage, and the prefaces by Che Kezhao and Ming Suchan recommended Jindan dayao to curious readers. Also, the Ruiqing Gong may have funded the publication of Chens works, may have given Chen a place to stay, and may even have found alchemical partners for him. To extend my model of the threeway feedback loop of propagation, authority, and salvation, perhaps we could image a doubled, sixloop model, with Chens tripleloop and the tripleloop of the Daoists of Mt. Jiugong interconnected. 268

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.35b68 missing from DZ 1067. I read yi as su ).

269

Why would Chen need female partners any longer at this point, if he had gathered enough pharmaca during the twoyear period of preparation, 132931? Either 1 Chen actually did not need any more partners; 2 he actually had not completed his elixir during the period 132931; or 3 he wanted to practice an advanced form of cultivation. I discuss the evidence for this advanced cultivation in pp. 52223 chap. 5, §3.4.3.

125

§8.3, Literati Association Inner alchemy has always been a literary tradition, and, until recent times, a literati tradition. From the perspective of social history, one may argue that the shift from laboratory to inner alchemy in the Tang dynasty, and the popularity of inner alchemy in the Song, is linked to a general social shift from aristocratic society to gentry society.270 Due to advances in printing, the wider availability of education, and a general growth in population, the literati class grew dramatically in the Song, until only a small proportion of literate and educated men were able to nd employment in government service. Unable to pursue traditional literati careers on a national scale, they developed regional forms of higher culture, and enjoyed the arts of private life, including inner alchemy. As Skar says, adepts and their patrons used these new teachings . . . to add to the repertoire of literati association.271 Along with this new alchemy came new deities, a new type of supralocal transcendent being, such as Zhongli Quan, L Dongbin, or Liu Haichan who resembled the cultivated gentlemen he sought to attract.272 The aspect of literati association is evident in Chens transmission epistles to each of his disciples, both in the genre of the epistle itself, and in his descriptions of their meetings. For example, Chen often speaks of the character qualities of his disciples e.g., Ming Suchan, Deng Yanghao, Zhang Shihong, and Wang Shunmin , often mingling them with physiognomical observations e.g., Luo Xizhu . Chen speaks of enjoying conversation with his disciples e.g., Ming Suchan at the Square Jug Heaven , along with tea, alcohol, and meat, as in the following examples from epistles to Xu Renshou and Yu Shunshen , both laymen living on Mt. Jiugong: I climbed to the peak of Mt. Jiugong, and met with Squire Xu of LikeaFool Studio. . . . In the past, he stored tea and clay bowls in a little case. As soon as I arrived, he would have to provide me with tea ; whenever our drink of tea was done, we would have to sit. Or, we might take a stroll and look at the vista, or 270

Skar, Golden Elixir Alchemy, 14.

271


272


126

climb the mountain to view its excellences, gazing down on the cleansing ow of the springs, and thus gaining everything that this place was good for. Now, Mr. Nanshan, with his heart yearning for the Dao, has been inquiring into this a air of the golden elixir for some forty years. . . . Yet he did not know where to begin his practice. z e¢3§g=²8o 7(IBn (>M{Avz¬Dd]¤^[rJN#SX# mH"& 46R}273 Recently I saluted Yu Shunshen, Mr. Guangu Xin One Who Views the Ancients with His Mind . We met casually and hit it o , striking up an acquaintance with a single word. The fragrance of our meeting? was like a numinous plant or an orchid, and the avor was like smoky mist or aurora. Aside from conversing liberally, we drank freely. His style and appearance was free and unrestrained. . . . On 68 of the yihai year June 29, 1335 , with a pigling on the shoulder and caged geese, we met at his lodgings. We joined in drinking and o ered toasts back and forththis was truly a rare moment in a mans life, and so I wrote it down to show our similarities and di erences. Guangu Xin said, Since we share so many similarities they were born on the same year, day, and hour, and their names were also similar , you could bestow me with the dao . . . so our similarity could be moreorless complete. I replied, Okay, lets meet again next year. Asking about his increased diligence, I exhorted him, saying: When following the dao of the golden elixir, one must rst amass merit, and only then may one ask about it, otherwise one will take a tumble. At present you are tempted by scheming for prot, fettered by cares, buried in lusts, and sunk in anger and doubt. Seeking merit in this state of character would be slanderous; seeking the Dao like this would be dicult. !y:|*®%µwY@U«Jc¦0L 'WQk¯a - T°ÖNxpQ+ ~,)?51h#E0ut®%9J20¥l# #`sKqFJN0£$P4/mj "V(.¡6Z$
Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.27a9b5 missing from DZ 1067 .

274

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 12.11a13, 12b713a4. Man µ can be a loan for man , including the meaning casual, random.

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seeker, Wang Xiangweng .275 This essay could have been written by a Chan Buddhistand, in a sense, it was. Foulk speaks several levels of identication with Chan Buddhism: there were a few enlightened dharma heirs in Chan lineages, there were other Chan lineage holders, there were monks in Chan monasteries, and there were monastics or laypeople who had received precepts from a Chan master, and so on.276 Chen Zhixu was none of these. But the Chan school chanjia , chanmen , on the other hand, consisted of everyone who believed in the Chan lineage, gained inspiration from its lore, worshiped its patriarchs, and followed or supported the Chan masters who were its living representatives.277 Chen certainly possessed some aspects of this relationship to the Chan lineage, gaining inspiration from its lore and showing reverence to its patriarchs in his own way. I believe that the Ritual for Celebrating the Birthdays of the Two Transcendents, Zhong and L in DZ 1070 translated in chapter appendix 3 also reects the same atmosphere. Note that, when the ritual participants oer candles, incense, tea, ale, and owers, they make statements on the cosmic signicance of these oerings except the owers , but these statements are also exercises in literary appreciation. Look at the statement for oering tea: Now, as for teathere are the sparrows tongues of early spring, tender leaf tips trembling in the rain. We pour the crab eye water, and white owers oat on the surface of the water in the bowl. We pour water from the dragon spring, and a transcendent wind is aroused in Penglai. Lu Tong penetrated to the transcendents and spirits in six bowls; and Zhaozhou joined the buddha

nature with one cup. It rouses sleepy fellows, and brings illumination to drowsy transcendents. We bow and bow again, oering up tea.278 Although I have not undertaken a systematic comparison of this text with other ritual texts, I believe that this text is more literati than most. It is true that poetry has always been associated with ritual, such as ci poems on pacing the void buxu ci

from the early medieval period, or blue paper prayers qingci from the Tang dynasty, yet these two ritual poetic genres are more Daoist, dwelling on 275

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 15.1a36a3.

276


277


278

DZ 1070, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao liexian zhi 5b96a6.

128

the vastness of the cosmos more than on the virtues of tea.279 I believe that the ritual in DZ 1070 was written for a literati audience, rather than a strictly sacerdotal one. This is not a Quanzhen ritual, it is a literati ritual. While tea is an oering appropriate for many kinds of divinities in China, this is literati tea, tea described in a amboyantly literati language.280

§9, Conclusion In this chapter, in addition to introducing some basic data about Chens dates, the arc of his career, his area of activity, list of contacts, and general social and religious environment, I have discussed the following themes. The feedback loop.

According to the schema of seven perspectives laid out in

chapter 1, this chapter mainly represents a historical perspective; the next chapter will oer a structural/ institutional perspective. In chapter 3, I will discuss Chen from the perspective of conict sociology, developing a theory of elds and capital. In this chapter, I have provided background material for such a theoretical discussion. One concept from chapter 3 that I have already adumbrated in this chapter is Chens threeway feedback loop of propagation, authority, and salvation. According to this process, Chens transmission of his teachings, his struggle to build his authority, and his eventual salvation from the mortal condition, are all linked in a virtuous circle. I have suggested how this feedback loop worked within Chens own career. I have also suggested that this model may be applied, not only to the life of one man, but to the fortunes of a larger institution, such as Qintian Ruiqing Gong on Mt. Jiugong. Performative speech.

I have oered the ritual in DZ 1070 as an example of

279

Bokenkamp, The Pacing the Void Stanzas of the Lingpao Scriptures is a study of buxu ci; Liu Tsunyan, The Penetration of Taoism into the Ming NeoConfucianist Elite includes a section on qingci. 280

In chapter 1, we saw that Hugh Urban has found one aspect of esotericism to be the creation of a new social space or private sphere, which promises equality and liberation for all classes, while at the same time constructing new and more rigid hierarchies ; Urban, Elitism and Esotericism, 1. If we were to nd such a thing in Chens milieu, we would look for it here, in his literati association with disciples and kindred spirits. I dont think that Urbans description applies to Chens case, however.

129

performative speech as a secondary salvic e ect: Chen and his ritual participants perform enlightenment, perform a meeting with L Dongbin, or perform alchemical transmission. Patronage.

I have identied Tian Zhizhai and perhaps Luo Xizhu as patrons

Chen relied on to supply the requisites for his sexual alchemical workshop. I have also noted Chens source of patronage for spreading his books: the triple network of Zhang Shihong and perhaps his four friends in Jiujiang, and the temples at Mt. Jiugong and the Lu Mountains, with Wang Shunmin as the middleman bringing them all together. The marketplace of daos.

I also show Chen in a shakier semblance, as a

wandering teacher in a marketplace of daos, su ering derision in order to nd a few worthy disciples. This may reect a stage in Chens career before he developed his network, but I think that, in such a wide open marketplace, Chen would have continued to face the same sti competition in the marketplace of daos. Chens transmission epistles to his two most promising young disciples, Ming Suchan and Deng Yanghao, show just how many rivals he had for their trust. Conversion and mystical experience.

I have shown the powerful e ect Chen

had his on disciples, and how this was understood, by Chen and disciple alike e.g., Ming Suchan, in the terms of a discourse drawing equally from the Daode jing and the classics of Chan Buddhism. Actually, we cannot be certain how far or near the epistles and prefaces are from the experience. Following Steven Katz, I hold that their conversion experiences would not be pure, unmediated, mystical experience, which they would later describe in words drawn from religious tradition; rather, tradition would prep them, suggesting to them what experience to expect, and would give them practices to stimulate the experience. Thus, the use of traditional discourse to describe the experience would be a natural result rather than a forced translation of the experience into the straitjacket of language. These conversion events come to us in textual form. Someone who is optimistic that we may understand the conversions qua experience might say that the written and intertextual nature of the experiences may serve as a handle by which to grasp a

130

participant understanding of the event: just as we can read and attempt to embody the same texts they read, so we may approach their own understanding of their experience. A pessimist and skeptic might say that the textuality of the sources would pose an obstacle to understanding the experience: Chen Zhixu and Ming Suchan might have composed their texts without the intention of representing experience at all, but rather to repeat the proper phrases and attain a conventional and literary respect in the eyes of others. Chen and Ming could simply be using writing to manage mastership and enact enlightenment. A third position, which we might call postmodern with Faure as an example, or poststructuralist in Wuthnows terms,281 would advocate focusing on publiclyavailable texts and symbols rather than on subjective inner meaning or experience, or on surfaces instead of depthsnot because public surfaces are all the scholar can see, but because this is the only side of a person worth studying, the only aspect of human being with cashvalue for social thought. In this dissertation I waver between all three of these positions. Lineage and Quanzhen Daoism.

The question of Chen Zhixus relation to

Quanzhen Daoism is a very important one in the hagiography of Daoism, as I show through a survey of the literature. I attempt to dispel any remaining suggestion that Chen was a Quanzhen Daoist in any substantial sense. Not only did he fabricate his Quanzhen lineage, but he probably had not met many Quanzhen initiates or read many Quanzhen books: his Quanzhen Daoism was in name only. While he does represent a trend toward the fusion of the Northern and Southern lineages, he does not embody this trend substantially. Chen probably invented his Qingcheng master, and the two patriarchs standing behind his real master, Zhao Youqin. Chen may have gotten the idea of crafting a Quanzhen lineage for himself from his reading of a Quanzhen text, but it is just as likely that he got the idea from reading a genealogy by Xiao Tingzhi of the Southern Lineage of inner alchemy. Buddhism.

Chan Buddhism will be a continuing theme throughout the

dissertation. In this chapter, we saw Chen, Ming Suchan, and possibly Zhao Youqin 281

Wuthnow, Beyond the Problem of Meaning. Wuthnows poststructuralists include Foucault, Habermas, and Mary Douglas.

131

experiencing or performing Chanstyle enlightenment and/or describing it in Chan avored language. The traditional terms for the shock of satori serve them as well for describing their shock at discovering that the true dao is in fact sexual alchemy. Sometimes, Chen sees Daoism and Buddhism as fundamentally di erent, and sometimes he does not. In his speech to Deng Yanghao, Chen does not thematize Dengs erstwhile teachers as Buddhist or Daoist: they are all simply masters. Just as Chen manipulates Buddhist elements for his own purposes, so too can Chens material be manipulated according to Buddhist sympathies: a Chan lineage leading to L Dongbin was attached to Chens ritual genealogy by a later redactor, apparently based on a local Jiangxi story of Ls defeat at the hands of a Chan master.

132

Appendix 1 to Chapter 2, Places Chen Zhixu Is Known to Have Visited Presentday Yuandyn. Later placenames province placenames Above and below Anhui? Xuan Xuanzhou Xuancheng County ? Sitang , Guangxi Pingnan County Sitang Zhou

Citation

Notes

JDDY 6.55b2 Zhengli ed.

Met Tao Tangzuo.

Guizhou tongzhi 1741 32.13b

Travelled from Yelang to Sitang.

Guizhou

Yelang

Tongzi !% County

DZ 142, xu, 5b8; Guizhou tongzhi 1741 32.13b; Da Qing yitong zhi, j. 396

Guizhou

Sinan Sizhou

Wuchuan > County

Guizhou tongzhi 1741 24.5a Stayed with Tian Zhizhai.

Guizhou

Mt. Wansheng .), ./

In Wuchuan > County

Guizhou tongzhi 1741 Went there with Tian 32.13b; Da Qing yitong zhi, j. Zhizhai. 396

Guizhou

Qiongshui = County

Zhenyuan :3 County

DZ 142, xu, 5b8

Henan

West E *

Hubei

Jingnan $

Hubei

East E *

Hubei

Mt. Jiugong

In Tongshan ' County

Hunan Hunan Hunan

Yuanzhi Chenyang + Changsha

Zhijiang County Chenxi ,, Chenzhou

Changsha City

Hunan

On a side of the S. Marchmount 7

Mt. Heng 6, or Hengyang 6+ DZ 1067, 2.3a7, 9.3a7

Hunan? Jiangsu Jiangsu Jiangxi

Huojia 81 County, Nanyang + Commandery, Dengzhou 5

Nanping , Jiangling ( County Wuchang

Jingzhou 0 County? Or Mt. Heer < Guangfeng 49 or Yongfeng 9 Counties? Qinhuai #& Jiangning 2 County Jinling ( Jiangning County Luling ;( Jian

Jiangxi

Mt. Lu ;, Lu Fu ;

Mt. Lu

Jiangxi

Penjiang ?

Ruichang -, Jiujiang County

Jiangxi

Penpu ?"

Jiujiang City

Jiangxi?

The waterside at Jiang Jiangzhou Jiangzhou is Jiujiang City ? Or just the Yangtze?

133

DZ 142, xu, 5b9 DZ 142, xu, 5b9; DZ 1067, 15.5a3 DZ 142, xu, 5b9 DZ 1067, 12.1a9; JDDY 6.27a8 Zhengli ed.; Jiugong Shan zhi 4.6a8b1 DZ 142, xu, 5b8 DZ 142, xu, 5b8 DZ 142, xu, 5b9

Met Wang Xiangweng. Met Che Langu, Ming Suchan, Yu Guangu, Xu Renshou

First met Zhao Youqin and received teachings there.

JDDY 6.55a10 Zhengli ed. Met Tao Tangzuo. JDDY 6.30b1 Zhengli ed. JDDY 6.31b2 Zhengli ed. DZ 1067, 12.11a9

Met Li Tianlai. Met Zhang Shihong. Birthplace. Met Pan Taichu, Ouyang DZ 1067, 11.6a9, 12.8b8; Yuyuan, Ouyang Yutian, DZ 142, xu, 5b9 Zhou Caochuang. Met Wang Shunmin, Zhou DZ 1067, 11.3a5; JDDY Yunzhong, Zhou 6.17a6, 33b6, 66b10,Zhengli Caochuang, Zhang ed. Xingchu, Zhao Boyong. JDDY 6.36b7, 46b10 Met Xia Yanwen, Zhao Zhengli ed. Boyong. JDDY 6.55b1 Zhengli ed.

Met Tao Tangzuo.

Jiangxi Jiangxi

Old Hong Hongzhou , Nanchang Yuzhang Within Hongzhou or Jiujiang Jintang City?

Jiangxi

Zhongling

Jiangxi

Mt. Jinluo

Within Hongzhou

DZ 1067, 1.2b8, etc.

134

Met Tingzhang, Zhao Renqing, Deng Yanghao.

JDDY 6.42b10, 45a9 Met Zhao Boyong. Zhengli ed. JDDY 6.42b10a1 Zhengli Part of Chens circuit. ed.

Mt. Wansong , in Ganzhou DZ 91, xu, 5a12 City Southcentral Jiangxi ? JDDY 6.53b3 Zhengli ed.

Mt. Mei Mt. Qingcheng In Guan County Sichuan

Sichuan now Old Yu Chongqing Chongqing Yuzhou The marketplace Zhejiang? of Hu Huzhou Wuxing County ? Jiangxi?

JDDY 6.33b1, 40a4, 41b7, 42a1 Zhengli ed.

Wrote DZ 91 there, 1336. Met Zhenxi Haci. Chen never says he actually went there . . .

JDDY 6.17a5 Zhengli ed.

Met Zhou Yunzhong.

JDDY 6.55b1 Zhengli ed.

Met Tao Tangzuo.

Appendix 2 to Chapter 2, Chens Disciples and Acquaintances1

1

A Guizhou Province Tian Qi L, a.k.a. Zhizhai `, Marquis . Tian HanHmong, younger brother of Pacication Commissioner? B Hongzhou 4 or Yuzhang [H i.e., Nanchang /*, Jiangxi

Deng Yi X\, zi Yanghao Y= Spiritual seeker Studied with Youtan ]Z Pudu K0, and later, Old Man Huayang O?; friend of Zhang Shouqian B%^ Zhao Boyong UA 3 Aged almost 30; starting out on ocial career Is he the son of Zhao Renqing 4? Zhao Renqing U 8 4 Aged over 50; ocial for 30+ years Is he the father of Zhao Boyong 3? Also from Jiangxi: 5 Zhou Yunzhong & Aged ca. 40; NeoConfucian C Jiujiang , Jiangxi Wang Shunmin M, a.k.a. Bingtian Aged 52; teatransport ocial mingcao @R 6 Knows Che Kezhao 12, Ouyang Yuyuan 18; friend of Zhang Shihong 9 Zhang Xingchu B), Aged over 60; Confucian physician 7 Former disciple of Zhao Youqin Xia Yanwen 91 8 Aged over 50; physician, diviner D Jinling -G i.e., Jurong ;, near Nanjing, Jiangsu 2

Zhang Yifu BW , Shihong , Dingzhai (`, Gongbu F Aged 57 ; a high ocial 9 Friend of Li Tianlai 10, Wang Shunmin 6 presumably also Zhang Tailang, Wang Jiujiang, and Wang Jiage Li Tianlai ! $ Spiritual seeker; ocial? 10 Friend of Zhang Shihong 9, Zhang Tailang BT7, Wang Jiujiang , and Wang Jiage 3V E Mt. Jiugong :, Tongshan E County, Hubei 11

Ming Suchan +>a, Tiancong c Daoist monk

12

Che Kezhao #N, zi Langu #b", a.k.a. Shuke < Aged 5560? Daoist for 40+ years; abbot zhuchi 2 and superintendent tidian J_ of Ruiqing Gong Knows Wang Shunmin 6, knew Mou Pufu I deceased

1

DZ 1067, 11.1a2a Zhiyangzi 132931? 133134? O

JDDY 6.41a44a Nanyangzi Zhengli ed. /O JDDY 6.44a48a Zhiyangzi Zhengli ed. 6O JDDY 6.39a41a Fuyangzi Zhengli ed. O JDDY 6.15b18a Guyangzi Zhengli ed. "O

DZ 1067, 11.2b 6a

1334, 1335

Chuyangzi met in the ,O winter of 1335

JDDY 6.23a26a Xiyangzi O Zhengli ed. JDDY 6.35b39a Deyangzi Zhengli ed. CO

met 1341

met in 1335 after JDDY 6.30b32b meeting Wang Huiyangzi Zhengli ed.; DZ O Shunmin in 142, xu, 6a8a winter JDDY 6.29b30b Laiyangzi $O Zhengli ed.

DZ 1067, xu 1a 3b; 12.1a6a; JGSZ 91 error DZ 1067, 11.8a 12b; XFTY, xu, p. 461; JGSZ 9899, passim

Zongyang met 1335 zi 'O Biyangzi SO

met 1335?; preface 1337

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 517, citing a Daotong yuanliu QDP5 source unidentied, says that Chen transmitted the dao to Zhang Sanfeng B, styled Xuanxuan . I do not take this seriously.

135

13

14 15 16

17 18 19 20

Luo Xizhu O#, zi Jingshan <, hao Dongyun *B, daohao Mibian Xiansheng JP Aged 72; eminent Daoist leader Disciple: Tingzhang ,: Yu Shunshen @, a.k.a. Guangu S , Guangu Xin S Exactly Chens age; not a Daoist or an ocial Xu Renshou -E, hao Nanshan % of Ruyu Zhai CM Aged 5560? alchemst for 40+ years; Confucian ocial? Also from Hubei: Wang Xiangweng 80 from Jingnan 1% Buddhist layman and/or BuddhoDaoist spiritual seeker Dharmadescendant of Yingan K4, in the Linji lineage. F Lu mountains N, Jiangxi Pan Taichu H$ Abbot zhuchi ) of Taiping Xingguo Gong Ouyang Yuyuan GA7, a.k.a. Tianshu , Ziyuan ? Monk at Taiping Xingguo Gong Knows Wang Shunmin 6 Ouyang Yutian GA Friend of Zhou Caochuang 20 Zhou Caochuang 2> Exam candidate, ChengZhu NeoConfucian Friend of Ouyang Yutian 19

G From other places, or place unknown Zhenxi /. Zhenxi Haci? &: met at Mt. Mei 6, Jiangxi ? 21 Mongolian, NeoConfucian Descendent of Hacilu &I, son of Earl Fengyi Q Tao Tangzuo 9+: met at Mt. Heer R ?; Huzhou =, Zhejiang; Jiangzhou , Jiangxi; Xuanzhou ', Anhui 22 Aged over 70 Is Xiangfu his master? Zhang Yanwen 5( : location unknown 23 Spiritual seeker; clerk lowlevel? 24

Han Guoyi L3F: location unknown

25

Dingyangzi !A other names unknown Aged 24; seeking an ocial post

136

JDDY 6.32a35b Not Zhengli ed.; Chens JGSZ 97, passim disciple DZ 1067, 12.10b 13b JDDY 6.26a28a Zhengli ed. DZ 1067, 15.1a 6a

DZ 1067, 11.6a 8a

met 1335?

Xinyangzi met 1334? parti A ed June 29, 1335 Nanyangzi %A Not Chens disciple Yiyangzi A

met 1336 or before

DZ 1067, xu 4a Xuanyang met ca. 1335? 5a; 12.6a7b zi A preface of 1336 DZ 1067, 12.7b 10b

Fuyangzi ;A

same as above

Quanyang zi A

JDDY 6.51b55a Zhenyang February 3, 1343 Zhengli ed. zi /A JDDY 6.55a59a Dongyang 4th month, 1343 Zhengli ed. zi "A JDDY 6.28a29b Zhengli ed. JDDY 6.48a51b Zhengli ed. JDDY 6.57b58a Zhengli ed.

Nanyangzi %A Yiyangzi DA Dingyang zi !A

Appendix 3 to Chapter 2, Translation of DZ 1070 The Master of Highest Yangs Great Essentials of the Golden Elixir: Stream of Transcendents2 Shangyangzi jindan daoyao xianpai / %!

1a2 Composed by the Master of Highest Yang of the Scarlet Palace of the Purple Empyrean, Chen Zhixu, byname Guanwu ,;-&/ =*$.9. Stream of Transcendents xianpai !. The GreatUltimate precosmic Laozi 1a4 1 .3 At the beginning of the Great Ultimate,4 the Celestial Sovereign of Marvelous Nonbeing produced the three qi, the Mysterious, the Primal, and the Incipient xuan yuan shi . The Incipient Qi transformed, producing the precosmic Laozi. Since then, the precosmic Laozi has been born down below time after time, by means of the Mysterious Qi.5 +

1 " 5

2

This appendix is a complete translation of DZ 1070. In the Zhengtong daozang, this text is treated as a stand alone text or perhaps an appendix to DZ 1067, but it was originally a section within juan 8 of Jindan dayao. The Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao editions of Jindan dayao retain this original structure. 3 Note how Laozi is not Most High taishang , i.e., at the top of the hierarchy of divinities. Rather, his pre cosmic xiantian origin is emphasized. 4

This is when nonbeing was rst showing signs of a division into yin and yang.

5

The following list of fteen names is a list of Laozis successive incarnations in dierent prehistoric and historical eras. I have compared the sequence of names in a variety of texts: DZ 296, Lishi zhenxian tidao tongjian; DZ 770, Hunyuan shengji; Laozi bashiyi huatu 3 lost edition, quoted in T 2036, Fozu lidai tongzai, 49:713c; and T 2116, Bianwei lu, 52:755a, 756a; Laozi bashiyi huatu Hangzhou edition, quoted in Yoshioka, Dky to Bukky, 1:199284; DZ 774, Youlong zhuan; Shenxian zhuan (0 in Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, 19496; DZ 1205, Santian neijie jing; S. 2295, Laozi bianhua jing; Huahu jing #2 in DZ 1139, Sandong zhunang 9.6b7b; DZ 1437, Laozi Kaitian jing also DZ 1032, Yunji qiqian 2.9a14b; and DZ 1123 Yiqie jing yinyi miaomen youqi. For most of these I just looked at the chart in Kohn, God of the Dao, 218. I conclude that the lists closest to Chens list are the lists in Tidao tongjian, Hunyuan shengji, and the Taish edition of the Bashiyi huatu the top three items in the list above. The Tidao tongjian and Hunyuan shengji materials are extremely similar. Both may have been based on a lost Hunyuan shilu ) 4<, which Tidao tongjiao quotes. To ll out these gures hagiographies below, I rely on these two texts. Chens list and these other three lists are not identical, though. Tidao tongjian does not identify these gures as avatars of Laozi, and they follow the entry on the Yellow Emperor. This is an eccentric treatment of the material. It may have been a way of escaping the wrath of Buddhist censors, or it may be a holdover from a Songdynasty arrangement of the material. In the Song, the Yellow Emperor was said to be the imperial Zhao clans ancestor. Zhao Daoyi was a Song loyalist Tidao tongjian includes prefaces by two Song loyalists, Liu Zhenwen 7' 123297 and Deng Guangjian :86 12321303 , so this rst chapter on the Yellow Emperor may be a form of resistance to the Mongol conquest.

137

,, Celestial Master of a Myriad Methods;6. =$+%* ,7

The Great and Ancient Master;8 . *, Master of Dense Florescence; .9 P6 (*, Master of Great Attainment; .10 G, Master of Broad Attainment; .11 E 1L,12 Master Who Responds Freely; .13 JK R, Master of Red Essence; .14 1b1

C N@,

6

Wanfa Tianshi is called Tongxuan Tianshi 4+, a.k.a. Xuanzhong Da Fashi $+, in DZ 296, Tidao tongjian. Tongxuan Tianshi produced the Dongzhen ). section of the Daoist canon in the time of the Celestial August One tianhuang * the rst of the Three August Ones *, cosmogonic deities Tidao tongjian 2.1a . The Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu gives this name as Wantian Fashi =$+, a.k.a. Xuanzhong Fashi $+. Fashi $+, translated here as master of methods, could alternatively be translated as master of doctrine, master of cosmic law, or even master of dharma. 7

The following phrases in angle brackets are found in the the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds., but not in the DZ 1070 ed. 8

Yougu Da Xiansheng produced the Dongxuan ) section of the Daoist canon in the time of the Chthonic August One Dihuang * ; DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 2.1a. The Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu concurs. In Tidao tongjian, Yougu Da Xiansheng is followed by Pangu Xiansheng F, in the time of the Human August One Renhuang * . The Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu gives Jinque Dijun &M'. This third gure is missing from Chen Zhixus list. 9

Yuhuazi, a.k.a. Wanyua !6 or Tianyezi 5 , descended in the time of Fuxi QO = G , and transmitted the Tianhuang neiwen * , and writings on the River Chart Hetu #A and Eight Trigrams. He also wrote the Yuanyang jing 7> in thirtyfour rolls; DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 2.1b. The Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu is similar, but without details. This Yuanyang jing sounds like a Lingbao scripture found as DZ 334, P. 2336, P. 2450, S. 3016, and D4717, but these texts dont mention Yuhuazi, and do not have 34 juan. In Tidao tongjian, Yuhuazi is followed by Guangshouzi EB , who descended in the time of Zhurong 0H. The Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu concurs.

10 Dachengzi, a.k.a. Chuanyuzi 8I , descended in the time of Shen Nong /? and transmitted the Dihuang neiwen * , and taught the people how to grow vegetables instead of hunting. Some say he wrote the Taiyi yuanjing jing C> in thirtysix rolls; DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 2.2a. The Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu is similar, but without details. No Yuanjing jing is extant, but it is quoted briey several times in DZ 1032, Yunji qiqian 11.52b4, 64.2a3, 72.24a9 . It was a Lingbao scripture. 11 Guangchengzi taught selfcultivation to the Yellow Emperor; DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 2.2ab. The Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu is similar, but without details. His dialogues with the Yellow Emperor were quoted in all manner of Daoist texts. A Guangchengzi shul e E -2 is included in the Zangwai daoshu 3:7058 . 12

In the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao editions, the eraascriptions from Guangchengzi to Guyi Xiangsheng have been displaced, so Suiyingzi appears in the time of the Yellow Emperor an error instead of Shaohao correct . I have corrected this error to avoid confusion.

13

Suiyingzi, a.k.a. Taiji Xiansheng <, descended in the time of Shaohao 9 = " and preached the Zhuangjing jing 3;>; DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 2.3a. The Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu is similar.

14

Chijingzi preached the Weiyan jing :> in the time of Zhuanxu N@; DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 2.3a. The Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu is similar. No Weiyan jing is extant, but a Weiyan : in three scrolls is mentioned at DZ 1185, Baopuzi neipian 19.5a7.

138

Master of Records and Charts; .15 OF63 Master Who Has Completed His Task; .16 7=3 Master Yin Shou; .17 G@3 Master of Perfected Practice; .18 4,3 Master Who Bestows Guidelines; .19 N&?3 Master of the Ancient Burg.20

Jian Keng .21 WQ>5 Shang Rong.22 81 The precosmic Laozi, although he transformed and crossed over from one generation to the next, did not reveal any traces of his births. But then in the time of the eighteenth Shang king, Yangjia A, he took shelter as a fetus within the body of the Jade Maiden of Wondrous Mystery 15

Lutuzi descended in the time of Diku *V, and preached the Huangting jing B2C DZ 331, 332. He also transmitted talismans to Diku, who ascended to become a celestial deity; DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 2.3b4a. The Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu is similar, but without details.

16

Wuchengzi descended in the time of Tang Yao /=, and preached the Xuande jing IC. Some say that he wrote the Zhengshi xuanhua jing +!) C in forty rolls; DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 2.4a. The Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu gives this as the Xuanhua jing ) C. 17

Yinshouzi descended in the time of Yu Shun D@, and preached the Daode jing. He transmitted the dao to Pengzu >5. Some say he wrote the Tongxuan zhenyi jing <4C in seventy rolls, and the Daode jing in 1200 rolls !; DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 2.4a. The Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu is the same. No Tongxuan zhenyi jing is extant, but a text with a similar title, Wenzi tongxuan zhen jing <4C, is quoted in DZ 725, Daode zhenjing guangsheng yi, by Du Guangting 2 3.19b6, 30.20b8. The quotes are in Daode jingstyle language. 18

Zhenxingzi, a.k.a. Ningzhenzi U4, descended in the time of Xia Yu 0,, and transmitted many texts and talismans to Yu, including the Lingbao wufu TR; DZ 388, Taishang lingbao wufu xu. Some say he was called Ji Ziken #$, and wrote the Yuanshi jing "C in fortysix rolls, the Miaole jing JC in seventy rolls, and the Dewei jing I(C in thirty rolls; DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 2.4a5a. The Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu gives this as a Yuanshi jing in forty rolls. A Yuanshi jing is quoted at DZ 1032, Yunji qiqian 21.2a2, and Taiping yulan 9S 675.8a25. Might Miaole jing refer to DZ 1192, Dahui Jingci Miaole Tianzun shuo fude wusheng jing? 19 Xizezi descended in the time of Shang Tang 8?, and preached the Changsheng jing %C. The Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu says this too. Some say he was called Xishouzi NG or Jie ziken $, and that he wrote the Daoyuan jing E C in seventy rolls; DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 2.5ab. For translating his name, I take x N as a loan word for c L. 20

The name Guyi Xiansheng shares the character yi with Xieyizi P in DZ 296, Tidao tongjian; Huahu jing; Kaitian jing, yi Xiansheng with Wenyi Xiansheng in Shenxian zhuan. Xieyizi, a.k.a. Chijingzi H note that Chijingzi has already appeared in the list, descended and preached the Chijing jing HC. Xibo i.e., Zhou Wenwang employed him as an archivist Tidao tongjian 2.5b. The Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu is similar.

21

Jian Keng is the avoidancename hui M of Pengzu >5. Pengzu was best known for his longevity. He was said to have practiced gymnastics, sexual cultivation, etc., in order to live more than eight hundred years Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, 17286. It is unusual to see him listed as an avatar of Laozi. Jian Keng is not mentioned in the Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu. 22

Shang Rong was a worthy xianren K in the time of the last Shang king, Zhou - Shiji ., 55:2041a10f.. In the Huainanzi :', Shang Rong is said to have been Laozis teacher. He stuck out his tongue, and from this Laozi learned how to maintain his softness like the soft tongue; Huainan Honglie jijie, 1:237, j. 10. This may seem at odds with the claim here that Shang Rong is an avatar of Laozi, but elsewhere in the Jindan daoyao, Chen Zhixu himself says that Laozi took Shang Rong as his teacher 1.5a10b1, 16.9b12. Shang Rong is not mentioned in the Taish ed. Bashiyi huatu.

139

Xuanmiao Yun /=0 for eighty one years, only then being born. He descended and was born between 5:00 and 7:00 a.m. on February 8, 1241 .23 He pointed to a plum tree to indicate his surname. 4!7(( Y8.1Mm'{2ho`/=0C 6$1O 24LD &%*hc\@^J The Most High Laozi, the Mysterious Prime and Latter Day Sage. Z/"7 #I41t

25

< Gautama the Ancient Buddha> ,;

26

"Fi a

<kyamuni> b#;

"i AB

zb

"ri uK :! j "ri >

Qj

:i |S jv+ /]i WH

jw

ki GT

-jU

"i y

j

}ei '¡

j

:)d@

r9[28

P

V 29

Ri

lj30

5x1i

3?31

lN1i

!_g32

sS1i

pU33

fqEi

X34

<{i

n35

23

The text gives the date and time as the mao * hour on 225 in the gengchen LD year of the Shang King Wuding O .

24

The Jindan zhengli daquan ed. has $MO instead of $1O . Daozang jiyao ed. has O.

25

The following names in angle brackets are found in the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds., but not in the DZ 1070 ed. 26

Apparently, the person who compiled this Chan genealogy regarded Gautama and kyamuni as two dierent persons.

27

Usually named "~ instead of " and instead of y.

28

Qingyuan Xingsi d. 740 was a disciple of Huineng.

29

Nanyue Huairang 677744 was a disciple of Huineng.

30

Mazu Daoyi 70988 was a disciple of Nanyue Huairang.

31

Shitou Xiqian 70090 was a disciple of Qingyuan Xingsi.

32

Tianhuang Daowu 738819 was a disciple of Shitou Xiqian.

33

Longtan Chongxin dates unknown was a disciple of Tianhuang Daowu.

34

Deshan Xuanjian 782865 was a disciple of Longtan Chongxin.

35

Gantan Ziguo dates unknown was an heir of Deshan Xuanjian.

140

4 09G:

;/E36

3%

ZQ,37

3I#

*(38

2a1 The Great Sovereign of Eastern Florescence from the Purple Oce Cavern Heaven, Who Establishes the Ultimate and Assists the Primal. $= ARHO40

Zhongli Quan, Sovereign Lord of Correct Yang Who Spreads Awakening and Transmits the Dao. ? >1BG'SUY41 C6F L Yan, Sovereign Lord of Pure Yang Who Morally Transforms People through Admonition, the Trustworthy Right hand Aide. 5?X 'W42 "3FD 43

Liu Cao, Sea Toad Sovereign Lord Who Propagates the Dao and Is a Pure Right hand Aide. 2VG 5'LN44 ?3M)K45 Wang Zhe, Sovereign Lord of Redoubled Yang and Complete Perfection, Who Spreads Transformation. .?3> '[46 36 Xuefeng Yicun 822 908 was a disciple of Deshan Xuanjian, and master of Yunmen Wenyan @&7 864 949. 37

This must be Yantou Quanhuo ZQ 828 87, a disciple of Deshan Xuanjian and fellow of Xuefeng Yicun.

38

Xuanquan Yan, or Xuanquan Shanyan ( . 800s, was a disciple of Yantou Quanhuo.

39

This title was granted by Yuan Wuzong r. 1307 11 cf. DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan 13b10. Note that Donghuas title here, tiandi, is one level higher than his title as given in DZ 1069, Liexian zhi, where it is dijun. 40

Huanglong Huiji dates unknown was a disciple of both Yantou Quanhuo and Xuanquan Shanyan. T 2035, Fozu tongji, 49:390b4 14, records an encounter dialogue between Huanglong and L Dongbin. When passing Mt. Huanglong, L Dongbin attended a public assembly ascending to the hall, shangtang 8 at Huanglong Huijis monastery, and boasted about his inner elixir. When Huanglong mocked this, L Dongbin returned at night, and attempted to assassinate Huanglong with a hidden sword. Huanglong parried the blows with a single nger, then caused L to achieve enlightenment. Fozu tongji lists the source of this tale as Xianyuan yishi -P no longer extant?. This tale makes L Dongbin a disciple of Huanglong Huiji, with a lineage stretching back to Qingyuan Xingsi, Bodhidharma, and kyamuni. This Chan lineage leading up to L Dongbin was spliced into this chapter of Jindan dayao by a later redactor. It is not found in the DZ 1067 edition, and probably was not known to Chen Zhixu at all. L Dongbin is the butt of this story, which would contradict Chen Zhixus consistent veneration of L.

41

This version of Zhonglis title is a combination of two dierent titles granted by Yuan Wuzong and Yuan Shizu r. 1260 94; DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan 15a3. Chen Zhixu gives the correct up to date title granted by Yuan Wuzong on p. 4a4 below. 42

This is a combination of the titles from Yuan Shizu and Yuan Wuzong; DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan 16a10. Chen Zhixu gives the correct up to date title granted by Yuan Wuzong on p. 4a5 below.

43

This is Ge Hong F+ 283 343, the Master Who Embraces the Unhewn Baopuzi ".

44

This is an abbreviation of the title was granted by Yuan Wuzong; DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan 18a1. The correct title is given on p. 4a6 below.

45

Zheng Yin MT, by name Siyuan . 298 302, was a disciple of Ge Xuan, and was Ge Hongs master.

46

This title was granted by Yuan Shizu; DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan 23a3 4. The longer title granted by Yuan Wuzong occurs on p. 4a7 below.

141

c /:f_;47

Ma Yu, Perfected Lord of Cinnabar Yang Who Embraces the One and Maintains Nonaction. L) I28"=n48 JL>8>!U Tan Chuduan, Perfected Lord of Extended Perfection of Clouds and Water Who Holds Virtue Within. /8MkZ8"jCU49 &,86 Liu Chuxuan, Perfected Lord of Long Life Who Assists Transformation and Illuminates Virtue. / W+Z8"XC50 J^8d Qiu Chuji, Perfected Lord of Extended Spring, Who Develops the Dao and Takes Charge of the Teaching. /1TR?8"C`51 -8EP Hao Datong, Perfected Lord of Broad Tranquility Who Penetrates the Mysterious, Named Great Antiquity. YSD8"<D52 7h8i Wang Chuyi, Perfected Lord of Jade Yang Who Embodies the Mysterious and Saves Broadly. Lm 54 Y08"C53 l,8FB 2b1 Sun Buer, Perfected Lord of Purity Who Sounds the Depths of Chastity and Obeys the Dictates of Virtue. @bA3NZ8"455 JK8a$ 56 Song Youdao, Sire YellowHouse, the Perfected of Virtuous Radiance Who Parts the Clouds. O'( MZ8# R Li Jue, the Perfected of the Grand Void Who Perches in Perfection, Named Double Jade. KG 8g8%. Patriarch Zhang Mu, Master of Purple Redgem, with the Byname Junfan. 95Jh >["\ Master Who Follows the Middle, Zhao Youqin. ] Q V H 47

Lan Yangsu is mentioned by Li Jianyi %e* in DZ 245, Yuxizi danjing zhiyao, preface, 1a5b7. The story seems to be, not a common legend, but part of Lis personal family heritage. In the story, Lis ancestor meets Lan at the Southern Marchmount, and Lan does laugh long, so it appears Lis story is the locus classicus for this citation in Jindan dayao. Lan is said to be an associate of Liu Haichan X7i, who is one of the patron saints of Quanzhen Daoism and the Southern Lineage. 48

This title was granted by Yuan Shizu; DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan 26b45. A title closer to Yuan Wuzongs title occurs on p. 4a10 below. 49

This title was granted by Yuan Shizu; DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan 29a56. Yuan Wuzong granted a longer title, but a title even longer than Yuan Wuzongs title occurs on p. 4b1 below. It is a combination of Shizus and Wuzongs titles.

50

This title was granted by Yuan Shizu; DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan 31b56. The longer title granted by Yuan Wuzong occurs below on p. 4b2. 51

This title was granted by Yuan Shizu; DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan 35b1036a1. Yuan Wuzong granted a longer title, but a title even longer than Yuan Wuzongs title occurs on p. 4b3 below. Wang Yuyang should follow Qiu Chuji in the sequence, but in this text he follows Hao Datong. 52 This title was granted by Yuan Shizu; DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan 41a45. The longer title granted by Yuan Wuzong occurs below on p. 4b4. 53

This title was granted by Yuan Shizu; DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan 38b1039a1. The longer title granted by Yuan Wuzong occurs below on p. 4b5.

54

Peng Si 1185after 1251 was a disciple of Bai Yuchan.

55

This title was granted by Yuan Shizu; DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan 43a12. The longer title granted by Yuan Wuzong occurs below on p. 4b6.

56

Xiao Tingzhi . 1260 was a disciple of Peng Si.

142

Master of Highest Yang, Chen Zhixu. y Z }57

3a1 Ritual for Celebrating the Birthdays of the Two Transcendents Zhong and L. ? & jbI¡3M¨( .CO (1?&¤~jbI?3X©ajK
(d):rxp84%2B¢¡lp&R :oT§ onh £¥"]i7^;6

Sequence and rank of ritual participants; ritual actions; sprinkling and purifying; sending out the incense. AgRD¬u;\ We have respectfully heard that the season is the fourth month between late April and early June; it is proper that the pure and harmonious trigram of summers beginning be full, with six yang lines: the exact central moment of joyous and pure qian m , the dawn of the sagely masters birthdays. We extend the sincerity of people of afterdays who pay respects and oer congratulations. In one voice, with incense and owers, the pure assembly oers and requests the following. cd( J[`tGFzkm,b.*/V{~t w1\SH Raise the incense and owers, and make the request three times. \S We cautiously bow and make our request, to: W Most High Lord Lao, Pre cosmic Dao Ancestor; 0j9@ Former Sages and Transcendent Masters of the Three Teachings, Who Have Achieved the Dao;63 q 57 The Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds. have «> instead of Z} , and do not space out the last two names. 58

This section is found in the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds., but not in the DZ 1070 ed.

59

I.e., Luoyang Y. Luoyang was called the Eastern Capital during most periods. It was only called the Western Capital during the Song, as well as the Later Liang s 90723 and Later Jin e 93646 Dynasties. 60

This is probably Haizhou f4, in present day Donghai Pf County, Jiangsu Province, rather than the Hainingzhou in present day Zhejiang Province.

61

The text gives the date as 414 of Tianbao ¦ 14, an yiwei + year, the si hour.

62

In present day Jiujiang 8, Jiangxi Province. This place was called Dehua from the Southern Tang 93775 until the Ming Dynasty. 63 Presumably, Chen Zhixu means to include all important sages from Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism here, before concentrating on the Daoist sages in the rest of his list. Note that here, although the Three

143

+86 & Master Yin, Celestial Worthy of the Origin of the Text;64 1 Yin, the Perfected of Great Harmony;65 ( Du, the Perfected of the Great Ultimate;66 5( Peng, the Perfected of Great Clarity;67 '-2( Teachings are given equal status, Taishang Laojun also stands preeminent over all Three Teachings. Yet Taishang Laojun is not a universal deity: according to the Chinese way of referring to teachings by the name of their founders, Laozi or Taishang Laojun is synonymous with Daoism. This is a Daoist inclusivism. 64

Yin Xi 0, byname Gongwen , a.k.a. Wenshi Xiansheng the Master of the Origin of the Text of the Daode jing , or Guanyinzi ?. He was the keeper of the Hangu Pass Hangu Guan ?, in presentday Lingbao County A@<, Henan Province to whom Laozi transmitted the Daode jing before decamping for the West. This was during the reign of Zhou Kangwang * . ca. 1000 ? . During the reign of Zhou Zhaowang . c. 990970 ? , Yin Xi built a straw tower caolou ): in the Zhongnan mountains . near the Hangu Pass , and Zhou Muwang ; . ca. 970940 ? later rebuilt this tower into the TowerAbbey or TowerObservatory, Louguan :B . Because other parts of DZ 1070 resemble the DZ 296, Tidao tongjian, it is possible that Chen Zhixu would also have been familiar with the material contained in Yin Xis entry in Tidao tongjian 8.119. The entry contains a long description of the alchemical teachings that Laozi transmitted to Yin Xi. The use of Yijing symbolism in the teachings is reminiscent of the Cantong qi, yet the entry says Laozi transmitted Taiqing scriptures to Yin 8.6b46, 8.10a89 . Laozi also teaches Yin inner alchemy 8.7a9a , and nally gives him the Daode jing 8.11b1 . At the end of Yins training, Laozi ascends to Heaven, but promises to meet Yin after one thousand days in the market of the black goat qingyang zhi si 7 in Chengdu. Laozi is born into a local family, and transforms from the form of an infant into his godlike golden body to greet Yin 8.13a4f. , then bestows Yin with the title Wenshi Xiansheng, and a celestial oce. They then travel about the heavens and the holy isles and mountains, and nally a few lines about their converting the Western barbarians are mentioned 17b59 . DZ 954, Taishang hunyuan zhenlu, gives the same material at even greater length. Yin was mentioned throughout the history of Daoism. In 1233, a longlost text attributed to him was rediscovered and delivered to the Quanzhen master Yin Zhiping 11691251 , who had claimed Yin Xi as an ancestor. The longlost text was called Guanyinzi ?, and the rediscovered text is DZ 667, Wushang miaodao wenshi zhenjing.

65

Yin Gui $, byname Gongdu ", from Taiyuan %, was said to have been a disciple of Yin Xi, who transmitted about one hundred Daoist sciptures to him. After Yin Xi went to his heavenly reward, Yin Gui practiced together with Du Chong, abstained from grains and nourishing his qi. This stimulated the Most High Lord Lao to make him a transcendent ocial of Duyang Gong 4. He wandered about the human realm using his alchemical powers to succor the needy and sick: cf. his entries in DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 8.1921 and Shenxian zhuan Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, 34749 . Yin Guis link to Yin Xi may have been a later addition by the 5th c. Louguan Daoists? . Yin Gui is mentioned in Shangqing texts. According to later hagiographies, there is a Shangqing scripture which mentions Yin Gui as roaming the cosmos with other lofty Perfected this scripture is a Shangqing qiongwen dizhang -> !/; this may be DZ 55 =Robinet A.30 or DZ 129 . Yin Gui is also listed in Tao Hongjings DZ 167, Dongxuan lingbao zhenling weiye tu as Jiuku Zhenren Jun =Yin Gui ,#( =$ 16b3 . Elsewhere, Chen Zhixu refers to a lineage from Laozi to Yin Xi to Yin Gui. This is a lineage of the transmission of enlightenment, parallel to the Chan lineage BuddhaMahakasyapaAnanda, and to a Confucius Zengziother disciple lineage Jindan dayao, Daozang jiyao ed., 2.39a6b4 . 66

Du Chong , byname Xuanyi 3, from Haojing = in presentday Shaanxi, west of Xian heard of Yin Xis ascendence, then went to stay at the tower Yin Xi had built. He practiced together with Yin Gui. During this time, Zhao Muwang rebuilt into the tower into the TowerAbbey. After Du had dwelt at the TowerAbbey for over twenty years, Yin Xi, now a Perfected, returned to bestow Du with alchemical scriptures. In 922 , at the end of his mortal career, Du received a celestial post as Transcendent Monarch of Mt. Wangwu Wangwu Shan Xianwang . Cf. DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 9.1a2b.

67 Peng Zong 2, byname Faxian , from Pengcheng 2 presentday Tongshan 9 County, Jiangsu Province , was said to have been a disciple of Du Chong in the time of Zhou Muwang. Several hagiographical

144

3b1 Song, the Perfected of Great Clarity;68 50 Feng, the Perfected of the Western Marchmount;69 C70 Yao, the Perfected of the Mystic Continent;70 (%0 Zhou, the Perfected of the Eight Simplicities;71 20 Yin, the Perfected of Great Tenuity;72 :0 Wang, the Perfected of the Yellow Court;73 8- 0

entries portray him as a wonderworker. In 866 , at the end of his mortal career, he was given a transcendent position in charge of Chicheng Palace Chicheng Gong $, . Cf. DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 9.2b3b. His title is also written as Taiqing 5, the same as the next gure, Song Lun. 68

Song Lun *, byname Dexuan =, from Luoyang, was said to have entered the TowerAbbey Terrace in 857 , reciting the Daode jing and ingesting herbal drugs. After twenty years, Lord Lao was stimulated by his pure and sincere practice, and gave him talismans. He was known as a wonderworker and cosmic traveler. In 784 , at the end of his mortal career, he was given charge of the records of spirits and transcendents at the Central Marchmount, Mt. Song Songgao Shan 93 . Cf. DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 9.4a5a. 69

Feng Chang 7", byname Yanshou <, from Lishan G presentday Lintong D> County, Shaanxi Province , was said to have been hired as an archivist by Zhou Xuanwang & r. 827782 . He soon resigned his post and became a Daoist. He recited the Daode jing and ingested herbs for several years, stimulating the transcendent Lord Deng @ to descend and transmit holy scriptures. Later, Peng Zong, riding on a white tiger, descended to his chamber and transmitted more scriptures. Feng made a name for healing the sick and saving those in distress with his powers. In 751 , at the end of his mortal career, he was appointed as a Perfected of the Western Marchmount. Cf. DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 9.5b6b. The entry in DZ 956, Zhongnan Shan Shuojing Tai lidai zhenxian beiji 5a says Lord Deng transmitted the Huangting jing 8-; to him.

70

Yao Tan %, byname Yuantai /, from Pingyang 6 presentday Linfen D County, Shanxi Province , was said to have been employed by the lords of Jin . in the time of Zhou Pingwang r. 771720 . He recited the Daode jing and ingested pine resin for several decades, until a transcendent child bestowed him with charts and scriptures. In 575 , at the age of 210, he disappeared in a terric thunderstorm, and was appointed Xuanzhou Zhenren, in the White Water Palace Baishui Gong , . Cf. DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 9.6b8a. 71

Zhou Liang #, byname Taiyi /, from Taiyuan +, was said to have been a disciple of Yao Tan, who bestowed on him the Daode jing and the Basu zhen jing 20;. The Basu jing is a Shangqing scripture, text A.3. in Robinets analysis of the Shangqing corpus. He served the people by exorcising ghosts and fox spirits. He received honors from the Zhou prince. In 402 , at the end of his human career, he was appointed a Perfected of the Qinlong 1E Palace. Cf. DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 9.8a9a. His entry in DZ 956, Zhongnan Shan Shuojing Tai lidai zhenxian beiji 6a adds that he was a close companion of Zhou Lingwangs F r. 571544 son, and was renowned for his musical abilities. 72

Yin Cheng ?, byname Chumo B, from Fenyang 6 presentday Yangqu County 6, Shanxi Province , was said to have entered the Tower Abbey in 399 . Qin Shihuang as well as successive Han emperors donated lands to the Tower Abbey, and built buildings there and installed Daoists there in hopes of getting Laozi to return from the West and teach them secrets of immortality. Too many of the faithful came to worship, and so Yin changed his name to Lin and escaped into the wilds. On Mt. Emei he met Lord Song Song Lun? , who transmitted to him Sanhuang neiwen ) , and alchemical scriptures. The talismans gave him great magical powers. In 87 , at the age of more than 340, Taiwei Dijun :' made Yin into Taiwei Zhenren. Cf. DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 9.9a11a.

73

Wang Tan 4, byname Yangbo A, from Taiyuan, was said to have served the Latter Han, then when Empress L gained power in 188 he quit in protest, and went into retirement at the Tower Abbey, where he practiced qi circulation and breathing exercises. He was visited by transcendents who gave him secrets of transforming his form. In 124 , when he was ninetyone, Xiling Jinmu F! sent transcendent ocials to give him the title of Taiji Zhenren, and put him in charge of Dayou Gong , this may be Greater Cavern Heaven #2 . Cf. DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 9.11b12b.

145

Li, the Transcendent Minister of the Western Marchmount;74 . the Elder, Sire on the River;75 the Perfected, Master An Qi;76 $ the Perfected, Master Ma Ming;77

74

Li Yi / was said to have received his dao from Wang Tan and transmitted it and the Daode jing to Heshang Gong . Li was installed as Transcendent Minister of the Western Marchmount by the Celestial Sovereign Tiandi . Cf. DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 9.12b. His entry in DZ 956, Zhongnan Shan Shuojing Tai lidai zhenxian beiji 7b adds that his byname was Zhongfu ), and he came from Yingchuan - ? . He entered the Daoist vocation at the Tower Abbey when Han Wudi r. 14187 was installing new Daoists there. He encountered Yin Gui, and was promoted to Duyang Gong Yin Guis bureau , where he served a Transcendent Lord Wang Wang Xianjun . He ascended as Transcendent Minister of the Western Marchmount in 179 . But Li Zhongfu and Li Yi were probably generally not the same gure. Li Zhongfu has an entry in the Shenxian zhuan Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, 23032 , and is mentioned by Tao Hongjing in DZ 1016, Zhengao as being a transcendent Director of Destiny Siming ; 9.22a1 , the Perfected of the Central Marchmount 10.18b5 , and the master of Zuo Ci ' 12.3b1 . This Li Zhongfu has nothing to do with the Li Yi of either of the above TowerAbbeyrelated hagiographies. Note: Chen Zhixus lineage leaps from the TowerAbbey masters to Heshang Gong, but the TowerAbbey lineage in Zhongnan Shan Shuojing Tai lidai zhenxian beiji continues on for twentytwo more TowerAbbey gures before leaping to the Quanzhen master Yin Zhiping who wished to attach himself to the TowerAbbey lineage . 75

According to the Shenxian zhuan, Heshang Gong lived in a hut by the river and studied the Daode jing. Han Jingdi r. 157141 called him to court to consult him about the Daode jing, and when Heshang Gong would not come, went out to visit him in person DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 12.13f. and other texts say it was Han Wendi r. 180 157 . But Heshang Gong rejected the emperors authority over him, and humbled the emperor by levitating above him. The commentary to the Daode jing attributed to Heshang Gong may not be a Han commentary; it may date from between the 3rd c. and the Sui Dynasty. The standard received version of the Daode jing in fact comes from the edition of the Daode jing in the Heshang Gong commentary. DZ 770, Hunyuan shengji 7.1a45 says that Heshang Gong was an avatar of Laozi.

76 Master An Qis name is written as $ in later hagiographies, but the Liexian zhuan & gives his name as $. According to the Liexian zhuan, An was called to an interview with Qin Shihuang r. 221210 . They spoke for three days and nights. Qin Shihuang rewarded An handsomely, but An discarded the treasure, and disappeared, leaving a pair of red jade slippers and the message: Meet me in Penglai +% in a few years some texts give: in a thousand years . Qin Shihuang sent search parties out into the Eastern Sea, but they did not nd Penglai DZ 294, Liexian zhuan 2.14b; Kaltenmark, Le Liesien tchouan, 11518 . By some accounts, Heshang Gong taught Master An Qi Shiji 80.2436a12, quoted in DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 13.1b6; also, Gaoshi zhuan !& 2.10a . By another account, Master An Qi taught Master Ma Ming, who in turn taught Master Yin Chang Hunyuan shengji 7.1a56 . The AnMaYin lineage is relatively early. Pregadio notes that Tao Hongjing contested the usual attributed origin of the Taiqing teachings to Zuo Ci , and says that the Taiqing teachings came from the AnMaYin lineage Pregadio, Great Clarity, 145, citing Robinet, La Rvlation du Shangqing, 1:10, who cites DZ 300, Tao Huayang yinju neizhuan 2.6b . Putting the Shiji and Huanyuan shengji accounts together and discounting parts of each account discounting the Shiji lineage after An Qi and the Hunyuan shengji lineage after Yin Changsheng gives the HeshangAnMaYin sequence in Chen Zhixus list. These four gures also appear in sequencesignicantly followed by Wei Boyang in Tidao tongjian 12.13a13.15a. In Chen Zhixus list, the XuWei Cantong qi alchemical lineage directly follows the HeshangAnMaYin Taiqing alchemical lineage. 77 Master Ma Mings name is written as in most hagiographies, but the Shenxian zhuan gives his name as * Campany translates this as Master Horseneigh . According to the Shenxian zhuan, his name was originally He Junxian ,. He took Master An Qi for his teacher, and received two alchemical scriptures from him: the Grand Purity and the Gold Liquor Taiqing Jinye dan jing #"( . He lived for ve hundred years, then eventually ascended to Heaven; Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, 32526. Mas entries in DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 13.3a8b and DZ 1032, Yunji qiqian 106.15b21a include a long story about Ma following a female Perfected, who brought in An Qi Sheng to teach him. DZ 962, Wudang fudi zongzhen ji 2.21a, gives the alchemical

146

the Perfected, Yin Changsheng;78 ' the Perfected Xu Congshi;79 " ;

80

3)

teachings Ma received as Taiyang shendan )!. 78 Yin Changshengs name could be also be parsed as Yin Chang Sheng Master Yin Chang. According to the Shenxian zhuan, Yin came from a noble family, but having heard of Master Ma Ming, he served him as a servant. After ten years, Ma transmitted the Taiqing shendan jing $!- to Yin at Mt. Qingcheng Wudang fudi zongzhen ji 2.21a gives Taiyang shendan )! and Mt. Wudang. He travelled about performing good works for three hundred years before taking a full dose of the elixir and ascending to Heaven Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, 274 77. Yins entries in DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 13.8b 13a and DZ 1032, Yunji qiqian 106.21b 24b add detail to the same general story. Yin, together with An and Ma, were seen as part of a Taiqing alchemical lineage from early on ca. 3rd c. , Ge Hongs time or before. But in the Tang and Song, Yin was seen as part of a Cantong qi alchemical lineage. Three Tang or Songperiod works attributed to Yin Changsheng are included in the Zhengtong daozang: DZ 226, Ziyuan Jun shoudao chuanxin fa; DZ 904, Jinbi wuxianglei cantong qi; and DZ 999, Zhouyi cantong qi with Yins commentary. 79

No entry for Xu Congshi exists in any Daoist hagiographical work, but he is mentioned in writings about the Cantong qi. There is a tradition that, after Wei Boyang composed the Cantong qi, Xu Congshi was the rst recipient of the text. In his preface to DZ 1002, Zhouyi cantong qi fenzhang tongzhen yi, Peng Xiao says that Wei Boyang rst gave the text to Xu Congshi of Qingzhou preface, 1a9 10, who wrote an anonymous commentary to it. Later, in the time of Han Xiaohuandi / r. 146 67, Wei transmitted the text again, to Chunyu Shutong #%, whom we have to thank for spreading the text in the world preface, 1a9 b1. There is a tradition that Xu Congshis personal name was Jingxiu ( supposedly mentioned in Yu Yans 6 DZ 1005, Zhouyi cantong qi fahui, but I could not nd the reference; cf. Xiao Hanming and Guo Dongsheng, Zhouyi cantong qi yanjiu, 5. Guwen Cantong qi jianzhu, Zangwai daoshu, 6:254 70, is ascribed to Chen Jingxiu, named Congshi, of Eastern Han Qingzhou. Finally, at DZ 1016, Zhengao 12.8b3, we are told that Chunyu Shutong received the Cantong qi from Xu Congshi rather than from Wei Boyang himself. By another tradition, however, Xu Congshi composed the rst juan of the Cantong qi, and transmitted it to Wei Boyang. Wei composed the second juan, and transmitted both to Chunyu Shutong, who composed the third juan Xiao Hanming and Guo Dongsheng, Zhouyi cantong qi yanjiu, 27 28. Xiao and Guo say that this is closer to the truth, and that Peng Xiaos version of the lineage is erroneous ibid., 33. In other places in his writings, Chen Zhixu gives a YinXuWei sequence. In his Cantong qi commentary Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 3.40a5 6, Chen Zhixu cites Peng Xiaos preface to DZ 1002, Zhouyi cantong qi fenzhang tongzhen yi, which would make Wei the master and Xu the disciple see above. But in the same passage, immediately after citing Peng Xiao, Chen says that Weis initial teacher was Yin, but that Wei afterward took Xu as his teacher. And at DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 13.19a6 9, Chen says that Wei Boyang received the dao from Xu, wrote the Cantong qi to express this teaching, and passed it on to Fuyuan Tianshi 0 . Fuyuan Tianshi here must be an error for or variation on Fuhan Tianshi 0/ , i.e., Zhang Daoling. Chen also says this at DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 1.1a7. 80

Not much is known for sure about Wei Boyang. His birthyear has been given as 107 , but he may be a legendary gure. A Songdynasty source gives his personal name as Ao 2, his byname as Boyang, and his style name as Yunyazi * DZ 1017, Daoshu 34.1a1. He was said to have come from Shangyu . in Guiji ,1, and to have written the Zhouyi cantong qi, and a related text, the Wuxiang lei 4. Entries on Wei in the standard hagiographical collections repeat a story in which he takes an elixir and fakes his death in order to test the faith of three disciples. As mentioned in the above note, Peng Xiao says Wei was active in the reign of Han Huandi r. 146 67, and was linked with gures named Xu Congshi and Chunyu Shutong. Pregadio has shown that a text entitled Cantong qi was extant by at least 200 , and was probably composed and transmitted in southeastern China until it came into contact with alchemical and Shangqing teachings; Pregadio, The Early History of the Zhouyi cantong qi, 153 59. So the Han Dynasty is indeed an appropriate era for Wei Boyang and the Cantong qi whether in fact or legend. Links between Wei Boyang and Laozi have been proposed by some. Chen Xianwei &5+ . 1254 claims that Wei Boyang was a manifestation body huashen of Laozi; DZ 1007, Zhouyi cantong qi jie 2.20a7. Fukui Kjun suggests that Laozis byname Boyang ) gave rise to the legendary gure Wei Boyang; Fukui, A Study of Choui Tsantungchi.

147

;81 +(

the Great Ritual Master of the Three Heavens;82 the Great Ritual Master amidst the Mystic;83 81

I can nd nothing denite on this gure. By placing him after Wei Boyang in the list, Chen seems to be presenting him as a Handynasty follower of Wei. His monicker Jinbi also suggests the Jinbi jing ($, a text or textliation related to the Cantong qi. Chen Zhixu does not mention the name Liu Jinbi in his Jindan dayao, but at one point he does mention a Liu Yan +& as author of or commentator to a Longhu shangjing .$ Jindan dayao, Daozang jiyao ed., 2.21b9 . Longhu shangjing probably refers to the wellknown Longhu jing, which was closely related to the Cantong qi and Jinbi jing. So perhaps Jinbi is the byname of this Liu Yan. I have not been able to nd any other reference to Liu Yan. 82 This is Zhang Daoling. At DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 13.19a89, Chen says that Wei Boyang transmitted his dao to Fuyuan Tianshi * , i.e., Fuhan Tianshi *' , i.e., Zhang Daoling. In the DZ 1070 list, Liu Jinbi is interposed between Wei and Zhang, but I cannot say why. Zhang Daoling . 141 is remembered as the founder of the Celestial Master movement though some have argued that his grandson Zhang Lu , coopted the organization of an unrelated Zhang Xiu , and subsequently promoted Zhang Daoling posthumously as the founding Celestial Master; cf. Ren Jiyu, Zhonuo daojiao shi, rev. ed., 3738 . The hagiography of Zhang Daoling is more relevant to us than his actual historical identity. From the end of the Tang Dynasty, he was remembered as the founding patriarch of the Celestial Master lineage headquartered at Mt. Longhu in presentday Jiangsu. The new ritual traditions of the Song Dynasty, and popular religion down to today, remembered him as a demonqueller he is included as a patriarch of the Qingwei " tradition; cf. DZ 171, Qingwei xianpu 11a . Pregadio makes the important point that Zhang Daoling was remembered as an alchemist. The Shenxian zhuan emphasizes Zhangs knowledge of the Elixirs of the Nine Tripods of the Yellow Emperor Huangdi jiuding dan ! % , and also claims that Zhangs involvement with the Celestial Masters was really just a strategy for raising funds for his own alchemical endeavors Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, 350 . This early reinterpretation of Zhang Daolings activities as covers for laboratory alchemical work is quite reminiscent of Chen Zhixus view that the activities of sages of the past were all covers for another sort of alchemy. Pregadio argues that Shangqing Daoists remembered Zhang Daoling as a Taiqing alchemist in order to both acknowlege the Celestial Masters presence in the Jiangnan region and assert the preeminence of their own teachings over the Celestial Masters teachings; Pregadio, Great Clarity, 149. But Zhang Daoling was remembered as an alchemist long after the extinction of the Shangqing lineage. Pregadio notes that If one reads the account of Zhangs life in the fourteenthcentury DZ 1473 Lineage of the Han Celestial Masters Han tianshi jia with no knowledge of the crucial role that he played in the history of Daoism, one might indeed take that account to refer to an alchemist ; ibid., 151. It is primarily as an alchemist that Chen Zhixu remembers Zhang Daoling. Note that Zhang Daoling is followed by Wang Chang and Zhao Sheng in DZ 1070 list the intervening Xuanzhong Dafashi, who must be Wei Jie #, is perplexing . Wang Chang and Zhao Sheng are linked to Zhang Daoling in his persona as a master of esoteric methods especially alchemy . If Chen Zhixu were remembering Zhang Daoling primarily as the founder of a Daoist lineage, he would have included Zhangs son, grandson, and possibly even his wife in the list, rather than his disciples Wang and Zhao. In DZ 296, Tidao tongjian, the entries for Wang Chang and Zhao Sheng appear directly after Zhang Daolings entry, and before the entry for Zhang Lu, whereas in DZ 1473, Han Tianshi shijia, Wang and Zhao of course do not receive individual entries, as they do not belong to the Han clan. 83

This must be Wei Jie #, but I cannot imagine why Wei Jie would follow Zhang Daoling in Chens list. Wei Jie 496569 , byname Chuyuan , came from Duling near presentday Xian . He served successive Northern Wei 386534 emperors, beginning as a court calligrapher at the age of fourteen. He was permitted to go to Mt. Song to study under Master Zhao Jingtong )-. Zhao asked him to nd a better place to practice; Wei used divination to choose the south side of Mt. Hua, so he received the monicker Huayangzi . At Mt. Hua he ingested numinous drugs, and practiced the teachings of the Huangting jing !$. He possessed both Shangqing and Lingbao scriptures. He wrote commentaries to the Xisheng jing $ excerpted in DZ 726, Xisheng jing jizhu; cf. Kohn, Taoist Mystical Philosophy and other Daoist and Confucian texts, and also wrote a hagiography of Yin Gui. Zhou Wudi r. 56078 was pleased with him, and gave him the title Xuanzhong Dafashi. Cf. DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 29.4a5b. Note: Xuanzhong Dafashi is also a name for Taishang Laojun in his role as the teacher treasure shibao / , the great teacher of all Daoists cf. DZ 1032, Yunji qiqian 43.5a6; Tidao tongjian 23.4a7 .

148

the Perfected Wang of the Left Mystery;84 the Perfected Zhao of the Right Mystery;85 1 Ge the Old Transcendent Fellow of the Grand Ultimate;86 -/ the Grand Astrologer and Chief of Transcendents of the Nine Prefectures of China ' ;87 84

This is Wang Chang or Wang Zhang , Zhang Daolings rst foremost disciple. According to Zhang Daolings entry in Shenxian zhuan, Zhang only entrusted his most essential Nine Caldron jiuding 0 alchemical teachings to Wang, and later, Zhao. The Shenxian zhuan dwells on Zhangs testing of his disciples among who only Wang and Zhao displayed sucient tenacity and faith. In the end, Zhang and the two disciples ascend into the clouds together. Cf. Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, 35254. According to the DZ 296, Tidao tongjian entry 19.1a , Wang was the only one of Zhangs disciples from Shandong to accompany him to Mt. Yunjin +5 near presentday Luzhou 7, Sichuan Province . 85

This is Zhao Sheng 1, Zhang Daolings other foremost disciple. The Shenxian zhuan entry says that Zhang awaited Zhaos arrival in Sichuan, and gave Zhao seven trials, which he passed Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, 35254 . The DZ 296, Tidao tongjian entry 19.1b adds that Zhaos byname was Lutangzi )!. Wang Chang and Zhao Sheng are listed in Tao Hongjings DZ 167, Dongxuan lingbao zhenling weiye tu as Protectorgenerals of the Three Heavens Santian duhu '8 9a8 . They would seem to be demonquellers in Tao Hongjings pantheon. 86 This is Ge Xuan /, Ge Hongs greatuncle. In the Shenxian zhuan he is portrayed as a typical master of esoterica, and adept . . . who sees and controls spirits and is on familiar terms with local gods, who heals the sick, . . . and who seems most memorable for his illusional arts of multilocality and transformation . . . and his use of talismans Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, 158 . Campany notes that, although Ge Xuan transmits alchemical scriptures, he is not depicted as an alchemist in the Shenxian zhuan. Ge Xuan became even more important in the Lingbao scriptures, in which he is a highranking deied human, and a main vector for the transmission of teachings from the Lingbao deities to the human realm. Bokenkamp has argued that Ge Xuans exalted place in the Lingbao scriptures is a reaction on the part of Ge Chaofu /", the author of the early Lingbao scriptures, against earlier Shangqing revelations which had demoted Ge Xuan to the rank of a lowly earthbound spirit Bokenkamp, Sources of the Lingpao Scriptures, 44243 . According to Ges long entry in DZ 296, Tidao tongjian whole of j. 23 , his byname was Xiaoxian , and his ancestors had dwelt in Langye .% in presentday Shandong Province and served the Han Dynasty. At the age of fteen or sixteen, he was visited by the Perfected Xu Laile while strolling on Mt. Tiantai, and received all thirtyeight sections of the Lingbao scriptures, as well as ten types of zhailiturgy 23.3bf. . After serving his uncle Ge Mi /6 23.4f. , he chose Mt. Gezao 3 in presentday Qingjiang $ County, Jiangxi Province; in the late Tang this was considered to be the home mountain of the Lingbao lineage as a place to complete his alchemical procedures. However, his ancestors had killed many people in battle while serving the Han Dynasty, and Ge had rst to perform Lingbao liturgies to save their souls and remove this obstruction to his progress 23.5af. . The narrative abruptly shifts to recounting Ges magical feats from the Shenxian zhuan 23.7bf. , and his exchanges with the ruler of Wu Sun Quan 9, r. 22252 23.10b17a . Eventually he leaves the Wu ruler to work on his alchemical elixir with disciples in solitude. He tried to rene his elixir for a long time without success, leaving traces of his alchemical platforms in twentytwo dierent spots on dierent mountains 23.17b . He used to sing about how he was already sixty years old and had still to successfully complete his elixir 23.17b10 18a1 . Finally, on Dec. 24, 238 , the Most High three times bestowed Ge with titles and clothes of celestial oce as reward for his pains 23.18b420a . Ges elixir was nally ready at this time too, so he was able to ingest it and ascend to Heaven at the age of eightyone 23.21a9 . DZ 450, Taiji Ge Xiangong zhuan, covers the same material as the Tidao tongjian entry, often verbatim. It is important to know the content of the full, late Ge Xuan hagiography, because Chen Zhixu seems to have been aected by Ge Xuans story. A halfdozen times Chen cites Ges lament at being sixty years old and still unsuccessful at his elixir. For Chen, the moral of the story is that even a great transcendent like Ge had to face old age and failure, before nally succeeding, so lesser mortals should be prepared for the same or worse. 87

This is Xu Xun &2 some read 2 as Sun . The gure Xu Xun does not appear in Six Dynasties hagiography: his cult developed out of a local Jiangxi deity cult, only appearing within Daoism in the late Tang. Xu Xun 23992/374? , byname Jingzhi ,, a.k.a. Xu Jingyang &#*, lived in Yuzhang 4( a.k.a. Hongzhou , presentday Nanchang , Jiangxi Province . After his mortal career, he was worshiped locally as a healer and dragonqueller, later becoming seen on a national scale as a paragon of lial piety and patron of the Jingming

149

4a1 and the Eleven Perfected Lords, from Wu to Huang P9.88 We respectfully look for the transcendents to have the compassion to descend to their seats at this jiaofte. 5A R2fk4 We cautiously bow and make our request, to: h/^ The ancestral masters: :3 the Great Sovereign of Eastern Florescence from the Purple Oce Cavern Heaven , Who Establishes the Ultimate and Assists the Primal;89 *LK'ZS. Sovereign Lord Zhongli of Correct Yang Who Spreads Awakening, Transmits the Dao, and Sends down the Teachings; giNM6QV-?. Sovereign Lord of Pure Yang Who Develops Uprightness and Morally Transforms People through Admonition, the Trustworthy Righthand Aide; 29 Y, in j. 34 of Yulong ji. I summarize this Tidao tongjiao entry forthwith. As a youth, Xu heard that Wu Meng C had received marvelous prescriptions, and went to study from him. Wu taught him all he knew. Xu then visited the named mountains with Guo Pu Fa 276 324: Guos birthdate belies the story, settling at the Mt. Xiaoyao E[, south of Mt. West Xishan , 30 km from Nanchang 26.1b. In 280 he was made magistrate of Jingyang @N County in Shu U Commandery in presentday Zhijiang + County, Hubei Province; he was a paragon of virtue, and used his post to spread moral transformation among his subordinates and the people of the region. He also used his miraculous prescriptions to heal the sick in great numbers 26.2. When saw the Jin Dynasty was in decline and he decided to leave his post, the local people begged him not to leave 26.3. He received sword techniques from ve transcendent maidens, and went with Wu Meng to study under Chenmu b& later included in the Qingwei Daoist lineage 26.3b. She had been waiting for him to arrive for many years, and transmitted to him the Way of Filiality Xiaodao V, talismans, alchemical teachings, and Correct Unity Zhengyi demonquelling methods 26.4a, etc. She revealed to Xu and Wu their celestial titles Xus was Gaoming Dashi =)$, and told Wu to take Xu as his teacher 26.4b. Xu and Wu pursued a career of wonderworking and demon and dragonslaying, the site of each deed part of the XuXun cults sacred topography 26.5 14b. Finally, when Xu was 136 years old, transcendents descended to reward him for his years of magical healing and dragonslaying with a new celestial title and post of Jiuzhou Duxian Taishi Gaoming Dashi G =)$ 26.15a3. He left instructions for his eleven disciples, achieved the salvation of his ancestors, and arose to Heaven with his whole household, including chickens and dogs 26.16b3. The entry concludes with records of imperial edicts honoring Xu. There are several clues that Chen Zhixu knew this material, whether from Bai Yuchans text or other sources. He gives the same title for Xu Xun Jiuzhou Duxian Taishi, and the same list of eleven disciples see below. 88

These are Xu Xuns eleven disciples. The sequence and details of the eleven vary between dierent Xu Xun hagiographies. According to the chart on Akizuki, Chgoku kinsei dky, 35, a version of the list beginning with a gure named Wu and ending with a gure named Huang can be found in three texts: DZ 448, Xishan Xu Zhenjun bashiyi hua lu; DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 27.1 9; and Xiaoyao Shan qunxian zhuan E[T Q in j. 35 of Yulong ji, by Bai Yuchan, in DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu. The Tidao tongjian material seems to be an abridged copy of Bai Yuchans text, with added commentary. This list of eleven from Wu to Huang is: Wu Meng C, Chen Xun H_, Zhou Guang %], Zeng Heng J, Shi He 71, Gan Zhan `, Shi Cen 0", Peng Kang I#, Xu Lie n8, Zhongli Jia giW, Huang Renlan Pm. 89

For the following twelve Quanzhen patriarchs, see notes to their titles above, pp. 141 42, nn. 46 55.

150

SeaToad Sovereign Lord Who Illumines with Awakening, Propagates the Dao, and Is a Pure Right hand Aide; 4^#2M8& and Sovereign Lord of Redoubled Yang and Complete Perfection, Who Spreads Transformation and Assists the Ultimate. ,G5FRK& We respectfully look for the transcendents to have the compassion to descend to their seats at this jiaofte. 1<J-[_0 We cautiously bow and make our request, to: ](V The ancestral masters: 6/ Perfected Lord of Cinnabar Yang Who Embraces the One, Maintains Nonaction, and Disseminates Moral Transformation; G"A*@5 4b1 Perfected Lord of Extended Perfection of Clouds and Water and Dark Tranquility Who Concentrates His Spirit and Holds Virtue Within; %5H X7Y`T5 Perfected Lord of Long Life Who Assists Moral Transformation, Takes Mystery as Its Principle, and Illuminates Virtue; %R!#T5 Perfected Lord of Extended Spring, Who Develops the Dao, Makes Virtue Complete, Miraculously Transforms, and Illumines Response; %)OMT7#Z5 Perfected Lord of Broad Tranquility and the Marvelous Ultimate, Named Great Antiquity; SN? K 5 Perfected Lord of Jade Yang Who Embodies the Mysterious and Broadens Compassion and Disseminates Salvation; GbSJ@'5 Primal Lord of Purity and the Mysterious Void, Who Sounds the Depths of Chastity and Obeys the Dictates of Moral Transformation Qingjing Yuanzhen Xuanxu Shunhua Yuanjun =Y>+DI . We respectfully look for the transcendents to have the compassion to descend to their seats at this jiaofte. 1<J-[_0 We cautiously bow and make our request, to: ](V Perfected of Purple Yang, Who is Awakened to the Real, from Tiantai Tiantai Wuzhen Ziyang Zhenren 25BG5;90 Perfected of the Apricot Grove, of Halcyon Mystery;91 Q$5 Perfected of DaoRadiance, the Purple Worthy;92 MBW5 90

His surname was Zhang :, personal name Boduan P, byname Pingshu , later personal name Yongcheng , from Bead Street in Tiantai County aCE in presentday Zhejiang Province DZ 143, Ziyang zhenren wuzhen zhizhi xiangshuo sancheng miyao 15a. Zhang Boduan traditional dates 987 1082 was the author the Wuzhen pian 25U Stanzas on awakening to the real , the single most important inner alchemy text.

91

His surname was Shi , personal name Tai 3, byname Dezhi ;, stylenames Xinglin $ and Cuixuan Q , from Changzhou 9. Shi Tais dates are traditionally given as 1022 1158. He is said to helped get Zhang Boduan out of prison, and become his rst proper disciple. Cf. DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 49.12b 13b.

92

His surname was Xue \, personal names Daoguang M, Shi , and Daoyuan ML, byname Taiyuan .,

151

the MuddyPellet Perfected of the Halcyon Void;93 (RG6

5a1 and Perfected of Purple Purity from Hainan.94 5+F@6

We respectfully look for the transcendents to have the compassion to descend to their seats at this jiaofte. 4?K/]c3 We cautiously bow and make our request, to: _-X the ancestral masters: 72 Song, Sire YellowHouse, the Perfected Who Parts the Clouds; J%&I695 Li, the Perfected of the Grand Void; G6 Zhang, the Perfected of Purple Qiongjade; Fa<6 Preceptor Zhao, the Perfected of Following the Middle; ,2WMS6 Preceptor Liu, the Perfected of ValleyCloud. ,2IU696 HB697

We respectfully look for the transcendents all sages and worthies from the past to the present who have cultivated perfection, studied transcendenthood, and achieved the Dao to have the compassion to descend to their seats at this jiaofte. $ !06[=PNY4?K/]c3 We extend a notication and request, asking that the deities forgive the sully of stooping down to us. We oer up our hope that we might detain the deities, that they might accept our from Mt. Chickenfoot ` in presentday Shan : County, Henan Province , or possibly from Langzhou e area of presentday Langzhong e, Sichuan Province . He had once been a monk, with the dharmanames Zixian FY and Chan Master Piling .A\2. Xue Shis dates are traditionally given as 1078 1191. According to his entry in DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 49.13b 14b, he had practiced selfcultivation this is described in a mixture of neidan and Buddhist language and achieved a certain level of enlightenment as a Buddhist monk, before meeting Shi Xinglin in 1106, and received his neidan teachings, later returning to the lay life in order to practice neidan. 93

His surname was Chen B, personal name Nan L, byname Nanmu +, stylenames Cuixu RG and Niwan ( , from Whitewater Cli d in Boluo Cb County near presentday Huizhou D, Guangdong Province . Chen Nans dates are traditionally given as ? 1213. He received neidan teachings from Xue Shi, and also practiced apotropaic thunder rites. Cf. DZ 296, Tidao tongjian 49.15a 16b. 94

His surname was Bai originally Ge O , personal name Yuchan ^ originally Zhanggeng *# , bynames Ruhui >, Ziqing F@, Baisou 1, stylenames Haiqiongzi 5a , Hainan Weng 5+9, Qiongshan Daoren a P, Binan f;, Wuyi Sanren 'E, Shenxiao Sanli 8ZE, from Minqing T@ near presentday Fuzhou Q, Fujian Province or Qiongzhou a Hainan Province . Bai Yuchan 1194 1229 or his disciples are responsible for creating this Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir Jindan Nanzong ) +" . Chen Zhixu knew Bai Yuchans writings and teachings. 95

The Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds. omit &I from 72J%&I6, and add a separate entry for &I6. These editions do not recognize Huangfang Gong and Song Defang as being a single person. As is evident from numerous other places in Jindan dayao, Chen Zhixu did consider Huang Fanggong and Song Defang to be the same person, yet other authorities such as Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. Huang Youdao JP, 142, and Song Defang V, 153 do consider these to be two persons. The alternate wording of the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds. is clearly by a later hand. 96

I have not been able to discover any information about this gure. He may be Chen Zhixus second teacher, from Qingcheng.

97

Added in the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds.

152

reverence and wish for refuge. Today we encounter L Chunyangs auspicious dawn birthday, and meagerly extend our dullards sincerity in paying our congratulations. .7ri98+¥*;dfc[e%n(z9 Taking up our candles, we say: Now, the candles one point of numinous radiance has not been lacking in the past or today. Throughout the whole world, it pervades places both visible and inaccessible 5b1. The ignorant believe that it is the ame that is transmitted. Those who are in the know say: the wisdom of the inherent nature xinghui @ causes the dark chamber of ignorant consciousness to sprout a heart mind and know awe, and to return the radiance. We trust that there is a path to Heaven, and we can approach it; that we can transcend the mundane and enter into the holy. We bow and bow again, oering up birthday shou candles. £F§®+$XOYuEF W>EFT@=µ N4E¬Kj+Mm34#} -R£ Ritual action. D< Taking up our incense sticks, we say: Now, as for incense, we venture to say yue that one stick of it has been standing forth since the beginning of greatest antiquity. Why would it have waited for after the time of the Three August Ones99 Sanhuang Z ? And through how many kalpas has its fragrance owed? Inferior fools have noses but have not smelt it, while superior gentlemen smell the fragrant and distinguish it from the malodorous. This is like the way that the holy master L Dongbin? rubbed earth between nger and thumb, leaving a fragrance everywhere. At pains we can call this virtue; everyone should receive and apply it. We bow and bow again, oering up birthday shou incense. ^Fp$JCa"_P ZQw8VG 34|^4 g1`q tt±I 4o/?'-R^ Ritual action. D<100 Taking up our tea, we say: Now, as for teathere are the sparrows tongues of early spring, tender leaf tips qiangqi ¨² trembling in the rain huyu ´L . We pour the crab eye water,101 and white owers oat on the surface of the water in the bowl. We pour water from the dragon spring, and a transcendent wind is aroused in Penglai. Lu Tong102 ©¯ 6a1 penetrated to the transcendents and spirits in six bowls; and Zhaozhou103 2 joined the buddha nature with one cup. It rouses sleepy fellows, and brings illumination to drowsy transcendents. We bow and bow again, oering up tea. hF,Sv5´L¨²«s{)HbA\k¢U!]A¡¯ 4u!®2 4l6@yx~Bª¤!-Rh 98

The Jindan zhengli daquan ed. has ° instead of i , and Daozang jiyao ed. has :. Neither of these make sense here. 99

The Celestial, Chthonic, and Human August Ones Tianhuang Z, Dihuang 0Z, Renhuang Z were rulers at the beginning of history. By tracing his lineage back to Wanfa Tianshi D` and Yougu Da Xiansheng 3$,& in 1a89 above, Chen Zhixu has implicitly traced his lineage back to these times.

100

The DZ 1070 ed. omits D<.

101

Water just coming to a boil, with tiny bubbles the size of crabs eyes.

102

A disaected Tang Dynasty poet who wrote poems about tea. He was praised by Han Yu ¦ 768824 . Cf. Zang Lihe, Zhonuo gujin renming da cidian, 1589.

103

Zhaozhou Congshen 2p³ 778897 , a Chan Buddhist master from the Tang Dynasty, and subject of many later Zen kan. This seems to be a kan in which Zhaozhous every response is Go have some tea Shih Chao

chou, The Recorded Saying of Zen Master Joshu, 146 .

153

Ritual action. 4/104

Taking up our ale, we say: Now, ale is sweet dew sent down from the heavens, or sweet water welling up from the earth. Those who drink claried butter of superior avor are ever alert and never intoxicated. Those who get the dregs of the sages can thereby revert from existence to nonexistence. If one sucks up the West River in one mouthful,105 ones appearance will never age. One can penetrate to the great Dao with three cups, and ones dharmabody will have a long existence. We bow and bow again, o ering up birthday shou \ ale. E59m Ml?1poR5Gb&N`WdJH "&fN +($Ai %@K Y4n7!=P\E Ritual actions. 4/ Chant the HeartSeal Scripture and the Merit Scripture of Thirty Items. 106 aV8_V Those who have drawn up ju 0 memorials o ering congratulations ought to cautiously kneel and present them. 0"Ô6gUX: Memorial of Congratulation for Ancestral Master Zhongli Quan. ehDBO6 The disciple of the great Dao named insert name here, on the fteenth day of this month,107 has reverently arrived at

Y->CL

6b1 this day fraught with the auspicious, the day of Ancestral Master Zhongli, the Sovereign Lord of Correct Yang. In anticipation of this day, on the fourteenth, I reverently presented i.e., wrote out my memorial o ering congratulations: DBehQ;*ST .[.g26Ô5 Crouching on the righthand side,108 I proclaim: The Dao is revered and De _ is valued: I look upward along the cord of a myriad generations of masters. Yin is extinguished and yang is pure: the birthday shou \ morn of the exalted transcendent has arrived. The moon is full in the heavens, and in the human realm there is an auspicious haze. I kowtow, bow and bow again, and reverently make wei I the following statement: 104

The DZ 1070 ed. omits 4/.

105

Mazu Daoyi FDY 70988 once answered Layman Pang Yun jk3 d. 808 : When you can swallow the whole water of the Western River in one gulp, I will tell you <#+]($)#Y. Cf. Wudeng huiyuan, Zhonghua shuju ed., 3:186; trans. by Ogata, in Tao Yuan, The Transmission of the Lamp, 293. For Chen Zhixu, West River is correlated with both agent metal in the west as the outer pharmacon of lead, Pb, qian Z, kan , and agent water the female partners uid as the source of the pharmacon . According to the usual production sequence of the ve agents, metal produces water, but according to the alchemical sequence, interlaced waxing of the ve agents wuxing cuowang 'c , it is water which produces metal. This also represents the appearance of fresh yang metal out of pure yin water . 106

The HeartSeal Scripture is DZ 13, Gaoshang Yuhuang xinyin jing, or something like it. This short neidan text is still recited daily by Quanzhen monks. The Merit Scripture of Thirty Items is unidentied, but likely another text used in daily liturgy, perhaps with precepts. 107

Zhongli Quans birthday is on the fteenth day of the fourth lunar month.

108

The martial side, and yin side, thus the more humble of the two sides?

154

E:M<C,P9J>1L4H @ BR=(G+& -7 Ancestral Master, the Sovereign Lord Zhongli of Correct Yang Who Spreads Awakening, Transmits the Dao, and Sends down the Teachings, is his own origin and root, preceding Heaven and Earth. He takes qian 5 and kun as the caldron, renes kan and reverts li O , nabs the crow and rabbit as the ingredients, subdues the dragon and the tiger. His dao surpasses the Great Ultimate Taiji A , and his grace nourishes the company of living things. Continuing on and on for kalpa after kalpaall people receive salvation. From L Chunyang, Liu Haichan, and Wang Chongyang who bestow the transmission upon the array of later sages, mind after mindto Ma Danyang, Qiu Changchun, and Zhang Ziyangs supplying aid, and on, they serve as 7a1 father after father for the masses. Their merit is not something that can be extolled in words; their cohumanity ren can be compared to that of cosmic creation and transformation zaohua 8 itself. I am merely mundane bones,109 and do not yet possess a numinous perfected heart mind. In the dao I have been fortunate enough to receive the teachers instructions. The xuan110 and pin are the root of heaven and earththe details of this are in the writings on the elixir. Essence jing K and qi are the roots of yin and yang. The oreate pool huachi ; and the spirit water shenshui 0 are styled qians gold qianjin 5" and earths caldron tufu 2 .111 Flowing pearl liuzhu )/ is a name for woods mercury mugong .112 The two lunar quarters xian 113 unite their substances, and for ten months you bear the fetus. The vital thing is to make marvelous use of a split

second. The hardest thing is to be truly tranquil and respond to things. How much the more dicult is the great danger of what is referred to by the phrase supreme treasure of the rst passing shoujing zhibao +DQ , and the deep fear from when the virile tiger reduces its passion xionghu guaqing ?!I6 !114 For these reasons, I pay my respects and oer congratulations, furthermore discoursing on the dangers and diculties. I look up in expectation that you, in compassionate mercy will look down with pity on my petty lowliness, and give me relief with your expedient means, helping me to

109

This humilic statement likely means both I am just an lowly old bag of bones and I do not possess the bone physiognomy guxiang 3* which would mark me as transcendent material. 110 The term xuanpin originally comes from Daode jing, chapter 6: The gateway of the mysterious female is called the root of heaven and earth #'N .. Some texts read xuan and pin physiologically as a denite entities, and some read them as mystical or indenite entities. For Chen Zhixu, they always retain the meaning of the male and female sex organs, whether foregrounded or in the background. 111

According to Chen Zhixu, spirit water is a cover name for mercury gong , , and oreate pool is a cover

name for lead qian F, ; DZ 1069, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao liexian zhi 9b6, 10a10. Qians gold is a cover name for the center yang line yao within lead; DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 13.16b23. The earth caldron could be the outer caldron the female sex organ , or the inner caldron the Yellow Court .

112

Flowing pearl is quicksilver, an aspect of mercury. Woods mercury is just mercury emphasized as coming from the east the direction corresponding to wood . They are both correlates of the male adepts seminal essence. 113

Xian means a line stetching across a circle, usually the circle of the moon. The fore chord qianxian $ and after chord houxian % are lines representing the yin yang light dark ratios of the moon on the eighth and twenty third days of the month, respectively at the ends of the rst and third quarters ; Wang Mu, Wuzhen pian qianjie, 82. Uniting the two chords would mean gathering each of the two ingredients at the rst and third quarters; yet in pp. 50913 chap. 5, §3.3.2.2 , I argue that this is a theoretical point rather than a practical instruction for Chen. 114

Supreme treasure of the rst passing is the female partners pharmacon at menarche. See pp. 45456 chap. 5, §3.1.2.3 . The erce tiger is usually the female sex organ, in its threatening aspect as a robber of the male adepts seminal life essence; see pp. 38990 below.

155

enter the chamber without demonic hallucinations.115 You transcendents live as long as the sun and moon, so why would you depend on eulogies from the mundane, dusty world? In a future year, our work and deeds will be complete, relying on our craftsmenmasters casting of us. Secondly, I wish that superior gentlemen, worthies, and the virtuous will all become enlightened to the ultimate Dao; and that errant fools, liars, 7b1 and absurd men will repent and develop trust; that claried milk116 will ow in rivers, and claried butter will anoint the crown;117 that the earth will all become cyan jade, and the ground will everywhere become gold. I risk imposing myself upon the masters and Perfected, trembling and sweating unbearably. I have cautiously drawn up ju ` a memorial oering congratulations, and make them heard. With sincere glee and joy, I kowtow, bow and bow again, and cautiously speak. ðò-½¼ÀÌu©wRL+L66?V¥bÒçïSîòs^ô Wë4lÌºÄĄÆ1QQoA ax3 ½õ½ù¨z9Ç ×½o|·½§í%]«$$(pZö)ÑÝ¬ā~¤,ÿ fÌcÞF.J?É@Û}½+¸I#È ¥n £}<"X_d=þ!óekT2é°÷kêìjiÅM øZ;K¾lÖ¦ª>´¹C;÷5æÃ²ĂÁäÝB[f r v%µü'!o PyÓÑ&D(NØ7\:®EG³ å YgMÌ¢Âßâ¶q»ÏEhĆąú¯Ù/?Î¿nt±è Hñ`mÚ¹%Ü~ÊćÊĀÐá8{ñZ

Fill in year, month, day. Congratulatory memorial of disciple of the great Dao ll in name here. D!ÌU~¹m Memorial of Congratulation for the Birthday shou Ô of Ancestral Master L Chunyang. ½¹Ôm The disciple of the great Dao named insert name here, on the fourteenth day of this month,118 has reverently arrived at this day when ÌU~!*Í the Ancestral Master, the Sovereign Lord of Pure Yang, descended to be born. I have cautiously drawn up ju ` a memorial, and reverently pay my respects and extend congratulations. Crouching on the righthand side, I proclaim: 115

That is, practice meditation without the maraphenomena, or hallucinations, known to aict meditators. For a list of ten maras, see the chapter Lun monan ãü÷ in Zhongl chuandao ji, in DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu 16.22b 26b; translated in Wong, The Tao of Health, Longevity, and Immortality, 135 41. 116 Eskildsen translates sulao »Ï as koumiss, an alcohol made of fermented mares milk. I cannot discover an English equivalent from the entry in Hanyu da cidian, s.v. sulao »Ï. It is some food made from the essence of the milk of mares or ewes, but does not seem to be alcohol. In Qingdynasty Beijing, it was commonly mixed with sugar. Foguang da cidian, s.v. tihu guanding Ćąú¯, 6322, says that tihu is a kind of rened sulao, so it seems sulao is a more general term for milk products which are partially rened, but not as rened as ghee tihu. 117

The term tihu guanding looks Tantric, but I have only found it in three Chinese Buddhist texts: two Chan texts, T 1999, Mian heshang yulu, 47:969a9, and ZZ 1318, Xukan guzun suyu yao, 119:32a18; and one Dunhuang text ?, T 2859, Huiyuan waizhuan, 85:1316b24. It seems not to occur in any Tantric texts in the Taish canon. The term shows up in some later inneralchemical texts. It has obvious inneralchemical connotations, but the inneralchemical texts are merely quoting what seems to have become a common Chinese phrase, tihu guanding, ganlu saxin Ćąú¯0ûý, meaning cool and refreshing. Hanyu da cidian, s.v. tihu guanding, quotes this phrase from both Honglou meng àÕ and Shuihu zhuan #ăÀ. Some inneralchemical texts quote it from the the Xiyou ji OË¡. How did this Indian and possibly Tantric phrase make its way into colloquial Chinese? 118 L Dongbins birthday is on the fourteenth of the fourth lunar month, one day before Zhongli Quans.

156

4/5<)-H!J"(07;' The season has arrived at the point of pure yang, and tonight is the rst night of the full moon. In the heavens, primal qi has gathered, and meritorious deeds have been performed in full over many years. The cosmos is full of joy, and transcendents and mortals express birthday shou B wishes. I kowtow, bow and bow again, and reverently make wei 6 the following statement: @%5< >&#I2D&$MP EB+A.*06 8a1 O Sovereign Lord of Pure Yang Who Develops Uprightness and Morally Transforms People through Admonition, Trustworthy Right hand Aide 5
119

The last three lines are a paraphrase of Daode jing, chapter 1.

120

This refers to a poem attributed to L Dongbin. I found the untitled poem in an electronic le, but was not able to locate it in Lzi quanshu. Green snake means mercury from the east = green; snake = dragon . The lyric poem seems to mean 1 L was rening his mercury as he traveled past Dongting Lake, in present day Hunan and Hubei Provinces; and 2 L was rening his seminal essence beside the water source, the female sex organ. 121 This refers to another poem attributed to L, entitled Ti Huanghe Lou Shi Zhao K=NG?. I found the poem in an electronic le, but was not able to locate it in Lzi quanshu. Huanghe Lou was a famous storeyed pavilion, in what is now Wuhan, Hubei Province. This also refers to foreplay: the male adepts ute is handled probably by the female partner while he dwells in private seclusion in an urban setting the greater recluse hides in the marketplace . 122

These must all be episodes from L Dongbins hagiography. They are also playful references to the sex organs.

123

The authentic lineage of Dao and De could mean a virtuous lineage, the transmission of Dao and De, or the transmission of the Daode jing. I read zi as you L transmitted his teachings through both the Northern Lineage of the Golden Elixir through Wang Chongyang , and the Southern Lineage through Zhang Boduan . Wang Chongyang was said to have received teachings from L Dongbin, and Zhang Ziyang was said to have received teachings from the transcendent Liu Haichan, whose own teacher had been L Dongbin. 124

The theme that it is dicult to recognize L Dongbin in disguise, and that only those worthy of receiving his teachings will be able to recognize him, was occurs often in L Dongbin hagiography. According to Katz, in DZ 305, Chunyang dijun shenhua miaotong ji, compiled by Miao Shanshi ,91 . 12881324 , 43 percent of the stories involve the theme of recognition of the transcendent by mortals; Paul Katz, Images of the Immortal, 173.

125

See p. 155n110 above.

157

of qians gold. 126 First one must be clear about the guest and the host. 127 Furthermore, one transports the half a catty of woods mercury, matching the yin and the yang.128 One renes them into a single lump, and keeps watch on them for a full ten months. One calmly listens to the keening of the dragon and the roar of the tiger, and must not allow the watersupply go dry or the re to grow cold. If one has been able to remain at this stage, one must act with great trepidation. Ones mind is so occupied with it that one does not know how to proceed; one is so anxious that one forgets mealtimes. If one is fortunate enough to receive pity a teachers guidance, one can harvest and ingest a spatulaful daogui H . You have enlivened this declining body, and made me familiar with the retiming. Although I have naught with which to repay you, I rely on your fondness for life

i.e., for helping people live longer. In this fortunate moment in a ourishing season in late spring, I have even joyously arrived at this auspicious morn. I dare to state my mundane sincerity, and pay my respects from afar to your transcendent deportment xianfeng 2 . I believe that you, revered one, dwell above in the celestial supervisory department jiusi }8 , and I think that you extend pity down to us beginning students. Although I am not making use of eulogizing from the everyday human realm, I am relying on this other form of address to inform you of my heartfelt feelings. I hope that there will be hidden scrutinizing ? yin xiang Â of this mortal body, and it will soon receive substances and pharmaca.129 I will gather the the initial crossing of the ultimate treasure. Faultless inside and outside, I will rene the 9a1 precosmic aspect of the One qi. Completely moral from beginning to end, I will no longer

encounter demonic obstacles. When I meet the numinous spirit of the heartmind130 xin ling " Ĝ , I will then begin swiftly cultivating. Now, who would not want to be given relief through expedient means, and to have their a airs easily succeed? Secondly, I wish that superior gentlemen, worthies, and the virtuous will all become enlightened to the ultimate Dao. The rest is same as before. 131 ¦¨Òì=Ė_Y[å¬7ÞîâĜĝp"9ĝpa±CaÖQ1ĝ ĎÍ1ĝ^Č¹^ģ*ÛW·ĉUOÇ½¾čçU¡]Ôęú ĊĞĤU\ºĆ°U2êUÈqÏã-U Đ@ÃUçÜ£ ¬ē[X37UöÕå÷¥VUV4¶ć.U Ēc¶eUü ;ĂAu¼z>TPČtæ¥à´ åjě&|lė"Õße n Bzñ0ä5%(f«FÂÒÝ¯éJM'ăĚą]Uõğm*U +Å±)wÊLL~³ggbĄð×øUĈÓ HS©ÌUû|+ ċÍ6ÄvI?¤tôwy /ĠÀwÞ:ÉÁĢò2ýÆs } 8Øġw<āċ® Ñ§èG1Ðwª²ĀÂwďONwđ{µ áWĕ9ÙÝ¢B r»íÎdÍĘóÚi"Ĝ#1¿!þĔ ïKkw&ZlxMRËÿhzWå ïD`133

Those who have drawn up memorials testifying to their oaths, reverently face the deities and proclaim: oQēà$¸ëù 126

Qians gold is a covername for the center yang line yao , within lead DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 13.16b23 . Cf. p. 155 above.

127 Guest and host have many possible connotations. In general, the host is that which is more substantial of the pair such as the within the , the guest is the more insubstantial such as the within the . 128

In the alchemical process, one gathers eight ounces of pure yang from , and eight ounces of pure yin from , and unites them in the caldron. The reason they mention eight ounces of each is to symbolize the eight days approx. of a lunar quarter. 129

Wu yao {đ: a fancy way of saying yaowu đ{, the usual term for the ingredients of the elixir?

130

For a discussion of Chens use of intention spirits during the process of cultivation, see pp. 53839 below.

131

Referring to the end of the previous memorial to Zhongli Quan.

132

DZ 1070, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao xianpai has {đ instead of đ{ .

133

DZ 1070, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao xianpai has ïE instead of ïD` less comprehensible .

158

The disciple of the great Dao named insert name here , on the fourteenth day of this month, has reverently arrived at

9M"Zn this auspicious birthday of the Ancestral Master, the Sovereign Lord of Pure Yang; and on the fteenth day will arrive at ^Y`|J8;Zn the auspicious birthday of the Ancestral Master, the Sovereign Lord of Correct Yang. Cautiously equipped with incense and candles, on this fourteenth day I have drawn up a memorial, and together with my fellows pay my respects and extend congratulations. After this is nished, I hope to be bestowed with a sealed compact yin meng * from all of the exalted transcendents and holy beings together. I piously oer paper funds spirit money and respectfully exhaust myself in taking refuge in you and paying thanks jing dan gui xie O. I pray that you guarantee that I can study the Dao without demonic hallucinations , and that I be fated to cultivate transcendenthood. Looking up, I beg for compassion and pity, for invisible protection from dangers and di culties; that you make it such that I enter 9b1 the chamber and achieve success, without deviating from the great re

timings; that my fetus will soon be born and transform into a spirit, and be promoted on high to be among the ranks of the transcendents. Secondly, I wish that superior gentlemen, worthies, and the virtuous will all become enlightened to the ultimate Dao; and that errant fools, liars, and absurd men will repent and develop trust; that claried milk will ow in rivers, and claried butter will anoint the crown; that the earth will all become cyan jade, and the ground will everywhere become gold. In my seeking I risk the masters severity, making my declaration without end. On the righthand side, I have cautiously drawn up a memorial, and, kowtowing present it to: ^Y#|J8;qS;"r(% As before, ask the spirits to come to their positions; there should be no addition or subtraction in the sequence or layout. .G_62)f134xw Document for Sending the Spirits O d_ In my previous passionate sincerity, I risked profaning the clear hearing and vision of the spirits . Looking up, I hope for pity and forgiveness, and that you should broadly extend greeting and guidance, that you should stoop your transcendent banners and come down into the dusty realm, that I who am shivering and do not know how to proceed in returning to the perfected condition

should 10a1 voyage back to the isle of Penglai.135 Taking clinging and loving attachment as my task, I now must, bowing, send them the spirits o. I expect to bear the shame of dwelling vacantly without the spirits after they have gone? . I have heard that even if a person travels alone or sits alone, his name could still move the heart of an emperor or king. Poems that no one comprehends 134

The Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds. have i) instead of 2) +f .

135

This is a general reference to transcendent lands or heavens, and need not refer literally to an island in the eastern sea. The patterns of usage of the term Penglai deserve closer study.

159

can still make their way to the ears of the highest ranking ministers. How much can the eshly eyes of a common mortal comprehend? A single grain of elixir establishes long life; this meeting of ours was not unfated. I have the heartfelt wish to proclaim that the entire world ought to? seek this dao. This aair is dicult to know, but if you get started on it, it will be speedily cultivated. If you are too slow at it, who in the whole world would be able to carry it out? This body has already appeared in the trichiliacosm sanqian jie X. In the past you even gave it to Zhang Seng p ? , and permit us to rove together to the realm of the Five Emperors. Now, I wish that you should take pity on these mortal bones, and not say that this common mans empty life endowment is ill fated ming bo @«.136 I beg to trade my bones to an impoverished Confucian for elixir.137 You the Perfected are already roving in the realm of Jade Clarity, your sword spanning the twin riverbanks.138 After you have left, master, it ought to be dicult for you to grow old:139 your body is in the Great Veil Heaven Daluo Tian ². Coming, you leave no shadow; leaving, you leave no tracks. You supervise jiusi L$ 10b1 the records of the spirits and transcendents up in the heavens. You cannot be heard by listening, or seen by watching.140 I serve the Jade Emperor as he returns to the realm of Great Clarity Taiqing fv. My risk of profaning the spirits has been deep. I bow and see them o with a concentrated mind. ,?q¼R®©I)£\csD!]4?_G¤a¶MtOh»4G d±¹rgUm^2E(¦89¦8:A-¬oS J%b[5 6xJ1PyBQ'}/[<kquª Y22>´J ~`§ ¡Vj9N2=" XHC³Gp {;+SµºG nz WK@« |¢nh0&v¥° F*'#T¨´3=0²?#¯L$i!·¸<7> &ZfvR®rwUm

le141

136

This paraphrases a line from a poem attributed to L Dongbin: Zi shi fanliu fuming bo 8V W@«.

137

This is a line from a poem attributed to L Dongbin. I found the untitled poem in an electronic le, but was not able to locate it in Lzu quanshu. 138

This is a line from a poem attributed to L Dongbin.

139

This is a twist on a line from a poem attributed to L Dongbin: Xiansheng qu hou shen xu lao *'#.=3.

140

Quoting Daode jing, chapter 14.

141

DZ 1070, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao xianpai omits these nal instructions.

160

Chapter 3, A Conict View of Daoist Mastership Chen Zhixus writings reveal him as a man striving to spread his teachings, achieve recognition as a master, and attain salvation. The story told by his writings is, in the main, a story of social competition between rival intellectuals within a soteriological marketplace. Chen is competing against other purveyors of daos, anonymous salesmen of salvic teachings, who like him are relatively marginal, operating sometimes within and sometimes between the interstices of social institutions, both religious and secular. Chen is competing for recognition from disciples, patrons, rivals, and readers. He is striving to achieve recognition for selfcultivation as a practice per se, recognition for Daoism visvis other religious traditions, recognition for his own dao in particular, and, ultimately, recognition of himself as an authentic master and keeper of the keys to Heaven. I call this work managing mastership. In this chapter I argue that Pierre Bourdieus sociology of culture oers the best conceptual framework for studying a case like Chens. Bourdieus sociological work on culture, knowledge, and art provides a welldeveloped vocabulary, and will help me frame my picture of Chen Zhixu and his world, and organize its parts. After I have introduced Bourdieu, we will be able speak of Chen competing for economic, social, cultural, symbolic, and religious forms of capital, within the concentric elds of social power, religion, and selfcultivation. Chens teachings are the tools he uses in his struggle to achieve three inter related goals: 1 achieving recognition and authority as a master, or managing his mastership; 2 spreading his teachings in the religious eld; and 3 attaining personal salvation. These three goals were complementary. Why does he seek authority? Proximately, for the sake of advantages in this world; ultimately, for the sake of his own salvation. The authority he gains will help him attract a support network and audience base of patrons, disciples, or readers. This support network in turn will help him nance his personal quest for salvation. In addition to this, his 161

teaching activities within his network, and his successes in spreading his teachings to new audiences, will generate karmic merit for him, which will further contribute to his salvation.1 I call this dynamic a threeway feedback loop of propagation, authority, and salvation. His struggle for the rst two of these three goals involves competition with others, while the third goal does not. Chens activity, as he has recorded it for posterity, takes place in the toil and moil of an arena of social competition. His ultimate goal of salvation involves transcending the realm of human conict, though in practice he imagines and expresses it in human, social, and competitive terms. In this chapter, I argue that we must not only place Chens teachings within the eld of social competition, but we must also recognize the element of competition within Chens religious teachings themselves, even his most abstruse and technical teachings. Chens teachings are thoroughly strategic, often polemic, colored by their competitive context. Since Chens sexual alchemical teachings are radically revisionary, he has more di culty than most alchemical teachers would in gaining recognition and acceptance for himself and his dao, and so his teachings may exhibit this competitive aspect more than most alchemical teachings would. Yet if Bourdieu is correct, this competitive, strategic aspect must be present, to a greater or lesser extent, in a religious teachings, and we ought to reread the history of all Chinese religion in this light especially relatively intellectualized elements of Chinese religion .

1

Chens goal is to become a transcendent. To become a transcendent, the cultivator must combine inner cultivation with outer deeds that generate karmic merit: If one makes progress in ones inner training, and achieves success in outer deeds, only then can one be called a transcendent. Inner training is the dao of applying proper ring periods, followed by parturition of your holy fetus and transformation into a spirit. Outer deeds are succoring people and bringing benet to things, such in as the cases of the Celestial Master of the Han Zhang Daoling distinguishing humans from demons, Transcendent Ge Xuans mission to save netherworld souls, and Perfected Lord Xu Xuns judicial slaying of the dragongoblin. + ) '#. 2/!& $, 20("-%* DZ 91, Yuanshi wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie 1.29a9 b3

This concept of spiritual merit combines the Indian Buddhist concept of karma with preBuddhist Chinese ideas about the e ects of virtuous power de 1 upon people, Heaven, spirits, and the natural world.

162

§1, A Conict View of Chen Zhixus Life and Work §1.1, Chens Teachings within a Field of Competition The best justications for a new approach are that it suits the material, reveals new meaning in the material, and yields new theoretical insights applicable elsewhere. Here I will show that an approach emphasizing conict suits the case of Chen Zhixu particularly well. The new meanings that this approach reveals in the material will appear in subsequent chapters; as for the new theoretical insights applicable elsewhere, these would only become evident as I apply the approach to other topics in future work. For now, I will show that a conict view is appropriate for the case of Chen Zhixu by showing the elements of conict in Chens story showing which kinds of opponents Chen is competing against, and which kinds of goods Chen is competing for. First I will place Chens teachings within his eld of competition, and then I will place the eld of competition within Chens teachings. §1.1.1, Skeptics.

Chen is competing against several kinds of opponents in a

cultural debate over selfcultivation. Logically, his most fundamental opponents would be those who reject the possibility of Daoiststyle transcendence altogether. Such people he consigns to hell: There is one kind of trivial fool who, never having joined in the practices of transcendents and sages, sneers at selfcultivation activities, saying, In this world, since there is birth, there must be death. How could the dao of longlasting vision i.e., longevity exist? These people are seeded for hell, content with their lot in sasra! % !' "#$ &2 Chen is competing with these skeptics for the advantage of authority in the religious eld. While we might expect those critics who are fundamentally skeptical of self cultivation to constitute a dangerous threat, as they could undermine Chens entire religious enterprise, Chen does not mention them very much, and they seem not to be a threat to him. Perhaps his audience is already well committed to the idea that 2

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4.19a3 5. These people have hell seeds diyu zhongzi #$ , karmic seeds that will bear the fruit of rebirth in hell.

163

transcendence truly can be cultivated. §1.1.2, The marginal traditions.

Chens next type of opponent is the purveyor

of the heterodox teachings of a marginal tradition pangmen 7*, lit. side door, side gate, or side school .3 Chen apparently considers this his most dangerous type of opponent.4 Chen denes the teachings of a marginal tradition as any teachings that are not devoted to the gathering and rening of the one point of prenatal perfected qi, i.e., the golden elixir5: Recently, how many are the people of this generation who take it upon themselves to discourse vacuously upon all things between Heaven and Earth! All these side doors and perverse paths are briey but exhaustively listed in Cuixu yin Chant of Mr. KingsherblueVoid . Besides teachings on the one point of prenatal perfected qi , all strands of teaching beyond this are, overall, perversions of the truth. (#8@&DCE7*,"5A9 3+I2?F"6

4G>

The cultivation of the one perfected qi is the core of Chens teaching, the good news that he partially displays while still keeping secret, and it is the same secret teaching that all the sages have possessed.7 Teachers from the marginal traditions do not know of, or do not accept, this ultimate teaching. Yet in addition to mere ignorance of the golden elixir, there seems to be a second component to this concept of marginal tradition. When he criticizes ordained Daoist monastics for their ignorance of the golden elixir and their reliance on false teachings, Chen does not 3

Other terms equivalent to pangmen 7*//* in Chens writings include qianxi baijing H., xiexi qujing "H ., pangmen xiejing 7*"5, pangmen qujing 7*., pangxi xiaojing /H 5, pangxi yu qujing 7HB5, qujing pangxi 57H, and pangmen zuodao /*<.

4

J. Z. Smith has observed that rather than the remote other being perceived as problematic and/or dangerous, it is the proximate other, the near neighbor, who is most troublesome. That is to say, while dierence or otherness may be perceived as being either or , it becomes most problematic when it is or when it claims to ; Smith, Dierential Equations: On Constructing the Other, 145.

5

For Chen, the golden elixir is the qi gathered on the outside, i.e., from a woman. Qi, when on the outside, is called black lead, that is, the dao of the golden or, metal elixir. 0':=)< Qi, when on the inside, is called black mercury, that is, the dao of cultivating and xing 0':!-$ < DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 2.2a. So, for Chen, the term golden elixir refers more often to the exterior work of inner alchemy than to the process as a whole. 6

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 9.3b24. Cuixu yin is the polemical poem Niwan Zhenren Luofu cuixu yin % 2J1A9 The MudPill Perfecteds Chant of Mr. KingsherblueVoid of Mt. Luofu , attibuted to Chen Nan 6; d. 1213 , a patriarch in the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir. The poem is collected in DZ 1307, Haiqiong Bai Zhenren yulu 4:16; and DZ 1090, Cuixu pian 712. 7

According to my numbering of Hugh Urbans esoteric strategies, display is no. 4, advertisement, and appeal to the sages is no. 2, stealing the lightning ; see pp. 2526 above.

164

call them purveyors of the teachings of marginal traditions, as we might have expected. So, in practice, marginaltradition teachings are not just any false or ignorant teaching, but rather those teachings which are false and furthermore practiced mainly by uncertied teachers or gullible laypersons. In his Song on Judging Delusions Panhuo ge -6,8 Chen states that there are 3600 marginal traditions. 9 He o ers dozens of examples of false teachings, which can be divided into several overlapping categories. I will not use the term heterodox for these teachings, because this list includes many traditional and non controversial Daoist, Buddhist, and macrobiotic yangsheng D practices, as well as some more controversial practices. Chen rst criticizes meditation or selfcultivation practices that involve a vain outward show, such as various kinds of noisy breath control,10 massage and gymnastics,11 or inneralchemical practices involving shaking the body or inducing borborygms bellyrumbles.12 Second, Chen criticizes practices involving the ingestion of concrete substances, whether they be the mineral ingredients of traditional alchemy,13 herbal drugs,14 or bodily uids.15 Third, Chen

8

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 9.3a66a10. A full translation of this song is appended to this chapter.

9

Polemics against marginal traditions can be found throughout Chens writings another representative passage is Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 2.59a4b2. But the Song on Judging Delusions is the longest and richest polemical passage.

10

Chen mentions the noisy macrobiotic breathing practices of spitting and gulping tutun , or pu ng, hooting, and swallowing xuhe fu yanyan =,LL. He also mentions counting respirations shuxi @#, harmonizing the breath tiaoxi B#, stopping the breath bixi (#, and sitting and gazing at the nose zuoguanbi P<. Chen describes the face of someone sitting and gazing at his nose as being like sh the eyes gazing at insects as they come alive in a marsh in the spring the nose. This suggests that breath control is a noisy practice. 11

Chen mentions massage and stretching anmo shenqu !?, and gymnastic exercises with animal names

xiongshen niaoyin, guisuo heshu 7* SHO/, reminiscent of an early macrobiotic practice called the Five Animal Frolics Wuqin xi 3G. 12 Chen mentions shaking the inner passes dong weil, han jiaji 'CE%, or producing sounds in the cranium and belly dingmen xiang, fuzhong ming ) N5; and calling these the cries of dragon and tiger

longyin huxiao sheng F>I. 13

Chen mentions smelting the Three Yellows and Four Spirits sanhuang ji sishen J0 $, or Five Metals and Eight Minerals wujin bing bashi see p. 205nn12932 below, as well as ingesting metals and minerals generally er jinshi : 14 Chen mentions ingesting atractylis and tuckahoe yong zhufu Q, or herbal medicines generally souji yaozhong zhu caomu 18MA&. 15

Chen mentions ingesting phlegm choutuo 4+, seminal essence and urine jing ni 92, breast milk and urine

ru sou R, menses nren tiangui ", semen and menses jingxue 9, and other lthy and evil things

K..

165

criticizes certain forms of sexual cultivation as false.16 I believe that for Chen, these three categories of practice have a common aw they are too coarse, relying on outward sounds and movements, tangible external substances and secretions mineral, vegetable, or human , or tangible internal secretions the adepts semen within the body , rather than intangible internal energies. Perhaps the reason Chen criticizes the traditional Daoist practice of ingesting the qi of sun and moon17 is because it too relies on external things, even though they are intangible. Chen also criticizes several other Daoist or macrobiotic practices,18 as well as the Buddhist practices of Chan zazen and Pure Land nianfo chanting.19 §1.1.3, Sexual cultivators.

The marginal tradition teaching that Chen

condemns most carefully throughout all his writings is the coarse sexual cultivation called gathering and battling at the three peaks or, battling to reap from the three peaks, sanfeng caizhan
16

Chen mentions using the numinous bough yong lingke Z4 , and a ve stage practice of retaining, retracting, sucking, extruding, and sealing cun, suo, xi, chou, bi wushi U%-I ( ; see p. 206n139 below. He also mentions lying in wait for the movement of the semen, and recycling it as a tonic for the brain sihou jingxing zhuanbu nao $;P!XNL , i.e., recycling seminal essence to replenish the brain huanjing bunao VPNL . 17

Chen criticizes gazing at the sun and moon, then inhaling the two qi of the sun and moon and sending them down to the xuanpin cavity ies wang riyue, erqi xi gui xuanpin xue GA%W . 18

Chen criticizes grasping at a single bodily site, visualizing a golden radiance, and daring even to regard this as the dantian zhuo yichu, cun jinguang, ren shi dantian ?H1Q3 ; the qigong like practice Eight Sections of Brocade baduan jin 5T ; fetal breathing taixi 8> ; and the prognostication of death dates shengsi dingnian ci yueri ) or fetuses guanwu zhitai [./8 . Bernard Faure mentions similar mantic practices in Kamakura Japanese Buddhism; Faure, The Rhetoric of Immediacy, 186. These practices are not specically Daoist. 19

Chen criticizes zazen as sitting stubbornly in emptiness zuo wankong &O0 , and criticizes those who chant the name of Amitbha Buddha zhuan nianfo D*# and yearn for his western paradise yixin zhiyao xiang xifang

:" , yet do not keep the precepts hunjiu MB .

166

L20 Yet Chen reserves the harshest rhetoric, not for those who practice false sexual alchemy, but for those who pose obstacles to his true sexual alchemy. Such persons may pose obstacles by slandering the true sexual dao such as the dao of the Wuzhen pian as a false sexual dao: it is only this rst passage of the white tiger which, when forced to put a name to it, we may term, the one precosmic qi. . . . If a fool of this generation points to this as the teaching of gathering and battling, or a technique using the boudoir elixir, then calamity will come to his person. &AI]P!K[ HEGQhd8if S?Cb:521 Or such persons may pose obstacles by misinterpreting a truly sexual and correct dao as a nonsexual dao: Whenever he met someone who would chat about the dao all day long, repeatedly claiming to have met and received instruction from an eminent person, my master Zhao Youqin would immediately bow before him and ask: Not daring to ask about your dao, let me just ask for now: What sort of thing are the dragon and tiger? The other person would say: Dragon and tiger are within your body. Master would say: What shape do they take? The other person would say: They are the liver and lungs. The master would say: You ought to go down to the hell where they pull out peoples tongues and receive your punishment there, never again to delude or cheat the people of this world! Old Man Ziyang Zhang Boduan has now indicated the twin things dragon and tiger too closely! Now, my thing is the dragon, and the partners thing is the tiger. There is a distinction between east and west, so Wuzhen pian has each to east and west. The dragons head is ji, and the tigers gate is wu. The dragon and tiger rely on these for their coition . . . /e(J"4 ag^1iV_N W;J.BD)O^ U O^jAG,= jA$'5 J-,> 3@F J'\ 9*#`6T20 Yck XZMEj A=lR /=Gj7=GA%7/F<+

20


21

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 5.7b58. Boldface represents a reference to the passage in Wuzhen pian that Chen is commenting on. For Chen, rst passage of the white tiger refers, not to a girls rst menses, but to the primal qi coincident with menarche; see pp. 45557 chap. 5, §3.1.2.3. A xation on physical menses would be a coarse sexual teaching. It would be a sin to misrepresent the holy teachings of Zhang Boduans Wuzhen pian as coarse sexual teachings. However, I will argue in chapter 5 that Chens own sexual alchemy is not so distant from the practices he condemns.

167

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/22

Chen is battling with rivals on several fronts, but the most bitter and ticklish of his battles is this one over the denition of the true dao of sexual alchemy. Most of the handful of passages in which Chen or his master Zhao Youqin consigns a rival to hell involve a rival who mischaracterizes the dao of true sexual alchemy either as coarse sexual alchemy or as nonsexual alchemy, often through an alternative reading of a classic text.23 Because of the frequency of this topic, and the vehemence of his reactions, we can infer that such rivals seem most threatening to Chen. In the above passage we also gain a glimpse of a concrete social setting for Chens competition, a public market of daos. Just as Chen criticizes his rivals, he is also the object of much slander and abuse. He occasionally refers to his own troubles of this sort: I came traveling through Yuzhang in order to nd people of correct heart and sincere intent, so I could tell them about the dao of cultivating the self and long life. But as soon as I would express a single idea, I would arouse a riot of slander and acrimony. 5 3<*( 2. 6%- 4C?AD& ,24 More often than recounting his personal trials, however, Chen mentions slander as a general problem for any teacher of the correct dao. He claims that all true teachers have su ered slanderous attacks or mere misunderstanding. This has been a problem for even the sages of the past. Therefore sages have always been leery of revealing their secrets openly, and this is why their writings are so di cult to interpret! Alas! The abilities and virtue of people of the world are meager and shallow, and they easily turn to slandering. Therefore the sages of old and the great worthies did not let slip the treasures of heaven, and strewed them about in the scriptures. : ;7)@8A#19"' B+ 025 In the passage following the line quoted above, Chen goes on to cite Zhou Wenwang and Confucius as Confucian sages, the Yellow Emperor and Laozi as Daoist sages, 22

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 3.17b818a6. Italics are for emphasis.

23

The passage in which Chen consigns a skeptic to hell see p. 163 above is an exception.

24

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.42a12.

25

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 1.4a10b2.

168

and kyamuni and Bodhidharma as Buddhist sages, all of whom left secret teachings i.e., teachings on sexual alchemy within their scriptures, but did not speak them openly for fear of slander by ignorant oafs. This claim by Chen that the sages did not reveal their sexual teachings openly for fear of slander or misunderstanding is a version of his esoterizing strategy of managing secrecy and displaydisplaying a few hints that the sages possessed secrets, and oering this as evidence that their secret is his own secret.26 Chen is competing directly with teachers from marginal traditionsand from our perspective he is himself a marginal teacher! He is competing rstly for authority or capital as we will term it later within the religious eld, secondly for patrons, disciples, and readers, and thirdly for the benets these followers could bring him. We would not say that Chen is competing with his rivals for salvation, per se, since his nal goal of personal salvation is not a good in limited supply, as a worldly good would be. Yet he is competing with rivals for the goods he would need in his quest for salvation: competing for authority, which would attract disciples and patrons, who could oer the nancial support, women, and private quarters Chen needs to complete his self cultivation. And he is also competing for an abstract good: the denition of salvation, and religious truth. While there might be enough patronage and authority for Chen to share with his rivals, it would be much more dicult for competing denitions of religious truth to co exist. Chen could re read the daos of the holy teachers of the past, but not brook competition in the present between his true dao of the golden elixir and his rivals rival regimes of truth,27 potentially true daos such as sanfeng caizhan, stubborn zazen, or embryonic breathing. The town of Hongzhou was not big enough for the both of them. §1.1.4, The Three Teachings.

Although Chen is, in the nal analysis, a Daoist,

he rmly distances himself from ordinary ordained Daoists, as well as from Buddhists and Confucians. He criticizes Zhengyi, Quanzhen, and other monastic or reclusive Daoists who know nothing of inner cultivation: 26

In addition to the esoteric strategies, of managing secrecy and display, and stealing the lightning, we see here imperialist inclusivism: embracing other religious traditions, yet violently misreading them according into ones own lights.

27

The phrase comes from Bruce Lincoln, e.g., Lincoln, Theorizing Myth, 18.

169

Crowned with the seven stars of the Dipper , and named Zhengyi Daoists , which man among them can recognize the gates of xuan and pin?28 RC

(?1bn

They dwell in the mountains and forests and are called Daoists, but they dont know what the great Dao is. Nor have they ever heard the name golden elixir so how could you want to teach them to understand life and death or, sasra ! 48a] < ]B,2>

Uc9FQ6'

Wanderers of cloud and water, they are called Quanzhen Daoists , and from morning to night they work at saving themselves. Their patriarchs have left behind teachings on the spatula, but nowadays how many men know this?29 ZA\K@DV7P0LIJ !f<="%T Chen appears to be positing three Daoist categories here Zhengyi, Quanzhen, and just Daoist. Do these three categories line up with a general view about the categories of Daoists in his place and time? Would he call the misguided ones among the monks from Mt. Jiugong or the Lu mountains Zhengyi, or just Daoist? The answers are unclear. Next, Chen criticizes Chan Buddhist monks who joust with kans, vainly maintain their precepts, or lord it over their disciples, but do not see the truth: There is one type of person, called Chan monk, who walks on foot, passing about with kans of great dynamism and great application ever on his tongue. He only struggles over victories and defeats in idle linguistic jousting , and neglects to face Mt. Tai and check the old woman.30 *[h\l3 j k^:SGX/edM)N The Chan monks they shave their temples, but the Buddha holds out this monkish mien and orders us to examine it.31 Forming lines and troops, they lower not their heads. Hardly a patchedrobe monk among them has actually seen his buddha nature and illuminated his mind. l_Hoi+O&E`$*$Y-k.56WTp Clearsighted men, who have seen their buddha natures, because they ascend and sit on the teaching dais they then rail at the buddhas and patriarchs. The teaching mechanisms of stickblows, shouts, and the single nger are most deep, 28

For Chen, xuan and pin refer to the male and female sexual organs or to their points of contact.

29

Spatula refers to the alchemical pharmacon yaowu m;. The metaphor comes from laboratory alchemy, where the elixir is scraped out of the caldron with the tip of a spatula.

30 This refers to the kan Zhaozhou checks the old woman Zhaozhou kan po g#MN. In this kan, an old woman by the roadside gives monks the correct advice to go straight and immediately toward Mt. Tai, i.e., become suddenly enlightened without wavering or mediation. 31

Monks follow the monastic code, but according to Chan teachings the Buddha pointed to any emphasis on proper behavior as itself an impediment and subject for contemplation.

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but nowadays they have turned these into routine phrases.32 $9"&.)3-F?<(LK;7 =4B He criticizes NeoConfucian sophists or exegetes who think that the ultimate truth can be captured in oral dialetic or written commentary: Those smarties, yakking on about inherent nature and principle, with wanton words and forced sophisms say that only they are correct. But who understands inherent nature and the great Dao? Master Yan sat in forgetfulness and Master Zeng said Yes.33 N$!G"8J

6Q1*"D CH$P > 1

Chanting the Great Learning and discussing the Mean, they swerve not a jot from the teachings of Zhu Wengong Zhu Xi . With correct mind and sincere intent they search for commentary for each stanza and sentence, but sincere intent is originally not found within stanzas and sentences.34 E IO 5/#A@:A@': Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian religious specialists are Chens rivals within the religious eld, but they are not as threatening to him as the uncertied or lay purveyors of marginaltradition teachings. Chen criticizes these certied religious specialists for not understanding the inner truth of their own traditions, rather than for peddling dangerously misleading teachings. Chan Buddhist monks have facility with k anjousting, but have lost sight of the true goal of enlightenment. Confucian disputators and exegetes have forgotten their own sages mental cultivation practices and understanding of the inherent nature. And ordained Daoists from Zhengyi, Quanzhen, and other lineages have forgotten Laozis true teaching of the golden elixir. In fact, the sexual dao of the golden elixir is the true teaching, not just of Laozi, but of each of the Three Teachings: 32

In this stanza, Chen is referring to Chan masters who perform a ceremony of ritual antinomianism called ascending the hall shengtang %2 or shangtang 2 ; cf. Foulk, Myth, Ritual, and Monastic Practice in Sung Chan Buddhism, 17679. Zhitou (L nger likely refers to the onenger Chan method yizhi Chan (M

of the Tang monk Juzhi ,+. Chen himself uses the Chan methods mentioned by Foulk, although here Chen rejects them. Perhaps it is because he would consider substance of the teachings of ordinary Chan masters to be incomplete merely zazen or k anpractice, with no alchemy .

33

Chen criticizes NeoConfucian disputators, arguing that Confuciuss disciples also supposedly meditated Yan Hui P, in Zhuangzi, H.Y. 6.92 , and understood the esoteric for Chen, sexual aspect of Confuciuss dao Zeng Shen >0, in Lunyu, H.Y. 4.15 .

34

Zhangju : stanza and sentence refers to a type of careful, analytical sentence commentary, distinct from a broadbrush, bigidea approach to commentary.

171

Within the caldron of the suspended fetus, one renes the owing pearl, already joyous to have the gold return to the origin of the inherent nature. The sages of the Three Teachings all follow a single track, yet, in after times, other people and myself are on dierent paths. V4OMJ18 D-$Q(,?KS0$"/7C35 This dao is the true teaching of Laozi, kyamuni, and Confucius; they each taught it in secret to their immediate disciples, but due to their secrecy, the true teaching became lost to subsequent tradition: Laozi said, Always be without desires, in order to observe its secrets: this is the recycled elixir of jade uid. Always have desires, in order to observe its orice: this is the recycled elixir of golden uid. This dao is very great, so the sage kept it a secret and did not disclose his pretext. . . . The Tathgata did not dare to disclose it in words, thus he held a ower between two ngers to transmit the dharma, and Kayapa received it with a smile. Confucius did not dare to disclose it in words; when it came to his lineal disciples, Zeng Shen managed only a Yes. Laozi did not dare to disclose it in words; when it came to the ve thousand character mysterious writing the Daode jing, the Guardian of the Pass Yin Xi used it to arrive at ming life endowment and reach the mysterious. =G@X% 2AP=@X%R2-AP %N3 K9 WT$ EW#)+H*6LI: & EW#.!F;>< EW# U5'B36 Chen Zhixu is competing with representatives of the Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian traditions for the very denition of these traditions. Contrary to the more mainstream interpretations of the Three Teachings, as taught by Daoist and Buddhist monks and Neo Confucian scholars, Chen oers the esoteric interpretation that the essence of the Three Teachings is none other than his own brand of sexual alchemy. Here he is competing mainly to establish the authority of his teachings, and thus establish and manage his mastership. While Chen does compete with religious institutions for the denition of truth as we have seen in chapter 2, he sought disciples and patrons in Daoist monasteries, he never criticizes rival religious professionals as harshly as he does the teachers of marginal traditions, so we may infer that he either has a reason not to do 35

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 9.10a910. For Chen, the caldron of the suspended fetus is the male sexual organ, and the owing pearl is the seminal essence, which will escape in ejaculation unless carefully retained. The gold is the female partners primal metal qi. After the male siphons up this qi, he renes the amalgam of male and female energies within his body. The reference to joy suggests sexual pleasure.

36

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.36a35, a8b1.

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so, or no reason to do so. A possible reason not to harshly attack Daoist and Buddhist monks or NeoConfucian scholars is that this would arouse too much antipathy among them, and he would no longer be able to recruit from their ranks. And he may have less reason to attack them, because he would not have to struggle to distinguish himself from them. While an outsider might mistake Chen for a false teacher from a marginal tradition, the outsider would not mistake Chen for an ignorant monk or scholar. The danger of being mistaken for such a false

teacher would be greater, and so he would have to work harder to distance himself from them. §1.1.5, Chen as marginal.

Indeed, Chen does look much like a teacher from

one of the marginal traditions that he attacks. Like Chen, such teachers are also attempting to promulgate subversive counterinterpretations of the teachings of the sages. Although he never mentions the names of his rivals from marginal traditions, at one point he lists the titles of several texts which may have been composed and promulgated by such anonymous teachers: We may say that, of those who have not attained the perfected instructions, and are silently speculating and benightedly cogitating about the contents of the alchemical scriptures, not a single one can complete their practice . They can only make marginal allusions and warped attempts at proof, wideranging debates and highying discourses, to pass away their lives. Then again, whats surprising about this? Furthermore, ignorant men wantonly contrive alchemical writings, borrowing the names of former sages for their titles, such as The Old Transcendent Ge Xuans Alchemical Instructions for Preserving Ones Life and Nourishing Ones Life Endowment, Disquisition on Bodhidharmas Scripture on Fetal Breathing, Zhaozhous Song of the Twelve Hours, Sire Pangs Encomium on the River Cart, as well as things like Eight Sections of Brocade, and Qi of the Six Characters. There are even more titles of such writings, but they are denitely unreliable. The essentials of any true teaching ought to take the Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian as their main source . Y3HCK2/ SaJPON&H?'dbÊ] 7QM).IN12"L AF<T9 #UD5_ - KV[:=S^Z% @Xc0+W( 8`$B e,*!4;RG6>C \937 These former sages, whose names other teachers are attaching to their own texts 37

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 1.5a39. Both of the last two false practices are still popular today within qigong circles.

173

the Daoist holy man Ge Xuan, and the Chan patriarchs and worthies Bodhidharma, Zhaozhou Congshen , and Layman Pang Yun are also frequently cited by Chen Zhixu himself as masters of his dao. From our outsiders perspective, Chens claims upon these former sages are just as false as the claims by the rival teachers that Chen is criticizing. From our perspective, there are many structural similarities between Chen Zhixu and his marginal rivals. We will see in chapter 5 that the line separating Chens sexual alchemy from other forms of sexual cultivation that he criticizes is very thin. Similarly, here the line between other teachers claims to the former sages and Chens own claims is very thin. If Chen Zhixu is a marginal gure, this may actually play to his advantage. Remaining marginal, he would be able to deploy his esoterizing strategy of managing secrecy and display. If his secret teachings were to become mainstream teachings, practiced by all, he would lose his special outsiders advantage. While I do not believe that Chen wishes to remain a marginal gure,38 he does receive certain benets from this peripheral position, and so we may say that his managing of his mastership contains an inherent tension. §1.2, The Field of Competition within Chens Teachings Chen uses his teachings as a tool to compete within his religious eld. But the situation becomes more complex and interesting when we look at the religious content of his teachings. It is not the case that Chen simply wields a set repertoire of teachings in a strategic way; rather, his teachings themselves are permeated with strategies. In a sense, the competitive eld can be found within Chens teachings just as much as Chens teachings can be located within a competitive eld. For an example of the thoroughly strategic nature of Chens abstract teachings on alchemical or other Daoist matters, I could analyze almost any technical topic and nd seams of strategic action within Chens treatment of that topic. One striking 38

Chen claims that the Old Man from Qingcheng . . . exhorted me, saying: In the future there will certainly be a prince, marquis, or great man who seeks to take you as his teacher. DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu, preface, 5b45. I believe that Chen would have liked to nd a patron of the very highest rank. With such a patron, while he could retain his esoteric secrecy, he would no longer be a marginal person.

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case I have found is Chens treatment of the Dao. The Daoist tradition takes its name from the Dao as found in early classics like Laozi.39 This metaphysical Dao is a great Way that is at once the ground of existence, the principle or motive force beyond the natural functioning of all things, and the proper guide for authentic human being and action. Because Chen Zhixu is teaching a version of Daoism, the Dao ought to be the starting point for our discussion of Chen; yet the Dao is actually mentioned in Chens Daoist teachings rather less than one might suppose. In only a small fraction of the occurrences of the word in Chens corpus does this word refer to the metaphysical Dao. For Chen, usually refers instead to a tradition,40 and usually to his own tradition. In most cases we ought to romanize Chens as dao rather than Dao, and translate it as a way rather than the Way. And when Chen is referring to his own tradition, we ought to translate it as the way rather than a way, because for Chen, there is only one true way to salvation: the way of the golden elixir, using the outer pharmacon gathered from a female partner. One place Chen does discuss the cosmic Dao is in his section The Daos Root Is Yin and Yang Dao ben yinyang . In this section we can see Chens slippery equation of the Dao with his dao. In an exchange with a disciple,41 Chen presents his conceptions of the cosmic Dao, the human Dao, and the alchemical dao. The alchemical dao involves sexual practice inviting slander from ignorant persons yet is equivalent to the cosmic Dao itself. Here is a translation of almost the entirety of the short section: The Daos Root Is Yin and Yang A disciple again approached the master , and said, . . . The socalled Dao is able to bring the vastness of the Heaven and Earth to completion. But you have also said, The Dao is nothing more than a thing within the human body. Why is there this dierence between the small and the great? What is this Dao, after all, 39

Cf. Kidder Smith, Sima Tan and the Invention of Daoism, Legalism, et cetera.

40

This was the original meaning of the word . Analyzing the graph , Robert Eno argues that its original meaning was a formula of speech and step, connoting aspects of both discourse and skilled practice Eno, Cook Dings Dao and the Limits of Philosophy, 129. And it remained a common use of the word. Campany argues that In early medieval Chinese discourse, probably the most ubiquitous way of nominalizing what we would call religions was to speak of one or multiple ways or pathsone or more dao Campany, On the Very Idea of Religions, 300.

41

This teaching encounter was probably composed on paper, and is probably not a report of an actual occurrence.

175

that its numinous pervasion and transformations could be like this? Your disciple dares to ask this, so that his surprise and doubts might be dispelled. The Master of Highest Yang replied, The Dao generates Heaven and Earth, brings the transcendents and buddhas to completion, and organizes the myriad things by classes. This is the precosmic Dao lit., the Dao from before Heaven and Earth . Now, presently, there are Heaven and Earth, humans, and the myriad things; this is the postcosmic Dao. Yet the Dao runs within them. As for what I am calling the precosmic Dao, its merit is universal and vast, and its application cannot be plumbed. That which the heavens conceal is unimaginable, and cannot be rashly discussed. Theres no need for you to rashly listen, either. The disciple asked, What do you mean? The master replied, Now, the Dao or dao is dicult to put into words. The disciple said, I wish to receive your instruction. The master replied, Not yet. Superior gentlemen listen eagerly and are courageous in their practice, and middling gentlemen listen tentatively and are indolent in their practice. When inferior gentlemen hear of it, hostility and scorn arise. The disciple advanced on his knees, and said, Between Heaven and Earth, the Dao or dao is the most great. How could a middling or inferior gentleman hear of it or receive it? Your disciple will not speculate about it on his own, and with his simple minded mediocrity would not dare to slight or neglect it, or be indolent. I wish to hear of the ultimate Dao or dao . The Master of Highest Yang replied, I once made an interpretive commentary on the Daode jing, and as for the wonders of the ultimate Dao or dao , I have already indicated a few of the details in my essay on the Dao That Can Be Spoken Of chapter the rst chapter of the Daode jing .42 In a moment I will bestow you with that. Now, the Dao is none other than a yin and a yang: havent you heard this? Heaven and Earth are a yin and a yang, humans are a yin and a yang,43 and each of the myriad things is a yin and a yang. . . . As for the Dao of Heaven and Earth, when yang reaches the limit it becomes yin, and when yin reaches the limit it becomes yang; therefore the myriad things are nished and generated. As for the Dao of human beings, when yin reaches the limit and stops, there is thus birth and death in the world; when yang reaches the limit and stops, there is thus the golden elixir in the world. Worldly birth and death are the postcosmic Dao of repletion and deciency, waning and waxing. It is the golden elixir alone which is none other than the Dao of Heaven and Earth, and does not make people or things or, and is not procreation . One does not seek it by following the current; instead one attains it by advancing against the current, bringing life without death. Such a person is called a sage, a transcendent, or a buddha. Do you alone not know that the precosmic Dao or dao is the golden elixir? People of this generation are not only unaware that the precosmic Dao is the golden elixir: when they hear of it, if their response does not stop at mere laughter, then 42

Chens essay Dao ke dao zhang Section on the Dao which can be spoken of is in juan 1 of Jindan dayao 2.7b812b7 in DZ 1067.

43

I.e., humanity is composed of a yin human a woman and a yang human a man.

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their response develops into ensuing slander and scorn.44 Therefore Confucius said: If he is not a sage, there is no way to teach him. . . . )t @x~ Jd20PB7 D N<o\LJ.0PF'vF,q{J b(W(16-jK1 < PC m3 *YK7TK :K7XK:¢ + @7~ 0 k9e ddHP@8yU7$j zIX9

9?>BFK(uZ&} :il6"P=t#0t t N/t07tt7[Np nN+n t7![4+5n7![4Q n!+5PV04^n4a`nhQP=. 0] ]NRA fG4+|5\ \%;O.0\]Q#! R hO.0]QrESRcB[ R P|M 45 When Chen speaks of a that incites surprise, hostility, and slander, we should recognize that he is no longer speaking about the cosmic Dao which would be known to and largely accepted by all, including nonDaoists , but instead is speaking of an esoteric dao, a dao which strains the credulity and tolerance of most people who have never previously heard thishe is speaking of his own sexualalchemical dao. Chens strategic shifts between Dao and dao can be tricky to catch, but we can see him doing this in the second paragraph of the translation above. Between the words . . . what I am calling the precosmic Dao, its merit is universal and vast . . . and . . . is unimaginable, and cannot be rashly discussed, . . . Chen has shifted strategically from a vast cosmic Dao to a sexual dao that cannot be rashly discussed without inciting slander from ignorant philistines. There may be another such shift when the disciple says Between Heaven and Earth, the is the most great. . . . I wish to hear of the ultimate , . . . and Chen replies Not yet. . . . When inferior gentlemen hear of it, hostility and scorn arise . . . The disciple seems to be referring to the cosmic

44

I read Rc as analogous to the Mandarin pattern \Aw\B.

45

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 13.6a78a5.

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Dao, and Chen is certainly referring to the sexual dao which arouses hostility .46 We might say Chen shifts from Dao to dao, or we might say he embeds his dao within the Dao as its mainstream. This shift from Dao to dao is an example of strategic ambiguity, and is also a clear example of a rhetorical strategy found throughout Chens works: marshaling universal truths in service of his own particular truth, or extension. He argues for the validity of sexual alchemy by rst citing a noncontroversial and widelyaccepted religious truth such as the Dao, the buddhanature, or the person or teachings of Laozi, kyamuni, Confucius, Mencius, or any one of various holy persons from history or legend , then reinterpreting this truth in terms of sexual alchemy, and attempting to convince us that the real import of this truth is to teach the sexual dao of the golden elixir. In the above passage we see that Chens teachings are not simply set pieces that he applies in strategic ways, but that his teachings are strategic all the way down. We nd traces of social competition everywhere in his writing, even in abstract discussions. This is not to say that he has concocted his religious thought for the sake of advancement in a teaching career. It is not a matter of making things up from whole cloth, but of activating or emphasizing those conceptual or praxological links or homologies from within Chens overall religious toolkit that would be most useful to his purposes.47

§2, Toward a General Conict Theory of Society I have argued that it is appropriate to apply a conict view to the case of Chen Zhixu; that is, to focus on the conictual aspects of his life and work, which are indeed manifest and manifold. The remaining steps in this chapter are to draw the 46

When inferior gentlemen hear of it, hostility and scorn arise recalls chapter 41 of the Daode jing: When inferior gentlemen hear of the Dao, they have a big laugh over it . Yet the hostility mentioned by Chen is quite dierent from the mere derision or incredulity in the Daode jing passage.

47

See my discussion of Bourdieus concept of matrimonial strategies on p. 190 below.

178

outline of a general conict theory of society, and then to choose the best specic theory for our purposes. In this section I take the rst of these two steps. §2.1, Conict.

Human social life is pervaded with both competition and

cooperation, with both conict and consensus.48 Conict is always based on some sort of consensusevery debate has its rules of order and given topics, and every ght has its groundrules49but consensus is not more basic than conict. Just as species evolve through natural selection based on intraspecies competition as much as on competition with other species , human societies and cultures change due to conict. In the animal and human worlds, conict and consensus exist in a dialectic, and it is unrealistic to imagine any other state of aairs. While human society will always possess both aspects, we may still ask which aspect is dominant. Is human social life fundamentally characterized more by conict, or by consensus? This might seem to be a false question fundamentally conictual or consensual relative to what? , we might ask , but I argue that it is reasonable. Some societies are clearly more conictual than others, and it is also reasonable to ask whether human society as such is more conictual or consensual. We might compare human society as we know it with imagined utopian societies, heavenly orders, animal orders, or even inorganic natural processes. Or we might compare human social life as it is seen by sociologists with social life as represented in our own commonsense view our common sense being based on our own biography, culture, and society, of course . So, nally, this is a reasonable question. §2.2, Why choose conict theory?

There is no scholarly or cultural agreement

on the answer to this question of whether competition or consensus is more 48

Social conict may be dened as the intentional mutual exchange of negative sanctions, or punitive behaviors, by two or more parties, which may be individuals, corporate actors, or more loosely knit quasigroups Blalock, Power and Conict, 7 . I understand the terms conict and competition to be largely interchangeable. Most conict is competitive, and most competition aside from friendly games is conictual. Finks review of the relation between terms conict and competition in various conict theories shows that there is no general consensus on how to use the two terms together; Fink, Some Conceptual Di culties in the Theory of Social Conict, 44053. 49

In Bourdieus terms, every eld has its doxa. Anthropological research has shown that even violent conict follows culturally encoded patterns, has institutionalized forms, and is controlled and directed in its appearance Elwert, Conict: Anthropological Aspects, 4:2543 .

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dominant. Yet I will argue that, in the absence of theoretical agreement, a theory assuming that conict is endemic to human society o ers unique theoretical advantages. We may all agree that every human society has possessed aspects of both consensus and conict, and human social life as such will always possess both aspects. Yet social theorists continue to disagree on issues such as: • how to dene conict, competition, or consensus, • whether conict is a species of competition, or vice versa, • how broadly or narrowly conict should be construed, • whether a general theory of conict is possible or desirable, • the relative amounts of conict and consensus in society or social groupings, • which varieties or patterns of conict are worthy of study, • at which level of society from micro to macrolevels conict should be studied, • how di erent varieties of conict interrelate, • what kinds of general phenomena can be observed in conict relationships.50 With this much disagreement on basic points, we should not expect it to be easy to develop a general theory of conict. Theorists views on conict di er for objective technical or theoretical reasons, but also for subjective moral or political reasons. In his book on the conictconsensus debate in Western social thought,51 Thomas Bernard concludes that most thinkers views on conict are actually based on their underlying assumptions about human nature and proper human society, rather than on empirical observation, and furthermore that the question of whether human society as such is conictual is yet unresolved. Bernard has compared the positions of more than a dozen classic and contemporary thinkers on the issue of social conict, analyzing their views on human nature, their contemporary society, and the ideal society, and dividing their positions into four types: • conservative consensus theorists such as Aristotle, Aquinas, and Locke, who regard both their contemporary society and human nature as basically consensual; • sociological consensus theorists such as Hobbes, Durkheim, and Talcott Parsons, who regard human nature as conictual but identify contemporary and ideal society as a means of holding individuals together in a consensus; 50

Fink, Some Conceptual Di culties in the Theory of Social Conict.

51

Bernard, The ConsensusConict Debate.

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• radical conict theorists such as Plato, Rousseau, and Marx, who regard humans as having a sociallyharmonious nature which is made conictual by society; • sociological conict theorists such as Machiavelli, Georg Simmel, and Ralf Dahrendorf, who regard both human nature and human society as basically conictual.52 In comparing the positions of thinkers from similar eras and societies, Bernard shows how often assessments by two contemporaries of the same society may be radically dierent, and in almost every case Bernard concludes that the dierence between the two theorists is not one of empirical descriptions of existing societies, but rather one of value judgments about what is described and predictions about the future course of society which are also based upon these value judgments.53 For example, Locke and Rousseau lived in similar oligarchical societies, but because Locke saw this social arrangement as legitimate, he did not recognize any real endemic struggle within his society, and therefore saw his society as consensual. Rousseau did not see the arrangement of his society as legitimate, and so he was inclined to see it as marked by conict.54 In midcentury sociological thought, functionalists were inclined to support the status quo of modern society and of society in general, and thus to describe the dominant power group as incorporating the large majority of people in a society, making this social arrangement morally legitimate and practically stable.55 Marxists, on the other hand, were inclined to reject the status quo of modern society and of most known human societies in favor of a utopian society, and thus to portray the dominant social group as quite small, making this social arrangement morally illegitimate and practically precarious. Bernard argues that, until the question of whether human society as such is more conictual or consensual has been answered empirically, sociological conict theories56 are the best option that we have. Unlike sociological consensus e.g., functionalist theorists, or radical conict e.g., Marxist theorists, sociological 52

Bernard, The ConsensusConict Debate, passim, esp. viii ix, 189 93.

53

Bernard, The ConsensusConict Debate, 102.

54


55


56

E.g., the theories of Ralf Dahrendorf, Lewis Coser, or Randall Collins.

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conict theorists are not fundamentally biased toward or against the status quo of their own society or other societies. Sociological conict theories merely provide a framework for analyzing conict, and are not intended as weapons in a culture war.57 If evidence emerges in the future suggesting that human nature and society are relatively more consensual or conictual, this nding could be incorporated into the sociological conict approach,58 but until then, this approach may operate with thinner assumptions about the basic character of human nature or society. Sociological conict theories emphasis on conict is a methodological choice rather than a moral one. In a similar vein, I argue that emphasizing conict over consensus helps us to remain alert to the possibility of di erences between individuals and within groups at all levels of society, rather than merely between societies. Emphasizing conict over consensus has heuristic advantages. For example, when introducing students to unfamiliar traditions, it is easier to draw students into the material by teaching the debates within the tradition or between rival traditions emphasizing conict rather than by merely describing static structural elements in the tradition emphasizing consensus. The same strategy works for introducing unfamiliar material in writing to any audience. This bias toward conict is based on the practical exigency of presenting the subject in a striking light and drawing the audience into the subject. In the eld of Daoist studies, too many scholars have preferred to study Daoist history, structure, and ideas as a general continuum, perhaps implicitly distinguishing Daoism from Western religion and culture, but not marking sharp di erences within the continuum of Daoism itself. The best way to cultivate an alertness and sensitivity to di erences within Daoism is by emphasizing conict within Daoism. All scholars of Daoism would agree that the history of Daoism has been a history of political struggle and competitive cultural innovation, but scholars have not emphasized strife enough, or have underestimated the pervasiveness of strife in Daoist religious life. Scholars have too often represented the history of Daoist concepts or texts as an unfolding of ideas themselves, when in fact the main 57


58


182

motor of change is social competition between individuals between dierent Daoists, or between Daoists and nonDaoists, or between people who are sometimes Daoist, or Daoist in some aspect .59 One ne model of a conict approach to the study of Chinese thought and religion is Michael Puetts book To Become a God. In this book, Puett rereads classic early Chinese philosophical and religious texts as arguments, as statements in a cultural debate over concepts of divinity shen .60 He criticizes attempts by some modern scholars to understand Chinese ideas as features of a Chinese mind, or attempts by others to explain the ideas of particular texts in terms of a broad evolution of Chinese ideas across the millennia, and criticizes as well the common habit of marking particular texts as representatives of schools of thought such as Confucianism or Daoism. All of these interpretive strategiesreading in terms of schools, essentialized denitions of culture, evolutionary frameworkshave the consequence of erasing the unique power that particular claims had at the time. My strategy is, instead, to contextualize through a dierent approach: to ask why statements are made in particular situations, to understand the cultural signicance they would have had at the time, and to work out the historical consequences of the ensuing debates.61 Following Puett, we must view religious ideas, not as the solid and natural furniture of an ageless and holistic Chinese cultural system, but rather as unsteady new proposals advanced in specic circumstances and rmed up through cultural debate. We must think of teachings like those of Chen Zhixu as arguments in cultural debates about specic issues relating to tradition, lineage, or selfcultivation, rather than merely expressions of the Daoist mind. Finally we must move beyond the 59 Exceptions include the work of Stephen Bokenkamp e.g., Scripture of the Inner Explanations of the Three Heavens: Introduction, in his Early Daoist Scriptures, 186203 , Kenneth Dean e.g., Taoist Ritual and Popular Cults of Southeast China, and Lord of the Three in One , and Paul Katz e.g., Images of the Immortal . Articles by Schipper Purity and Strangers and Stein Religious Taoism and Popular Religion must also be mentioned. Skar, Golden Elixir Alchemy comes close to the perspective adopted in this chapter, but Skar emphasizes consensus at the expense of conict. He identies selfcultivation as a form of cultural power that elites could use at court or among their peers 23 . Adepts and their patrons used these new inneralchemical teachings and the transcendents bound up with them to add to the repertoire of literati association 231 . Yet the texts of the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir whose teachings he is referring to here are rife with polemicthe story of inner alchemy is a story of division as much as association. 60

Bokenkamp notes that such debates are not always carried out in terms of grand concepts, but often in terms of the various local concerns of importance to the people involved therein; Bokenkamp, Ancestors and Anxiety, 17 18.

61

Puett, To Become a God, 25.

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range of Puetts book and place Chens teachings within larger social and cultural contexts, rather than considering only intertextual relations within an intellectual arena, as Puett does. §2.3, Why choose Bourdieu as a conict theorist?

The conict view of Daoist

mastership that I propose in this chapter is based on the social thought of Pierre Bourdieu. Although Bourdieu uses the term conict only rarely he uses the term violence more often , David Swartz characterizes Bourdieus view as a conict view of the social world, which tends to downplay processes of imitation or cooperation.62 Out of all the work on conict theory I have reviewed for this chapter, I have found Bourdieus work the most useful, as I will explain below. To understand where Bourdieus conict theory stands within the eld of conict theories, we may chart conict theories along two axes, as constructed by C. J. Crouch gure 3.1 below .63

Momentous

Structural functionalism

Mundane

Marxism

Insitutionalization of conflict theories

Micro-functionalism; applied sociology

Critical applied sociology

Functions of conflict approaches Neo-Weberian sociology

X Exceptional Y

Endemic

Fig. 3.1, The main axes of sociological theories of conict

The X axis runs from Mundane to Momentous i.e., from theories that treat conict as a minor occurrence to theories that treat conict as a cataclysmic event , and the Y axis runs from Exceptional to Endemic i.e., from theories that treat conict as a rare event to theories that treat conict as part of everyday life in a normal society . 62

Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, 6364.

63

Figure 1 and the following discussion is from Crouch, Conict Sociology, 4:255558.

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In quadrant 1, we nd Talcott Parsons functionalist sociology, in which conict is regarded as unusual and undesirable.64 In quadrant 2, we nd Marxism, which concerns itself with major conicts between classes, conicts which are regarded as inescapable in feudal and capitalist societies. Because they treat conict as a momentous occurrence, both of these theories are inappropriate for the study of conict in Chen Zhixus career and teachings. We have seen that, in Chens case, conict is endemic rather than exceptional. Marxism and its heirs such as Ralf Dahrendorf s institutionalization of conict theory65 are further inappropriate because they treat mainly classes or other large groups. Functions of conict approaches as found in the work of Georg Simmel or Lewis Coser are unsuitable for the same reason.66 Randall Collins microfunctionalism is more useful, because it discusses conict at the microlevel.67 But NeoWeberian approaches are the most appropriate, because they recognize conict as endemic and ubiquitous in everyday life as it is for Chen Zhixu. Also, whereas Marx imagines a simple polarization of society into propertied and nonpropertied classes,68 Weber and his heirs recognize the complexity of social stratication in cultural and social terms as well as economic. Chen Zhixu cannot be easily sited within a Marxian economic class structure. As an itinerant teacher, he is economically marginal; his sexual alchemy makes him culturally marginal within Daoist society, yet his secret circle of disciples includes many social and religious elites. So he is a marginal gure within the economic eld, but an authority within his local Daoist subeld. As I will show below, Bourdieus sociology of culture is basically Weberian. Among all of the positions in Crouchs eld of conict theories in gure 3.1 above, NeoWeberian theories are the most appropriate for the study of endemic, mundane conict, and among conict theories of this type, Bourdieus work o ers the richest array of concepts and methods, on macro, meso, and microlevels. 64

E.g., Parsons and Smelser, Economy and Society.

65

Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conict in Industrial Society.

66

Simmel, Conict and the Web of Group Aliations; Coser, The Functions of Social Conict.

67

Collins, Conict Theory: Toward an Explanatory Science.

68

Turner, Conict Theory, 136.

185

Crouch writes that Todays postmodern, postCold War world presents a scene in which conict seems at once endemic and directionless, and sociological theory is reecting that.69 This comment is a good characterization of Bourdieus work. Bourdieus theory of elds is based on his research on academics, artists, writers, and middleclass consumers in modern French society, and the theory of conict as endemic and mundane that we may abstract from his specic research reects the modern society which he both studies and embodies. Surprisingly enough, Bourdieus distinctively modern view of conict as endemic and directionless is also well suited to Chen Zhixus specic social environment, even though Chens premodern Chinese society would seem to be otherwise quite foreign to Bourdieus modern Western society.

§3, Bourdieus Sociology of Culture My study of Chen Zhixus alchemy in the remainder of this chapter takes the social thought of Pierre Bourdieu as its framework. My reading of Bourdieu is deeply indebted to David Swartzs study, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu did not write much about religion,70 so why is his thought my best choice here? I will study religion as culture, and sociologists of culture tell us that peoples main use of culture is to deal with institutions and social structures,71 so religion must be studied in relation to these structures. Bourdieu o ers a sophisticated approach to the study of the politics of culture, one which attends to the macrolevel structures of societies class and habitus , and to the microlevel strategies of individual persons struggling to improve their cultural and economic positions by accumulating and converting di erent forms of capital, and furthermore adds the mesolevel concept of eld. Bourdieus work o ers one of the most appealing theoretical frameworks for understanding relations between persons, groups, 69

Crouch, Conict Sociology, 4:2558.

70

His longest work on the sociology of religion is an article, Genesis and Structure of the Religious Field.

71


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structures, and cultural products. The view of culture as an arena for social striving has deeply informed my study of Chen Zhixus teachings and biography from the beginning of my research. This view is current within the human sciences, which is partially due to Bourdieus work. Yet Bourdieu does not merely support a view of culture as a competitive arena: he has developed a set of new concepts and theories to sharpen this general view. For my purposes, Bourdieus most important concepts are eld, capital, and misrecognition, and his most important theoretical insights include the interconvertibility of various forms of capital, the semiautonomy of elds, and the function of elds in mediating macrostructures. §3.1, Bourdieu and Weber Bourdieu, like Karl Marx, studies the relation between cultural and economic life, but unlike Marx he does not reduce culture to a merely suprastructural legitimating function. Building on Max Webers thesisthat not only does economic activity shape religious ideas, but religious ideas can also shape economic activity72 Bourdieu applies Webers religious thesis to culture more generally. Weber speaks of the eects of ideas, but this is not to say that ideas generally exercise direct eects upon social life. For Weber and Bourdieu, more important than ideas are ideational interestsideas as used by social actors for their own purposes. As Weber says, Not ideas, but material and ideational interests, directly govern mens conduct.73 The action of individuals or groups is interested, strategic, and aimed at advantage, yet interests can be ideational as well as strictly material. Bourdieu develops Webers concept of ideational interest into a theory of various types of interest, all distinct from but intertwined with material interest. I will analyze Chen Zhixus teachings and biography in terms of Bourdieus economic, cultural, social, and symbolic interests. Bourdieu studies human action as social action, and he assumes that peoples action is directed toward other people, rather than toward transcendent ideals or 72

As in Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

73

Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, 280.

187

superhuman entities. Weber writes that, while religious life is more than merely an outgrowth of economic life as Marx would say , it is still a human social product: the most elementary forms of behavior motivated by religious or magical factors are oriented to this world. . . . Religious or magical thinking must not be set apart from the range of everyday purposive conduct, particularly since even the ends of the religious and magical actions are predominantly economic.74 Bourdieu adds that Webers insight allows him to escape from the simplistic alternative . . . between . . . the absolute autonomy of mythical or religious discourse and the reductionist theory that makes it the direct reection of social structures.75 Following Bourdieu, I will neither regard Chens religion as an autonomous realm or system with its own phenomena or laws as Mircea Eliade or Claude Lvi Strauss might do , nor will I reduce it to social structure as Marx would do . Chens teachings are inseparable from his social position, yet neither are they reducible to this. Chens striving for social goals, and for the extra social goal of salvation, is mediated by his interests, strategies, and struggles in religious and other cultural elds which I will introduce presently .76 Bourdieu regards social life as fundamentally agonistic, characterized by strife, not only on the macro level, but in all the little deeds of daily life. The recurring image one nds in Bourdieus work is one of competitive distinction, domination, and misperception; this is a conict view of the social world, which tends to downplay processes of imitation or cooperation.77 This view is a fundamental presupposition not a hypothesis for testing,78 and, as such, is a point in his thought that is open to criticism. Yet Bourdieus conict view is also one of the reasons why his thought is suitable as a framework for studying the teachings of Chen Zhixu and other Chinese masters like him. Much of Chens writing is manifestly interested, 74

Weber, Economy and Society, 399.

75

Bourdieu, Genesis and Structure of the Religious Field, 5.

76

Chens religious striving is oriented toward goals in this world, but also toward reward in the heavens or union with the Dao. His trajectory beyond the human realm is still presented in social terms of course: the celestial bureaucracy is consciously modeled on the Chinese imperial bureaucracy, for example. Daoist heavens are often imagined as societies, but not human societies. We may doubt whether Chens conceptualization escapes the circle of human society, but we may not doubt his extra human, transcendent aspirations. 77

Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, 63 64.

78


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agonistic, even antagonistic. At any time his discourse on technical aspects of alchemy can segue into a criticism of rival teachings on selfcultivation. Given that parts of Chens writing are manifestly agonistic, it is reasonable to view all of his writing as possessing this agonistic aspect to some degree, or at least to have been shaped in agonistic contexts. His struggle with rival teachers must thus be present, whether as a trace in all of his writing as I have suggested in section 1.2, pages 174 78 above , or as a basic reason for his engaging in teaching activities at all as Bourdieu might say . David Swartz notes that Bourdieus approach works best for certain professions in the media, the arts, and academe, where individuals seek to convert their valued cultural resources into economic rewards;79 Chens profession as master of a dao of salvation is just such a case. Bourdieu has developed a sophisticated model for the study of culture: a political economy of practices, which he calls a science of the reproduction of structures. His fundamental aim is to study how stratied social systems of hierarchy and domination persist and reproduce intergenerationally without powerful resistance and without the conscious recognition of their members.80 The basic elements of this model are superstructure,81 habitus, eld, capital, and practice. §3.2, Habitus Habitus is a matrix of practices, a exible system of structures produced and reproduced semi or unconsciously by each generation, a set of loosely organized dispositions or principle rather than conscious aims or procedures.82 Habitus is a heuristic concept, expressing Bourdieus view that practices are not structured in terms of formal rules, but neither do practices represent individuals unfettered free will. We may even say that habitus is a polemical concept, by which Bourdieu stakes 79


80


81

Superstructure includes the economy, polity, and class structure of a society. I will not be dealing with this level of social structure in my study of Chen Zhixu. 82 In Bourdieus words, habitus is a system of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to obtain them; The Logic of Practice, 53.

189

out a position in opposition to both objective structuralist and subjective existentialist positions, as exemplied by Claude Lvi Strauss and Jean Paul Sartre respectively. With habitus, Bourdieu is asserting what practice is not as much as what practice is. Practice is not strictly based on codes, because in practice social actors vary their use of overlapping social codes such as rules about cousin marriage and cosmological schemes such as cosmological correlations between parts of a human body, parts of a house, and seasons83 according to context. A telling example of how Bourdieus approach diers from a structuralist approach is the fact that Bourdieu replaces the idea of rules of kinship with matrimonial strategies.84 Peoples actual deployment of social codes is strategic, and cannot be adequately represented by the owcharts of a structuralist kinship analyst. These codes and schemes have an inherent practical coherence85 because they are all generated by the same underlying habitus matrix, yet their linkages are polyvalent, allowing individuals or traditions to apply them variously in practices. Codes and schemes are used strategically in practices, but this strategy is often unconscious, being the eect of lifeways what Bourdieu calls objective intentions86 that ow through similar channels over the generations, as much as the conscious work of individual agents. A habitus is a class subculture, an array of dispositions possessed by a social class. Class, in turn, is dened as all of the people sharing a common habitus. Habitus is both structured and structuring: it is structured by the life chances or conditions of existence of the people in that class, and it in turn structures their aspirations and expectations. The dispositions of a habitus are master patterns of behavioral style that cut across cognitive, normative, and corporal dimensions of human action.87 A male habitus characterized by machismo, for example, could be expressed in all aspects of a mans life, including language, nonverbal 83

Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 157.

84

Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, 99. Cf. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 3071.

85


86


87


190

communication, tastes, values, perceptions, and modes of reasoning.88 Habitus can be seen in specic lifestyles, and bodily ways of being in the world. The corporal aspect of habitus, called hexis, is the unconscious embodiment of principles and values specic to a class or group. Bourdieu calls this process of embodiment an implicit pedagogy, capable of instilling a whole cosmology, an ethic, a metaphysic, a political philosophy, through injunctions as insignicant as stand up straight or dont hold your knife in your left hand.89 In addition to its hexis, a habitus will also generate a distinctive pattern of lifestyles or aesthetic tastes specic to its social class. Bourdieu characterizes the four lifestyles of the four social classes in France, for example, as ostentatious indulgence and ease within the upper class, aristocratic aestheticism among intellectuals, awkward pretension by middleclass strivers, and antipretentious ignorance and conformity within the working class.90 These lifestyles are structured by the past social conditions of the members of a class, and in turn structure their future horizon. For Bourdieu, people develop practices as they act, on the basis of their semi conscious habituses and their accrued capital, within elds.91 In my study of Chen Zhixu, I draw on the concepts of capital and eld to explain Chens practices as strategic action, and make little direct application of the concept of habitus. Chen Zhixu shares the same basic literati class habitus with his rivals, friends, patrons, disciples, and readers, and indeed with every other party, group, or type of person who appears in his writings, so as we compare Chen with his rivals and friends, habitus is a constant quantity within the equation, and will not help us understand the dierences among the ideational interests we nd. The concept of habitus will still be relevant throughout this dissertation, however. My account of Chen Zhixus teachings as strategic, semisystematic applications and mobilizations of selfcultivation practices, social forms, myths, or 88


89

Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 94. The concept of bodily hexis is clearly indebted to the philosophical phenomenology of Maurice MerleauPonty, et al. 90


91


191

cosmological and soteriological concepts is informed by Bourdieus concept of habitus as a loose cosmological matrix applied strategically through the practices of individual agents within traditional lifeways. Bourdieus concept must be applied carefully, however. In Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu often warns ethnographers against intellectualizing the practices they are studying, against regarding them as philosophy, against seeking eternal answers to the eternal questions . . . in the practical answers which the peasants . . . have given to the practical . . . problems which were forced on them by their lifeconditions.92 But with Chen Zhixu, we have not a peasant, but an intellectual. Chen does elaborate cosmological meanings consciously, yet Chens teachings are still a form of practice. Bourdieus account of practices being generated out of the loose matrix of the habitus does apply to Chen Zhixus teachingaspractice, but not directly. Chen Zhixus teachings are situated somewhere along the continuum in gure 3.2: X

Y

Z

Unconscious workaday practices

Semiconscious micropolitical practices

Hyperconscious intellectual practices

Governed by practical logic

Governed by decient logic

Governed by formal logic

Unconscious objective intention only

Practices are infused with strategic intent

Practices have a place within a general strategy

Fig. 3.2, Continuum of consciousness, logic, and strategy of practices

The peasant practices that Bourdieu alludes to in Outline of a Theory of Practice and The Logic of Practice would belong to a range extending from point X on the left pole of the continuum toward the center Y. The practices of mathematicians or formal logicians, for an opposite example, would belong to point Z at the right pole of the continuum. Academic logicians are just as strategic as any social actors, but there may be little evidence of strategic moves within the detail of their theorizing itself. Rather, their theorizing is part of general strategy with the goal of success in academic competition, for example. I have argued above in my analysis of Chen Zhixus use of the term dao or Dao that Chens theorizing is infused with 92


192

strategic action. I would place Chen near point Y on the continuum, where his teachingaspractice is governed by Bourdieus concepts of habitus and practice, but less directly. The concept of habitus helps to articulate a point that I made in section 1.2 above pages 17478 , that Chens teachings are permeated with political strategies. Chens teaching activity is neither habitual behavior nor formal philosophy, but something inbetween. It is semiselfconscious micropolitical practice, governed by inconsistent logic, and infused with strategic intent. §3.3, Field A eld is a network, or conguration, of objective relations between positions.93 The concept of elds in the social sciences is based in part on the concept in physics of the electromagnetic eld. Fields are arenas of production, circulation, and appropriation of goods, services, knowledge, or status, and the competitive positions held by actors in their struggle to accommodate and monopolize these di erent kinds of capital. Fields may be thought of as structured spaces that are organized around specic types of capital or combinations of capital.94 Fields are similar to markets in some respects, but unlike the concept of market, the concept of eld suggests not only exchanges between buyers and sellers, but also rank and hierarchy within a force eld. Fields are similar to institutions when institution is dened in the broadest sense , but the concept of eld privileges struggle rather than consensus. The concept of eld is more exible than the concept of institution: elds can incorporate multiple institutions, or multiple elds may be found within a single institution. The concept of eld may also be used for undeveloped societies or subcultures with weak institutionalization.95 Bourdieus theory of elds of struggle for capital is reminiscent of Foucaults hydraulic theory of power,96 but Bourdieu criticizes Foucault for paying insucient attention to

93

Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, 117. Cf. Martin, What is Field Theory? for a discussion of the advantages of a eldtheory approach in sociology. 94


95


96

As in, for example, Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1.

193

institutions.97 An aspect of Bourdieus social thought that is most signicant for my study of Chen Zhixu is Bourdieus attention to how elds mediate outside interests. Fields have internal dynamics, capitals, aims, and vectors, which modulate external e ects. The e ects of economic forces upon individuals, for example, are mediated by elds, translated into terms or valences specic to each eld. The concept of eld is a conduit for Bourdieus polemic against class reductionism and vulgar materialism.98 Human action, or practices, cannot be reduced to the e ects of class habitus or economic interests alone. Struggle within a eld is in terms of the elds capital and positions, rather than in terms of external structures. External inuences are always retranslated into the internal logic of elds.99 The eld Bourdieu has studied in the most detail is the intellectual eld, the eld of academic practice in France. For him, intellectuals are strategists who aim to maximize their inuence within cultural elds.100 He argues that an academics intellectual or political stances cannot be explained merely in terms of his or her scientic judgment, philosophical inclination, or class habitus, but always reect the internal structure of the intellectual eld and his or her discrete position within that eld or within overlapping elds. Based on my reading of the sociology of culture of Bourdieu and Ann Swidler, I feel that it would be irresponsible to study culture without also studying the social structures elds or institutions in which culture is inscribed. Swidler has suggested that a good deal of what we normally mean by culture is not an internalized set of values, easily transportable from one institutional setting to another. Precisely the opposite: most culture sustains the symbolic capacities people develop to deal with institutions. ... Even the deeper parts of culturehow people conceive the nature of personhood, the sense in which one is an individual, or the ways one feels obligated to collectivities, may be much more directly tied to the institutional forms than we normally acknowledge. . . . This formulation of how culture inuences action calls for an approach 97

Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, 79n17.

98


99


100


194

dierent from those that prevail in much of the sociology and anthropology of culture. First, it suggests that rather than looking at cultural meanings in the abstract, it is crucial to attend to the contexts in which they are actually used.101 Swidler shows how people use culture as a toolbox of resources for negotiating their way through institutions, and she believes that this is one of the main functions of culture as such. Bourdieus sociology speaks of elds rather than institutions, but makes a similar point, and to this adds case studies and new conceptual instruments. Swidlers work does not address the question of how intellectual culture ts within institutions, but Bourdieu has devoted much study to intellectual elds. Both make the same point: we cannot understand culture without attending to how it is being used within strategies for action, and cannot understand these strategies without attending to mesolevel social structures such as elds or institutions. In the case of Chen Zhixu, we cannot understand his alchemical teachings without attending to his jockeying for authority with rival teachers, and, further, we cannot understand Chens specic relations with his rivals without placing them within a general, agonistic eld of production, consumption, and transmission of teachings on self cultivation. This is not to say that Chens religious activity is completely reducible to social activity, only to say that his religious activity in life is thoroughly and inescapable social. In studying the phenomenology of elds, Bourdieu has shown how two or more elds may develop homologous patterns, including positions of dominance and subordination, strategies of exclusion and usurpation, and mechanisms of reproduction and change.102 A notable example of this phenomenon is the way that struggles between producers in the cultural eld produce analogous eects in the social eld: legitimation of social class inequality is not the product of conscious intention but stems from a structural correspondence between dierent elds. . . . When cultural producers pursue their own specic interests in elds, they unwittingly produce homologous eects in the social class structure. . . . In serving the interests of their particular elds, intellectuals also serve the interests of the class

101

Swidler, Talk of Love, 177, 179.

102


195

structure.103 The structural correspondence between elds is underlain by shared habitus or aspects shared by distinct habitusesspecically, by a common set of dichotomous symbolic categories such as rare/common, good/bad, high/low, inside/outside, male/ female, light/heavy, or distinguished/vulgar.104 When intellectuals employ these distinctions for cognitive purposes in the intellectual eld, this can help reproduce or reinforce corresponding class distinctions in the social eld. I will not be studying medieval Chinese class relations in this dissertation, but we may note how Chen employs eld homologies as he strives for distinction as a master, and for personal salvation. For example, Chen sometimes makes a distinction between the two or three quasisocialclasses of holy selfcultivators and vulgar worldlings. A class of men with middling potential is sometimes listed between the two levels of superior and inferior men, as in the following example: The Master of Highest Yang says: There are three levels of transmission of the dao. The superior ones in this scheme are men of letters and virtuous gentlemen, of few words and loving the good, able to discard their wealth, and anxious only about their person. These are called superior gentlemen, and one may transmit the dao to them. The middling ones in this scheme are solid but unlettered; hearing of the dao, they have deep trust in it, and are able to sever loving attachments, put eort into making improvement, and do not pay attention to squabbles. These are called middling gentlemen. If they have the same intention as a superior gentleman, one may transmit the dao to them. The inferior ones in this scheme , though foolish, are of stout faith, delight in good and discard evil, giving up their own desires to follow others, and acting with daring and courage. These are called inferior gentlemen. If their intention passes muster, one may still transmit the dao to them. 485, ,1 91'+.2(# $ 58,,> <8?!'-&7; 3 @$ $ 58,,6!:= 1+/* )"0%$ 58,105 This class hierarchy within the eld of religious practice would be homologous in some respects with a class hierarchy within the social eld, or more fundamentally, 103


104


105

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 8.6a7 b3.

196

within the superstructure of the society. Yet Chens employment of eld homologies is strategic, not mechanically structuralist. In the above passage, Chen lists three levels of cultivator, and he oers a place within his dao for even the lowest. In the passage below, Chen lists two kinds of cultivator, excluding the lower one from his dao, and he does this for strategic purposes. In the following example, Chen tells his disciple Wang Shunmin 3 a tea transport ocial that superior men practice earnestly once they receive the dao, while fools have doubts and are unwilling to proceed: The old transcendent Chunyang L Dongbin said, Then, even if you set to work now and speedily cultivate, you are still too late, in order to spur superior gentlemen to be sure to diligently cultivate the dao once they have heard it. As for those common men, when they hear it they are both surprised and dubious, unwilling to get to work as soon as possible. The ash of a thunderboltthe spark from the striking of stoneslike the speed of an arrowo, how frighteningly quickly does human life pass! Now I tell you, Chuyangzi, do not neglect it! -4 '1+2> :65"0$@ (A9 %, 7/?<1*) ;&4!B#=106 Chen is trying to make rm his disciples commitment to self cultivation, both by warning him that death looms near and only Chens dao can save Wang from his mortal fate, and by warning Wang that if he does not practice diligently, this will prove him to be a commoner rather than a superior gentleman. Chen is employing a eld homology between classes in the social eld and classes in the religious eld. Wang Shunmin is a subocial functionary li whose line of work is transporting tea mingcao .8 .107 Wang may have an ambiguous social position, or at least a position of middling or low social status within the literati class. Chen takes advantage of Wangs social location to make a religious point, threatening to demote Wang to the rank of religious commoner. This strategic move, originally written for the purpose of managing his teacher patron relationship with Wang, is then printed in Jindan dayao for the purpose of perpetuating this as a social structure. This micro structure, in turn, would structure future teacher patron relationships. 106

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 11.3b1 5.

107

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao, preface, 4b5.

197

For Bourdieu, there are many eldsas many elds as there are forms of capitalbut all elds can be given specic locations relative to a metaeld, the eld of power. Bourdieus work on elds is based mainly on his study of modern France; he has determined that two major competing principles of social hierarchy . . . shape the struggle for power in modern societies: the distribution of economic capital . . . and the distribution of cultural capital.108 These two principles can be represented as two poles on a continuum, and this continuum can be used as the X axis in a twodimensional space, with volume or amount of capital as the Yaxis. The eld of power encompasses the upper part of the space of capital, and other elds are arrayed within the eld of power gure 3.3 .109 We can mark the position of any actor or group in a eld based on the amount of economic and cultural capital they possess. Bourdieu identies two types within each eld: in the French academic eld for instance, professional researchers are located toward the EC/CC+ pole, and university mandarins toward the EC+/CC pole. We can also mark the positions of entire elds relative to one another. Religious, artistic, and intellectual elds will usually be located toward the EC/CC+ pole of the Xaxis continuum for a given society, and relatively high or low on the Yaxis depending on the status of the eld within that society. Chen Zhixu, as an itinerant master with little economic capital but a certain amount of cultural capital as an educated man and Daoist master, would be located near the EC/CC+ edge of his religious eld. more capital 3.

2.

EC-/CC+

EC+/CC1.

less capital Fig. 3.3 EC/CC+ indicates relatively more cultural capital CC than economic capital EC , and EC+/CC vice versa. 1: The entire space of capital. 2: The eld of power. 3: The religious eld. 108


109

This gure is based on Figure I in Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, 139.

198

§3.4, Capital A eld is a structured space organized around a specic form of capital. The concept of a variety of dierent interconvertible forms of capital is perhaps Bourdieus most widelyknown contribution to social science. Bourdieu took Webers idea of ideational interests that are distinct from material interests, and developed his own idea of a cultural capital that is distinct from economic capital. Cultural and economic capital are not Bourdieus only forms of capital. Bourdieu, unlike Marx, sees a much broader range of types of labor social, cultural, political, religious, familial, to name but a few that constitute power resources110 and can be embodied as capitals. Usually, though, Bourdieu speaks of four generic types of capital: economic capital money and property, cultural capital cultural goods and services including educational credentials, social capital acquaintances and networks, and symbolic capital legitimation.111 Cultural capital, for instance, covers a wide variety of resources including such things as verbal facility, general cultural awareness, aesthetic preferences, information about the school system, and educational credentials.112 All forms of capital are used by dominant groups within a society, or by dominant individuals within a group, in the struggle for power. Bourdieus descriptions of capital are based on his study of modern France, and must be modied somewhat when applied to any other society, but still hold much explanatory value for my study of premodern China. It is not hard to apply the concepts of economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital to the case of Chen Zhixu. Economic capital does not weigh heavily on Chens mind.113 The only type of luxury goods Chen would need economic capital for, apparently, are female partners and a secure space for practice. To obtain the economic capital needed to hire female partners, and private quarters for sexual cultivation, Chen mobilizes his social and cultural capital. Through his social 110


111


112


113

Economic capital did not weigh as heavily on Chens mind as it might for some religious people, such as, for example, a religious layman worried about the corrupting eects of money.

199

network of masterdisciple relationships, he is able to meet rich and powerful patrons such as Tian Zhizhai K from a HanHmong warlord clan, Zhang Shihong 8 a high court o cial, or Luo Xizhu L!' an eminent Daoist from a national temple, who could oer the women and quarters he needed. Chen nds such patrons through his network social capital and gains their patronage by proving his status as a cultured literatus and authentic alchemical master cultural capital, receiving in return lodging and probably women economic goods. He also receives money from patrons directly. Chens defensiveness about possessing cai 5 which can mean either wealth or alchemical material, and the way he contrasts cai with religious poverty, suggests that he would indeed have received cash from disciples or patrons: In general, whenever the fools and vulgar men of the present generation hear of techniques and wealth, they have a hearty laugh, and say that selfcultivators must be impoverished to the bone, and not wear even a stitch. They only practice stubborn seated meditation, and devolve into empty vacuity and haziness without horizon. ?HF(50 4+J3*2E6;< :9#C /)7MI114 There are some passages which suggest that Chen may also have given teachings cultural capital to his female partners in exchange for their sexual labor and its product the prenatal yang qi possessed only by women: Having heard the ultimate dao and yet lacking elixir material, one is cautious and careful; having met one who has more than enough elixir material and is fond of virtue, then the two people can make an exchange. This is called application of both technique and wealth, with neither party lacking in either of the two goods . -FA ",DD@@BG=*,1>&.(5$ % 115 Now, according to the technique of nine recyclings and seven reversions, one must unite the external ingredient with the inner ingredient. If one does not have gold and jewels as a surety, how can one gain the wonder of this jing? How can one cause the tiger to submit in order to cause the dragon to descend? How can one 114 DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie 2.52b68. Chen is either criticizing Chan Buddhists yisi bugua < : is a Chan phrase, referring to a mind which relies on nothing, or to Daoists who act like Chan Buddhists. 115

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 13.12a10b2. Because the word dancai " is used here, it probably refers to the female partners material cai ", rather than the patrons wealth cai 5.

200

attain the state in which the precosmic qi comes out of void nonbeing? H)I I2+*J/E,9:@# 9'4F 9:3!=L%116 In the second passage above, Chen takes the term jing @ scripture from the Scripture of Salvation Duren jing -@ , and reinterprets it to refer to the womans qi which appears before her menses her yue jing @ . This alchemical pun is based on a sentence from the alchemical classic, Wuzhen pian.117 Chen is speaking of exchanging cash for the female partners prenatal qi, to be gathered from her through sexual cultivation. I analyze all of the available data on Chens relations with his female partners in chapter 5.118 Bourdieus fourth major type of capital, symbolic capital i.e., the legitimation of power relations by the dominant party , is possessed by Chen in the form of his skillful justications of his teachings and of his supposedly dominant position vis vis rival teachers. This symbolic capital is quite unstable, and depends upon Chens skill in convincing his audience of the truth of his words, combined with his listeners reception and application of his message for their own reasons. For Bourdieu, the conversion of economic, social, or cultural capital into symbolic capital can only be done successfully through the process of misrecognition. Misrecognition is the denial of the economic and political interests present in a set of practices,119 and is akin to the Marxist concept of false consciousness, or the Freudian concept of psychic repression. Most human action relies on symbolic communication, and because most action is interested, in most cases the actor must mobilize his or her capital in order to carry out the action. If 116

DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie 2.52b2 6. In Chens linguistic system, the tiger represents the female sexual organ, and the dragon represents the male. 117

The supreme treasure of the rst passing of the white tiger baihu shoujing zhibao '5@"J ; DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 5.6a5. Lu Ziyes commentary on this Wuzhen pian passage is an unmistakably sexual interpretation: At two eights the age of sixteen, a mans perfected seminal essence pervades him, while at two sevens the age of fourteen, a womans celestial gui sign menses descends. This being the time of rst descent, is it the rst passing? $ 8D; 04?&(47.5@1 . Chen arms Lu Ziyes reading: The transcendent teacher Zhang Boduan, author of Wuzhen pian has leaked the secrets too much, and the commentaries of Xue Daoguang and Lu Ziye are too detailed 6KBC G<>A . Chen is telling his readers to be thankful for the details revealed in the Wuzhen pian and its sexual alchemical commentaries. For a discussion of the shoujing zhibao, see pp. 455 57 chap. 5, §3.1.2.3 . 118

See pp. 446 70 chap. 5, §3.1.2 .

119


201

the actor is mobilizing economic, social, or cultural capital, it must be converted into symbolic capital to cloak its naked interest: most symbolic action can be carried out successfully only if its interested character goes misrecognized.120 Chens teaching, writing, and publishing activities are symbolic labor, devoted to the conversion of economic capital e.g., leisure, publishing expenses, social capital e.g., distribution networks, and cultural capital e.g., education, cultural knowledge, writing ability into symbolic capital religious discourses, arguments, and teachings. Chen can use this religiosymbolic capital to gain more of the other forms of capital, or can mobilize symbolic capital to work toward his own salvation.

§4, Conclusion However, I do not mean to suggest, ultimately, that Chen Zhixus religious career consists of nothing more than social competition, as a sociologist might argue. For Bourdieu, the aim of social analysis is liberation and social justice. Once the social analyst has identied the habituses, practices, elds, and capitals of a specic case, and related the specic eld to the general eld of power, the analyst can then publish these ndings with the aim of exposing social inequalities and inauthenticities for the general reader, or for insider readers who actually belong to the specic case in question. Bourdieu would have no qualms about reducing a persons religiosity, if not to social structure itself as a Marxist would, at least to the persons position within a eld.121 He would not take peoples religious aims seriously on their own terms, but rather merely reduce them to forms of symbolic labor aimed at reproducing social structure and securing the religious actor a more dominant position within that structure. Yet as I have mentioned throughout this chapter, I do take Chens quest for salvation seriously. Chen is striving to spread his teachings, achieve recognition as a 120


121

Bourdieu, Genesis and Structure of the Religious Field, 18.

202

master, and attain personal salvation, in a threeway soteriological feedback loop. The rst two of these three goals may be understood within Bourdieus frameworkand I have argued that Bourdieu may indeed o er the best theoretical framework for understanding Chens working toward these goalsyet the third goal of salvation does not have a place within Bourdieus system. In this chapter I have argued that we must study religious action as strategic and competitive. This is certainly true for the case of Chen Zhixu; further work would be necessary to determine how well this approach would suit disparate cases such as popular religious cults, monastic life, or a lay Buddhism, for example. If Bourdieu is right, as I believe he is, all religious action can be shown to be strategic and competitive, and this sort of analysis is always appropriate, even necessary. We cannot study religious concepts without analyzing how they are being employed by specic actors or groups within religious elds, and within economies of symbolic capital. But neither should we reduce religious action to the struggle for power within this world alone. As Weber says, the most elementary forms of behavior motivated by religious or magical factors are oriented to this world page 188 above , yet it would be wrong to say that religious action is oriented only toward this world. As I have stated above, Chens teachings are the tools he uses in his struggle to achieve the three goals of managing mastership, spreading his teachings in the religious eld, and attaining personal salvation. Chens quest for personal salvation ultimately structures his social action. His quest structures his entire career in the long term , his writings and teachings in the medium term , and his daily practices in the short term . While worldly micropolitical goals and strategies permeate his social action, I do not mean to suggest that Chen is a cynical social climber masquerading as a true master. His life is ultimately pointed, not toward social mastership, but toward the mastery of transcendence, and the transmundane goal of salvation. As I show in chapter 5, Chen speaks of salvation most often as eternal life in the celestial realm, but also speaks of it as escape from sasra, or union with the Dao. In this chapter, I have established the dynamic, or motor, of Chens teachings.

203

In the next two chapters, I discuss the content of Chens teachings, always within the context of Chens strategic action with a competitive eld.

Appendix to Chapter 3, Song on Judging Delusions122 Song on Judging Delusions (Wd

I, Master of Highest Yang, was late in hearing the dao, rst meeting my teacher at Hengyang123 at the age of forty. I had never believed in the teachings of longevity or immortality, but when I received my teachers words, my doubts were dispelled. [k`rq[2aBM0;8lLB-
k)G Since I gained the teaching, I have not dared to keep it a secret, and have desired to discuss similarities and dierences with true friends. Recently, how many are the people of this generation who take it upon themselves to discourse vacuously upon all things between Heaven and Earth! ,L0XFNb5Ap

P70Vi6&n l!

All these marginal traditions and perverse paths are briey but exhaustively listed in Cuixu yin Chant of Mr. KingsherblueVoid .126 Besides teachings on the one point of precosmic perfected qi, all strands of teaching beyond this are, overall, perversions of the truth. oU9@.SjZ*OufI>vD#ht. The great dao is simple. One cannot expound on it, only use the wonder of the aperture127 to x qian and kun cosmic or celestial male and female principles. How can it be helped that people lose the central road, and on the roadsides point to three thousand six hundred false gates? 122

Translation of Song on Judging Delusions Panhuo ge (Wd from DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 9.3a6 6a10.

123

Presentday city of Hengyang, Hunan Province, about thirty miles south of Mt. Heng, the Southern Marchmount. 124

Alludes to Daode jing, chapter 1: ?KYN|1+$N|1w or }. Chen is likely imparting a sexual meaning here.

125

Alludes to Daode jing, chapter 41:

k`G.

126

Cuixu yin is the polemical poem Niwan Zhenren Luofu cuixu yin 4 DxCjZ* The MudPill Perfecteds Chant of Mr. KingsherblueVoid of Mt. Luofu , attibuted to Chen Nan T] d. 1213 , a patriarch in the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir. The poem is collected in DZ 1307, Haiqiong Bai Zhenren yulu 4:16; and DZ 1090, Cuixu pian 712. Chens verses echo Cuixu yin on many points. 127

Or, use wonder and aperture to x qian and kun.

204

W¨!x¯HPvNO¥#`b ;] There is counting the breaths, there is stopping the breath; within these practices the practitioners are in a predicament128 and without a track. Some rene the Three Yellows129 and the Four Spirits,130 some rene the Five Metals131 and the Eight Minerals.132 7¢m7mV«b T"sT\5 + Desiring to take atractylis and tuckahoe133 at mid summer, they search exhaustively for all of the herbs within the pharmaceutical corpus . How many of them shorten their lives because of this? After all, ginseng has a deadly toxin. j

k)%·³¦u3/9_I( wQ7~ f

Chunyang L Dongbin said, Minister Zhang lost his eyesight from ingesting medicines, and his spirit and qi became drained. How amazingly foolish it is not to know that the recycled elixir is originally without material substance, and instead to ingest metals and minerals! tyQpY³#Xsqe[¬&©°\+@ Wanting to practice breath control, they sit watching their noses, like a sh in a marsh at springtime when the hundreds of insects are awakening from hibernation and buzzing . As for the limitless marvel of this practice , where is it? If one grows old never having succeeded in the practice , wheres the benet in that? }§mF¶BcZ;±¸IH¤1gK<6@Ur Grasping at a single site, they visualize a golden radiance, daring even to regard this as the dantian. They themselves know for certain that they cannot gain it by practicing this way , but still they teach others to practice this technique. n4\-d* G>M[?zCx9{$? Embodying heaven and earth, gazing at the sun and moon, they inhale the two qi of the sun and moon and send them down to the xuanpin cavity ies . Massaging themselves, stretching and crooking doing physical exercises , spitting and gulping breathing heavily without restraint, from dawn till dusk they pu and hoot, swallowing again and again. µ0|qE®':,a¡ARl.D£ L²² Fixing the point in time by means of an earth gnomon,134 they use this to say that it seems true; but it is not. They know to teach that ones own inherent nature will penetrate through to the goal at a specic time, but they still ought to consciously examine such thoughts. 2PoJxªBd=^{>S7o¶´ 128

«b is not cuzh but czh, and means in a predicament.

129

Realgar xionghuang , orpiment cihuang , and sulfur liuhuang .

130

The identity of the Four Spirits varied Needham, Science and Civilisation, 5.2:285. The line "s itself comes from Wuzhen pian e.g., DZ 142, Ziyang zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 1.25a9. Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. sishen "s, 1150 cites Liu Yimings Wuzhen pian commentary Wuzhen zhizhi to identify the Four Spirits as powdered cinnabar zhusha 8h, mercury shuiyin , lead qian , and saltpeter xiao . However, Chen Zhixu may not have known or cared about the exact identity of the Four Spirits.

131

Gold, silver, copper, iron, and lead or tin.

132

The identity of the Eight Minerals varied.

133

Atractylis zhu % is an herb similar to thistle; tuckahoe fuling ·i is a fungus that grows on pine roots. For a description of these wondrous ingredients, cf. Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, 134n4, 310n73.

134

This refers to a technique by which geomancers determined the cardinal directions by erecting a pole and observing the positions of its shadow, or it could refer to alchemical symbolism. Tugui 2 could also have an alchemical meaning, but Chen Zhixu is referring here to a line in Chen Nans Cuixu yin see p. 204n126 above, and in Chen Nans line, tugui denitely refers to the surveyors tool.

205

Shifting the Tail Gate point, at the tailbone and shaking the Spinal Straights pass, in the spine, they swallow their135 phlegm, seminal essence, and urine. Proting from the great yang elixir their whole lives, they focus on gathering and eating womens menses. h>=f9x#H$ ik Zy Rening urinary crystals and collecting urine, receiving urine and feces? is their fate. Furthermore, they regard this recipe as a secret treasureif you have no wealth they wont transmit it to you! ]%RR*nW@?.Ye _~g[ Entering chambers of lechery in a state of great agitation, they lie in wait for the movement of their semen, and recycle it as a tonic for their brain. If they desire to achieve longevity through absurd and perverse practices like this, their ancestors to the seventh and ninth generations will have di culty keeping their stations!136

mK {4b2+|L`P#d!6S Eating lthy and nasty things, slurping milk and urine, they have a look at the two sides of the womans face to see if it is ruddy yet. Furthermore they await for a woman and a man to unite

sexually, and gulp down their semen and blood as the basis for the elixir. az;137D¥\G}^:@UA[)916 Cherishing their inherent nature and life endowment, and making whole their primal qi, they even suck the liquid seminal essence from within the jade gate. Practicing this until old age lacks even a iota of merit, but they blame Shouguang and Huangguzi for leading them astray.138 jJI(c;"/Fl

~TV&B

There is a ringing in the fontanel, and a twittering in the belly, and they say this is none other than the sound of the dragon keening and tiger roaring. Calisthenic practices like the bear stretch and the bird pull are a vain expenditure of energy, and why even mention turtleretracting and crane spreading? tQ¡.8
Practices concerning the instructions on preserving life, using the numinous bough, or the twin elixirs of yin and yang, transmit great error. As for the ve matters of retaining, retracting, sucking, extruding, and sealing, at present these techniques are unsurpassably numerous.139 SIp$¤Xs q,;MrE0.ow* As for transmitting Bodhidharmas teachings, this talk ends up being vacuous.140 As for watching a thing or animal and knowing about the fetus, such talk is irrational. As for xing the year of birth and death, and following that, the month and daywhen the time of death? comes, furthermore

135

Ta here could mean other peoples or their own.

136

According to the laws of clan karma, if a living person commits a crime, not only the guilty party but also his deceased ancestors may be remitted to hell. 137

DZ 1067 has , while the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds. have ;.

138

Ling ¤ or Leng 7 Shouguang and Master Huanggu Huanggu xiansheng '# were legendary transcendents. For Shouguang, see Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, 23233, 44041. In Chen Nans Cuixu yin see p. 204n126 above , both are associated with sexual cultivation.

139

All of the teachings mentioned in this quatrain are related to sexual cultivation. Hao Qin discusses the ve matters of retaining, retracting, sucking, extruding, and sealing, based on Fangzhong lianji jieyao, by the Ming prince Zhu Quan -£; Hao, Longhu dandao, 34748. 140

Or, teaching returning to emptiness.

206

you must x the action of your mind!141 ¢Ü²RTe~$4I/2¥mDI The Eight Sections of Brocade142 and the Ode of Ten Shouts ? are both as useless as the ring nger on your hand.143 When suddenly oating clouds obscure the sun and moon, and the great limit the day of death arrives, one must be settled and rm. `¤ +(^ %¯*piGFJ¬h Saving the celestial demons and cutting o the yin demons is also called ddling with the celestial gate. When the zi hour 11 pm 1am comes in the middle of the night on the jiazi day, one cycles qi, draws it seven times, and places it on the tongue. [°°®uBQ&jEmoNO+7 Pointing to the Indian Taixi jing Scripture of fetal breathing,144 they say that they can live on in the world, and retain their bodies. They dont know that the virtuous ones of old were men of few words, only wanting people to follow the correct road. ^Vel£t;rCT,=gy#8 Drinking unrestrainedly yet keeping a vegetarian diet, some people cut o smoke and re, and do not burn wood. In their previous lives they did not spread and plant mouth merit,145 yet they glare indignantly and in vain at their lot in their present life. kvY]¦M§¡nW$! Y'3$U"´ Sitting in stubborn zazen, practicing only nonaction, they maintain an empty chamber and old, worn hedge. Lacking their ll of food? morning and evening, and also not dressing warmly, if they are suering like this they should reect on their life choice before long. "A

a-UZ©±0z1469@}uHf0)\

Grasping white beads, focused on chanting the buddhas name, when they see others eating and drinking pungent herbs and alcohol, they want to vomit. Directing themselves singlemindedly toward the western paradise, Sukhvat, whats the use of east, south, or north to them? ]s147qwL
g':bPX

Practicing many rituals, and making rounds of prayer: if thus, then they read scriptures all the way to old age. Being unable to distance themselves from covetousness, anger, love, and concupiscence, how can they succeed in extending their lifespan in this lifetime? ,>Qd«1_148cSG5|³tª.x3$K6 As for presently practiced teachings, in no case should you use them. If you amass such techniques, 141

Lit., the ve minds, or quintipartite mind. Soothill identies these as the ve conditions of mind produced by objective perception; Soothill and Hodous, A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms, 117. 142

This is a daoyin guiding and pulling practice involving stretching and breathing, attested as early as the Song Dynasty and still practiced today; Hu Fuchen, Zhonuo daojiao da cidian, s.v. Baduan jin `¤ and Baduan jin daoyin fa `¤Q, 1031. The practice is encapsulated by a text of eight stanzas, thus its name.

143

Wuming zhi (^ means ring nger, which is considered a useless, extra digit.

144

This may refer to teaching on fetal breathing ascribed to the Indian Chan patriarch Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma was associated with the practice of fetal breathing by the Song dynasty e.g., DZ 1017, Daoshu 3.7a1, dated ca. 1151 . 145

Meaning unclear. Lu can mean fu fortune which in turn can mean karmic merit.

146

DZ 1067 has ? instead of an error .

147

DZ 1067 has s, while the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds. have .

148

DZ 1067 has _, while the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds. have m.

207

you will incur a heavy debt of karmic retribution. If you meet a perfected teacher, swiftly bow to him as your teacher and throw yourself on his mercy . In some cases, a single word from a new teacher will strike the target and bring about the students enlightenment . e+Ag

76zwOLUSEF2;A5DR

If you have not heard it, you may not transmit it. How many marginal teachings are setting inherent nature and heaven149 in disorder? If you want to know where that which is within the mystery really is, you ought only to commit Wuzhen pian Stanzas on awaking to the perfected to memory. A ux#jBv:LM@h\{WTU There is one type of person, called Chan monk, who walks on foot, passing about with kans of great dynamism and great application ever on his tongue. He only struggles over victories and defeats in idle linguistic jousting , and neglects to face Mt. Tai and check the old woman.150 +|}8

?lNs5 ! Z)^

The Chan monks they shave their temples, but the Buddha holds out this monkish mien and orders us to examine it.151 Forming lines and troops, they lower not their heads. Hardly a patchedrobe monk among them has actually seen his buddha nature and illuminated his mind. Q,_(J%+%t .4:=ro Clearsighted men, who have seen their buddha natures, because they ascend and sit on the teaching dais they then rail at the buddhas and patriarchs. The teaching mechanisms of stickblows, shouts, and the single nger are most deep, but nowadays they have turned these into routine phrases.152 =f4:AX/H_,VqmGkc*1-n` Those smarties, yakking on about inherent nature and principle, with wanton words and forced sophisms say that only they are correct. But who understands inherent nature and the great Dao? Master Yan sat in forgetfulness and Master Zeng said Yes.153 =9:d5b\I: &=/0p\ Chanting the Great Learning and discussing the Mean, they swerve not a jot from the teachings of Zhu Wengong Zhu Xi . With correct mind and sincere intent they search for commentary for each stanza and sentence, but sincere intent is originally not found within stanzas and sentences.154 a Y <'~y3i~yCi Crowned with the seven stars of the Dipper , and named Zhengyi Daoists , which man among them can recognize the gates of xuan and pin? Within the more than ve thousand words in the Daode 149

For xingtian :, Hanyu da cidian gives tianxing : inherent nature bestowed by heaven, or xing, tian as the two main topics of debate in NeoConfucianism; Hanyu da cidian, s.v. xingtian :.

150

This refers to the kan Zhaozhou checks the old woman Zhaozhou kan po $Z^. In this kan, an old woman by the roadside gives monks the correct advice to go straight and immediately toward Mt. Tai, i.e., become suddenly enlightened without wavering or mediation.

151

Monks follow the monastic code, but according to Chan teachings the Buddha pointed to any emphasis on proper behavior as itself an impediment and subject for contemplation.

152

In this stanza, Chen is referring to Chan masters who perform a ceremony of ritual antinomianism called ascending the hall shengtang >] or shangtang ]; cf. Foulk, Myth, Ritual, and Monastic Practice in Sung Chan Buddhism, 17679. Zhitou G nger likely refers to the onenger Chan method yizhi Chan G of the Tang monk Juzhi PK. 153 Chen criticizes NeoConfucian disputators, arguing that Confuciuss disciples also supposedly meditated Yan Hui ", in Zhuangzi, H.Y. 6.92, and understood the esoteric thus, for Chen, sexual aspect of Confuciuss dao

Zeng Shen p[, in Lunyu, H.Y. 4.15. 154

Zhangju i stanza and sentence refers to a type of careful, analytical sentence commentary, distinct from a broadbrush, bigidea approach to commentary.

208

jing, as soon as zheng you have attained the One yi, the myriad aairs are complete.155 R@");.dpk,^g[LZ/O They dwell in the mountains and forests and are called Daoists, but they dont know what the great Dao is. Nor have they ever heard the name golden elixir so how could you want to teach them to understand life and death or, sasra ! 25c^8^?*/:" Te7BN3( Wanderers of cloud and water, they are called Quanzhen Daoists , and from morning to night they work at saving themselves. Their patriarchs have left behind teachings on the spatula, but nowadays how many men know this?156 Y=\!GJa'^3/$+q Q]D0hbnKJ* The aairs of this oating world are but waves on the water: having gained this precious human birth, do not live it in vain! If you have the fortune of meeting with the instructions of an enlightened teacher, who can say that you will have no means of ascending to the Great Veil Heaven? E/ 6 -LPW`&hj_3C>ilV

155

o

For Chen, xuan and pin refer to the male and female sexual organs or to their points of contact.

156

Spatula refers to the pharmacon. The metaphor comes from laboratory alchemy, where the elixir is scraped out of the caldron with the tip of a spatula.

157

This is an odd title. There is a wellknown polemical text ascribed to Zhongli Quan, but this is entitled, not Zhimi ge, but DZ 270, Pomi zhengdao ge Song for abolishing confusion and rectifying the way. There is also a text ascribed to Zhang Boduan entitled Chanding zhimi ge m1>Ja Song of directions regarding confusions about dhyna; DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu 30.6a98b9. However, this text is unrelated to the present discussion.

209

Chapter 4, What Is Inner Alchemy? This chapter is a general introduction to inner alchemy. It is an extended prologue for my analysis of Chens alchemical teachings in chapter 5, a careful explanation of terms, concepts, and practices that can only be mentioned more briey in the later chapter. By laying out the inneralchemical eld as a whole in this chapter, and locating Chen Zhixu within this eld, comparing and contrasting his teachings with those of other alchemists, I aim to impart signicance to ne technical points, and inspire appreciation for otherwise dry details. Not enough has been written in English about inner alchemy, and I hope this chapter will have general value for scholars of Daoism or selfcultivation. Comprehending the textual legacy of Chinese inner alchemy is a dicult task, for a number of reasons. Inner alchemy is a di use tradition or family of traditions, without a founder or founding revelation, and whose origins are the subject of debate. While it is associated with specic social institutions such as masterdisciple lineages and monastic life, these give it only a loose structure, and a great amount of variation remains, regarding its borders and outlines as well as its inner details. From the FiveDynasties period 90760 on, inner alchemists did recognize inner alchemy as a coherent category, calling it jindan golden elixir, golden elixir alchemy instead of the modern name neidan inner elixir, inner alchemy . While it was a native category, I will show in this chapter and chapter 6 that very di erent denitions, selfunderstandings, and views have always abounded within the eld of inner alchemy. Aside from historical and sociological considerations, inner alchemy is also dicult to dene and describe because of its internal complexity. While we can point to some common elements within inner alchemical discourse, thought, and practice, these elements often cannot be dened in terms of a single factor, but instead must be given multifactorial denitions that include a range of variation, even including 210

internal contradictions. As Isabelle Robinet notes, while the discourse of the alchemists rests on a logical foundation, their discourse is not linear and is often poetic,1 or shot through with intentional contradictions or conations. The alchemists develop this complexity intentionally, both to create esoteric authority for the teacher as a possessor of powerful and rare secrets, and to transform the student by forcing him or her to overcome knotty intellectual challenges. Finally, some Chinese scholars2 identify a further di culty confronting the scholar of inner alchemy: long personal experience in alchemical meditation, and perhaps even the guidance of a true master, would be necessary for a deep understanding of the tradition. This opinion has some merit, but it should not dissuade we who lack this level of personal experience from studying inner alchemy with the same condence or lack of condence! that we bring to any subject in the human sciences. If inner alchemy is to be seen as a multidimensional eld of variations, as I say it must, it can only be understood through historical and structural comparison. The authorities I have relied upon for my understanding of inner alchemy principally Hao Qin, Ma Jiren, Li Yuanguo, Robinet, Needham, Despeux, and Wile do a fair amount of implicit comparison, and a bit of explicit comparison.3 The Chinese authorities generally present the history of inner alchemy as one of continuous development, and represent that history through short studies of the more famous and oftcited texts or authors, from the Zhouyi Cantong qi dubiously ascribed to the 2nd c. to Chen Yingning 1880 1969. Since these modern scholars may discuss similar themes in each chapter of their books,4 the reader may make his or her own comparisons between chapters, but the scholars themselves oer no systematic comparative theory. Robinet and Needhams books do contain comparative insights, yet these two authors would prefer to see inner 1

Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 90 91.

2

E.g., Ge Guolong, Daojiao neidan xue tanwei, 30, 34 35. I have heard this opinion from other scholars as well.

3

Secondarily, I have also relied on books by BaryosherChemouny, BaldrianHussein, Wang Mu, Ge Guolong, Hu Fuchen, Zhang Guangbao, and Zeng Chuanhui; articles or chapters by Pregadio and Skar, and Azuma; dissertations by Wang Li, Liu Xun, Valussi, Komjathy, Crowe, and Belamide; and a halfdozen Chinese dictionaries devoted to Daoism and qigong.

4

For example, each chapter may contain a discussion of an alchemists theory of the heartmind and inherent nature xinxing xue or stages of practice.

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alchemy as a unitary tradition, with certain alchemical works being more or less clear, rened, or exemplary than others, and so comparison is not their basic method.5 Wiles book on sexual cultivation is explicitly comparative, but his interests are sexological, and the specic categories he uses are not completely relevant for the comparative study of inner alchemy. In this chapter, I will attack the problem of dening, describing, and understanding inner alchemy from several di erent angles. In part 1, I describe its structure and history in the form of a list. Part 2 is an extended discussion of the points in part 1. And in appendix 1, I o er a set of questions for future study. I can o er no systematic comparative framework at this point of my research, but I intend the questions in appendix 1 to be a contribution toward the future development of such a framework. I will include comparative insights within my discussion in part 2. Prototypes, paradigms, and the standard account.

I take my theoretical

approach to the study of inner alchemy or the study of Daoism, or religion from Benson Salers book on dening religion.6 Saler advocates a comparative, polythetic or multifactorial approach informed by prototype theory. Following Saler, I attempt to dene inner alchemy in terms of a collection of elements, rather than one central feature or paradigmatic case or text such as the Wuzhen pian, and do not expect to nd any one specic element present within all forms of inner alchemy. Section 1.2 of this chapter is a list of these elements of inner alchemy. Yet if no one specic element must be present to call a text inneralchemical, then how can our denition ever get o the ground? How do we know what we should be looking for? Saler o ers a solution to this problem by appealing to prototype theory. We begin our denition of inner alchemy with an uncritical idea of what inner alchemy ought to look like, a prototype taken from tradition. We may take elements and themes from this prototype a , and use them to look for other arrangements b, c, . . . x of similar 5

I do not assume that any inner alchemical text is more or less valuable than any other. According to the hermeneutical circle by which each part is understood with reference to the whole, and the whole is understood with reference to each of its parts, all texts represent positions with an entire eld, and each text must be understood against the background of this entire eld and each of its constituent positions. Some texts, such as Wuzhen pian, will be more popular, oftencited, or representative, but our view of the inneralchemical eld must not focus on these to the exclusion of other texts that may appear less dominant within the eld but may turn out to be important for our understanding of inner alchemy. 6

Saler, Conceptualizing Religion.

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elements that hold a family resemblance to the prototype. We continue the process by adding new elements from b, c to a, resulting in a new, modied paradigm a1. After we have compared our paradigm with enough outside cases, each time causing it to evolve further a1, a2 . . . ax, we will have a polythetic denition ax that is much better able to account for the variety within the alchemical eld. Remember, though, that the alchemical eld itself is neither a completely objective nor subjective construct: the eld is rst organized around a prototype taken from tradition, which evolves into a paradigm that may escape from the strictures of the initial perspective, but never completely so. Let me illustrate my approach. The scholarly traditions upon which I am basing this chapter are 1 Chinese contemporary traditional scholarship e.g., Wang Mu, Hao Qin, Ma Jiren, and Li Yuanguo , and 2 Western Sinological scholarship e.g., Robinet, Needham, Despeux, and Wile , with more weight given to the Chinese scholarship. I have identied a prototype of what these Chinese scholars think that inner alchemy ought to look like, which I call the standard account of inner alchemy. I am not aware of any Chinese scholar who discusses this prototype explicitly and self consciously as a paradigm. My sense is that contemporary traditional scholars believe that inner alchemy, at heart, is a true tradition, and that truth is unitary; thus, they are less likely to be critical about their own categories.7 The standard account seems to be a late imperial consensus based on the teachings of writers like Wu Shouyang and Liu Huayang, Liu Yiming and Zhao Bichen, Qinghua miwen and Xingming guizhi; these late imperial teachings in turn are derived in large part from the Southern Lineage established by Bai Yuchan.8 Within Western scholarship, there is no single, consistent prototype of inner alchemy. Wiles prototype is the Chinese standard account. Needham and Despeux privilege the Zhong L teachings, and Robinet privileges Li Daochun. In writing this chapter, I rely on the Chinese standard account, but my aim is to test it critically, compare it 7

Even a scholar like Ge Guolong, who is more consciously analytical, believes that inner alchemy is a true tradition, and that truth is unitary Daojiao neidan xue tanwei, 30 31, 35, 40 .

8

Wu Shouyang, Liu Huayang, Liu Yiming, and Zhao Bichen all belong to the Longmen lineage of Quanzhen Daoism, but their alchemical teachings reect a prior synthesis of the Southern Lineage and the Northern i.e., Quanzhen Lineage.

213

with other, alternative forms of inner alchemy, and arrive at a broader picture of the eld of inner alchemy in history.

Part 1, Toward a Denition of Inner Alchemy My strategy for dening and describing inner alchemy in this chapter will be to begin with concise denitions, and expand thence to a brief description of around two thousand words, and nally to a full discussion of each important term and category. In order to represent the complex structures of alchemy clearly for the reader, I have found it useful to compose my description of alchemy in the form of a tiered list rather than in paragraphs. I hope that the concision of the twothousandword description will enable the reader to hold the entirety of alchemy together within a single horizon of view. Inevitably, some of the references in the brief description will appear puzzling until explained at length in the full discussion. Each item in the brief description is followed by two numbers in parentheses; these are the section and starting page numbers of the extended discussion for that same item in the full discussion. I hope that attacking the problem of description from both sides at once showing the whole and explaining the parts, all the while marking the links between the parts and the wholewill contribute to the readers understanding. My description of inner alchemy is both historical and structural, both diachronic and synchronic. I will mention some dierences between dierent strands of the tradition within the full discussion, but I am not able to cover all the historical and structural variation in the eld of inner alchemy within this chapterthis would be a much larger project. I oer an outline history of inneralchemical literature in section 7 of the list; I have chosen not expand on this outline in the full discussion, yet many of the texts or people from section 7 are discussed elsewhere in this dissertation. The aim of this chapter is to provide a full outline of the eld of inner alchemy as a background for my description of the alchemical practice of Chen Zhixu in the following chapter. 214

Short Denitions Inner alchemy in fteen words.

In my own words,

Inner alchemists aim to join yin and yang, and recover primal perfection, through contemplative practice. Inner alchemy in sixty words.

In the words of Hao Qin,

Inner alchemists borrow the experience, theory, and technical terms of laboratory alchemists to rene their life endowment ming . They take the human body as the chamber, heart and kidneys as furnace and caldron, essence, qi, and spirit as the pharmaca, intention and breath as the ring, to create an elixir within the body, and seek immortality and transcendence.9 Inner alchemy in a hundred words.

In the words of Isabelle Robinet,

Interior alchemy texts are always characterized by these features: 1. a concern for training, both mental and physiological, with the mental aspect often tending to predominate; 2. a synthesizing tendency bringing together various Taoist elements breathing exercises, visualization, alchemy , certain Buddhist speculations and methods speculations on the wu and the you, Chan gongan the kans of Japanese zen , and references to Confucian texts; 3. a systematized use of the trigrams and hexagrams of the Book of Change, already used metaphorically in laboratory alchemy and ritual; and 4. references to chemical practices, of a purely metaphorical nature, following an interiorized interpretation we have already seen in less developed form in the Shangqing school.10 An overextended denition.

Joseph Needham writes,

We may list the techniques designed to give rise to one or other form of anablastemic enchymoma i.e., elixir of life as follows: 1 What one may call redemptive mental and bodily hygiene juchu fa in all its aspects. . . . 2 Respiratory exercises and techniques harmonising the qi, tiaoqi . . . . 3 Allied with the respiratory exercises were others intended to assist actively the circulation of the qi and the uids in the body banyun . . . . 4 Passing to exercises requiring still greater muscular exertion, one reaches the large eld of remedial gymnastics daoyin . . . . 5 An exceptionally important role was played by the conservation of certain secretions, for example saliva. . . . 6 Sexual techniques fangzhong buyi . . . . 7 Techniques of meditation, trance,

9

From Ge Guolong, Daojiao neidan xue tanwei, 5, citing Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 23 p. 7 in the 1994 ed. . My two thousand word description is partially based on this denition. Hao literally says that intention and breath are the huohou , which I translate here as ring, but usually translate as ring periods. 10


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and ecstasy zuowang . . . . All these were the neidan procedures.11 This denition is probably based on an oftcited Songdynasty denition by Wu Wu : The theory of the Neidan enchymoma is nothing more than the mutual conjunction of the heart and the reins xinshen jiaohui ", the circulation of the jing seminal essence and the qi jingqi banyun % $, the preservation of the shen and the retention of the air cunshen bixi , exhaling the old and breathing in the new tugu naxin !. Besides this, one may practise the special arts of the bedchamber huo zhuan fangzhong zhi shu , or take the rays and emanations of the sun and moon huo cai riyue jinghua %, or consume particular vegetable substances huo fuer caomu &, or again, it may be, abstain from cereal grains, or practise celebacy huo pigu xiuqi #' .12 Both Needhams and Wu Wus denitions are overbroad. Some of these practices such as macrobiotic practices, gymnastics, qi circulation, sexual cultivation, ingesting solunar qi or elixirs made of concrete substances may have been considered inneralchemical practices by some adepts at some time, but not by most adepts most of the time. Of course, most or all adepts would have practiced macrobiotic yangsheng ( practices in addition to, or preparatory to, inneralchemical practice, all the while distinguishing the two. If we were to assemble a consensus view of inner alchemy, drawing upon texts from the entire range of inneralchemical history, this view would certainly not include gynmastics or ingesting solunar qi, for example.13 Comparing Needhams denition with Ge Guolongs and Robinets denitions quoted above, we can see that Needhams denition emphasizes physiological practices, but lacks any mention of inneralchemical thought or discourse. A Full Description: Inner Alchemy in Two Thousand Words §1. Roots 11


12

Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5:3435, translating DZ 921, Zhigui ji, preface, 1a10b2.

13

Thus, I disagree with BaldrianHussein, who says that Wu Wu dened neidan as a syncretic system comprising all the longevity methods: gymnastic, respiratory, dietary and sexual techniques. This is the denition which persists to the present day; BaldrianHussein, Inner Alchemy: Notes on the Origin and Use of the Term Neidan, 187. Robinet says that what we call inner alchemy would be included within what Wu Wu calls waidan, while what Wu Wu calls neidan are the classical Daoist physiological practices; Robinet, Sur le sens des termes waidan et neidan, 1011.

216

Inner alchemy borrows, develops, combines, and transforms previous traditions within Daoism §1.1, 228 and Chinese society §1.2, 229, including • laboratory alchemy §1.3, 230, • qi cultivation §1.4, 232, • sexual cultivation §1.5, 235, • mind cultivation §1.6, 236, and • literary mysticism §1.7, 237. §2. Social Contexts 238 In sociological terms, the inner alchemists • use culture within social institutions §2.1, 238 • such as small groups characterized by interpersonal relationships, including • the masterdisciple relationship §2.1.1.1, 238, • the patronclient relationship §2.1.1.2, 239, • the advisorruler relationship §2.1.1.3, 240, • friendship and literati association §2.1.1.4, 241, or • the family or clan and its related institutions §2.1.1.5, 242; • or midsized groups, characterized by semipersonal relationships, including • the monastery, temple, or cult association §2.1.2.1, 243, or • local practice and printing networks §2.1.2.2, 243; • or large groups, macrostructures, and the broader society, characterized by impersonal or abstract relationships, such as • macroeconomies, class, state §2.1.3.1, 244, or • daos, teachings, traditions, schools, and sectarian movements §2.1.3.2; • for the goals of selftransformation §2.2, 245 into • authoritative and holy masters within this world, • distinct from the common run of mortal humanity, • and transcendent beings beyond it. §3. Ontological Registers, and Language

217

Inner alchemists may, for rhetorical, philosophical, or soteriological reasons, interpret their concepts and discourse on a number of dierent ontological registers or levels of reality §3.0, 246, including the registers of • the microcosm of human body §3.1.1, 247, mind §3.1.2, 252, and spirit or spirits §3.1.3, 252, • including empirical, theological, and symbolic perspectives on the body §3.1.1, • the mesocosm of signs §3.2, 254, • including abstract signs such as yin and yang §3.2.1.1, 257, the ve agents §3.2.1.2, 260, the trigrams and hexagrams §3.2.1.3, 262, or the numbers of the River Chart Hetu §3.2.1.4, 265, • and gurative signs such as lead and mercury, or dragon and tiger §3.2.2, 267, • the macrocosm of Heaven, Earth, and humanity §3.3, 268, • including temporal diurnal, mensual, annual aspects §3.3.1, 269, and • spatial cosmographical, geographical, or political aspects §3.3.2, 271, • and other nonspatiotemporal metaphysical realities such as • purposive action and nonaction wuwei §3.4.1, 272, or • inherent nature xing and life endowment ming §3.4.2, 273, or • inherent nature xing and human dispositions qing §3.4.2, or • the Dao or the One §3.4.3, 276. There are also dualistic categories that cut across all of these registers, such as • the cosmogonic categories §3.5.1, 277 of • xiantian precosmic or prenatal and • houtian postcosmic or postnatal; • or the hermeneutical categories §3.5.2, 277 of • prosaic interpretation, which takes alchemical terms or passages to refer to tangible or denite entities, and • mysticizing interpretation, which takes terms to refer to formless or indenite entities; • or the hermeneutical categories §3.5.3, 279 of • exoteric interpretation, which accepts terms according to their most apparent

218

meanings, and • esoteric interpretation, which gives secret meanings to terms. Inneralchemical discourse is characterized by constant shifts between these dierent registers. Alchemical authors exploit crossregister ambiguities in order to make and break linkages between dierent symbols, or keep the multiplicity of registers constantly present,14 for the sake of • weaving a picture of the salvic eects of the alchemical work that would be convincing enough to convert the reader or listener §3.6.1, 281, • creating an air of authority for the text, teacher, or lineage §3.6.2, 281, • writing about teachings in a code that is opaque to unworthy readers but partially transparent to worthy readers §3.6.3, 281, • synthesizing elements from many sources into a single teaching §3.6.4, 282, • representing or delighting in the unstable and protean nature of alchemical discourse itself §3.6.5, 282, and • directly causing salvic eects in the reader §3.6.6, 282. §4. Psychophysiological Elements 283 In psychophysiological §4.1.1, 283 and soteriological terms §4.1.2, 283, the inner alchemists, • following the dao of the golden elixir §4.2, 283, take • the human body as the alchemical chamber §4.3, 285, • dantian three bodily centers associated with the kidneys, heart, and brain as the furnace and caldron §4.4, 285, • inner tracts as the pathways of circulation §4.5, 285, • the three treasures the three lifeenergies of essence, qi, and spirit as the pharmaca15 §4.6, 291, • sometimes identied as outer pharmacon, inner pharmacon, and greater 14

Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 91.

15

Pharmacon/pharmaca is my term of art for yao or yaowu , usually translated as the ingredient or the medicine.

219

pharmacon see §4.9, • respiration, guiding intention, intense concentration, or formless samdhi as the alchemical re §4.7, 292, • with ring periods of low or high heat, or nonring §4.8, 293, • whose patterns of ring are modeled on lunar and seasonal cycles and represented with cycles of trigrams and hexagrams, • over a series of stages lasting days, months, and years §4.9, 299, • and monitoring their progress by means of temporal cycles, trihexagram cycles, psychophysiological responses, or inner vision §4.10, 311, in order to • create, gather, rene, crystallize, incubate, purify, and sublimate elixirs within themselves §4.11, 312 through • gathering the spark of pure yang qi remaining from the time of cosmogenesis §4.11.1, 315, • inverting and uniting contrary principles §4.11.2, 317, • rening essence into qi, qi into spirit, and spirit into void §4.11.3, 317, • and/or rening the postnatal three treasures seminal essence, respiratory qi, and cognitive spirit into the prenatal three treasures primal essence, primal qi, and primal spirit §4.11.4, 317, • stimulate and enlighten the intellect §4.12, 320, • grasp the handle of cosmic creation and transformation §4.13, 321, • reverse cosmogonic devolution §4.14, 322, • returning from a postcosmic state to a precosmic state, • and from postnatal deterioration to prenatal wholeness, • ow backwards against the lifecurrent of the natural man which leads toward death §4.15, 323, • return to a state of youth and health §4.16, 323, • escape from the round of birth and death sasra §4.17, 324, • perfect their inherent nature xing and life endowment ming §4.18, 324, • give birth to a new inner self, or spirit of pure yang §4.19, 324,

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• and seek immortality or transcendence in the heavens §4.20, 326, • and/or union with the Dao §4.20.

§5. Symbolic Elements One of the most distinctive aspects of inner alchemy is its use of symbolic terms drawn from the Book of Changes Yijing, the cosmology of yinyang and the ve agents, the numerology of the River Chart, and other systems §5.0, 328. Robinet writes that the joining of trigrams and chemical terms is the distinctive element that distinguishes interior alchemy from the ancient breathing exercises.16 In symbolic terms, the inner alchemists goal §5.1, 329 is to • unite contrary principles, • i.e., yin and yang, • especially in their mixed forms of yangwithinyin and yinwithinyang, • in order to recover a state of primal perfection, • described in terms such as pure yang, the One, Taiji the Great Ultimate, or Wuji the Limitless. According to trihexagram symbolism, the union of yin and yang involves • reversing the course of cosmogonic devolution §5.2.1, 331 • leading from the trigram qian pure yang; to the trigram kun pure yin; • by wedding the trigrams kan yang within yin; and li yin within yang; §5.2.2, 322, • extracting the single central yaoline of perfected yang from the trigram kan , • and applying it to the brokenyang trigram li , repairing it by replacing its single central line of yin with a line of yang, • relying on agent earth as an intermediary §5.2.3, 333, • in the doubled form of wuearth and jiearth, • to remake the trigram qian pure yang; §5.2.4, 334. According to veagent symbolism, the union of yin and yang 16


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• involves reversing the cosmogonic expansion and devolution from Taiji to the ve agents, and then to the myriad existents §5.3.1, 335 • by condensing the ve agents together into three, and then into one §5.3.2, 336: • uniting them symbolically • through condensing the ve . . . • in terms of abstract mesocosmic signs, by turning the ve agents upsidedown §5.3.2.1.1.1, 336, • or in terms of the body microcosm, by uniting the ve qi of the ve viscera §5.3.2.1.1.2, 338, • or condensing the three . . . • in terms of abstract mesocosmic signs, by uniting the three cardinal agents water, re, and earth §5.3.2.1.2.1, 339, • or in terms of the body microcosm, by uniting the three owers essence, qi, and spirit §5.3.2.1.2.2, 341, • . . . into one elixir; • or, uniting them numerologically §5.3.2.2, 342 • through condensing the three ves, according to RiverChart numerology, • into one Taiji. §6. Allegorical or Visionary Elements 343 In terms of allegorical, visionary, or gurative mesocosmic signs, the inner alchemists goal is • to unite mercury with lead §6.1.1, 344, or • to unite the dragon with the tiger §6.1.2, 344, or • to unite the gold or metal crow in the sun with the jade toad or rabbit in the moon §6.1.3, 346, or, to wed • the lovely girl from the east, who rides the cyan dragon §6.1.4, 346,

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to • squire metal from the west, who rides the white tiger §6.1.4 , through the mediation of • the yellow dame in the center §6.2, 348 , and bring about • the birth of the naked infant, the alchemists new self §6.3, 348 . Other allegories or visions include • the goatcart, deercart, and oxcart by which the alchemist transports the pharmaca during the process of circular renement §6.4, 349 , and • the description of the inner landscape of the body, with sun and moon, mountain peaks, gates, bridges, towers, springs, and lakes §6.5, 350 .

§7. A Historical Outline of InnerAlchemical Literature17 Period of Nascence.

While teachings on inner circulation resembling inner alchemy

appear in several SixDynasties texts,18 the elements of inner alchemy rst appear as alchemy during the Sui and Tang dynasties within • eclectic alchemical teachings that take inner alchemy as a complement to laboratory alchemy, • the Zhouyi Cantong qi, which may have been recomposed around or just before this time, transforming it from a weft text into a cosmological treatise on alchemy,19 • as well as other alternative forms of inner alchemy whose relationships to better known and later traditions await further study. 17

See Pregadio and Skar, Inner Alchemy Neidan for a detailed chronological overview of inner alchemy up to the early Ming dynasty. 18 E.g., the Shangqing texts DZ 639, Huangtian Shangqing Jinque Dijun lingshu ziwen shang jing cf. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 28486 , and DZ 1382, Shangqing jiudan shanghua taijing zhongji jing; the Lingbao text DZ 361, Taishang dongxuan lingbao bawei zhaolong miaojing cf. Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion, 228 ; and the early Southern text Huangting jing see p. 236n89 below , which reects the traditions of Ge Hong and his lineage. Also of note is Qingling Zhenren Pei Jun neizhuan , a Shangqing text preserved in DZ 1032, Yunji qiqian 105.126; this text teaches a form of inner circulation which has many of the hallmarks of inner alchemy. 19

Pregadio, The Early History of the Zhouyi cantong qi, 16869. For a discussion of the transition from preinner alchemical Daoist meditation to inner alchemy, see idem, Early Daoist Meditation and the Origins of Inner Alchemy.

223

Formative Period.

From the late Tang to the Five Dynasties and Northern Song,

alchemists developed • teachings related to the Zhouyi Cantong qi, such as • the teachings of the Ruyao jing,20 • the writings of Peng Xiao,21 • the tradition of Chen Tuan,22 • and teachings with less relation to the Cantong qi, such as • the Zhong L tradition,23 • the Zhenyuan tradition,24 and • the writings of Chen Pu.25 Classical Period.

During the Northern and Southern Song dynasties and the Jin

dynasty, we nd • Cantong qi inected teachings, especially • Zhang Boduan s Wuzhen pian,26 • the work that became the root text of the Southern Lineage founded by Bai Yuchan and his heirs,27 • and other works later included in the Southern Lineage, 20

Baldrian Hussein identi es four dierent versions of Ruyao jing Mirror on the admixture of pharmaca, dating them from the Tang to the end of the Southern Song dynasty. See her entry for DZ 135, Cuigong ruyao jing zhujie, in Schipper and Verellen, The Taoist Canon, 2:844.

21

Peng Xiao d. 955, Cantong qi commentator.

22

Chen Tuan traditional dates 871? 989.

23

Regarding the Zhong L tradition 10th 13th c., cf. Baldrian Hussein, Procds secrets du joyau magique; Baryosher Chemouny, La qute de l immortalit en Chine. I de ne a text as part of the Zhong L tradition, not by whether it is said to be derived from Zhongli Quan or L Dongbin, but by whether it shares characteristics and terminology with paradigm texts such as DZ 1191, Michuan Zhengyang Zhenren lingbao bifa, or Zhong L chuandao ji. Thus, I de ne some Quanzhen texts as Zhong L. My generalization that Zhong L texts are relatively unrelated to Cantong qi learning may need to be clari ed; cf. Xie Zhengqiang, Zhong L neidan sixiang yu Zhouyi Cantong qi guanxi shixi. 24

Robinet, Recherche sur l alchimie intrieure neidan: L cole Zhenyuan. The texts of the Zhenyuan tradition, though edited as late as the Ming, may be based on Tang dynasty materials.

25

Chen Pu 11th or 12th c.; cf. Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 300 11; Eskildsen, Neidan Master Chen Pu s Nine Stages of Transformation. 26

Zhang Boduan 984? 1082; Wuzhen pian .

27

Southern Lineage Jindan Nanzong ; Bai Yuchan 1194 1229+. Cf. Skar, Golden Elixir Alchemy; Wang Li, The Daoist Way of Transcendence.

224

• most of which teach solo cultivation • such as the texts collected in Xiuzhen shishu ca. 1340,28 • but some of which may teach paired sexual cultivation,29 • ZhongL teachings, • early Quanzhen teachings,30 • advocating a formless approach to inner alchemy as in the teachings of Ma Danyang, and mostly quite unrelated to the Cantong qi or Wuzhen pian,31 • the alchemical ritual teachings of liandu,32 • from ritual traditions such as Shenxiao, Tianxin Zhengfa, Jingming Zhongxiao Dao, Lingbao Dafa, Lingbao, and Qingwei,33 • and many other texts whose a liation with or links to the betterknown traditions have yet to be studied. Period of Integration.

Beginning in the Yuan dynasty and continuing in the Ming,

alchemists systematically borrowed and combined teachings from di erent traditions, or even from di erent religions. • Many Quanzhen texts i.e., texts composed by authors associated with Quanzhen institutions combine • early Quanzhen teachings 28

Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5:88nc describes DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu: The sexual element seems to be rather played down in this text, either because of later bowdlerisation, . . . or perhaps more likely because these practices were from a quite early time a matter of oral instruction. 29

Texts o ering a sexual version of SouthernLineage alchemy may include DZ 151, Jinye huandan yinzheng tu; DZ 555, Gaoshang yuegong Taiyin yuanjun xiaodao xian; DZ 878, Zituan danjing; the works of Weng Baoguang DZ 141, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu; part of DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu; DZ 143, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen zhizhi xiangshuo sansheng miyao; DZ 144, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian shiyi; and DZ 145, Wuzhen pian zhushi; and the works of Chen Zhixu. Two other SouthernLineage sexual alchemists are Dai Qizong cf. DZ 141, 143, and Lu Ziye cf. DZ 142. Robinet argues that Weng and Chen do not teach sexual alchemy Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 48 50; Sur le sens des termes waidan et neidan, 5 6; Taoism: Growth of a Religion, 227. I argue for a sexual alchemical interpretation of Chen Zhixus teachings in chapter 5, but I will not be able to address the question of Wengs views. 30

The early period of Quanzhen Daoism is the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

31

Ma Danyang 1123 84; cf. Zhang Guangbao, JinYuan Quanzhen dao neidan xinxing xue.

32

Liandu salvation through renement; cf. Boltz, Opening the Gates of Purgatory.

33

Shenxiao , Tianxin Zhengfa , Jingming Zhongxiao Dao , Lingbao Dafa , Lingbao , and Qingwei .

225

with • Cantong qi learning, • teachings from the Southern Lineage, • or Zhong L teachings.34 • Southern Lineage teachers • claimed ties to Quanzhen Daoism, • and continued the earlier trend of combining inner alchemical with Chan Buddhist teachings • Chen Zhixu does both of these things. • Masters from traditions associated more with ritual than self cultivation began to advocate inner alchemical learning: for example, • Qingwei master Zhao Yizhen35 taught Zhong L style alchemy, • and the forty third Celestial Master Zhang Yuchu36 taught Southern Lineage style alchemy. • Sophisticated theoretical texts were composed by teachers from the Quanzhen or Southern lineages, or from backgrounds that combine both traditionsteachers such as • Yu Yan,37 Li Daochun,38 Mu Changchao, Niu Daochun, Chen Zhixu, Chen Chongsu, and Wang Daoyuan Wang Jie .39 Late Imperial Period.

Inner alchemy in the Ming and Qing dynasties is marked by

features such as • a new view of the eld of inner alchemy based on a basic distinction between solo practice pure cultivation and paired practice sexual alchemy , 34 Two studies of Quanzhen texts that I believe teach Zhong L style inner alchemy are Belamide, Self Cultivation and Quanzhen Daoism; Komjathy, Cultivating Perfection. 35

See pp. 567 68, 606 8; cf. Schipper, Master Chao I chen ? 1382 and the Ching wei School of Taoism.

36

Zhang Yuchu 1361 1410 ; see pp. 568, 602 6.

37

Yu Yan 1253 1314 ; cf. Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue.

38

Li Daochun . ca. 1288 ; cf. Crowe, The Nature and Function of the Buddhist and Ru Teachings in Li Daochun.

39

Mu Changchao . ca. 1294 , Niu Daochun . ca. 1296 , Chen Zhixu 1290 1343+ , Chen Chongsu Chen Xubai , . Yuan dyn. , and Wang Daoyuan Wang Jie , . ca. 1360

226

• with more alchemists advocating sexual alchemy than before, alchemists such as • Lu Xixing and his Eastern Lineage,40 • Tao Susi, Qiu Zhaoao, and Sun Ruzhong,41 • Zhang Sanfeng,42 • Li Xiyue and his Western Lineage,43 and • Fu Jinquan,44 • and most solo practitioners of nonsexual alchemy also at least acknowledging the importance of sexual alchemy; • a trend toward more explicit and lucid discussions of social and psycho physiological details, as in the teachings of • Qinghua miwen,45 Xingming guizhi,46 Wu Shouyang and Liu Huayang, Zhang Sanfeng, Fu Jinquan, Huang Yuanji,47 and Zhao Bichen;48 • the Longmen revival, when a series of great masters from the Longmen tradition of Quanzhen Daoism were active,49 including • Wu Shouyang and Liu Huayang, Zhu Yuanyu, Liu Yiming,50 Dong Dening, and Min Yide;51 • the appearance of inner alchemical elements 40

Lu Xixing 1520 ca. 1601; cf. Yang Ming, Daojiao yangshengjia Lu Xixing yu tade Fanghu waishi ; Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 146 53.

41 Tao Susi . 1700 11, Qiu Zhaoao - . 1638 1713, Sun Ruzhong . 1615; for Sun Ruzhong, cf. Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 146 49, 153 69. 42

Zhang Sanfeng ,, , or ; cf. Wong Shiu Hong, Investigations into the Authenticity of the Chang San Feng Ch uan Chi ; Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 146 49, 169 88.

43

Li Xiyue 1806 56.

44

Fu Jinquan ' 1765 1845; cf. Xie Zhengqiang, Fu Jinquan neidan sixiang yanjiu.

45

DZ 240, Qinghua miwen full title Yuqing jinsi qinghua miwen jinbao neilian danjue, probably a Mingdynasty work.

46

Xingming guizhi 1615 and after; cf. Darga, Das alchemistische Buch von innerem Wesen und Lebensenergie: Xingming guizhi.

47

Wu Shouyang ! 1574 1644; Liu Huayang ! b. 1736; Huang Yuanji " . ca. 1841 83.

48

Zhao Bichen &+$ 1860 after 1933; cf. Despeux, Trait d alchimie et de physiologie taoste.

49

Longmen *; cf. Esposito, Longmen Taoism in Qing China.

50

Liu Yiming ( 1734 1821; cf. Liu Ning, Liu Yiming xiudao sixiang yanjiu.

51

Zhu Yuanyu . 1657 69; cf. Dong Dening #)% . 1788; Min Yide

227

1758 1836.

• within medical literature, • and within new religious movements, in scriptures known as precious scrolls;52 • and the development of a new literature on female alchemy.53 Modern period.

Alchemists since the late Qing have, in response to the challenges

posed by modern science, often given their teachings names other than inner alchemy or Daoismnames such as • Transcendent learning, • used by Chen Yingning and his heirs since the Republican era,54 • or, qi training qigong, • used since 1950.55

Part 2, An Extended Discussion: Inner Alchemy in Forty Thousand Words §1, The Roots of Inner Alchemy §1.1, Inner alchemy combines and transforms previous traditions within Daoism . . .

Inner alchemy neidan is a tradition of practice, thought, and discourse within religious Daoism. Daoism is a form of organized Chinese polytheistic religion whose daos paths or traditions are guided by and aimed toward the Dao as a metaphysical and cosmic principle, and spiritual source.56 The term dao/Dao way/Way is used in every Chinese philosophical or religious tradition; its most general meaning is a way of being or acting, passed on as 52

Precious scrolls baojuan ; cf. Overmyer, Precious Volumes.

53

Female alchemy ndan ; cf. Valussi, Beheading the Red Dragon; Despeux, Immortees de la Chine ancinne; Despeux and Kohn, Women in Daoism.

54

Transcendent learning Xianxue ; Chen Yingning 1880 1969; cf. Liu Xun, In Search of Immortality. 55

Qigong ; cf. Palmer, Qigong Fever.

56

Also see my polythetic denition of Daoism on pp. 19 22.

228

a tradition. In its earliest occurrences in Western Zhou bronze inscriptions and the Book of Poetry , appears to combine the meanings of 1 a path or walking along a path , 2 an art, and 3 speaking. Thus we may call it a formula of speech and step, connoting aspects of both discourse and skilled practice.57 In early Daoist texts such as Neiye , Daode jing, and Zhuangzi, the term is used in complex ways to refer to 1 the most basic sacred agent or pattern in the cosmos, 2 a perfect society, 3 a state of mind, or 4 a style of being or action. In medieval Daoism, usually refers to that most basic sacred cosmic agent the Dao , or to a tradition of practice a dao aimed at salvation. On pages 17478 above, I note that Chen Zhixu takes advantage of the dual meanings of the term to argue that his own dao uniquely represents the Dao as such. Some scholars argue that inner alchemy should be seen as a tradition that overlaps Daoist religion, weaving in and out of Daoist and other contexts in the course of history, rather than as a branch of Daoism.58 Yet, while not all inner alchemists or inneralchemical writings are Daoist, most of them are. Other scholars, adopting a narrow denition of Daoism, have argued that inner alchemy belongs to the category of Transcendent Learning xianxue , rather than Daoism daojiao .59 Yet something like Transcendent Learning appears as a category separate from Daoist religion only in a few cases in Chinese history, such as in the Han dynasty. Inner alchemy is intimately related to Daoism in doctrine and practice, social forms, and historical instances. §1.2, Inner alchemy combines and transforms previous traditions within . . . Chinese society.

Inner alchemy also has roots in other traditions within Chinese society.

Inner alchemists frequently include Chan Buddhist and NeoConfucian concepts and modes of discourse within their alchemical teachings. This is partly due to the times while Daoists have always incorporated Buddhist and Confucian elements into 57

Eno, Cook Dings Dao and the Limits of Philosophy, 129.

58

Skar, Golden Elixir Alchemy, 304, citing Michel Strickmann.

59

Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue, 39, 142. Mou Zhongjian makes a conclusive counterargument ibid., pref., 5 .

229

their teachings, this trend increased from the Song dynasty onward as part of a general view among Chinese intellectuals that the Three Teachings Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism were three versions of a single underlying truth. And among latterday Daoists, inner alchemists borrow more heavily from Chan Buddhism and NeoConfucianism than other Daoists do, often thinking carefully about the links between these traditions. Alchemists take various approaches to the questions of where alchemy ts within the Three Teachings, how the Three Teachings could all be true, and how they could be related. One approach, adopted by Bai Yuchan, Li Daochun, Chen Zhixu, and probably many others, is for the alchemist to claim that a deeper truth underlies all daos, and that he approaches this common truth more closely than any other teacher does. Li Daochun teaches that Golden Elixir alchemy is just one version of this truth, one among many.60 Chen Zhixu, on the other hand, claims that his own dao has a privileged relation to the truth: the underlying truth is precisely the dao of the Golden Elixir, and all the sages of the Three Teachings have always been transmitting this teaching, in secret. Chen sometimes divides the eld of religious teachings, not according to the faultlines of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, but according to the lines of true selfcultivation including true teachings from Buddhism and Confucianism as well as Daoism and false self cultivation including false Daoist teachings as well as false nonDaoist teachings. Emic views of inner alchemy like this are helpful for us to use in constructing an etic denition of inner alchemy within the eld of Chinese religion and society.

§1.3, Inner alchemy borrows, develops, and transforms . . . laboratory alchemy.

The

original form of alchemy, in China as well as in other civilizations, was laboratory alchemy waidan. The use of the name alchemy dandao within inner alchemy, as well as many terms and concepts from laboratory alchemy, identies inner alchemy more closely with laboratory alchemy than with any other source. From the time of Ge Hong 283 343 or earlier, laboratory alchemists included inner cultivation practices as part of their overall regimen. These innercultivation 60

Crowe, The Nature and Function of the Buddhist and Ru Teachings in Li Daochun, 161.

230

practices included breath control, qi ingestion and circulation, sexual cultivation, and visualization.61 Such practices later became important parts of inner alchemy, but during the early medieval period these innercultivation practices were not yet seen as alchemy, only as ways for the alchemist to cultivate life and health during his long years of labor in the laboratory. These components of later inner alchemy began to emerge as an alchemical system in the early Tang dynasty, and only gradually became separate from laboratory alchemy. Chinese laboratory alchemy came in many forms. The two most common forms were 1 attempting to make a mercurysulfur compound, and 2 attempting to make a leadmercury compound; a third form worth mentioning is 3 the attempt to make a mercurygold solution.62 In 1 mercurysulfur alchemy, mercury Yin is rened from cinnabar Yang, added to sulfur Yang, and rened again. This process, typically repeated nine times, yields an essence deemed to be entirely devoid of Yin and thus to incorporate the qualities of Pure Yang.63 In 2 leadmercury alchemy, rened mercury Real Yin, zhenyin is rened from cinnabar Yang, and rened lead Real Yang, zhenyang is rened from native lead Yin. The elixir produced by joining rened mercury and rened lead to each other is also equated to Pure Yang.64 The nal product of each of these forms of alchemy is called huandan cyclically transformed elixir, reverted elixir, or recycled elixir. While inner alchemists adopted terminology from 3 mercurygold alchemy e.g., the terms golden liquor, jinye , and golden elixir, jindan and perhaps also from 2 mercurysulfur alchemy, it is 1 leadmercury which they took as their theoretical basis. For inner alchemists, mercury represents the principle of yinwithinyang li , or its central yin line, and lead represents the principle of yangwithinyin kan , or its central yang line. This dominant position of leadmercury alchemy coincides with the dominance of the Zhouyi Cantong qi within inner alchemy. A text with this title had been in continuous transmission from the Han dynasty on probably as a weft text, weishu 61

Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 23; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 18491.

62

Pregadio, Great Clarity, 114 18; Pregadio, Elixirs and Alchemy, 190.

63

Pregadio, Great Clarity, 100.

64

Pregadio, Great Clarity, 100.

231

, but it was probably reedited into a text of alchemical theory toward the end of the Six Dynasties, or as late as the Sui or early Tang.65 The form of alchemy taught in Cantong qi, the fusing of lead and mercury, established this leadmercury complex as the alchemical mainstream; or perhaps the establishment of both Cantong qi as the central text, and leadmercury alchemy as the alchemical mainstream, were part of the same process.66 Other important laboratoryalchemical terms or concepts found within inner alchemy include the alchemical chamber, furnace, caldron, bellows and tuyre tuoyue , re and water, yellow sprouts huangya , white snow baixue , and granulated cinnabar zhusha . Some important terms or concepts from laboratory alchemy, such as sulfur and luting mud, were not picked up by the inner alchemists. Sometimes, inneralchemical interpretations of terms from laboratory alchemy are numerological and not metaphorical at all, obviously unrelated to the original meaning. Thus, inner alchemists often do not interpret the terms nine recyclings or seven reversions jiuhuan qifan as nine or seven stages of cultivation, but rather dwell on the numerological signicance of the numbers nine or seven. In inner alchemy, jiuhuan and qifan are, to a certain extent, merely oating signiers.

§1.4, Inner alchemy borrows, develops, and transforms . . . qi cultivation.

The concept

of qi67 is the most important concept within Chinese cosmology, embracing gaseous, energetic, and material phenomena. Its root meaning is air, vapor, ether, breath, but it came to be seen as the substance of all solid bodies, insubstantial airy qualities, and energic processes in the macrocosm of the natural world and the microcosm of the human body. For example, Songdynasty NeoConfucian philosophers beginning with Zhang Zai 1020 77 believed that, soon after the cosmic origin, some qi 65

Pregadio, The Early History of the Zhouyi cantong qi, 168 69.

66

Pregadio, Elixirs and Alchemy, 170 71.

67

English translations for the term qi in the Sinological literature include pneuma, air, matterenergy, congura tional energy, vital energy, vapor, breath, and subtle breath.

232

became turbid hunqi 68 and solidied into matter, while other qi remained insubstantial as air or energy. Religious Daoists regarded qi as the primary medium by which one might apprehend and eventually join with the Dao.69 Daoist selfcultivation in general involves the gathering and renement of qi, and qi is indeed one of the main ingredients of the inneralchemical process. BaldrianHussein notes that The earliest texts which speak of neidan compare it with qi techniques, either with embryonic breathing or with the absorption of breath.70 Among the qicultivation practices to which inner alchemy is heir, we may distinguish 1 the practice of cultivating external qi from 2 the practice of cultivating internal qi, with the former involving breath control and the latter involving circulation of internal energies.71 Daoist qicultivation practices include spitting out the old qi and drawing in the new tugu naxin , tuna , rst mentioned in Zhuangzi72 , guiding and pulling daoyin , which may refer to gymnastics as well as qicultivation73 , fetal respiration taixi , ingesting qi fuqi , circulating qi xingqi , rening qi lianqi ,74 and visualizing colored qi.75 Henri Maspero argues that, towards the middle of the Tang dynasty, there was a revolution in the theory of qicultivation, and a change from the ingestion of external atmospheric qi through swallowing air and saliva to the cultivation of the internal qi of the viscera.76 This is reected in the changing theory of fetal respiration. Whereas in the early medieval period, the adept practicing fetal respiration slowed and softened the breath until it was imperceptible, 68

Hun could also mean curdled or rotten.

69

Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 16.

70

BaldrianHussein, Inner Alchemy: Notes on the Origin and Use of the Term Neidan, 179.

71

This is a helpful distinction, but it overly simplies the matter, since qi always includes both gaseous and energetic aspects. 72

Zhuangzi, H.Y. 15.5; Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 167.

73

Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, 175n140.

74

Maspero, Methods of Nourishing the Vital Principle in the Ancient Taoist Religion, 469, identies circulating qi as guiding it e.g., to an a icted area , and rening qi as letting it go where it will without guiding it. 75

Visualizing colored qi is an important practice within Shangqing Daoism, e.g., Robinet, Taoist Meditation, 110.

76

Maspero, Methods of Nourishing the Vital Principle in the Ancient Taoist Religion, 460, with special reference to DZ 824, Songshan Taiwu Xiansheng qi jing.

233

at which point the adept could be assumed to be respiring through the umbilicus like a fetus in the womb, in the midmedieval period fetal respiration came to mean forming a spiritual fetus within the subtle body through internal respiration.77 The later form of internal fetal respiration is one of the main sources of inner alchemy. Some forms of classical inner alchemy contain a stage called fetal respiration, a state of deep stillness during which the holy fetus forms.78 Thus, some forms of inner alchemy may be distinguished from fetal respiration in theory and discourse, yet resemble it in practice. Inner alchemists may be unique in the singlemindedness of their emphasis upon cultivating the One Qi, a point of pure yang energy left over within this fallen world from the state of cosmogenesis, and left over within the adult body from the pure state of infancy. Inner alchemists had various notions about gathering this One Qi through respiration and salivaswallowing, internal sensation, or sexual congress. There was a practice of cultivating a spiritual fetus in the Shangqing tradition that may also be relevant to the prehistory of inner alchemy. DZ 639, Huangtian Shangqing Jinque Dijun lingshu ziwen shang jing from the root text Zishu lingwen shang jing describes a practice in which the the adept ingests yin qi jade placenta, yubao from the sun and yang qi jade fetus, yutai from the moon.79 These qi are mixed in the region of the lower dantian by the corporeal spirit Peach Child or Peach Vigor, Taokang , producing the Ruddy Infant or Naked Infant, Chizi , who nds lodging in the region of the upper dantian. Bokenkamp says that this is an alternative to sexual practice, a sublimated form of huanjing bunao recycling essence to replenish the brain .80 This practice resembles inner alchemy in its use of two pharmaca, one yinwithinyang yubao from the sun and the other yangwithin yin yutai from the moon ,81 but in its use of solunar qi it is more like the earlier form 77

Maspero, Methods of Nourishing the Vital Principle in the Ancient Taoist Religion, 481.

78

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 42. Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue, 223, says this of Yu Yan.

79

DZ 639 is a piece of Zishu lingwen shang jing, probably composed by Yang Xi 330? around 36470. This root text exists in the Ming Daoist canon as four separate texts DZ 639, 255, 442, and 179 . A translation and study of these texts is found in Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 275372. 80


81


234

of fetal respiration where external qi is ingested than the Tangdynasty form where internal qi is cultivated . Also note that this Shangqing practice was associated with alchemical discourse, though not directly. The root text Zishu lingwen shang jing includes both this quasifetal respiration in DZ 639 and a form of astroalchemy in DZ 255, Taiwei lingshu ziwen lanan huadan shenzhen shang jing , but while these two practices were both found in the original text, they were not integrated. This is like what we see in the early alchemy of Ge Hong and others, where selfcultivation practices are part of the alchemists overall regimen, but are not integrated with laboratory alchemy. The practices in DZ 639 go unmentioned by later inner alchemists. These practices may reect a moment in the prehistory of inner alchemy, but are not direct ancestors of the tradition.

§1.5, Inner alchemy borrows, develops, and transforms . . . sexual cultivation.

Hao Qin

believes that we should seek the origins of inner alchemy in sexual cultivation bedchamber arts, fangzhong shu , rather than in qi cultivation.82 He believes that the concept of circulating energy along subtle tracts within the body comes from the classical sexual practice of recycling the seminal essence to replenish the brain huanjing bunao ,83 and does not come from qicirculation or fetal respiration. His best evidence for this theory comes from the Mawangdui manuscript Ten Questions Shiwen , which contains key elements of later inner alchemy, including the interconvertibility of seminal essence and qi,84 retaining seminal essence bijing , rening essence lianjing , and recycling the essence to replenish the brain.85 In addition to transporting the essence up the dorsal tract to the brain equivalent to the superintendent tract, dumai , the Ten Questions manuscript also includes the concept of swallowing the rened essence and returning it to the abdomen which would follow a course comparable to the ventral 82


83


84

The Ten Questions contains the line For human qi, there is nothing as good as the essence of the penis Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 73 . The Ten Questions is translated in Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature, 385411. 85


235

conception tract, renmai , and thus this practice uses an internal route that looks much like the lesser orbit xiao zhoutian of classical inner alchemy.86 Hao also argues that Ge Hong describes a close cousin of later inner alchemical practice though not in alchemical language , and that Ge Hongs protoinner alchemy is in fact sexual cultivation.87 Hao also believes that the concept of the inner pharmacon neiyao comes, not from rening outer qi atmospheric qi into inner qi subtle energy , as Maspero thinks, but from rening seminal essence into qi.88 My tentative judgment is that both Hao and Maspero may be correct. Maspero may be right that there was a revolution in the theory of qicultivation in the Tang, but the idea of the cultivation of inner qi could have existed for centuries within sexual practice before it was applied to breath control.89

§1.6, Inner alchemy borrows, develops, and transforms . . . mind cultivation.

Just as

NeoConfucian learning of the heartmind and inherent nature xinxing xue can be seen as a Songdynasty reaction from within Confucian tradition to the challenge posed by Chan Buddhist mind cultivation, the xinxing xue within Daoist texts can be seen as a Daoist echo of both Chan Buddhism and NeoConfucianism. From the Song dynasty on, intellectuals advocating the unity of the Three Teachings sanjiao heyi would take commonalities in Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist xinxing xue as one of their main points of comparison. As Li Daochun writes, the Three Teachings all speak of the inherent naturethe Chan Buddhists want to actualize or see their inherent nature xianxing or jianxing , the Daoist inner alchemists want to preserve their inherent nature cunxing , and the Neo 86

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 289, 384.

87


88


89

A fuller evaluation of this issue would require more research on the Scripture of the Yeow Court Huangting jing , especially the Outer scripture DZ 332, Taishang huangting waijing yujing; DZ 403, Huangting neiwaijing jing jie; or Huangting waijing yujing zhujie , in DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu . This scripture seems also to contain the alchemical lesser orbit, and Maspero argues that the scripture is teaching something like recycling the essence to replenish the brain, but his interpretation is highly speculative Methods of Nourishing the Vital Principle in the Ancient Taoist Religion, 52329 . Also, his claim that the Scripture of the Yeow Court knew only about external qi and not internal qi 495 is hard to accept.

236

Confucians want to exhaust their inherent nature in order to illuminate bright virtue .90 Or, as Mu Changchao and Chen Zhixu say, Confucianism recties the heartmind, Buddhism claries the heartmind, and Daoism empties or puries the heartmind.91 Of course, inner alchemists usually also say that their xinxing xue is superior. For example, they say that whereas Chan Buddhists only cultivate the inherent nature, Daoists cultivate both inherent nature and life endowment xingming , and so whereas alchemists can become yang spirits after death, Chan Buddhists will become mere yin ghosts.92

§1.7, Inner alchemy borrows, develops, and transforms . . . literary mysticism.

This is

one of the signature insights in Isabelle Robinets study of inner alchemy. While there are many manifest echoes of Chan Buddhism within inner alchemical texts, Robinet also argues the two traditions share deeper similarities in their playful and antiessentialist use of language, or even their metalinguistic reection on the limitations of language. It is, in e ect, as a k an that neidan acts on the spirit of the adept.93 Like Chan Buddhist masters, inneralchemical masters try to induce mystical experiences in their disciples, not only by the ancient physiological practices, but also by harnessing the mind to disentangle knotty problems and break logjams.94 She traces this ultimately back to the Zhuangzis insights on the arbitrary nature of human language.95 Yet mystical language is not always directly related to mystical experience. Inneralchemical teachers also used mystical language to describe the state of mind and body that the adept ought to feel at certain points in the alchemical process, or to reinforce analogies between the microcosmic body and macrocosmic universe. 90

Robinet, Introduction l alchimie intrieure taoste, 6768, citing DZ 249, Zhonghe ji, by Li Daochun, 6.21a25b.

91

Robinet, Introduction l alchimie intrieure taoste, 71, citing Mu Changchaos DZ 1066, Xuanzong zhizhi wanfa tonui 4.5b, and Chen Zhixus DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 14.4b. In the section Robinet cites, Chen Zhixu argues that the Three Teachings are univocal on the following points of doctrine: the One Dao, the heartmind, inherent nature and lifeendowment, yin and yang, and the teaching institution jiaomen . 92


93


94


95

Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion, 219, 229.

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When Chen Zhixu often uses mystical language to describe the sex act, he is doing both of these at once.96 Finally, looking at inneralchemical literary mysticism from a political perspective rather than a philosophical perspective, we can see that inner alchemical teachers use mystical language to heighten the secret and therefore socioeconomically valuable penumbra surrounding their practices. §2, The Social Contexts of Inner Alchemy §2.1, The inner alchemists use culture within social institutions.

I dene social

institutions, not only as formal organizations, but also as informal groups, and the xed patterns of social interaction identied with these groups or organizations. I hold that the cultural elements of inner alchemy must be analyzed in terms of Chinese social structures. Sociologists of culture say that people develop and use discourses and other cultural elements in order to deal with the institutions and structures that make up human social lifeand perhaps this is even our main use of culture.97 Social institutions are more than a vague background structure that we can assume is standing behind our cultural analyses; rather, social institutions strongly shape how people use culture. We cannot understand cultural elements without understanding how they relate to institutions. §2.1.1.1, Inner alchemists use culture within . . . small groups, . . . including the masterdisciple relationship.

Daoist selfcultivation teachings have almost always

been transmitted within masterdisciple lineages. Many distinct social institutions that is, distinctive patterns of social interaction are essentially linked to, or secondarily associated with, the masterdisciple relation. Examples of social institutions linked to the masterdisciple relation include the roles and duties of master and disciple; lineage; secret or privileged transmission or knowledge; esotericism; and rites of transmission. Certain textual forms may be associated with the masterdisciple relation, such as oral instructions, and manuscripts or private printings. Textual forms, like social forms, may shape how people use culture. Masterdisciple relationships could grow into masterdisciple networks, or 96

See pages 492 93 below for an example of this mystical analogizing by Chen.

97

Swidler, Talk of Love, 177 79.

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even cults of disciples following a charismatic gure or saint, such as in the case of Tanyangzi 155880.98 §2.1.1.2, Inner alchemists use culture within . . . small groups, . . . including . . . the patronclient relationship.

This relationship depends on the exchange and conversion

of dierent forms of capital: the patron gives the client an alchemical adept or teacher economic support and protection economic capital or a social network social capital, and in exchange the client gives the patron oral instructions, written texts, or other forms of training cultural capital.99 Also, the patron receives cultural capital merely from association with a Daoist master, and the Daoist adept consolidates his status as a master through the patrons attentions. The patron is often a disciple of the master at least nominally, so in many cases the patronclient relationship would be a special case of the masterdisciple relationship. When the patron is also a disciple, he will submit to the masters authority in some respects e.g., in the religious eld while the master submits to the patrons authority in other respects e.g., in the economic eld, or the eld of social status. A study of this powerswitching would be a valuable contribution to the sociology of inner alchemy, but Chens writings do not oer much data on the subject. Some alchemists lacking wealth of their own or connections to monastic or temple networks would have to rely on patrons completely. For example, after giving up his wealth and o cial career for a life of selfcultivation, Zhang Boduan relied on the patron Lu Shen rst, and, after Lu died, Ma Chuhou . In return for Ma Chuhous economic support, Zhang Boduan gave him the manuscript of Wuzhen pian. The advice of Zhang Boduans disciple and second patriarch of the Southern Lineage, Shi Tai d. 1158 to the third patriarch, Xue Shi d. 1191, is also often repeated: Shi Tai furthermore warned Xue Shi , saying, Swiftly make your way to a central town well served by many roads or a metropolis, and, relying upon a powerful person, make plans to do this cultivation . The Purple Worthy Xue Shi followed this advice , and thereby completed the dao.

98

See pp. 62224 below.

99

See my discussion on pp. 199202 above.

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100 Other alchemists, such as Chen Zhixu, might rely on lay patrons at some times and temple networks at other times. In addition to exchanging forms of worldly capital, both patron and client might also help each other toward salvation: the client might help the patron by giving religious teachings, and the patron might help the client by giving him the space and time to complete his selfcultivation. If the client is a sexual alchemist, he would need the patrons help in procuring female partners, and privacy or protection from disapproving outsiders. §2.1.1.3, Inner alchemists use culture within . . . small groups, . . . including . . . the advisorruler relationship.

This is a special case of the patronclient relationship. The

trope of an adept presenting teachings or texts to a ruler, or a ruler seeking wisdom or secrets from an advisor, can be found in early texts such as Zhuangzi, and was of especial importance in the Han dynasty.101 This became a continuing literary trope: Douglas Wile notes that mainstream sexual literature from the Han to the Tang dynasty or later was written in the form of a dialogue between an emperor often the Yellow Emperor and his counsellor, while texts on private practice were written in straightforward exposition.102 The advisorruler relation is not merely a literary trope: it is also a social institution, or at least a social ideal. In his writings, Chen Zhixu often retells the story of the Yellow Emperors meeting with Guangchengzi , Guangchengzis advice to the Yellow Emperor not to belabor his body or disturb his seminal essence, and the Yellow Emperors eventual apotheosis. This legend of the Yellow Emperors disciplerelation to Guangchengzi is an important myth in Chens religious world. This was a myth that Chen hoped to embody himself. Chen reveals that he would like to repeat this scenario in his own life, with himself

100

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 13.12b7 8.

101

In Imperial Treasures and Taoist Sacraments, Seidel argues that the spiritual function of the Celestial Master as established in the Han was conceived on the model of the ancient sages who . . . instructed the mythical sovereigns of antiquity 293. A medieval emperor could prove his legitimacy that is, could prove that he possessed the Mandate of Heaven by attracting wise men including Daoists to his court by the power of his vertu de , and these wise Daoists could receive his support for their religious projects and institutions in return 369. 102

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 14.

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playing the advisor.103 And we can say that he achieved this wish while staying with his disciple Marquis Tian Zhizhai and the ruling Hmong Tian clan in Guangxi. §2.1.1.4, Inner alchemists use culture within . . . small groups, . . . including . . . relations of friendship and literati association

between male equals. Inner alchemy has

always been a literary tradition, and, until recent times, a literati tradition. From the perspective of social history, one may argue that the shift from laboratory to inner alchemy in the Tang dynasty, and the popularity of inner alchemy in the Song, is linked to a general social shift from aristocratic society to gentry society.104 Due to advances in printing, the wider availability of education, and a general growth in population, the literati class grew dramatically in the Song, until only a small proportion of literate and educated men were able to nd employment in government service. Unable to pursue traditional literati careers on a national scale, they developed regional forms of higher culture, and enjoyed the arts of private life, including inner alchemy. As Skar says, adepts and their patrons used these new teachings . . . to add to the repertoire of literati association.105 Along with this new alchemy came new deities, a new type of supralocal transcendent being, such as Zhongli Quan, L Dongbin, or Liu Haichan who resembled the cultivated gentlemen he sought to attract.106 From the perspective of the sociology of culture, we may view inner alchemical culture as a repertoire of tools used by literati to pursue strategies within and among literati institutions.107 This way we can explain specic features of inner alchemical culture, such as the fact that many inneralchemical texts are poem or song cycles written by named authors either human literati, or terrestrial transcendent literati such as L Dongbin, rather than scriptures dictated or revealed by celestial deities. Poetry was an important cultural currency among literati, and the value of a literati poem as art or as cultural capital is usually closely 103

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu, Chen Zhixus preface, 5b.

104


105


106


107

Cf. Swidlers theory of cultural tool kits; Swidler, Culture in Action; idem, Talk of Love, 24 44.

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related to its authorship. §2.1.1.5, Inner alchemists use culture within . . . small groups, . . . including . . . the family or clan and its related institutions.

Family or clanrelated social institutions

relevant to the study of inner alchemy include lineage, the ancestor cult, and polygamy. Inner alchemy has always been transmitted within lineages, for several reasons. The rst reason is historical: the family has always been the main model for Chinese society, and beginning in the Song dynasty or earlier, the familybased institution of the lineage in particular was taken as a model for society.108 Another reason why lineage is important within inner alchemy is because alchemy is an esoteric tradition. Inner alchemical training requires the oral instruction and handson guidance of a master, but even then, how can the adept know whether to trust his or her teacher? Unlike religious healing or apotropaic ritual, which can be veried through extraordinary miracles or ordinary good fortune, the spiritual attainments of inner cultivation can rarely be publicly veried. Thus, people will judge the value of an alchemical teaching according to their trust in the authority of the teacher who is transmitting this teaching, or their own personal experience in practicing it which also depends on this trust in the teacher.109 The authority of the students teacher depends on the authority of the teachers teacher, and the lineage extending behind them. Therefore, any inneralchemical teacher will depend in large part on his lineage to legitimate his teachings. Inner alchemists often venerated their lineal patriarchs, taking the ancestor cult in Chinese society as their model. In the Tang and Song dynasties, Chan Buddhists rst developed the concept of a lineage of Chan patriarchs stretching back to the Buddha, and later added to this the institution of a cult to their immediate patriarchs, i.e., an ancestor cult.110 Both lineage and ancestor cult are important to Chen Zhixu. As we saw in chapter 2, Jindan dayao includes several genealogies of 108


109

In Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism, Steven Katz argues that mystical experience is tradition dependent, and I hold that the alchemists experiences or attainment are also traditiondependent. The adepts experiences will depend directly on his or her training. We could almost say that the adept will experience what he or she is trained to experience, but this would be an oversimplication. So personal experience also depends directly on the students trust in his or her teacher. 110

Foulk, Myth, Ritual, and Monastic Practice in Sung Chan Buddhism.

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mortal and divine patriarchs, as well as many other genealogical statements scattered throughout, that attempt to place Chen within a Quanzhen Daoist lineage. I have identied three levels of lineage claim in this material: Chens extended, eective, and immediate lineages. Actually, all of these are retrospective, or false, lineages. Chens one known patriarch, Zhao Youqin, did not have a real historical link any to Quanzhen Daoist lineage, and Chens teachings themselves have almost nothing to do with Quanzhen Daoism. Chen Zhixus Stream of Transcendents contains the texts of rituals reecting Daoist ancestor cult, addressed rst to Zhongli Quan and L Dongbin but also including all of the patriarchs of Chens lineage. Finally, the institution of polygamy is relevant to the study of inner alchemy. Male sexual cultivators have often required multiple female partners to be available for their practice. Classical Chinese sexual cultivation as studied by Wile assumes a certain family institution, the polygamous household. The later sexual alchemists such as Chen Zhixu may have used bondmaids or prostitutes instead of wives or concubines.111 §2.1.2.1, Inner alchemists use culture within . . . midsized groups, . . . including . . . the monastery, temple, or cult association.

Many alchemists had monastic or priestly

careers, and this may have aected their teachings. I believe that the strongly polemical attitude of Chen Zhixus writings, and even of his alchemy itself, is due to his precarious economic situation; probably the writings, and even the alchemy, of adepts in economically stable situations within monasteries or temples would be signicantly less polemical. As I argue in chapter 3, socioeconomic factors can shape, not only the outer trappings of alchemical teachings, but even their inner technical details. §2.1.2.2, Inner alchemists use culture within . . . midsized groups, . . . including . . . local practice and printing networks.

An alchemists use of alchemical culture that is,

his or her practice and teachings may reect the conditions, constraints, and opportunities of local practitioner networks, and scribal or printing networks. For 111

On pp. 385 87, and pp. 446 70 chap. 5, §3.1.2 , especially pp. 463 65 §3.1.2.6 , I discuss the evidence for Chens use of prostitution or other kinds of paid sexual labor.

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example, when the alchemist writes down his teachings and disseminates them to a wider audience, we may expect to nd these teachings in code. Because the alchemical author cannot select his or her readers, and will no longer have direct control over who receives his teachings, he will have to use a new means of limiting their spread to a worthy few: writing coded texts and entrusting that only readers who have received personal instruction from an authoritative teacher would be able to decode these texts. As Chen Zhixu writes ever and again, What does the term reverted elixir refer to? I say, one must have a teachers personal instructions. Thus Chunyang the Perfected L Dongbin said, If you do not rely on a teachers instructions, this aair is dicult to comprehend. Lord Lao said, I am not a sage: I attained this through study. Therefore, in studying alchemy, you must rst seek a master, and must not speculate wildly about alchemical discourse by yourself. () $ #* %'! ' "&112 Chen assumes that his writings could only be properly applied by readers under the direction of a realized master, whether that be himself, or someone like himself elsewhere in space or time. This is Hugh Urbans esoteric strategy no. 5: constructing a hierarchy of levels of truth, and restricting access to them. §2.1.3.1, Inner alchemists use culture within . . . large groups, macrostructures, and the broader society, . . . including . . . macroeconomies, social class, or the imperial state.

All

of the micro and mesolevel institutions discussed above t into these larger structures. These larger structures do not impact alchemists use of alchemical culture directly, but are mediated by the other institutions discussed above. Macro economies of nancial, cultural, social, intellectual, and other capitals underlie the alchemical eld.113 When literati use alchemy to maintain networks, develop higher culture, and enjoy the arts of private life, this activity presupposes the class system and the privileges and desirability of being a literatus. The advisorruler relationship found in alchemical literature and in the careers of alchemists presupposes the Chinese imperial state, with ruler, court, and national and local bureaucracies. The 112

DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie 1.41a6 9.

113

See pp. 193 202 chap. 3, §§3.3 4.

244

Daoist heavens that alchemists often depict as their nal goal and salvation are modeled on the Chinese state. This model of the state actually has less impact on alchemical culture than it does upon other forms of Daoism, such as ritual or classical Daoist scripture. Sexual alchemists use of bondmaids for their practice also depends on an exploitative class system. §2.1.3.2, Inner alchemists use culture within . . . large groups, macrostructures, and the broader society, . . . including . . . daos, traditions, teachings, schools, or sectarian movements.

Robert Campany has shown that premodern Chinese writers did see

things like what we call religions in their social world, and their term for these was daos.114 Yet the term dao could also applied to entities at many di erent levels of generalityfrom a universal truth, to a major religion practiced in many lands such as Buddhism , to a regional religion or form of religion, to the tradition of a single lineage or single teacher, perhaps a smaller dao within a larger dao. Chinese writers also spoke of abstract schools of thought or practice each organized around a distinctive principle, zong , such as the Northern and Southern Schools of Chan Buddhism, painting, inner alchemy, poetry, or martial arts.115 From their texts we can see that inneralchemical teachers from the Song dynasty on devoted a great deal of thought to daos. It is dicult to summarize alchemists various schemata for categorizing daos, since each thinker seems to have a di erent schema. Also, to analyze these attempts sociologically would add several additional levels of complexity. Such an analysis would require 1 sorting out di erent alchemists conceptions of daos, 2 viewing these emic conceptions as uses of culture within etic social and socioreligious instititions that is, our viewing of medieval Daoists thinking about and constructing religions, and out setting this against the background of the objective institutions the Daoists were living in , and 3 theorizing about the categories religion, religions, religious in general. §2.2, The inner alchemists use culture within social institutions . . . for the goals of self transformation into authoritative and holy masters within this world distinct from the 114

Campany, On the Very Idea of Religions.

115


245

common run of mortal humanity, and transcendent beings beyond it.

In this

dissertation I argue that Chen Zhixu has three interrelated goals, and it is my hypothesis that most inner alchemical teachers will have similar goals. Chens three goals are 1 achieving recognition and authority as a master, or managing his mastership; 2 spreading his teachings in the religious eld; and 3 attaining personal salvation. Why does he seek authority? Proximately, for the sake of advantages in this world; ultimately, for the sake of his own salvation. The authority he gains will help him attract a support network and audience base of patrons, disciples, or readers. This support network in turn will help him nance his personal quest for salvation. In addition to this, his teaching activities within his network, and his successes in spreading his teachings to new audiences, will generate karmic merit for him, which will further contribute to his salvation.116 Among Chens strategies for managing his mastership and attracting disciples is the strategy of emphasizing the gulf between two types of person: common fools doomed to death and dissolution, and himself and his fellow illuminati saved by their wisdom, selfcultivation, and knowledge of the secrets of transcendence. §3, Ontological Registers, and Language §3.0, Inner alchemists may, for rhetorical, philosophical, or soteriological reasons, interpret their concepts and discourse on a number of dierent ontological registers or levels of reality.

A classic example of an inneralchemical theory of ontological

registers is Li Daochuns schema of four vehicles and nine grades of alchemical technique sicheng jiupin danfa .117 This is a sophisticated theoretical construct, reminiscent of Chinese Buddhist panjiao classication of teachings schemas for ranking the various forms of SinoIndian Buddhism, and it serves as a model for my own schema of alchemical registers below.118 At the bottom of Li Daochuns schema are nine grades of marginal 116

See pp. 16162; also, pp. 72, 84, 104, 12425, 129, and 44852 chap. 5, §3.1.2.1.

117

DZ 249, Zhonghe ji, by Li Daochun, 2.13a17a. Cf. Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 49194; Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 15052; Crowe, The Nature and Function of the Buddhist and Ru Teachings in Li Daochun, 28992. This passage is translated in appendix 3 of this chapter pp. 36166. 118

Other such inneralchemical classication of teachings schemata can be found in the writings of Chen Nan, Bai Yuchan, and Mu Changchao.

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traditions pangmen , which Li does not consider to be inner alchemy at all; above them come three gradual vehicles of inner alchemy; and surmounting them all is the one sudden vehicle. The lowest of the four vehicles is alchemy on the microcosmic register, alchemy understood in psychophysiological terms, with body and heartmind as variables occupying the general category caldron and furnace, and kidneys and heart occupying the category water and re. His middle vehicle is alchemy on the mesocosmic level, alchemy understood in terms of abstract signs, with qian and kun occupying the category caldron and furnace, and kan and li occupying the category water and re. His upper vehicle is alchemy on the macrocosmic level, alchemy understood in cosmic and psychic terms, with Heaven and Earth occupying the category caldron and furnace, and sun and moon occupying the category water and re. His Supreme One Vehicle, which is also a sudden vehicle, is alchemy on the purely metaphysical level or level of nonspatiotemporal realities, alchemy as the direct cultivation of inherent nature, with the Great Void Taixu and the Great Ultimate Taiji occupying the category caldron and furnace, and calming meditation ding , Skt. samatha and wisdom hui , Skt. praj occupying the category water and re. I include a full translation of Li Daochuns nine grades and four vehicles in appendix 3 to this chapter. These four vehicles line up with my quadripartite schema of ontological registers below though details vary between them. §3.1.1, Inner alchemists may interpret their concepts and discourse on . . . the register of the microcosm of human body, . . . including empirical, theological, and symbolic perspectives on the body.

Kristofer Schipper o ers a useful schema for categorizing

Daoist body concepts. He writes that Daoists may view the body empirically, theologically, or symbolically.119 The empirical body is the medical body as understood by the practicing physician, according to a way of knowing based more on experience than theory. In the theological body, the multiple souls and spirits represent the essences and the energies qi of the body. This view also includes understandings of the body based on correlative cosmology. The symbolic body is 119

Schipper, The Taoist Body, 1035.

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the body viewed as an inner landscape. Whereas the empirical and theological bodies are part of Chinese common culture, the body as a landscape is a uniquely Daoist concept. This beautiful vision includes both the empirical and theological views, but what distinguishes it from the other ways of viewing the body is that it is related to a rich and meaningful mythology. By turning the light of his eyes within, a Daoist may see a mythical inner world, with the great sacred mountain; the Kunlun, pillar of the universe; the isles of the Immortals; the holy places, such as the altars of the Earth God; in short, the whole mythical geography as well as its corresponding pantheon.120 In this chapter, I discuss the 1 psychophysiological, 2 symbolic, and 3 allegorical or visionary elements of inner alchemy; almost all of these are related to body and mind. These do not map directly to Schippers A empirical, B theological, and C symbolic visions of the body, but Schippers categories are useful for comparison. The 1 psychophysiological elements of inner alchemy include essence, qi, spirit or spirits, and so on. The 2 symbolic elements come from Chinese correlative cosmology. The 3 allegorical or visionary elements include dragon and tiger, or squire metal jingong , lovely girl chan , and naked infant chizi . Comparing Schippers categories with mine, I have left out Schippers A empirical perspective, and divided his B theological perspective into 1 psychophysiological and 2 symbolic dimensions. The closest relation is between Schippers C symbolic view and my 3 allegorical or visionary perspective. As in Schippers account, in some cases inner alchemists do represent the body as a mountain, or a landscape.121 Chen Zhixus Jindan dayao contains an illustration of the alchemical body gured as a mountain, copied from an earlier text.122 This illustration does not represent Chens usual bodydiscourse, and may be related to liandu salvation through renement practice, which plays no role in Chens

120

Schipper, The Taoist Body, 105.

121

Catherine Despeux has written a book, Taosme et corps humain, on Daoist images of the body as a landscape. Many of her images are related to inner alchemy. 122

DZ 1068, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao tu 3a; copied from DZ 90, Yuanshi wuliang duren shangpin miaojing neiyi 8b9a.

248

teachings.123 As I say in section 6 below on the allegorical or visionary elements of inner alchemy, I do believe that the 3 allegorical elements of inner alchemy belong to an embodied mythology that is comparable to Schippers C symbolic view, yet the contents of the two mythologies are quite di erent. The inneralchemical theological body includes the Five Viscera124 wuzang , which are yang; the Six Receptacles liufu ,125 which are yin; the three dantian in the front of the body and the Three Passes in the back; and the lesser orbit xiao zhoutian , or ecliptic huangdao , often thought to be made up of the twin tracts of conception and superintendency rendu ermai ;126 and various other subtlebody tracts, some of which may be used for the greater orbit da zhoutian .127 While the descriptions of the Five Viscera and Six Receptacles do not vary much according to the teachings of various inneralchemical authors, there is considerable variance in the conception and description of the three dantian, the lesser and greater orbits, and the various tracts. The nomenclature of some sites especially the dantian varies tremendously, mostly for rhetorical reasonsthe dantian or other sites may be given di erent epithets to emphasize their di erent functions or correlations. The conception of some sites also varies, though to a lesser extent. I list many alternate terms for body sites in appendix 2 to this chapter. 123

Chens illustration includes body sites labeled Luofeng and Kuhai , which are infernal sites for the renement of souls. 124

These are the kidneys correlated with agent water , the liver wood , the heart re , the lungs metal , and the spleen earth . The most important viscera for inner alchemists are heart and kidneys, representing the opposed principles of yinwithinyang and yangwithinyin, or the human beings two major systems of cognition heart and reproduction kidneys; Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 190.

125

These are the gallbladder, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, bladder, and Triple Burner. The Triple Burner is associated with certain bodily locations, but should be thought of as a triple set of functions rather than an organ. See Komjathy, Cultivating Perfection, 457, for a full denition. Medical texts beginning with the Huangdi suwen further add a set of ve Odd Receptacles qiheng zhi fu 126

The superintendent tract dumai leads from the lower Magpie Bridge between coccyx and anus up the spine through the Three Passes, and over the crown to the upper Magpie Bridge between upper palate and tongue . The conception tract renmai leads from the upper Magpie Bridge down the front of the body, through the middle and lower dantian, and back to the lower Magpie Bridge. 127 These tracts include the cardinal jing and reticular tracts luo . According to the modern medical system, there are twelve regular cardinal tracts zhengjing , eight extraordinary cardinal tracts qijing , and fteen reticular tracts; Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 15378. Of the cardinal tracts, the twin tracts of conception and superintendency rendu ermai are the most important.

249

As for the lesser orbit, we can divide the di erent versions of it into two categories: those versions in which the pharmacon being circulated is swallowed as saliva, with the circuit thus involving the salivary glands, tongue, and throat, and those versions in which the pharmacon is circulated as intangible essence or qi, with the circuit thus bypassing the throat. Conceptions of the greater orbit vary tremendously; some versions involve the greater and lesser tracts, while others do not. Alchemists see upper, middle, and lower ranges in the body, each range with its dantian. Important bodily sites within the upper range of the alchemical body include the upper dantian MudPellet Palace, Niwan Gong and sites related to it such as the brain and the crown of the head; the eyes, brows, and the ophryon midway between the brows; the upper Pass JadePillow Pass, Yuzhen Guan at the occiput; and the upper Magpie Bridge shang Queqiao , nose, mouth, and the tongue with its precious saliva. The eyes, ophryon, and salivary system are not important for all alchemists, but the other sites in the upper range of the body are generally relevant in most forms of inner alchemy. The eyes and ophryon become important in Quanzhen alchemy of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The salivary system is emphasized in some forms of inner alchemy, but less so by Southern Lineage alchemists and their heirs.128 Important bodily sites within the middle range of the alchemical body include the middle dantian Crimson Palace, Jianggong and sites related to it such as the Bright Hall Mingtang ,129 Grotto House Dongfang , heart,130 spleen,131 and Yellow Court Huangting ; the liver; the lungs; the digestive 128 An exception to this trend is Weng Baoguang, whose teaching involves swallowing saliva called recycled elixir of metallous humor, jinye huandan as part of the lesser orbit; Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 27. Although he was not part of Bai Yuchans Southern Lineage, Weng Baoguang did consider himself a true heir of Zhang Boduan. 129

Some texts locate the Bright Hall below the throat, and the Grotto House between the Bright Hall and the middle dantian Maspero, Methods of Nourishing the Vital Principle in the Ancient Taoist Religion, 458; Despeux, Taosme et corps humain, 72. Other texts use these terms to refer to the middle dantian itself.

130

Sometimes the heart is considered to be a section within the middle dantian; Maspero, Methods of Nourishing the Vital Principle in the Ancient Taoist Religion, 458.

131

The spleen may also be an assistant of the lower dantian; Maspero, Methods of Nourishing the Vital Principle in the Ancient Taoist Religion, 459.

250

system with ve of the Six Receptacles gallbladder, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, and bladder ; the middle Pass SpinalStraits Pass, Jiaji Guan ; the throat, esophagus, and trachea the Storied Building, Chonglou ; and the arms and hands. Crimson Palace is the most common term for the middle dantian, but sometimes it refers directly to the heart. The middle dantian is usually located below the heart, and is related to it functionally. The Yellow Court is usually associated with the spleen both correlated with agent earth , but is sometimes glossed as the middle dantian.132 The throat and esophagus are emphasized only in relation to saliva swallowing. The arms and hands are only mentioned rarely, when the greaterorbital practice involves transporting qi along their tracts. Important bodily sites within the lower range of the alchemical body include the lower dantian simply called the Dantian, or Dantian Palace and sites related to it such as the kidneys, bellows and tuyre tuoyue ,133 genitals, and gate of seminal essence ; the lower Pass TailGate Pass, and sites related to it such as the lower Magpie Bridge xia Queqiao , Gate of Destiny Mingmen ,134 perineum Huiyin , and anus ; and the legs and feet. The legs, feet, and related sites135 are only mentioned rarely, in relation to greaterorbital practice. Certain sites vary in their physicality, with some teachers giving them physical locations, some arguing that they have only a functional or mystical existence and no xed location,136 and others saying that either of these positions may be appropriate, depending on the adepts depth of understanding or stage of cultivation. Such sites include the xuanpin which is sometimes understood to be a pair of sites, the 132

Despeux, Taosme et corps humain, 78.

133

Quanzhen alchemists place the bellows between the heart and kidneys or as a function of heart and kidneys ; Southern Lineage alchemists place them between the two kidneys or as a function of the two kidneys ; Despeux, Taosme et corps humain, 165.

134

Because it is understood functionally, the Gate of Destiny is variously dened as the navel or below the navel, right kidney, a point between the second and third vertebrae, eyes, lower dantian, spleen, nose, and the Gate of Essence.

135

Such as the Bubbling Well acupoint Yongquan xuewei in the sole of the foot.

136

Bai Yuchan especially criticizes the view that regards xuanpin as nose and mouth in alchemical practice. Rather, Bai says that xuanpin is the gate of generation or creation; Wang Li, The Daoist Way of Transcendence, 159 also see 266 67 . Li Xiyue says that the Mysterious Pass does not have a physical existence or site, yet is connected with the various inner bodily sites; Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue, 115.

251

xuan and pin , the Mysterious Pass Xuanguan , a.k.a. One Aperture of the Mysterious Pass, Xuanguan Yiqiao , the Yellow Court, the Gate of Destiny, and the three dantian. Also, some terms are given additional or variant interpretations within sexual alchemy, especially the xuan and pin, and the Mysterious Pass. Finally, some alchemists develop conceptions of the alchemical body based on Buddhist terms such as formbody seshen or dharmabody fashen .137 §3.1.2, Inner alchemists may interpret their concepts and discourse on . . . the register of . . . mind.

The cultivation of the heartmind xin and inherent nature

xing is an important part of inner alchemical practice. The inherent nature is often understood as transcending the heartmind while also depending on it. Most alchemists take inherent nature rather than heartmind as an object of cultivation, but some such as Bai Yuchan emphasize heartmind instead of inherent nature.138 This prefence by some alchemists for inherent nature, and others for the heartmind, parallels a divergence between proponents of Xingxue and Xinxue within the eld of NeoConfucian thought.139 Alchemical proponents of cultivating the inherent nature rather than the heartmind must also still, purify, and clarify the mind, of course; some such as Ma Danyang even say that this is the whole of the alchemical process. They may interpret this in terms from Chan Buddhism, calling it illuminating the heartmind and actualizing the inherent nature or

buddhanature mingxin xianxing or, jianxing . They also draw on the Buddhist idea that six forms of sensory consciousness may be embodied as ve or six thieves liuzei , maras who will tempt the unwary and lead them astray. §3.1.3, Inner alchemists may interpret their concepts and discourse on . . . the register of . . . spirit or spirits.

The human subtle body as a bureaucracy peopled with

spirit o cers is one of the most distinctive concepts of medieval Daoism i.e,

137

Chen Zhixu o ers a remarkable discourse on these terms in DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 10b11a. I do not have the opportunity to analyze this passage in the dissertation.

138

Di ering from the Northern Lineage of Complete Perfection that usually regards nature xing as the golden elixir, Bai insists the mind xin is the golden elixir; Wang Li, The Daoist Way of Transcendence, 222.

139

Yang Lihua, Niming de pinjie, 157.

252

religious Daoism, and perhaps also early Daoism i.e, philosophical Daoism.140 The corporeal spirits of early medieval Daoism, such as the spirits of the Nine Palaces in the upper dantian, twentyfour phosphors jing from the Huangting jing in three sets of eight,141 or the set of ve spirits from the Duren jing,142 are still present within the purview of many inner alchemists, but they are usually mentioned only within quotations from the scriptures, and are not developed within the alchemists own teachings. Calling the corporeal spirits by name is no longer an important practice. Alchemists may also speak of summoning groups of corporeal spirits, such as the hundred spirits or myriad spirits, but these are anonymous groups, and their response is a result of alchemical practice rather than the direct goal of practice. Some alchemists may even speak of classical corporeal spirits as mere qie ects, rather than independent entities, but this sort of demythologization is not universal. The classical concepts of the cloudsouls hun , whitesouls po , and corpses or deathbringers, shi or worms chong seem to be widely accepted in inner alchemy, though these spirits are not named individually.143 They may be reinterpreted as forces of alchemical process, or understood as individual corporeal spirits as in classical Daoism. Some alchemists, such as Chen Zhixu, develop unusual teachings on corporeal and mental spirits.144 The most important spirits in inner alchemy are 1 the spirit of the heart mind xinshen and related concepts of cognitive spirit shishen 145 and primal spirit yuanshen ; and 2 the pureyang spirit yangshen . The spirit of the heartmind exists both as an individual spirit being though not visualized 140

Something like this concept can also be found in nonDaoist texts from early China, such as Xunzi; Bokenkamp, What Daoist Body? While the concept is not unique to medieval Daoism, we may say that it is distinctively medievalDaoist. 141

In the upper range, spirits of the hair, brain, eyes, nose, ears, mouth, tongue, and teeth; in the middle range, lungs, heart, liver, spleen, left and right kidneys, gallbladder, and throat; in the lower range, kidneyorb, intestines, abdomen, chest, diaphragm, armpits, and two yinyang spirits; DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 4.4ab. 142

Grand Unity Taiyi in the MudPellet Palace; Nonpareil Wuying and White Prime Bai Yuan, in the head or liver and lungs; Director of Destinies Siming in the heart and sex organs; and Peach Vigor Taokang, in the lower dantian. 143

Despeux, Taosme et corps humain, 135.

144

I discuss this on pp. 52326.

145

Also called desiring spirit yushen .

253

wearing certain robes and with a certain physiognomy, as it would have been in classical Daoism , and as a function or quality of mind and inherent nature.146 In its postnatal, degenerate form, this spirit is cognitive spirit, and in its prenatal, perfected form, it is primal spirit.147 Primal spirit is at once pharmacon, agent, and result of alchemical cultivation: it is material on which the alchemist works, yet it is also an aspect of the alchemists self and thus an agent of that work. The pure yang spirit, an invisible and intangible spiritform of the self, is strictly a result of cultivation, and not an agent of cultivation. It is the alchemists new spiritbody, able to live forever in the Heavens or in the Dao. Sometimes, it is said that the yang spirit may divide into multiple spirits, or even countless spirits. Perhaps we can regard the yang spirit and its o spring as a new alchemical version of the classical Daoist concept of corporeal spirits, although, unlike the classical spirits, these alchemical spirits only come into existence at the end of a long process of cultivation. Some teachings also may represent the holy fetus shengtai which is also produced through renement of the elixir, but at a stage earlier than the yang spiritas a sort of spiritbeing.148 Other teachings do not personify the holy fetus; this issue awaits further study. §3.2, Inner alchemists may . . . interpret their concepts and discourse on . . . the register of . . . the mesocosm of signs . . .

I take the term mesocosm from a denition of the

Tantric maala by D. G. White: the maala is a mesocosm, mediating between the great and small the universal macrocosm and the individual macrocosm , as well as between the mundane and the sublime the protocosm of the visible world of human experience and the 146

That is, this spirit is sometimes a count noun a singularity or plurality of discrete beings and sometimes a mass noun a spiritstu . This phenomenon is found throughout the history of Daoism, but predates Daoism; Bokenkamp, What Daoist Body? This issue awaits further study. There may have been a turning point in the Tang period, as evinced by texts such as DZ 1460, Taishang Dongxuan jizhong jing, which John Lagerway calls A small jewel. . . . In this new form of Taoism the human being is no longer considered as a body lled with spirits that one must try to retain, but as a spirit endowed with knowledge; Schipper and Verellen, The Taoist Canon, 1:564. 147 The binary opposition between cognitive spirit and primal spirit could also be restated as the opposition between heartmind and spirit Ge Guolong, Daojiao neidan xue tanwei, 90 , or, in NeoConfucian terms, as the opposition between our postnatal inherent nature qizhi zhi xing and our Heavenbestowed nature tianfu zhi xing . 148

E.g., in the illustrations studied by Despeux in Taosme et corps humain.

254

transcendentyetimmanent metacosm that is its invisible font.149 As described by White, a Tantric maala is a grid with a central deity in the center and a host of other beings, including lesser deities and the human practitioner, situated amidst a hierarchy of spaces, or moving along pathways of power, which both organize them into a hierarchy and connect them to the central gure. I am not using the term mesocosm to describe this sort of an abstract, hierarchical space of powerpoints within inner alchemy.150 I merely wish to draw attention to how, within inner alchemical thought, 1 yin and yang, 2 the ve agents, 3 the ve directions, 4 the eight trigrams and sixtyfour hexagrams, 5 the numbers one through ten within the numerological system of the River Chart Hetu and Luo Writ Luoshu , and other abstract cosmological or symbolic systems such as 6 the celestial stems tiangan and terrestrial branches dizhi , exist and interact within a plane distinct from both the macrocosm of Heaven, Earth, and humanity, and the microcosm of the human body and spirits. The reason why this mesocosm is ultimately important to the alchemist is because he must apply its laws to his microcosm in order to achieve transcendence, yet the transformations of the mesocosm are often accorded a life of their own within inneralchemical discourse, without direct reference to the microcosm. Often the transformations of the mesocosm actually appear to be the source of transformations within the microcosm, so it is important for the alchemist to understand mesocosmic phenomena in their own terms. Take the following passage from Chen Zhixus commentary to the Wuzhen pian for example: Heaven three produces wood, earth two produces re. Fire is numbered two, and wood is numbered three. Three and two join their natures, integrated into a single ve. The image of wood is in the east, and its modelimage faxiang is the bluegreen dragon. The qi of the dragon is mercurial re, dwelling in the south, with a modelimage of a cardinalred bird. Wood produces re, so wood is the substance, and re is the qi that is produced. Therefore wood and re make a single clan. . . . Heaven ve is jiearth, earth ten is wuearth. Wuearth dwells in kan, and jiearth dwells in li. . . . 149

White, Introduction: Tantra in Practice: Mapping a Tradition, 9.

150

If one were to pursue the metaphor of body as maala, one would have to be aware that the alchemical body has neither a singular center gure or position, nor a rigorously hierarchical structure. There may be hierarchies and central positions at each stage of the process, but these vary according to the stage.

255

--,'# * *#..%# *#("#2# %"!#$ /151 In this passage, the patterned transformations of 1 trigrams from the Book of Changes, 2 numbers from the River Chart, 3 agents from the system of the ve agents, and 4 animals from the system of the Four Images Sixiang * take on a life of their own, distinct from their correlates in the body of the alchemist. Using mesocosm as a term of art helps us to thematize these structural positions and transformations as located on a separate ontological register. I will talk more about these mesocosmic elements in section 5 on Symbolic Elements below. One word that alchemists often use for these mesocosmic elements is xiang * images.152 According to Robinet, the xiang occupies a fundamental place in Chinese thought, similar to the Word Logos in Christianity, or the sound of a mantra in Tantrism.153 Xiang and shu - number are both fundamental elements within Chinese tradition; some thinkers privilege the xiang, while others privilege number. The Commentary on the Attached Verbalizations Xici zhuan 01+ of the Book of Changes is the earliest text to oer a theory on the xiang as symbolic explanations of the trigrams. Robinet notes that, for the early medieval philosopher Wang Bi ) 226 49, the xiang are a link between thought and language. More mystically, for alchemists such as Li Daochun, the xiang serve as relays between the inexpressible vision of totality and the deciency of human discourse, between metaphysicalmoral Principle li & and practice, between natural tian principles and the human mind. I will not attempt to remain true to the emic term xiang, because the term varies so much in usage. For Chen Zhixu at least, xiang can belong to a specic set e.g., the Four Images, or it can just mean any kind of sign regarding the changes of sun and moon, the transformations of the outer pharmacon, or the rening of the 151

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 2.17a7 b1, b10.

152

Other translations for xiang include: signs, emblems, forms, or manifestations; Platonic Ideas Baryosher Chemouny, La qute de l immortalit en Chine, 127; gures or symbols Robinet, Introduction l alchimie intrieure taoste, 84; counterparts Schafer, Pacing the Void, 55; BaldrianHussein, Inner Alchemy, 183; simulacra Schafer, ibid.; or schemata Sharf, Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism, 147 49. Image has become the consensus translation. The best discussion of the term is in Sharf, ibid. 153

Robinet, Introduction l alchimie intrieure taoste, 84 87.

256

elixir within the body. In Cantong qi, qian and kun can be xiang, but macrocosmic heaven and earth can also be the xiang of mesocosmic qian and kun! Robinet would say that the inconsistency of the referents for the term xiang is instructive, a symptom of the alchemists fundamentally ludic and selfcontradictory use of language. This is a salient point, but I prefer simply to avoid using the term xiang, for the sake of clarity. Before noting the ssures and inversions in the structures of alchemical thought and language, let us understand the structures themselves. I talk about these mesocosmic elements below in section 5, Symbolic Elements, and section 6, Allegorical or Visionary Elements. Another alternative view of the xiang comes from Wile, who calls the tri hexagrams both the myth and mathematics of Chinese thought.154 This is an exaggeration in the direction of truth. While Wile alerts us to the mythical and numerological functions of the trihexagrams, and warns us that creation myths can be found within Chinese culture in places we might not be looking for them, it is an overstatement to say that trihexagrams are the myth of Chinese thought, and it is also misleading to call this mathematics. While inner alchemists do often use the trigrams qian , kun , kan , and li to tell the myth of a fall from primordial perfection,155 this myth may be mostly conned to inner alchemy. The most common sort of myth in Chinese culture, including Chinese thought, is the myth of a culture hero, or the founder of a tradition e.g., the Yellow Emperor. §3.2.1.1, Inner alchemists may . . . interpret their concepts and discourse on . . . the register of . . . the mesocosm, . . . including abstract signs such as yin and yang . . .

Yin

and yang are key concepts within traditional cosmology, astronomy, divination, psychology, medicine, cooking, martial arts, and other arts of living. Although they are central concepts within religious Daoism, they are not unique to or uniquely associated with the religion. Yin and yang serve as markers for dual categories into which any aspect of mundane reality can be divided:

154


155

I discuss this saga of devolution and redemption on pages 43539 chap. 5, §3.0.2.

257

Yang

Male

Heaven

Sun

Yin

Female

Earth

Yang

Pure

Above

Day

Yin

Impure

Below

Night

Heavens

White

Spring

Chinese

Sunny

Host

Action

Black

Autumn

Foreign

Shady

Guest

Passivity

Life

Hot

Summer

Outside

Dry

Ruler

Hard

Death

Cold

Winter

Inside

Wet

Minister

Soft

Moon Netherworld

Fig. 4.1., Yangyin dyads

The pair yinyang is epitomized by the pair malefemale, but it is better to think of yin and yang as markers of a pair of abstract categories rather than as simply reducible to the pair malefemale. Note that, in all of the pairs in gure 4.1, yang is superior to yin. It is commonly assumed, by scholars as well as nonscholars, that Daoists aim to harmonize yin and yang principles in their bodies or lifestyles, or even to maximize the yin principle and reduce the yang, but this is somewhat mistaken. There are many passages within the Daode jing emphasizing the harmonization of masculine and feminine principles and/or the maximization of the feminine.156 Readers who assume a strong continuity between the Daode jing and medieval Daoism may assume that medieval Daoists must therefore also seek to balance yin and yang, or exalt the yin.157 But this is not true. Medieval Daoists are essentially devoted to personal salvation from this world of decay and death, of imperfection and dissatisfaction. The cultivation of health and holism through balancing yin and yang is but the rst step on their path to salvation, which ultimately leads beyond the realm of yin and yang to the purer realm of the One Qi, Great Ultimate, Limitless, or Dao also equated with the heavens, celestial deities, and cosmogenesis. And this One Qi is yang.158 Because yang is pure, high, and associated with life, while yin is impure, low, and associated with death, the purer, higher realm of eternal life is marked yang relative to the sublunar, mortal realm, which is yin. Thus, while the harmonization of yin and yang, or cultivation 156

E.g., Know the masculine but maintain the feminine, and be a valley for the world

chapter 28.

157

Cf. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5.54: And how profound a truth lay hid in this exaltation of the feminine qualities and virtues to the highest place, perhaps nothing less than the key to all human social evolution in its sublimation of intraspecic aggressiveness. Also cf. Schipper, The Taoist Body, 12729. Needhams view that inner alchemists essentially aim to maximize yin is colored by his love of the Daode jing and his love of peace, and is not objectively accurate. 158 This claim is based on my understanding of inner alchemy, but also holds generally for nonalchemical Daoist teachings in the Tang dynasty and after. I believe that it holds generally for early medieval teachings, but there may be more exceptions in this period.

258

of yin, may play some role in the practices of medieval Daoism, usually these Daoists would ultimately be aiming for a state of pure yang. This involves inverting turning topsyturvy, diandao E+ the normal relation between yin and yang cf. pp. 32021 and 323 below . All of the foregoing holds especially true for the inner alchemists.Yinyang symbolism plays a more central role within inner alchemy than within perhaps any other form of Daoism;159 and while the manipulation of yin is essential within inner alchemical procedures, inner alchemists are always clearly aiming to achieve a state of pure yang.160 In addition to the set of yinyang paired oppositions listed above in gure 4.1, the inner alchemists added many of their own. Yang

Yin

Yang continued

perfected yang

perfected yin

male

female

masculine pin ; xiong 8

feminine mu ; ci =

qian 1

kun

Yin continued

kan

li C

husband

wife

the yang within the yin

the yin within the yang

above

below

lead qian 9

mercury gong

host

guest

perfected lead

perfected mercury

self wo

other bi "

rabbit within the moon

crow within the sun

movement dong 2

stillness jing A

Tiger as kan White Tiger of the Western Mountains the Lad of Kan kannan

Dragon as li Cyan Dragon of the Eastern Ocean the Maiden of Li lin C

rm gang ,

yielding rou )

pure qi qingqi 4-

impure qi zhuoqi @-

descending jiang *

rising sheng $

the Baby Boy yinger B

the Lovely Girl chan

exhalation

inhalation

Heaven

Earth

civil ring wenhuo

martial ring wuhuo %

Sun

Moon

advancing

retreating

south

north

summer

winter

jade caldron yuding : eight ounces of fallingcrescent silver !< ghost gui 0

spirit shen /

qi -

metallous furnace jinlu 'F eight ounces of risingcrescent gold !' transcendent

qi -

essence jing ;

earthly whitesoul dipo ?

celestial cloudsoul tianhun >

heart

kidneys

wuearth wutu

jiearth jitu

six digestive viscera liufu 6

ve basic organs wuzang G

nine

six

re

water

white

black

inherent nature xing #

life endowment ming

outer pharmacon waiyao D

inner pharmacon neiyao D

metallous essence jinjing ';

wood humor muye 3

outer elixir waidan

inner elixir neidan

gold humor jinye '3

jade humor yuye 3

yang elixir yangdan 7

yin elixir yindan 5

oating, volatizing fu .

currentdriven waterraising machine heche &

oxdriven waterraising machine niuche

sinking chen

Fig. 4.2, Inneralchemical yangyin dyads 159

The rhythm and principle of the play of Yin and Yang are essential in all of Taoism, but the practitioners if interior alchemy have concentrated and reected on their interactions to the greatest extent; Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion, 10.

160 Robinet, like Needham, would like to portray inner alchemy as requiring the equal involvement of yin and yang Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 141 , but she also notes that the equality of yin and yang is a feature of the houtian ( postnatal, postcosmic, temporal realm, whereas the xiantian prenatal, precosmic, io temporal state is pure yang without yin ibid., 117 .

259

The above is a table of the most important paired oppositions within inner alchemy.161 Note that elements from every register, level, or niche of inneralchemical thought and discourse macrocosmic, mesocosmic abstract or gurative, and microcosmic have a place in the yinyang categorical scheme, and the yinyang scheme can be used to establish resonances between elements of di erent registers. §3.2.1.2, Inner alchemists may . . . interpret their concepts and discourse on . . . the register of . . . the mesocosm, . . . including abstract signs such as . . . the ve agents . . .

The schema of the ve agents wood, re, earth, metal, water is a way for people to organize species according to a set of categories. Like the schemata of yinyang

above or the trihexagrams below, the schema of the ve agents can in theory include within it all things in the postcosmic houtian realm. Cosmological treatises o er many sets of veagent correspondences the ve tastes, smells, musical notes, styles of government, and so on. A full search would turn up more than a hundred such sets of correspondences.162 Figure 4.3 lists several such sets that are relevant to inner alchemy.163 Colors

Directions

Seasons

Yin/Yang

Heraldic animals

Viscera

Parts of the body

Wood

Cyan

East

Spring

Lesser yang

Cyan dragon

Liver

Muscles

Fire

Red

South

Summer

Greater yang

Cardinalred bird

Heart

Blood

xue

Earth

Yellow

Center

Dog days

furi

Yin and yang in balance

none

Spleen

Flesh

Metal

White

West

Autumn

Lesser yin

White tiger

Lungs

Water

Black

North

Winter

Greater yin

Dark warrior

xuanwu

Kidneys

Skin and hair Bones

marrow

Visceral spirits Cloudsoul

hun Spirit

shen Intention

yi Whitesoul

po Will

zhi

Fig. 4.3, Fiveagent correlations

Like yinyang or the trihexagrams, the schema of the ve agents allows people to thematize or, understand, within their given epistemological horizon how A any one species succeeds another species from a di erent category, or how B species are 161

Figure 4.2 is based on Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5:60, and Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 146, with some deletions and additions. 162

Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 2:264, citing Eberhard, Beitrge zur Kosmologischen Spekulation Chinas in der HanZeit.

163

I have selected these correspondences from similar tables in Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 1819; Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 2:26263; and Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 15052, with modications. Bokenkamp lists

260

related to one other by belonging to the same category. As a part of Chinese cosmology, the ve agents also contribute to C a general sense of metaphysical order and moral meaning in the natural and social world. A The schema of ve agents helps the alchemist to understand how one species in the world produces another, or conquers another, according to their ve agent value. Standard Chinese veagent cosmology includes several general sequences of the ve agents. Three of these are the cosmogonic order shengxu , the order in which the agents came into being: water, re, wood, metal, earth, the mutual production order xiangsheng , in which wood produces re, re produces earth, followed by metal, water, and wood again; and the mutual conquest order xiangsheng or xiangke , in which wood is conquered by metal, metal is conquered by re, followed by water, earth, and wood again.164 These orders may help alchemists to understand the sequence by which the qi of the viscera produce one another. For example, in DZ 150, Xiuzhen taiji hunyuan zhixuan tu, to make a lesser recycled elixir xiao huandan , the adept causes the primal qi of the kidneys to pass through the liver, heart, lungs, then to the middle dantian associated with the spleen, where the elixir is formed.165 Actually, more often than production or conquest cycles, the alchemists use a contrary sequence called turning the ve agents upsidedown wuxing diandao or interlaced waxing of the ve agents wuxing cuowang , as I discuss in on pages 336 38 below. B The schema of the ve agents also helps the alchemist to see links between di erent species of the same category xianglei . For example, following veagents correspondences, the alchemist can understand how the spirit corresponds to the heart because both correpond to agent re, or how the will corresponds to the kidneys because both correpond to water.166 With this understanding, the adept can guide natural processes of transformation in ways 164

Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 2:253.

165


166

Such correspondences often have their own logic. For example, in discussing the system of kidney correlations, Wile argues that The soporic state following emission also may have inspired the conceptual link in medical theory of jing and zhi , both associated with the urogenital system the kidneyorb , and of the urogenital system and the brain; Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 6.

261

favorable to his own purposes. The ve viscera are perhaps the most important set of ve within alchemy, or within any form of Daoist body practice. As Robinet notes in her study of early medieval Shangqing Daoism, within the human body, the viscera are both the location and privileged form of the expression of these Powers the ve agents . The Powers are active everywhere in the body . . . but the viscera are the points of concentration of nodes which integrate the other bodily parts. As a text related to the Huangting jing says, the ve viscera are the governors of the body.167 The ve viscera, as governors of the body, correspond to the ve planets above, or the ve marchmounts or, ve holy mountains, wuyue below.168 These relations between species of dierent categories or between species within the same category work not so much by mechanical impulsion or causation as by a kind of mysterious resonance.169 A. C. Graham calls Chinese cosmology a form of correlative thinking, which may be contrasted with scientic thinking, but which has its own rationality and is an inescapable mode of human thought.170 §3.2.1.3, Inner alchemists may . . . interpret their concepts and discourse on . . . the register of . . . the mesocosm, . . . including abstract signs such as . . . the trigrams and hexagrams . . .

The trigrams and hexagrams or trihexagrams171 come from the

Zhouyi Changes of the Zhou. The Zhouyi began as a manual for royal divination, and was probably compiled over the course of centuries, reaching its nal form in the late Western Zhou period, perhaps 825 800 .172 By the 2nd c. , it had become customary to append ten commentaries Ten Wings, Shiyi to the Zhouyi to make the Yijing Classic of changes. By this time, no one remembered what the original oracle statements of the Zhouyi had meant, and the

167

Robinet, Taoist Meditation, 60 62.

168

Robinet, Taoist Meditation, 180 81.

169


170

Graham, YinYang and the Nature of Correlative Thinking, 7.

171

Both trigrams and hexagrams are called gua ; I use the term trihexagrams to encompass both meanings of gua.

172

Rutt, The Book of Changes, 33.

262

Yijing was used as a book of ethicometaphysical wisdom.173 In the Han it was assumed that the trigrams came rst, and hexagrams were later constructed by stacking two trigrams, but actually the hexagrams may be the older of the two.174 Traditionally, the composition of the trigrams is attributed to the mythic culturehero Fuxi , and the hexagrams and their statements are attributed to King Wen of the Zhou Zhou Wenwang , or to King Wen and the Duke of Zhou Zhougong together. Like yinyang and the ve agents, the trigrams and hexagrams o ered Chinese cosmologists and diviners sets of categories eight for the trigrams or sixtyfour for the hexagrams to use in A marking di erence between species, B forging links between species within a common category, and C contributing to a general sense of meaningful order. The special value of the trihexagrams lies in their use for illustrating the dialectical complexities of change bianhua , according to which No state of a airs is permanent, every vanquished entity will rise again, and every prosperous force carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.175 Through knowledge of the Changes, the wise man may know the patterns of all changes of heaven, earth, and humanity. Laboratory alchemists, probably beginning in the Tang, used select sequences of the trihexagrams to represent the waxing and waning of yin and yang during the periods of ring the elixir, and this was continued by the inner alchemists. I discuss the three most important such trihexagram sequences, the Matching Stems, Sovereign Hexagrams, and Hexagram Qi schemata, on pages 29399 below. Here I will briey mention two more fundamental trigram sequences, the Precosmic Trigrams Xiantian bagua ascribed to Fuxi, and the Postcosmic Trigrams Houtian bagua ascribed to King Wen. Both are said to be derived from quotations from Shuogua , the eighth wing of the Yijing, but they were popularized by the Songdynasty NeoConfucian and inner alchemist Shao Yong

101177. The sequences are more commonly seen in the form of circular 173


174


175


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diagrams, which also owe their popularity and perhaps invention to Shao Yong.176

Follow the trigrams from qian at bottom i.e., South counterclockwise to zhen, then from xun above qian clockwise to kun.

8 kun

7 gen

6 kan

5 xun

4 zhen #

3 li '

2 dui

1 qian

Heaven and Earth have xed positions, Mountain and Still Water pervade their qi, Thunder and Wind excite one another, Water and Fire do not shoot at one another % &Shuogua 1.3 Fig. 4.4, Precosmic diagram, numerical sequence, and Shuogua quote

*

9 li '

8 gen

7 dui

6 qian

*

5 zhong

*

4 xun

3 zhen #

2 kun

1 kan

The thearch emerges at zhen, arranges at xun, sees i.e., receives at court at li, is given service at kun, speak his words at dui, does battle at qian, labors at kan, and completes his words at gen #" ' ! $ Shuogua 2.5 Fig. 4.5, Postcosmic diagram, numerical sequence, and Shuogua quote

Both diagram/sequences exhibit mathematical regularity: adding the numerical values of each opposing pair on the circle qiankun, likan, duigen, or zhenxun always gives a sum of 9 for the precosmic diagram, and 10 for the postcosmic diagram. However, for the inner alchemist, whereas the precosmic diagram represents the perfect order that we all possessed before birth, the postcosmic diagram represents the disorder and fallenness of our mortal condition.177 Perhaps this is because, whereas the pre cosmic diagram and numerical sequence are correlated the diagram is constituted by two fourtrigram subsequences from the eighttrigram sequence, the postcosmic 176

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 160 62. Rutt, The Book of Changes, 440 43; Smith et al., Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching, 110 20.

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diagram and sequence seemingly do not correlate with one another. It is said that an adept must follow one or the other of these diagrams according to his stage of practice. Many scholars say that the adept must follow the postcosmic diagram at an initial stage of cultivation such as when rening the outer pharmacon, and the precosmic diagram at a more advanced stage when rening the elixir.178 However, I see no evidence of this from my study of Chen Zhixu, for whom li and kan always correlate with the cardinal directions east and west in accordance with the precosmic diagram, and never, as far as I know, with north and south in accordance with the postcosmic diagram. Wile oers a dissenting viewpoint, asserting that the postcosmic sequence is found only in texts on female inner alchemy.179 §3.2.1.4, Inner alchemists may . . . interpret their concepts and discourse on . . . the register of . . . the mesocosm, . . . including abstract signs such as . . . the numbers of the River Chart Hetu . . .

In Yijing learning and common practice, the River Chart is

usually paired with the Luo Writ Luoshu .180 While inner alchemists may cite the titles of the River Chart and Luo Writ together in the same breath, I have not been able to nd any special uses of LuoWrit numerology in inner alchemy, so I do not discuss the Luo Writ in this chapter.181 The term River Chart has a long history within Chinese culture,182 but for our purposes we need only think of them as two simple cosmograms, each of which correlates 1 the numbers 1 through 10 with 2 the waxing and waning of yin and yang, and 3 the ve agents in their mutual production cycle wuxing xiangsheng . In the River Chart, we see the 178

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 161; Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 203; Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 141; Wang Li, The Daoist Way of Transcendence, 303 citing DZ 243, Chen Xubai guizhong zhinan.

179


180

My discussion of HeLuo symbology below is based on Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 176 79.

181

The Luo Writ is a magic square of three adding the values of any three squares in a line gives the same sum of fteen, and represents the waxing and waning of yin and yang during a cycle around the eight directions of the windrose. Both River Chart and Luo Writ are correlated with the eight trigrams, with the River Chart being precosmic representing the trigrams in their precosmic order, and the Luo Writ being postcosmic. The River Chart when it is drawn as a round chart represents Heaven, while the Luo Writ square represents Earth; Saso, What is the Hotu?

182 The titles River Chart and Luo Writ originally referred to palladia, royal treasureobjects, guobao . The possession of a palladium by a sovereign signied that he also possessed the Mandate of Heaven; Seidel, Imperial Treasures and Taoist Sacraments, 297 302. These were probably stones with unusual natural markings Hsieh, Writing om Heaven, 141; the diagrams that we know today may be Songdynasty products.

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numbers 1 through 10 arranged in a circle over the four cardinal directions and the center, as in gures 4.6 and 4.7 below.

Fig. 4.6, The River Chart

Fig. 4.7, The Luo Writ

The ve odd numbers are celestial and yang represented with white dots; the ve even numbers are terrestrial and yin black dots; this arrangement follows a passage from the Xici zhuan: Heaven has 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9. Earth has 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. Thus heaven has ve numbers and earth has ve numbers. The two series are interlocked in order; each number in one series has its partner in the other.183 Each of the ve directions has one oddcelestialyang number its production number, shengshu , and one eventerrestrialyin number its completion number, chengshu . Thus, according to these numbers of production and completion, heaven 1 tian yi produces water, earth 6 di liu completes it, and the numbers 1 and 6 dwell in the north. Earth 2 produces re, heaven 7 completes it, and the numbers 2 and 7 dwell in the south, and so on for the other three directions.184 According to common, nonDaoist understanding, the ve yinyang pairs for the ve agents in the River Chart symbolize continued blessing and productivity in nature. Blessing, productivity, and good fortune are possible because the ve elements are married, that is, their yin and yang aspects are joined together; and also because the chart represents the veagent mutual production cycle.185 Within inner alchemy, the 183

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 176; the translation is from Rutt, The Book of Changes, 415.

184


185

Saso, What Is the Hotu?, 402.

266

River Chart is primarily used to represent the union of the ve agents as the union of three ves, as I discuss below.186 The ten celestial stems, combined with the twelve terrestrial branches, form the Chinese sexagesimal cycle.187 Inner alchemical texts use a system for correlating each stem with yinyang and the ve agents. There is also a system for correlating the branches in the same way, but while these stemcorrelations are often seen in alchemical texts, the branch correlations are not. This is because the ten stems can be distributed evenly among the ve agents, while the twelve branches produce a less elegant distribution. This must be why stemcorrelations are used within inner alchemy to represent distinctions between the ve agents.188 Texts on sexual alchemy may advise the adept to gather the gengjin yang metal; i.e., the womans primal qi from the renshui yang water before the renshui turns into guishui yin water.189 Even more important are the jitu yin earth and wutu yang earth, which I discuss below. Each one of these ten yin or yang values of the agents is mentioned within the literature, although not each one appears in every text. §3.2.2, Inner alchemists may . . . interpret their concepts and discourse on . . . the register of . . . the mesocosm, . . . including gurative signs such as lead and mercury, and dragon and tiger...

In addition to the abstract mesocosmic signs of yinyang, the ve

agents, trihexagrams, and RiverChart numerology, inneralchemical texts also 186

Hao Qin notes that the River Chart is also used to correlate the ten celestial stems with ten viscera Longhu dandao, 178, but I have never seen this correlation employed in an inneralchemical text. The representation of the ve agents as three ves is very common in the literature, however, especially in SouthernLineage texts that draw heavily on the Wuzhen pian.

187

The ten celestial stems tiangan are jia , yi , bing , ding , wu , ji , geng , xin , ren , and gui . The twelve terrestrial branches dizhi are zi , chou , yin , mao , chen , si , wu , wei , shen , you , xu , hai . The two sequences may be used individually as a separate cycles of ten values from jia to gui and twelve values from zi to hai, or combined in staggered cycles to produce a sequence of sixty combinations from jiazi to guihai, the sexagesimal cycle. 188

Here is the list of the ten stems that are used to mark the yin and yang forms of each of the ve agents arranged according to the mutual production sequence: jiamu yang wood, yimu yin wood, binghuo yang re, dinghuo yin re, wutu yang earth, jitu yin earth, gengjin yang metal, xinjin yin metal, renshui yang water, and guishui yin water. 189

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 32. In the sexualalchemical texts studied by Wile, the adept must gather from the renshui and not the guishui ibid., 159, 177, 189, but Chen Zhixu teaches the opposite see p. 472 below. I think this is just a semantic dierence. For Chen, the outer pharmacon of yang metal within the yin water represents yang withinyin kan . In Wiles materials, the renshui itself represents yangwithinyin ibid., 32. The point in both cases is to use water symbolism to signify the gathering the yangwithinyin outer pharmacon with the symbol of water.

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contain allegorical elements: from weakly allegorical elements such as lead and mercury, to relatively richly allegorical elements, such as the lovely girl and squire metal. I discuss these in section 6 below. To distinguish them from the abstract mesocosmic signs, I call these allegorical elements gurative mesocosmic signs. §3.3, Inner alchemists may interpret their concepts and discourse on . . . the register of the macrocosm of Heaven, Earth, and humanity.

In Daoism, the macrocosm is

conceived as a trinity of Three Powers sancai , Heaven, Earth, and humankind. The link between macrocosm and microcosm in Daoism is often so strong that the correlation between these the macro and microcosmic ontological registers is simply assumed by the composers and readers of Daoist texts. When a cosmic process is described in a Daoist text, this description is often equally applicable to either the body and mind or to the cosmos. Sometimes the modern reader cannot be sure whether the text is describing meditation or processes in the macrocosm. Daoist writers may intentionally create this ambiguity, or writers and readers may even simply assume that macrocosm and microcosm operate by similar principles, and not bother to disentangle the two ontological registers.190 In inner alchemy, perhaps the most basic assumption concerning the correlation of the macrocosm and the microcosm is the assumption that the appearance of the cosmos ex nihilo, and its expansion and devolution into the fallen world we know today, is parallel to the birth, growth, maturity, degeneration, decrepitude, and death of each human being especially males. This is not a complete correlation, because the microcosmic devolution leads to death and then rebirth according to the cycle of sasra, whereas the macrocosm devolves into the generally steadystate system of the world as we know it.191 The aim of the inner alchemist is to reverse this anthropocosmic fall, and return to a state of primal unity,

190 Sharf, Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism, 61. This same observation holds for mainstream Indian Buddhism too: psychology and cosmology parallel each other in Buddhist thought; Gethin, Cosmology and Meditation, 211. 191

The BuddhoDaoist notion of kalpic cycles of macrocosmic destruction and reformation is, to my knowledge, rarely exploited within alchemical thought.

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following a narrative that I call the saga of devolution and redemption.192 This is done through regaining the energy he has lost, which can still be found in this world, either in the body as internal primal qi or mingled with atmospheric qi as external primal qi . The prelapsarian state is called xiantian , and the fallen state is called houtian .193 Depending on whether the passage in question is discussing cosmogonic or anthropogonic devolution and redemption, xiantian may be translated as precosmic or prenatal, and houtian as postcosmic or postnatal. And if one decides that the passage is talking more about microcosmic process pre and postnatal , the idea of macrocosmic process pre and postcosmic will always still be present as a meaningtrace. Such is the inextricable correlation of self and cosmos in this aspect of inner alchemy. §3.3.1, Inner alchemists may interpret their concepts and discourse on . . . the register of the macrocosm . . . including . . . temporal aspects.

In addition to the

correlation between human and cosmic devolution, there are many temporal correlations within this postcosmic, postnatal world. Alchemical theories of the generation and gathering of the outer pharmacon, and the melding of the two pharmaca into a single elixir through renement, are based on diurnal, mensual, and annual cycles of time. The completion of the elixir is based on a human temporal cyclethe gestation of the child, thought to take ten monthsrather than a macrocosmic one. The sexual alchemist cultivates the inner pharmacon gradually in preparation for the arrival of the outer pharmacon, which is capricious and di cult to catch. For most sexual alchemists, the outer pharmacon must be gathered on the third day of an alchemical lunar cycle, represented by the trigram zhen and the celestial stem geng , and corresponding to a certain day of the female partners menstrual cycle. The sexual alchemist then combines his inner pharmacon his yuanjing or 192

I discuss this saga on pages 43539 chap. 5, §3.0.2 .

193

The terms xiantian and houtian were popularized in the NeoConfucian Shao Yongs 101277 teachings on the Book of Changes: Shao terms the Fuxi arrangement of the eight trigrams the xiantian arrangement, and the Wenwang arrangement the houtian arrangement. For Shao, xian and houtian mean before and after the creation of Heaven. The term xiantian derives originally from the Wenyan commentary to the Book of Changes the seventh wing , where its meaning is unrelated to this meaning. Shao may have taken his meaning of xian and houtian from the cosmology of medieval Daoism; Smith et al., Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching, 112n49.

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sublimated seminal essence with the outer pharmacon. Conversely, for solo alchemists, it is the outer pharmacon which must be amassed gradually and the inner pharmacon which suddenly appears. The solo alchemist cultivates his outer pharmacon by transporting qi along the lesser orbit, and after he has done this for long enough, his inner pharmacon appears within his lower abdomen at a moment called the living midnight hour huo zishi ; corresponding to a moment just before midnight in the diurnal cycle or called the arrival of winter dongzhi ; cor responding to a moment just before the winter solstice .194 During the process of rening the elixir, the system of ring periods huohou of hot ring, cool ring, and resting, varies from teacher to teacher, or between traditions, but without any essential di erence between solo and sexual alchemies. The ring periods are completely based on macrocosmic time cycles, although some alchemists may claim that higher forms of alchemy transcend any concrete ring periods. As I discuss below, within SouthernLineage alchemy there are at least three di erent temporal ring schemata: one using six trigrams to represent the waxing and waning of yin and yang over a lunar month, one using twelve hexagrams to represent the changes of yin and yang during the twelve months of a year or twelve hours of a day , and one using sixty hexagrams to represent the changes of yin and yang during a month. Any teacher or tradition may employ only one of these, or several. Many alchemists say that re phasing has nothing to do with time as measured by the cyclical signs, years, months, and days, xed in precise fashion by various authors. . . . This cannot be connected with seasonal rhythms.195 This may be true for many forms of inner alchemy, but in the ZhongL tradition of inner alchemy, it seems the adept is meant to follow macrocosmic temporal cycles more literally. For example, in a later tradition drawing upon the ZhongL teachings, the heat of the re that is, the number of breaths is varied over a microcosmic cycle of three hundred days according to the macrocosmic season, and time of day, plus the 194

Midnight is the centerpoint of the Chinese zihour lasting from 11 pm to 1 am. In solo alchemical teachings, the adept is often instructed not to mechanically expect this moment to come just before the actual time of midnight or the winter solstice: this temporal correlation is only metaphorical.

195


270

adepts level of attainment.196 §3.3.2, Inner alchemists may interpret their concepts and discourse on . . . the register of the macrocosm . . . including . . . spatial aspects.

Within inner alchemy,

spatial correlations between the macrocosm and the microcosm are much less important than temporal correlations. The only two macrocosmic spatial entities of universal importance within inner alchemy are the sun and moon, which are correlated with pure yang qian and pure yin kun respectively when alone, or with yinwithinyang li and yangwithinyin kan when they harbor the suncrow and moonhare or moontoad. The cardinal directions are also frequently included within alchemical discourse. Within standard correlative cosmology, east is correlated with the agent wood, south with re, west with metal, north with water, and center with earth. Within inner alchemy, the southwest is often mentioned as the direction from whence the pharmacon originates, since the pharmacon is metal, and southwest is the point on the windrose immediately preceding the west. Since the pharmaca appear in the lower abdomen, the southwest also correlates with this region in the bodily microcosm. In earlier forms of Daoism such as the Shangqing tradition, spatial correlations between sites in the body and palaces in the heavens, or asterisms, were of major importance, but this sort of correlative thinking can be found in inner alchemy only in the quasialchemical practice of liandu salvation through renement, which I mention in section 6 below on allegory and visualization. Sometimes the alchemical body is depicted as a mountain but this depiction is also related to visualization practice, so I will not discuss it here. Macromicrocosmic correlations between bodily spaces and social spaces such as the state are not much in evidence in inner alchemy. In early Daoism for example, in the Heshang Gong commentary to the Daode jing, from the Han dynasty, it was thought that to bring order to the self is to bring order to the

196

DZ 244, Dadan zhizhi, discussed in Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 268. The Quanzhen tradition represented in Dadan zhizhi ascribed to Qiu Chuji but perhaps postdating him seems to be largely based on ZhongL teachings. It is translated in Belamide, SelfCultivation and Quanzhen Daoism.

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state zhishen zhiguo .197 This is not quite the same as the Confucian theory from the Great Learning Daxue that the moral self cultivation of one and all alike helps bring about a moral society. In the concept of zhishen zhiguo, cultivation is more physiological than moral though the two are linked , and the body itself is a country. Only a few traces of this sort of social spatial macro microcosmic correlation can be found within inner alchemy, such as in the Zhong L concept of lordly re, ministerial re, and folkish re junhuo , chenhuo , minhuo , or the analogy between pacifying the internal energies or passions and bringing prosperity to the state and peace to the people fuguo anmin . Finally, in Zhong L teachings, a set of nine viscera is correlated to the Nine Regions jiuzhou . §3.4.1, Inner alchemists may interpret their concepts and discourse on . . . the register of . . . other nonspatiotemporal metaphysical realities, such as purposive action and non action wuwei.198

In accordance with a dominant reading of the Daode jing, within

Daoism even outside of Daoism , non action wuwei is usually given a higher value than purposive action youzuo ; youwei , yet purposive action has an important place within most forms of inner alchemy. During the lesser orbital cycle, for example, the adept may rst use purposive action to force the gradually melding pharmaca up the dorsal tract, but then maintain a state of non action while he allows the pharmaca to gently descend the ventral tract.199 Or, the early stages of practice may generally involve purposive action while advanced and mystic stages may involve non action.200 Or, purposive action may be used to rene the life endowment ming , while non action may be used to rene the inherent nature xing .201 Purposive action is associated with the cognitive spirit, while non action is 197


198

Wuwei could also be translated as not Acting, eortless action, non interference, or conforming with the spontaneous ow of things.

199

Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 129. Yu Yan teaches this; Zeng, Yuandai Cantong xue, 180.

200

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 558; Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 149. Yu Yan teaches this; Zeng, Yuandai Cantong xue, 234.

201


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associated with the primal spirit.202 In all of these binary oppositions, purposive action is associated with the inferior element, and nonaction with the superior element. However, this does not mean that nonaction is superior to purposive action in all contexts. While some alchemical teachers emphasize nonaction almost exclusively, other teachers give relative priority to purposive action. Quanzhen alchemy is generally said to emphasize nonaction. We see this in the teachings of Ma Danyang 112383 or Wu Shouyang 15741644, or in the Wupian lingwen .203 Yet some Quanzhen teachings are characterized by purposive action.204 Southern Lineage alchemy is generally said to emphasize purposive action: Chen Zhixu does this at times.205 Yet some SouthernLineage alchemists, such as Bai Yuchan, emphasize nonaction. Almost all inner alchemists would agree that inner alchemy emphasizes purposive action more than Chan Buddhism does Chan emphasizes nonaction, and this is the advantage of inner alchemy, which cultivates the body as well as the mind. §3.4.2, Inner alchemists may interpret their concepts and discourse on . . . the register of . . . other nonspatiotemporal metaphysical realities, such as . . . inherent nature xing and life endowment ming, or inherent nature xing and human dispositions qing . . .

Xing and ming together make a major metaphysical category

within postTang Daoist thought, especially within inner alchemy. The new emphasis on xing and ming within Daoism was probably a reaction to Chan and NeoConfucian thought while NeoConfucian thought itself was a reaction to Chan. Xing and ming are a way for Daoists to organize conceptions of body, mind, and spirit, but they are also a polemical concept. Whereas all inner alchemists teach the dual cultivation of inherent nature and life endowment xingming shuangxiu , Daoists say that NeoConfucians, and especially Buddhists, teach cultivation of the inherent nature only, lacking an emphasis on physiological practice, so Daoist practice is more 202


203

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 264. The Wupian lingwen are ascribed to the Quanzhen founder Wang Chongyang, but are likely a later composition. 204


205

E.g., DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 11.8b23: Having nothing to do is mere postnatal naturalness; having something to do is the way of the prenatal One qi .

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complete, and superior.206 By a simple denition, inherent nature is the abstract essence of mind and spirit, and life endowment is the abstract essence of physical vitality. According to an analogy by the modern teacher Chen Yingning, if the body is like a lamp, then ming is the oil of the lamp, and xing is the light produced by the lamp.207 Note how, in this analogy, xing and ming are distinct, yet linked together in a single process; xing is superior and more rened, while ming is inferior and more coarse; xing is an intangible energy, while ming is a liquid, perhaps suggesting the seminal essence. Both xing and ming can come in prenatal universal and postnatal individual forms. Pre natal xing or perfected xing, zhenxing is what humans share with the Dao, while postnatal xing is qing , the minds dispositions, passions, or other manifestations;208 prenatal ming or zhenming is the point of pure yang within the body left over from before the cosmogony, while postnatal ming is an individuals lifespan. While both nature and life must be cultivated, dierent teachers will give them dierent priorities, cultivate them in dierent sequences, or place them on dierent ontological levels. Some scholars say that, in Quanzhen alchemy, one cultivates nature rst and life thereafter xianxing houming , while in SouthernLineage alchemy one cultivates life rst and nature next xianming houxing .209 For example, the Quanzhen patriarch Ma Danyang taught nature cultivation almost exclusively, advising against lifecultivation practices min ong , assuming that the perfection of the life endowment would be a later sideeect of the more important perfection of the inherent nature;210 this can be contrasted with the Southern classic Wuzhen pian, in which Chan verses are placed at the end of the work in order to provide a stage of naturecultivation following the life 206

Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 45; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 385, discussing Bai Yuchan.

207

Chen Yingning, Daojiao yu yangsheng, 247, cited in Ge Guolong, Daojiao neidan xue tanwei, 104.

208

Ge Guolong, Daojiao neidan xue tanwei, 108.

209

Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 91; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 372. Li traces this comparison of Northern and SouthernLineage alchemies to Song Lian 131081.

210

Belamide, SelfCultivation and Quanzhen Daoism, 66. Li Daochun also says that the cultivation of life is included within the cultivation of nature yi xing jian ming; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 459.

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cultivation that is taught throughout the body of the work.211 Exceptions to this characterization of the Northern and Southern Lineages include Bai Yuchan, who teaches the cultivation of nature before life,212 and the Quanzhen text Dadan zhizhi, which teaches the cultivation of life before nature. Sometimes we will see the same teacher make apparently contradictory statements about the relative priority of nature and life, but this is because di erent answers are appropriate at di erent stages of the process.213 Other scholars reply that all alchemical teachings involve both nature and lifecultivation throughout all stages of the process.214 It is certainly true that even the most mingcentered practices, involving the cultivation or gathering of sexual energies for example, must involve deep mental training, that is, training of the xing; yet the reverse, that xingtraining always involves mingtraining, is more a matter of doctrine than an obvious point.215 Robinet goes so far as to state, The truth is that for both schools xing and ming are to be worked on conjointly, and that any division of them into before and after is articial.216 These are salutary cautions, but the issue of the priority of nature or life cannot be dispensed with, because it was an issue alchemists did use as part of their unending processes of selfinterpretation and construction of alchemical tradition. There is no essential and unied alchemical truth lying buried beneath the shifting sands of historical trends, so our object of study must be those shifting

211 Ge Guolong, Daojiao neidan xue tanwei, 118. This structure of Wuzhen pian is analyzed in Fukui, Goshin hen no ksei ni tsuite. 212

Wang Li, The Daoist Way of Transcendence, 185.

213


214

Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 44; Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion, 226; Wang Li, The Daoist Way of Transcendence, 223; and Ge Guolong, Daojiao neidan xue tanwei, 106.

215

From my study of Chen Zhixu, I can see that physiological practice must be based on training of the mind or spirit, but the idea that mental training must somehow also perfect the body is a point of faith. Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 376, discusses the relative emphasis on xing and ming in the stages of alchemical process in the SouthernLineage classic Jindan sibai zi: stage one tamping the base, zhuji involves both xing and ming, stage two rening essence to qi is mostly ming work, stage three rening qi to spirit is mostly xing work, and stage four returning the spirit to the void is purely xing work. This is excellent analysis. 216


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sands.217 The categories of inherent nature and life essence were categories the inner alchemists used to think about practice, philosophy, and tradition, just as Chan Buddhists used the categories of subitism and gradualism to think about Chan tradition. In the case of Chan, we will note that any Chan teaching program must perforce contain both subitist and gradualist elements,218 but this would not lead us to say that distinctions between subitism and gradualism are articial, since it was in fact by means of such distinctions that Chan or Zen Buddhists made and understood their tradition. In addition to using the categories of xing and ming to think about di erent traditions of alchemy, or to think about alchemy in relation to Chan, alchemists also used the categories to make technical distinctions: xing and ming were correlated respectively with yin and yang,219 the classic epistemological categories of substance ti and function yong ,220 the upper and lower dantian,221 night and day,222 lead and mercury,223 nonaction and purposive action, or mind and body. §3.4.3, Inner alchemists may interpret their concepts and discourse on . . . the register of . . . other nonspatiotemporal metaphysical realities, such as . . . the Dao or the One.

The Dao gures into inner alchemy as the cosmogonic origin and the nal goal

of practice, that is, at the beginning and end of the cosmogonic saga of devolution and redemption. Alchemists do not often explicitly seek visions of the Dao, or extol its workings in the world; in fact, the majority of occurrences of the character in

217

This does not amount to a serious critique of Robinet. She only makes such a reductionist statement while summarizing a previous discussion in which she has in fact paid close attention to details. 218

This is a familiar paradox inherent in Chan. How could Chan enlightenment occur without any practice which is objectively gradualist whatsoever? And yet, according to classical Buddhist understanding, the nal leap to enlightenment cannot be understood to be caused by the practice leading up to it, and thus the concept of enlightenment is essentially subitist. 219


220

Ge Guolong, Daojiao neidan xue tanwei, 9394; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 49798 a discussion of Wang Daoyuans theory of substance and function . 221


222


223


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alchemical writings refer to a human daos rather than to the metaphysical Dao.224 We may say however, that the alchemists outer pharmacon, the prenatal One Qi of pure yang, is the One for the alchemists, their manifestation of the Dao in the phenomenal world.225 By means of this One outer pharmacon, the alchemist may return to the Dao. Inner alchemists also speak of guarding unity or, embracing the One, shouyi during the phase of the incubation of the elixir, but this is a mere metaphor, or an echo of earlier Daoist practices, and does not actually involve embracing the Dao as the One.226 There is also no mention of the Three Ones sanyi as in the earlier Shangqing tradition. §3.5.1, Other dualistic categories cut across all of these registers, such as the cosmogonic categories of xiantian and houtian.

I have already introduced these concepts above on

page 269. Chinese correlative cosmology, and especially inner alchemy, is pervaded with binary oppositions, with one half of these dyads being yang, and the other yin. These concepts of xiantian precosmic, prenatal, i otemporal and houtian postcosmic, postnatal, temporal cut across all registers microcosmic, mesocosmic, and macrocosmic, and through many of these binary oppositions. There can be xiantian or houtian versions of essence for the male alchemist or water of the female partner, qi, spirit, inherent nature, life endowment, caldron, furnace, sequence of trigrams, time,227 and so on. These oppositions help to reinforce the sense of a gap between sacred and profane aspects of reality, and teach the alchemist to reject the profane and aspire to gain the sacred for himself. §3.5.2, Other dualistic categories cut across all of these registers, such as . . . the hermeneutical categories of prosaic interpretation . . . and mysticizing interpretation.

Some terms or passages may be understood to refer either to physiological, tangible, 224

See my discussion on pages 17478 chap. 3, §1.2, on how Chen Zhixu strategically exploits the ambiguity of the term Dao/dao.

225

Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue, 37, 105.

226

Some early Daoists also argued against the idea of embracing the Dao as the One; Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 89, 97 from the section on Laozi xianger zhu, dated to before 255 .

227

The time of gathering the pharmacon is xiantian time, the time of ring the melding elixir is houtian time Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 122, citing Chen Zhixu, and upon completion of the ring process the alchemist returns to xiantian time Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 203.

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concrete, or denite entities, or to mental, mystical, abstract, formless, intangible, or indenite entities. Examples of such terms include the xuanpin or xuan and pin, the Mysterious Pass, the Yellow Court, the Gate of Destiny, and the three dantian. Lets take, for example, the Mysterious Pass Xuanguan, also known as the One Aperture Yiqiao . Some interpreters say that the Mysterious Pass has no xed location, whereas some say it does have a physical location. In her discussion of the mystical nature of the Mysterious Pass, Robinet cites a passage from Jindan sibai zi as evidence of the view that it has not xed location;228 yet Hao Qin interprets this same passage as hinting that the Mysterious Pass is none other than the Yellow Court229 associated with the middle dantian. Not only do alchemists vary in regard to their prosaic or mysticizing interpretations of elements of alchemy, but these interpretations themselves may be ambiguous. According to a third position, the same term may refer to a denite bodily site for adepts at a lower level of cultivation, and to a formless entity for adepts at a higher level. This is Li Daochuns position regarding the Mysterious Pass. The Mysterious Pass, also called the Center Zhong , plays an important role within Li Daochuns system. In one passage, he says that it is no particular part of the body, but neither can it be found outside the body; the body is like a marionette, and the Mysterious Pass is like the strings that cause the body to move and act.230 Yet in another section of his collected writings, he locates the Mysterious Pass within specic bodily locations as appropriate for dierent vehicles, or levels of cultivation. For adepts practicing the lower vehicle, the Mysterious Pass is the lower dantian; for adepts of the middle vehicle, it is the upper dantian; for adepts of the higher vehicle, it is the Heart of Heaven perhaps an abstract version of the upper dantian; and for adepts of the highest vehicle, it is the Center.231 Such a position, which includes both prosaic and mysticizing 228 Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 104, citing DZ 1081, Jindan sibai zi, 4a b also found in DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu 5.4a b. This text is ascribed to Zhang Boduan, but it was probably composed within Bai Yuchans circle; Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 64 65; Skar, Golden Elixir Alchemy, 185. 229


230

DZ 249, Zhonghe ji 3.3a1 10, translated in Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 105, discussed in Crowe, The Nature and Function of the Buddhist and Ru Teachings in Li Daochun, 262 63. 231

Cf. pp. 364 66 below.

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interpretations within a single hermeneutical system, is able to comprise both physiological and mental cultivation, and other potentially incompatible forms of doctrine and practice. It serves a function similar to the doctrine of Two Truths232 within Mah y na Buddhism, allowing a teacher to teach concrete doctrines or practices, or to undermine them, according to the pedagogical needs of his students, or according to his rhetorical needs for justifying his teachings and striving against rivals. It is the most common kind of hermeneutical position within inner alchemy. §3.5.3, Other dualistic categories cut across all of these registers, such as . . . the hermeneutical categories of . . . exoteric interpretation and esoteric interpretation.

Inner alchemical texts are usually explicitly esoteric, announcing their own secrecy. They often cite an injunction against leaking the celestial trigger xie tianji , or divulging the secrets of Heaven. This celestial trigger could be merely a technical secret, but more often it was actually thought to be a piece of powerful knowledge guarded by celestial deities, who would punish any teacher who revealed it to the wrong persons.233 The case of Zhang Boduan, who mistakenly transmitted his teachings to unworthy persons three times, is often cited: I transmitted the teachings to three persons, and met with three calamities, in each case not more than ve days after the wrongful transmission .234 While this reason may explain, to a certain extent, why alchemists advertised the secrecy of their teachings, a more important reason would be in order to generate prestige and authority for the teachings and the masters who possessed them, or even to constitute their mastership in the eyes of others.235 Yet in addition to promising that their texts contain esoteric, private interpretations, alchemical teachers often also oer exoteric, public interpretations 232

These are ultimate truth Ch. zhendi , Skt. paramrthasatya and conventional truth Ch. sudi , Skt. savtisatya .

233

This trope in Daoism has a history as long as Daoism itself. One common formulation of this trope in Six Dynasties Daoism was the idea that scriptures are attended by guardian spirits jade lads and maidens . These spirits watch over the possessor of the scripture, protecting him from danger or punishing him for misusing the scripture; Robinet, Taoist Meditation, 26. 234

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu, postface houxu , 2a7.

235

Recall my discussion of the master function on pp. 2729 above; and my discussion of the threeway feedback loop in chapters 2 and 3.

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as part of their teachings. This could be part of a strategy for attracting students, rst into the outer hall and then, at the right time, into the inner chamber. Chen Zhixu describes this process of progressive conversion.236 More often, claiming that there are both exoteric and esoteric interpretations of a teaching is a way for an alchemist to add a new, esoteric, alchemical interpretation of a classic teaching, without admitting that it is a new interpretation. Alchemists were able to claim that the teachings of Laozi, kyamui, and Confucius all contain an esoteric, alchemical layer as well as exoteric, philosophical layers. Similarly, sexual alchemists were able to claim that solo alchemical teachings also contained a truer sexual layer. Chen Zhixu takes this hermeneutical approach in his commentary on the Scripture of Salvation Duren jing . For each section of the text, Chen Zhixu oers two interpretations, one according to Daoist usage Daoyong , and one according to worldly technique shifa : Now, the scripture has both Daoist usage and worldly technique. One can rely on Daoist usage to cultivate ones practices and ascend to transcendenthood. As for worldly technique, this involves reciting and keeping the spirits in mind with vigorous diligence to seek blessings. 237 For Chen, the superior approach is to practice the teachings of the Scripture of Salvation through both Daoist usage sexual alchemy and worldly technique classical Daoist recitation or ritual together.238 Like Li Daochuns synthesis of prosaic and mystical interpretations of the Mysterious Pass, this is a hermeneutical position that is able to bring together two potentially incompatible interpretations of the teaching into a single vision.

236 When I encountered various forms of mockery, I suered it glady. If I found a dharma vessel worthy student, I tried my best to approach him. As for students among them who could reach the gate, I guided them through. As for those among them who could enter the gate, I guided them up the stair. As for those among them who could ascend the stair, I guided them up to the hall. As for those among them who could enter the hall, I guided them into the inner chamber. Generally, my reasons for acting this way were that I wished that the great dao could continue on in a single line, that I wished to raise up the common runofthemill man from the ery pit, and that I wished that the world should know there is indeed a dao of the golden elixir, and not slander it DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 12.8b2 7. 237

DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie 1.1a9 b2.

238

DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie 1.1b10 2a2.

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§3.6.1, Alchemical authors exploit crossregister ambiguities . . . for the sake of . . . converting the reader or listener.

All of these correlations, ambiguities, and polyvalent

hermeneutical positions provide resources for converting students. They allow alchemists to justify contradictions within the teachings, reinterpret nonalchemical ideas in alchemical terms, and oer an overall climate of theoretical holism. The concept of upya expedient means; helpful means is one of the most powerful tools within Buddhism for resolving contradictions and accomodating all manner of alternative ideas and practices within a single religious horizon. Alchemists also use this tool, and many others, for their own purposes. §3.6.2, Alchemical authors exploit crossregister ambiguities . . . for the sake of . . . creating an air of authority for the text, teacher, or lineage.

This is what I term

managing mastership. As I discuss in chapter 3, the teachers ability to spread his teachings, his authority as a master, and his own salvation may be interdependent I term this a threeway feedback loop of propagation, authority, and salvation. His authority as a master depends on the opinion of his clients or the greater public, and this in turn depends in part on convincing them of the truth and high value of his teachings or texts.239 Shifting between ontological registers or hermeneutical positions are important strategies for achieving this goal. Advertising the secret, that is, the claim to possess very precious, rare, and valuable knowledge, while simultaneously partially revealing and largely concealing it,240 is a related strategy. §3.6.3, Alchemical authors exploit crossregister ambiguities . . . for the sake of . . . writing about teachings in a code that is opaque to unworthy readers but partially transparent to worthy readers.

Once a book has escaped from the hands of its author,

the author can no longer directly control how it is used. Yet the alchemical author can manage the uses of his words by writing them in code, and supplying the key only to chosen initiates. In this way, he can publish his works widely while still partially controlling access to their secrets. Actually, most alchemical writers do not 239 Robinet says that, rather than aiming to convince or persuade, alchemical language is addressed to the seeker, whom it guides toward a goal Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 83. Actually, since the alchemical eld is rife with con ict, even an alchemical writer writing moreorless exclusively for readers who are already alchemical practitioners must always attempt to convince them of the truth of his speci c approach to alchemy. 240

Urban, The Torment of Secrecy, 235. Also see Campany, Secrecy and Display, 294.

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intend to supply the keys such as the correct ring periods, huohou, or the revelation that all true cultivation is sexual directly to all of their readers in person. Rather, writers assume that teachers in other places or later times would do this. Writers often advise readers to nd a true master on their own, who can help them understand the import of the text fully, and ll in the necessary gaps. In this way, the writer may maintain his own monopoly on valuable teachings and charge students for access, or may contribute to the present and future monopoly of alchemical teachers as a class. Another important reason for writing in code is to avoid censurewhich would be a serious danger for sexual alchemists, for example. §3.6.4, Alchemical authors exploit crossregister ambiguities . . . for the sake of . . . synthesizing elements from many sources into a single teaching.

This is the

intellectualist goal of Buddhist panjiao classi cation of teachings , Li Daochuns ranking of physiological, mental, and mystical approaches to alchemy, and Chen Zhixus esotericizing appeal to nonalchemical classics as proof for the truth of his teachings. §3.6.5, Alchemical authors exploit crossregister ambiguities . . . for the sake of . . . representing or delighting in the unstable and protean nature of alchemical discourse itself.

Robinet argues that, while the discourse of the alchemists rests on a logical

foundation, the discourse is not linear and is often poetic. The ruptures of thought and language are constantly and consciously worked.241 §3.6.6, Alchemical authors exploit crossregister ambiguities . . . for the sake of . . . directly causing salvic eects in the reader.

Robinet argues that, like Chan Buddhists

practicing with kans,242 alchemists achieve a sort of enlightenment that inheres within language itself, rather than existing outside of language.243 This is a powerful insight, though alchemists certainly also hope to achieve salvation by ascending to the heavens and/or becoming one with the Dao, a Dao which is more than a linguistic construct. 241

Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure tao ste, 90.

242

It is, in eect, as a kan that neidan acts on the spirit of the adept; Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure tao ste, 78. 243


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§4, Psychophysiological Elements §4.1.1, In psychophysiological terms . . .

Inner alchemists do distinguish body and

mind as separate elements within their systems, regarding mind as superior to body more raried and ultimately more important , but usually emphasizing the cultivation of both mind and body or, the dual cultivation of xing, inherent nature, and ming, lifeendowment on the path to salvation. Alchemists often distinguish Daoists from Buddhists and NeoConfucians in these terms: while Daoists cultivate both xing and ming, the other two Teachings neglect the cultivation of ming i.e., the physiological quality . §4.1.2, In soteriological terms . . .

Inneralchemical practice is always devoted

to personal spiritual salvation or perfection . While alchemical writers may also have micropolitical, aesthetic, or cognitive goals, these must be understood within their overall soteriological m rga.

§4.2, Inner alchemists follow the dao of the golden elixir.

Whereas the English term

inner alchemy is derived from the modern Chinese term neidan , most inner alchemists actually called their teaching the way of the golden elixir jindan zhi dao , or the way of the elixir dandao .244 While we may certainly make our own distinction between inner alchemy and laboratory alchemy waidan , inner alchemists often did not make exactly this distinction. By the Song dynasty, many inner alchemists believed that true alchemy had always been inner alchemy, and that even those texts believed by modern scholars to teach laboratory alchemy were actually teaching inner alchemy all along. Like Western spiritual alchemists scorn for sooty empiricks,245 the middleperiod inner alchemists would say that laboratory alchemists from the early medieval period were simply misunderstanding 244

Robinet writes that the expression interior alchemy is an arbitrary designation for a widely followed movement still in existence today. At the outset it was not designated by a specic term, except perhaps jindan . . .; Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion, 215.

245

Needham, Science and Civilisation, 5.3:206, uses this term to translate a Chinese inner alchemists criticism of laboratory alchemy. The locus classicus of the term is Robert Boyles 162791 The Skeptical Chymist 1661 . Boyle criticized laboratory alchemy from the standpoint of chemistry rather than spiritual alchemy.

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the true meaning of alchemy.246 Similarly, sexual alchemists would say that solo inner alchemists misunderstood true alchemy, and solo alchemists would say the same of sexual alchemists. Thus, while these inner alchemists would agree that dierent alchemical practices exist, they would not agree that these represent separate and equally legitimate traditions. In the late imperial period, inner alchemists came to understand the eld of alchemy in terms of three approaches or three elixir methods, danfa : solo inner alchemy alchemy taking Heaven as prime, tianyuan danfa , laboratory alchemy alchemy taking Earth as prime, diyuan danfa , and sexual alchemy alchemy taking the human as prime, renyuan danfa . The earliest appearance of this formulation may be in Lu Xixings Xuanfu lun, composed in 1567.247 In this late formulation, alchemists did recognize the various approaches as distinct and equally legitimate, though not as equally e cacious.248 Is the dao of inner alchemy Daoist? Michel Strickmann advised against assuming that alchemy is always Daoist, noting that alchemy and other technologies would . . . emerge more clearly against the backdrop of Chinese society if visualized as separate entities, weaving in and out of Taoist and other contexts in the course of history.249 Lowell Skar applies this same perspective to inner alchemy as well, apparently considering even a work such as Jindan zhengli daquan ca. 1442 outside the boundaries of Daoism.250 Emic and etic de nitions of alchemy or Daoism or Buddhism and understandings of their interrelationships are complex matters which I will discuss further in chapter 6 and the conclusion. I do not limit 246 This perspective oversimpli es the case, but at the present state of my research, I cannot oer a more nuanced perspective. Actually, there were plenty of alchemical texts mixing inner and laboratory alchemy through the Southern Song dynasty the classical period of inner alchemy . By my count, approximately eleven such transitional texts survive from the Tang, ve survive from the Five Dynasties period 90760 , eight from the Northern Song, and four from the Southern Song many of these dates are speculative . A text entitled Diyuan zhenjue may include Bai Yuchans teachings on laboratory alchemy; Wang Li, The Daoist Way of Transcendence, 123. Thus the practice of a combined inner alchemy and laboratory alchemy was a continuing tradition. 247

Xuanfu lun, Sanyuan lun , in Fanghu waishi, by Lu Xixing, 8.1a3b6.

248

Two other examples of lateimperial alchemists teaching both inner alchemy and laboratory alchemy are Peng Haogu . 15861600 , and Fu Jinquan 17651845 . 249

Strickmann, On the Alchemy of Tao Hungching, 166.

250


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my use of the label Daoist to ordained Daoist clergy, and I assume that all inner alchemy is Daoist, aside from exceptional cases. Chen Zhixu calls himself a Daoist.251 §4.3, Inner alchemists . . . take the human body as the alchemical chamber.

Whereas waidan alchemists manipulate their pharmaca252 in a laboratory, inner alchemists manipulate pharmaca within the spaces of their own body. Thus, the inner alchemical chamber is also corporeal.253 An important exception to this is the meaning of chamber in sexual alchemy: when a sexual alchemist speaks of entering the chamber rushi , this may refer either to entering the bedroom to collect the outer pharmacon, or to sending the elixir into a corporeal chamber for further rening during a later stage in the process. Another exception may be found in the works of Li Daochun and others: for adepts at higher stages of practice, the chamber may be, not the body, but the heart mind, the macrocosm, or non spatial space. §4.4, Inner alchemists . . . take . . . dantian three bodily centers associated with the kidneys, heart, or brain as the furnace and caldron.254

From laboratory alchemy

come the terms lu furnace or stove; also zao and ding caldron, crucible, or reaction vessel; also dingqi or fu , together with the bellows and tuyre tuoyue . Given the importance of the furnace and caldron within inner alchemy, and given the mutability of inner alchemical language in general, it should not be surprising that the usage of these terms varies quite a lot between texts. Also, within each text, there will be more than one pair of referents for furnace and caldron: as the adept moves to a new, higher level within the alchemical sequence, the referents for furnace and caldron will change too. The two most common furnace caldron 251

In a passage criticizing ignorance and corruption among temple dwelling Daoists, Chen writes Why dont they re ect on what it is that we study in our religion! Soon after, he writes My our Most High Lord Lao said . . . . Chen thus considers himself and the temple dwelling Daoists to be members of a common jiao with the deied Laozi as its founder. I translate this passage on pp. 7475 above. As Campany notes, in medieval China, The names, partial names, or titles of founding or paradigmatic gures are sometimes used synecdochally to refer nominally to what in Western discourse would be called an entire religion or tradition; Campany, On the Very Idea of Religions, 299. This may be the only page on which Chen explicitly calls himself a Daoist. 252

These pharmaca are principally lead and mercury, but other pharmaca include gold, sulfur, and hundreds of other mineral, vegetable, and animal substances. Cf., e.g., Huang Zhaohan, Daozang danyao yiming suoyin.

253

There are dozens of inner alchemical technical terms for corporeal entities using the characters fang or shi chamber.

254

This section draws on Haos discussion of furnace and caldron; Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 18995.

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pairings are kidneys heart255 i.e., lower and middle dantian and kidneys brain i.e., lower and upper dantian. In the Zhong L texts, and other early texts from the period of nascence, or the formative period, the primary furnace caldron pairing is kidneys heart, since the union of hearts uid yin within yang, li with the kidneys qi yang within yin, kan is an important practice in this teaching. The furnace caldron pairing of kidneys and brain is also found within Zhong L texts, as part of orbital circulation,256 but this is emphasized less. It seems that the kidneys heart pairing is cultivated rst, and the kidneys brain pairing only gures in at higher levels of cultivation. The situation is reversed in Southern Lineage texts from the classical period and the period of integration, where the primary emphasis is on orbital circulation from lower, to upper, to lower dantian;257 while still part of the process, cultivation using the heart region middle dantian is a more advanced stage, and is mentioned more vaguely. Northern Lineage alchemy from the period of integration appears to draw on both Zhong L and Southern Lineage alchemy, so I do not discuss it separately here. I know less about the case of early Quanzhen alchemy.258 The standard account of inner alchemy that we have today developed in the late imperial period, and is found in the teachings of Wu Shouyang and Liu Huayang, Liu Yiming and Zhao Bichen, Qinghua miwen and Xingming guizhi. In this version, during the two initial stages of opening the passes and rening seminal essence into qi, the adept circulates the pharmaca along the lesser orbit from coccyx to fontanel; here, the lower dantian is the furnace, and the upper dantian is the caldron, together called the greater caldron and furnace da dinglu . As Wile writes, In 255

A related version of the kidneys heart pairing is the pairing of the Pit of Qi Qixue and Yellow Court

Huangting. This is a more literal pairing of lower and middle dantian.

256

This is termed called causing crystals of metal to soar up behind the elbows zhouhou fei jinjing , i.e., recycling seminal essence to replenish the brain huanjing bunao . 257

I simplify the orbital path for the sake of clarity here. The path is described more carefully below.

258

Early Quanzhen alchemy is that taught by Wang Chongyang and his rst generation of heirs, especially Ma Danyang. Although DZ 1156, Chongyang zhenren jinguan yusuo jue, and DZ 244, Dadan zhizhi, are ascribed to Wang Chongyang and Qiu Chuji respectively, some scholars have dated these to later generations of the Quanzhen movement; Hachiya, Chy shinjin kinkan gyokusa ketsu ni tsuite. These two texts draw on Zhong L teachings.

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meditation practice, the crucible is often pictured between the kidneys, and the spirit provides the re of the furnace, which is fanned by the breath to heat the jing so that it may rise up the spine.259 Then, during the stage of rening qi into spirit, the elixir circulates along the greater orbit; now the middle dantian becomes the caldron, while the lower dantian remains as the furnace, together called the lesser caldron and furnace xiao dinglu . During the nal stage of rening the spirit and causing it to return to the void, the elixir as spirit remains in the upper dantian, and the furnace caldron metaphor is not used. In addition to the dyadic pairing of furnace and caldron, bodily centers are also viewed in triadic and pentadic arrangements: the triadic relationship of three dantian together,260 and the pentadic relationship of the Five Viscera.261 Sexual alchemists retain the furnace caldron terminology introduced above, while adding an additional layer of furnace caldron pairings, such as inner and outer caldrons neiwai ding , or crescent moon furnace yanyue lu and caldron of the suspended fetus xuantai ding . Chen Zhixu explains that the inner caldron is the lower dantian, while the outer caldron is the valley spirit, Mysterious Pass, gates of xuan and pin, etc., references to the female sex organ.262 The term crescent moon furnace or yin furnace, yinlu describes the shape of the womans lap.263 The caldron of the suspended fetus, or yang 259


260

Terms for the union of the three dantian include harmonious meeting of the three elds santian hehui , reversion and return of the three elds santian fanfu , the three owers gather in the crown sanhua juding and the three yang gather in the crown sanyang juding .

261

Terms for the union of the Five Viscera include the ve qi pay court to the prime wuqi chaoyuan , condensing the ve agents cuancu wuxing , and pairing up the ve agents wuxing pipei . Needhams term for this circulation of qi amongst the ve viscera is mutual irradiation; Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5.74 76, discussing DZ 149, Xiuzhen taiji hunyuan tu. DZ 149 is a later Zhong L text, and mutual irradiation is a Zhong L practice. DZ 149 is also studied in Baryosher Chemouny, La qute de limmortalit en Chine.

262

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 5.6b10, 7a9 b1.

263

To be sure, solo inner alchemical theory also has its yanyue lu. By one interpretation, it is the Mysterious Pass; cf. DZ 1007, Zhouyi cantong qi jie, by Chen Xianwei, cited in Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. yanyue lu , 1181. By a second interpretation, it is the lower dantian; cf. DZ 240, Qinghua miwen, cited in Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 244. By a third interpretation, it is the recumbent new moon, and represents the moment when the new yang is born on the third day of the lunar cycle; cf. Wang Mu, Wuzhen pian qianjie, cited in Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. yanyue lu , 1188. Sexual alchemists might accept these readings of the symbol yanyue lu, while retaining their own physiological reading. The idea of a womans lap as a recumbent new moon can also be found in European alchemical

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caldron, yangding , which contains the owing pearl264 and enters eight cun inches into the furnace and remains suspended within it without touching the ground,265 is the male organ. In the sexual cultivation texts translated by Wile, however, the symbolism is reversed, with the caldron referring to the woman. Finally, in multi level alchemical systems, such as Li Daochuns system of Four Vehicles, the furnace and caldron will have di erent referents at each level, ranging from the physiological to the cosmic and mystical. The term bellows and tuyre can refer to various things that fan, pump, or otherwise promote the rening process; referents range from kidney region, kidneys heart pairing, lungs, or spirit intention, to yin and yang, heaven and earth, the Dao, or in sexual alchemy the sex organs the gates of xuan and pin . §4.5, Inner alchemists . . . take . . . inner tracts as the pathways of circulation.

According to classical Chinese medical theory, the body is criss crossed by cardinal and reticular tracts jingmai and luomai . While one goal of inner alchemy is to circulate rened qi throughout the whole body using all of the cardinal and reticular tracts, only a few of the cardinal and none of the reticular tracts266 receive much mention within alchemical teachings.267 Among the cardinal tracts, there are two sets, twelve regular cardinal tracts268 and eight extraordinary cardinal tracts;269 alchemists mainly care only about the extraordinary tracts, and of these, usually only two of the eight are mentioned, the superintendent tract dumai , and symbology, as in Robert Fludds painting of the world soul in his Utriusque cosmi historia. 264 DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 9.10a9. When Chen says that the owing pearl within the caldron of the suspended fetus receives the metal, he means that the semen inner pharmacon meets the womans qi outer pharmacon within the penis. 265

DZ 1068, Shangyangzi jindan dayao tu 8b6 7.

266

Ma Jiren says that there are fteen reticular tracts, twelve linked to the regular cardinal tracts, two linked to the conception and superintendent tracts, and nally, the great reticular tract of the spleen; Daojiao yu liandan, 169.

267

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 197 98.

268

The twelve regular cardinal tracts shier zhengjing may be divided into four sets: three yin and three yang tracts for the hands, and the same for the feet. These twelve tracts are related to twelve visceral systems: lungs, large intestine, stomach, spleen, heart, small intestine, bladder, kidneys, cardiac envelope xinbao , Triple Burner, gallbladder, and liver. 269

The eight extraordinary cardinal tracts qijing bamai are the superintendent, conception, highway chong , belt dai , yin and yang ligative wei , and yin and yang heel qiao or tracts. I take my translation terminology from Sivin, Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China, 250.

288

conception tract renmai . The superintendent tract leads from the lower Magpie Bridge between coccyx and anus up the spine through the Three Passes in the back at coccyx, mid spine, and occiput , and over the crown, through the ophryon between the eyebrows , to the upper Magpie Bridge between upper palate and tongue .270 The conception tract leads from the upper Magpie Bridge down the front of the body, through the twelve story tower esophagus , the middle and lower dantian, and back to the lower Magpie Bridge.271 Joined at the two Magpie Bridges, the superintendent and conception tracts together make up the lesser orbit xiao zhoutian ,272 one of the most important features of the alchemical body in almost all alchemical teachings.273 In the latter day standard account, during the initial stage of tamping the base zhuji , the adept rst opens up the twin tracts which in an adult will become stopped up over time by circulating unrened seminal essence or qi, in preparation for the stage of rening seminal essence into qi or joining outer and inner pharmaca into the greater pharmacon along the same route. During both of these stages, but especially the second, there are dangers and di culties. The precious pharmacon may leak away at upper Magpie Bridge in the form of long stalactites of snot jade pillars, yuzhu , or at the lower bridge as atulence. Penetrating the Three Passes in the dorsal tract also takes some care. In general, the internal mechanism for transporting the pharmaca is called the waterwheel or, river cart, heche ,274 but this one che wheel, cart is also split into three, drawn

270

Some alchemists locate the upper juncture of the twin tracts at the crown, rather than the palate and tongue.

271

According to modern qigong understanding, the superintendent tract intersects with the twelve regular cardinal tracts at many points, and the conception tract intersects with and can control the six yin regular cardinal tracts Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 172 73 . I have not seen this mentioned in premodern alchemical writings. 272

I translate the term zhoutian simply as orbit, but as an astronomical term it refers to the great celestial sphere in which the visible heavens are embedded. In astronomy, xiao zhoutian refers to a twelve month cycle year cycle , and da zhoutian refers to a twelve year cycle jovian cycle . An oft cited locus classicus of the term xiao zhoutian is DZ 243, Chen Xubai guizhong zhinan 1.2b5 Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 153 , but an earlier occurrence is in the Zhong L text DZ 1191, Michuan Zhengyang zhenren Lingbao bifa 1.14a10. 273

A rare counter example is Chen Pus DZ 1096, Chen Xiansheng neidan jue also in DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu, j. 17, with the misleading title Cuixu pian . Chen Pu concentrates only on the conception tract, never mentioning the superintendent tract until the eighth stage of his system; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 311; Eskildsen, Neidan Master Chen Pus Nine Stages of Transformation. 274

Needham identies the heche as a square pallet chain pump Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5:225 or current driven water raising machine ibid., 5.5:60 .

289

by a goat, deer, or ox.275 When transporting the pharmacon through the Tail Gate Pass Weil Guan in the coccyx, the adept must proceed slowly, as if driving a goatcart with his intention. When transporting it through the SpinalStraits Pass

Jiaji Guan , the adept can rush along with abandon, as if driving a deercart

or a sheepcart. When transporting the pharmacon through the Jade Pillow Pass

Yuzhen Guan at the base of the skull, one feels as if one must bull ones way through an obstacle, as if driving an oxcart.276 The adept senses and understands movements in the tracts through a sensation of heat, reactions of secretions some teachers speak of transporting the pharmacon from the mouth to the esophagus by swallowing saliva, for example, and guided visualization. Higher stages of alchemical attainment may be signaled by internal visual and aural signs. Some texts from the late imperial period mention the belt and highway tracts. Lu Xixing and Li Xiyue mention the visualization of the yin heel tract, a unique feature of their teachings.277 Some texts ascribed to Zhang Sanfeng speak of beginning the lesserorbital circulation by drawing qi up from the Bubbling Spring

yongquan acupoint in the sole of the foot to the Tail Gate Pass.278 ZhongL texts from the formative period also mention this route from the Bubbling Spring. There is also a di erent conception of inner tracts found in later imperial Longmen Quanzhen texts such as the writings of Min Yide. In this system there are three main tracts, the red, black, and yellow paths; the red and black paths are the conception and superintendent tracts, while the yellow path ascends straight up from the lower dantian to the middle and upper dantian. Chen Yingning in the Republican Period accepted the central yellow path zhonghuang zhi dao as a powerful

275

ZhongL texts have an unrelated set of three che, the lesser, greater, and purple waterwheels. The lesser waterwheel transports qi from one organ to another in mutual irradiation; the greater waterwheel transports pharmaca along the lesser orbit xiao zhoutian, and the purple waterwheel transports the elixir along the greater orbit da zhoutian. Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 298 99, discussing chapter 12 of ZhongL chuandao ji

in DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu, j. 14 16. 276

Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 154. I also discuss these three carts on page 349 below.

277


278

Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 94; Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 171. This is also found in Xingming guizhi rst printed 1615, but later expanded, cited in Li Yuanguo, ibid., 297.

290

but dangerous alternative to the twin tracts.279 §4.6, Inner alchemists . . . take . . . the three treasures the lifeenergies of essence, qi, and spirit as the pharmaca.280

According to the latterday standard

account, alchemists usually speak of uniting an outer pharmacon281 with an inner pharmacon282 to produce an elixir,283 which is further rened into a spiritbody.284 The concept of inner and outer pharmaca seems to have originated, not in alchemy, but in practices for ingesting qi, as studied by Maspero.285 For solo alchemists, the adept rst circulates the outer pharmacon, and the inner pharmacon later appears as a result of this.286 For sexual alchemists, the outer pharmacon is gathered from the female partners sexual energy as qi , and the inner pharmacon from the male adepts own sublimated sexual energy yuanjing . In alchemical texts from the period of nascence and the formative period, the outer ingredient may be gathered as atmospheric qi, which is mixed with saliva and swallowed. The common idea in all of these cases is that the inner pharmacon is the primal qi of the body, almost always linked to the seminal essence jing , while the outer pharmacon is macrocosmic primal qi, often called the prenatal One Qi xiantian yiqi .287 And common to all forms of inner alchemy and laboratory alchemy , is the idea of joining the two ingredients to form an elixir. The three pharmaca are essence, qi, and spirit, with the outer pharacon 279

Liu Xun, In Seach of Immortality, 144. The term zhonghuang zhi dao must be related to the term huangdao ecliptic . 280

I discuss the nature of essence and qi again below on pp. 31720, and 41819. I discuss spirit above on pp. 252

54. 281

The outer pharmacon waiyao may also be called lead qian or perfected lead zhenqian .

282

The inner pharmacon neiyao may also be called mercury gong , or perfected mercury zhengong . Solo alchemists may call it perfected seed zhenzhongzi ; sexual alchemists may call it the mysterious pearl xuanzhu , since it is linked to the semen. 283

This elixir dan may also be called greater pharmacon dayao , golden elixir or metallous elixir jindan , mysterious pearl xuanzhu , yellow sprouts huangya , Qi Qi is sometimes understood as prenatal qi ; Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 183 , and many other names. At the beginning stage of smelting the elixir, it may be called mother of the elixir danmu .

284

This nal form of the elixir may be called infant yinger , fetus taier , holy fetus shengtai , fetal transcendent taixian , yang spirit yangshen , and many other names. 285


286


287


291

related to qi either primal qi or atmospheric air, the inner pharmacon related to male seminal essence, and spirit as the nal form of the elixir. But alchemists will also say that essence, qi, and spirit are all included in most aspects of the cultivation process. The middle term, qi, is present within essence because, after all, essence is really just a form of qi;288 and qi is present in the nal form of the elixir as spirit because, while from one point of view, spirit is a personied being, from another point of view it is just a form of qi. Essence is also present within the middle stage of the elixir, since this is the amalgam of essence and qi. I have never seen it stated that essence is present within the nal spirit form of the elixir, however. Spirit is present throughout all stages of the process, as both subject and object of cultivation. Throughout the process, the adept uses intention yi to force, guide, or observe the process, and spirit is the semipersonied agent or subject of this intentionality. Yet spirit is also an object of cultivation, not just in the nal stages, but throughout the process: the alchemist must usually maintain a state of mental calmness, which may be called nurturing the spirit yangshen . Calming the mind or spirit is crucial in both solo and sexual alchemy; sexual alchemists, for example, assert that the elixir may be ruined if any lustful thoughts arise, so the adept must undertake a long period of mental training rening the self, lianji before approaching a partner. §4.7, Inner alchemists . . . take . . . respiration, guiding intention, intense concentration, or formless samdhi as the alchemical re.

For the laboratory

alchemists, ring uses re, of course; yet for the inner alchemists, ring involves breathing and intention, or usually a combination of the two. Usually, there are two types of ring, cooler civil re wenhuo and hotter martial re wuhuo , each appropriate for a dierent stage in the overall ring process. The phases of civil and martial ring may also each include hotter and cooler subphases within them advancing the yang re, jin yanghuo , and withdrawing the yin tallies, tui yinfu . There are also periods of nonring bathing, muyu ; i.e., basting at two points mao and you or four points zi 288

I will speak more of this on pages 31720 §4.11.4 on prenatal and postnatal essence, qi, and spirit; and on pages 41820 below.

292

, wu , mao, and you289 within each cycle. Zhong L texts add a further layer of ring terminology, the folkish, minister, and sovereign res minhuo , chenhuo , and junhuo , symbolizing essence, qi, and spirit. Some authorities say that martial ring is respiration and civil ring is mental concentration,290 but it would be safer to say that each phase of ring involves both respiration and concentration, with martial ring being intense, and civil ring attenuated.291 In some teachings e.g., Zhong L, ring can be a relatively physiological process, related to breathing and posture; others teach a relatively wuwei samdhic form of ring, using attenuated intention only,292 based on the alchemical correlation between spirit as intention and re.293 Most teachings would include both forms of ring at dierent stages. Niu Daochun, for example, de nes ring as respiration as appropriate for a lower stage of attainment the lowest level of the little vehicle takes . . . the circulation of the breath as re, with ring as concentration at a higher stage in the little vehicle . . . the re is luminous awareness.294 §4.8, The alchemical re . . . has ring periods of low or high heat, or nonring, whose patterns of ring are modeled on lunar and seasonal cycles and represented with cycles of trigrams and hexagrams.

Inner alchemists re their pharmaca and elixirs

according to patterns of intention and respiration called huohou ring periods, re phasing.295 Inner alchemists model their ring periods upon those of the laboratory alchemists, who would gradually increase and decrease the intensity of the 289 Zhang Zhenguo, Fanpu guizhen, 234, says that during lesser orbital circulation the pharmacon is bathed at mao and you, while during greater orbital circulation the pharmacon must be bathed at these zi, wu, mao, and you. 290

Zhang Zhenguo, Fanpu guizhen, 233. Baryosher Chemouny, La qute de limmortalit en Chine, 100, in her study of the later Zhong L texts by Xiao Daocun , DZ 149, Xiuzhen taiji hunyuan tu, and DZ 150, Xiuzhen taiji hunyuan zhixuan tu.

291

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 229; Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 143.

292

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 272, citing DZ 135, Cui Gong Ruyao jing zhujie, by the Quanzhen author Wang Daoyuan Wang Jie , . 1392; or Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 266, citing the later Quanzhen text, Wupian lingwen.

293


294

Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion, 254, citing DZ 276, Xiyi zhimi lun, by Niu Daochun , dated 1299.

295

Hou are temporal units. Inner alchemists correlate the day with the month, and with the year: the twelve Chinese double hours in a day are equivalent to the twelve months in a year, and the six twenty minute hou in a double hour are equivalent to the six ve day hou in a standard thirty day month.

293

re by using precisely weighted increments of fuel.296 Although inneralchemical writers usually say that one may only receive the nal details of the ring periods from ones master, they still tell us much about the subject. Like the earlier alchemists who used numerological correlations, correspondences, and resonances297 to model their laboratory upon the cosmos, and to model their ring patterns upon the natural temporal cycles of day and night, moon, and seasons, the inner alchemists use cycles of trigrams and hexagrams from the Yijing to represent, condense, and control macrocosmic time within the microcosm of the human frame, and to infuse themselves with the creative and transformative powers zaohua of the Dao. Within inner alchemy, there are at least three di erent temporal schemata for ring elixirs.298 The rst schema, the Method of Matching Stems Najia Fa uses a sequence of six trigrams to represent the waxing and waning of yin and yang over a lunar month. In the second schema, Twelve Sovereign Hexagrams Shier Pigua 299 represents the changes of yin and yang during the twelve months of a year, or the twelve hours of a day. The third schema, the Theory of Hexagram Qi Guaqi Shuo , uses sixty hexagrams to represent the thirty days of a month, but this schema is rarely mentioned. The schema of Matching Stems derives from the Yijing thought of Jing Fang and Yu Fan,300 and is employed within the Cantong qi. As the Cantong qi became popular within inner alchemy, so did the Matching Stems. In this schema, the trigram Zhen is correlated with the third day of the month, or shuo301 newmoon 296

Sivin, Chinese Alchemy and the Manipulation of Time, 518.

297


298

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 16974; Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 14550. The rst person to identify four types of Handynasty Yijing learning within the Cantong qi was Wang Ming, in Zhouyi Cantong qi kaozheng. These are najia fa, shier pigua, guaqi shuo, and liuxu shuo theory of six vacuities; Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue, 34. 299

I have taken the translation Twelve Sovereign Hexagrams from Liu Tsunyan, Lu Hsihsing and His Commentaries on the Ts ant ungch i, 224. They are also called the Twelve Hexagrams of Waning and Waxing Shier Xiaoxi Gua .

300

Jing Fang 7737 ; Yu Fan 164233 ; Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 168.

301

Shuo is actually the rst day of the lunar cycle, but in the MatchingStems schema it belongs to this rst period.

294

day within the lunar cycle. Here, Zhen represents the arising of fresh new yang out of the pure yin of the end of the previous cycle; thus, out of arises _ to make . Zhen is followed by Dui , Qian , Xun , Gen , and nally Kun

, then Zhen again. The gure below summarizes the correlative signi cances of these six trigrams. Zhen

Dui

Qian

Xun

Gen

Kun

Thunder

Satisfaction

Active

Compliance

Restraint

Earth

new yang

waxing yang

pure yang

new yin

waxing yin

pure yin

third day

eighth day

fteenth day

sixteenth day

twentythird day

thirtieth day

wangyue full moon

rst day after full moon

xiaxian last lunar quarter

huiyue dark moon day

shuoyue new shangxian rst moon day lunar quarter

Fig. 4.8., The Matching Stems

Of the eight trigrams in the Yijing Fuxi arrangement, the remaining two trigrams, kan and li , do not appear within the Matching Stems. This is because they do not t precisely into the pattern of waxing and waning of yang and yin i.e., , and also because they have a more general function, acting as gobetweens linking the other trigrams.302 The schema of the Twelve Sovereign Hexagrams is found in a Handynasty Yijing commentary,303 and in the Cantong qi. In this schema, six yang hexagrams waxingyang hexagrams, xigua are followed by six yin hexagrams waningyang hexagrams, xiaogua . The cycle begins with Fu , Return , which is correlated with the zi doublehour and the eleventh lunar month, and represents the arising of new yang out of pure yin. Fu is followed by Lin , Tai , and so on. Figure 4.9 below summarizes the correlative signi cances of these twelve hexagrams.

302

According to one interpretation of the cryptic Xici zhuan phrase owing everywhere within the six vacuities zhouliu liuxu ; Yijing, Xici zhuan, 2.8.1; Rutt, The Book of Changes Zhouyi, 428 , while the other six hexagrams have xed positions in a circle, kan and li enter the center of this circle, and, in the form of the celestial stems wu and ji , move about freely between the other hexagrams; Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 17072. 303

Yu Fans commentary to Xici zhuan; Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 147.

295

Hexagrams of Waxing

Fu !

Lin $

Tai

Dazhuang

Guai &

Qian

xigua

Return

Overseeing

Peace

Great Strength

Resolution

Active

zi hour 11th month; winter solstice dongzhi

chou hour

yin hour

chen hour

si hour

12th month

1st month

mao hour 2nd month; vernal equinox chunfen

3rd month

4th month

Hexagrams of Waning

Gou '

Dun (

Pi

Guan %

Bo

Kun

xiaogua

Encounter

Withdrawal

Obstruction

Viewing

Peeling

Earth

wu hour

wei hour

shen hour

you hour

xu hour

hai hour

5th month; summer solstice xiazhi

6th month

7th month

8th month; autumnal equinox qiufen

9th month

10th month

Fig. 4.9, The Twelve Sovereign Hexagrams

Alchemists use the Matching Stems and Sovereign Hexagrams to understand the natural cyclical changes of the pharmaca or elixirs within the microcosm of the body,304 and to understand what they ought to do at each stage of the cycle. The moment when the pharmacon should be gathered is called Fu the Return of yang. During the initial short stage after gathering the pharmacon, the adept may transport the pharmacon along the lesser orbit from the lower to upper dantian; following the Sovereign Hexagram schema, he advances the yang ring jin yanghuo "#, or applies hot, martial ring, through the six hexagrams of waxing yang, and then withdraws the yin tallies tui yinfu

, or applies cool, civil ring, during

the six hexagrams of waning yang. At the mao and you points, the midpoints of these two halfcycles, he will cease ring altogether, which is called bathing the pharmacon a metaphor drawn from laboratory alchemy. During lesserorbital circulation, the adept may also correlate his ring with the position of the pharmacon along the orbit within his body. While transporting the pharmacon up his spine along the superintendent tract, he may use martial ring to smash through the unyielding JadePillow Pass at the occiput; while transporting the pharmacon down the conception tract, he may use civil ring. In this schema, the mao and you points

304

Yu Yan introduces a theory that qi naturally circulates along the lesser orbit within the body, and if the adept knows this, and harmonizes his microcosmic cycle with the macrocosmic cycle, he can harness the macrocosmic power of qian and kun within his corporeal microcosm; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 408.

296

would be located at the midpoints of the two tracts, in the spine and abdomen.305 During later stages of ring, the adept may circulate the progressivelyfusing pharmaca either along the lesser orbit as above, or along the greater orbit.306 Instead of gathering the new pharmacon at the Fu point, now he may need to glean rened qi, and deposit this qi in his lower dantian. In this case, rather than using the Sovereign Hexagrams, he will use the Matching Stems to determine the points of shangxian the rst lunar quarter and xiaxian the last lunar quarter, when he must glean this qi. Alchemical texts often say that the adept ought not to try to slavishly to map the images xiang existing within the bodily microcosm onto macrocosmic patterns; that is, the adept should not assume that he must gather the pharmacon at the zi doublehour between 11 pm and 1 am, or glean qi on the eighth and twenty third days of the lunar cycle. Rather, the adept should watch for signs or emblematic scenes jingxiang 307 within his own body for the solo cultivator or in the body of the partner for the sexual cultivator, and then use the trihexagrams as labels for these signs, and the trihexagrammatic systems of correspondences as frameworks for linking individual bodily signs into repeatable patterns. Yet most alchemists may also speak as though there is an active link between microcosmic cycles and macrocosmic cycles rather than merely a metaphorical one. In ZhongL texts, or texts inspired by ZhongL teachings,308 the adept may actually measure the duration of ring by counting his breaths on a rosary, and he may change the duration or heat of ring to match the season.309 Or, the adept may try to match the heat of the ring to the time of day. This latter practice is found in alchemical teachings from the period of integration,310 or the late imperial period.311 305


306

The da zhoutian , usually involving the middle and lower dantian the lesser caldron and furnace, or involving circulation throughout the whole body. 307


308

Such as the early Quanzhen text DZ 244, Dadan zhizhi.

309

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 268; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 473.

310

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 272, discussiong Wang Daoyuan.

311

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 277, discussing Liu Huayang; or Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 143 44, reecting the

297

The cycle of the Sovereign Hexagrams may be applied simultaneously on dierent time scales. For example, on one time scale, one complete circulation of the pharmaca on the lesser orbit may take only as long as one inhalation during which the adept advances the yang ring and exhalation during which the adept withdraws the yin tallies. At the same time, the adept could be correlating the Twelve Sovereign hexagrams with the twelve doublehours of the day with advancing and withdrawing each taking half a day, and with the twelve months of the year with each phase taking half a year. A complete account of the uses of these schemata within the alchemical eld would be quite complex. Zeng Chuanhui says that 1 Some solo alchemists use the Matching Stems for the ring periods of the lesser orbit, and the Sovereign Hexagrams for those of the greater orbit. 2 Some solo alchemists do the opposite. 3 Some solo alchemists use the Matching Stems for gathering the pharmaca and the Sovereign Hexagrams for the ring periods. 4 Some solo alchemists use the Matching Stems for the ring periods and the Sovereign Hexagrams for oral instructions i.e., instructions regarding other issues . 5 Some sexual alchemists use the Matching Stems for the female partners pharmacon and ring periods, and the Sovereign Hexagrams for the adepts pharmacon and ring periods. 6 Some sexual alchemists use the Matching Stems for the pharmacon and ring periods, and the Sovereign Hexagrams as oral instructions when approaching the partner.312 Robinet is correct to point out that alchemists often warn against mechanically mapping microcosmic to macrocosmic cycles,313 yet the same alchemists who do proer such warnings e.g., Liu Huayang, who advocates a wuwei approach to alchemy are also making these direct micromacrocosmic correlations themselves. More research is required to determine whether this is due to situational rhetoric, dierences between stages of attainment within a single alchemical system, systematic ambiguity, or simple contradiction. Alchemical writers usually say that the ring periods are secret, and one may latterday standard account. 312

Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue, 220.

313


298

only receive the nal details of the ring periods under the guidance of a true master. Perhaps this guidance would involve imparting new secrets not written down in any text, but more likely it would involve telling the adept just what to believe among all of the conicting teachings, and which among the many potential correspondances are actually relevant. In the Maghrebian peasant society studied by Bourdieu, agents do not see cosmology or social relations as a systematic whole; instead, they activate only some of the possible structural correspondences available to them, as necessary for their strategic purposes, according to a practical logic; and these never add up to the harmonious system imagined by the structural anthropologist.314 Just so, an alchemist may use only some of the structural correspondences available to him, as necessary for his own training, and may need the teachers guidance in choosing elements from his alchemical toolkit.315

§4.9, The ring is done over a series of stages lasting days, months, and years.

In this

section I will begin by giving a standard account of the stages of solo inner

alchemical cultivation,316 then discuss departures from or variations on this account. The standard account of solo inner alchemy seems to be a matter of common knowledge among qigong authorities in modern China, and authors such as Wang Mu, Li Yuanguo, Ma Jiren, Hu Fuchen, or Zhang Zhenguo treat this standard account as the underlying truth to all inner alchemy.317 Azuma says that this account dates back to Li Daochun and the Yuan dynasty.318 I would say instead that the standard account includes DZ 243, Chen Xubai guizhong zhinan, is epitomized the Ming dynasty Qinghua

314


315

Cf. Swidlers toolkit theory of culture in Swidler, Culture in Action; idem, Talk of Love.

316

The standard account over simplies the historical reality, but it is still not wholly univocal itself. We should think of it as a family resemblance standard account. Standard account is my own term; I have seen no comparable idea in the Chinese secondary literature. 317

Among these scholar practitioners, the writings of Wang Mu, Hu Fuchen, and Zhang Zhenguo are more practitioner oriented and ahistorical, while Li Yuanguo and Ma Jiren are more scholarly and historical. Hao Qin is the most historical and generally reliable of these scholars.

318

Azuma, Ch Hakutan Goshin hen no kenky to k sh , 109.

299

miwen,319 developed further by Wu Shouyang and Liu Huayang in the early Qing, and brought to its nal form by Zhao Bichen in the late Qing. In the account presented below I draw on Hao Qin, Li Yuanguo, Ma Jiren, and Zhang Zhenguo, who in turn draw on these Ming Qing sources, especially Qinghua miwen.320 §4.9.1, The standard account.

The most distinctive feature of this standard

account is a series of four stages: 1 tamping the base, 2 rening essence into qi, 3 rening qi into spirit, and 4 causing spirit to return to the void. While this quadripartite sequence is a distinctively Southern Lineage teaching, Li Yuanguo and Hao Qin say that it has an earlier origin in the late Tang and Five Dynasties period and the Zhong L teachings.321 During the rst stage, called tamping the base zhuji 322 or rening the self lianji , the adept prepares his essence, qi, and spirit for subsequent renement. An important practice at this stage is shouyi guarding unity , also called shouqiao watching the aperture or ningshen ru Qixue crystallizing the spirit and causing it to enter the Pit of Qi . The adept rests his intention in the lower dantian: this has the dual eect of calming his heart mind and spirit, and building up post natal essence and qi in the dantian. When the adept has suciently strengthened his essence, qi, and spirit, and regained a state of ordinary good health this way, he can begin to transport this post natal essence cum qi jingqi through the twin tracts, paying special attention to the process of penetrating the three passes in the superintendent tract. When the adept feels his tracts are open and unobstructed, he transports the qi around them in concert with his breathing, raising the qi up the superintendent tract with every inhalation, and drawing it down the conception tract with every exhalation, through the conscious working youwei 319

DZ 240, Yuqing jinsi qinghua miwen jinbao neilian danjue Golden treasure formula for the inner renement of the elixir, of the secret writ of blue orescence, from the golden case in the Jade Clarity heaven . This text is ascribed to Zhang Boduan, but some say it was actually composed under Zhangs name by the Ming Dynasty Daoist Li Puye ; Ren Jiyu, Daozang tiyao, 171. 320

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 242 58; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 376 82; Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 181 210; Zhang Zhenguo, Fanpu guizhen, 230 35. 321

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 231, 351; Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 242.

322

Zhu means to ram earth to make a foundation for a building. I prefer to translate zhu as tamp rather than as ram or pound, which would imply violent action.

300

of his intention yi . Regulating the breath also aids in calming the mind, to the point of sam dhi. The qi being transported at this stage may be called yuanqi primal qi, but it has not yet been activated as the pharmacon. There is no set duration for the stage of tamping the base, but a gifted cultivator may be able to advance to the next stage after perhaps one hundred days. During the second stage, the adept re nes essence into qi by gathering and re ning the outer and inner pharmaca. For a solo cultivator, the outer pharmacon is produced from the store of yuanqi that he has accumulated in his lower dantian also called Sea of Qi, qihai during the stage of tamping the base. The outer pharmacon emerges from this store of yuanqi at the living midnight hour huo zishi , in the form of sexual energy primal essence, yuanjing , and signaled by the male adepts sudden erection. The adept must gather the outer pharmacon carefully, when it is neither too stale nor too fresh laonen , and transport it along the twin tracts. Between the substages of gathering the outer pharmacon and transporting it on the lesser orbit, there may be an intermediary substage of ring the pharmacon with hot, martial re within a closed caldron fenglu .323 Now, the orbital circulation is slower and more di cult to accomplish than it was during the rst stage. It may take one hundred respirations some say 360 respirations to transport the pharmacon one full orbital cycle. As before, the adept must be careful to penetrate the three dorsal passes at the right pace penetrating the coccygeal pass lightly, the spinal pass swiftly, and the occipital pass slowly and with eort. It may take as many as one hundred days to penetrate the three passes. When the adept has circulated the outer pharmacon three hundred cycles some say 360 cycles, he may enter into a state of sam dhi, and the inner pharmacon will appear spontaneously in the lower dantian. The adept can then unite the two pharmaca immediately to make the elixir matrix danmu . He must then go into a state of sam dhihibernation for seven days called entering the hut, ruhuan , at the end of which the greater pharmacon dayao will appear, again in the lower dantian. The greater pharmacon appears at the primary midnight hour zheng zishi , and may also 323


301

be called the holy fetus shengtai , or simply the elixir dan . After brie y transporting the greater pharmacon on the lesser orbit, the adept may shift the caldron yiding , shift the elixir from the lower to middle dantian, and begin stage three. The appearance of the inner pharmacon, and the subsequent cultivation of the greater pharmacon, signal the complete sublimation of the adepts sexual energy: at this point the male adepts sex organ detumesces and retracts. This is likened to the horses yin organ concealing its marks mayin cangxiang .324 During the third stage, the adept re nes qi the elixir, greater pharmacon, holy fetus into spirit the yang spirit, infant. Whereas the adept had used the lesser orbit during the stages of tamping the base and re ning essence into qi, during the third stage the adept uses the greater orbit. Whereas lesserorbital circulation uses the greater caldron and furnace the upper and lower dantian and the twin tracts, greaterorbital circulation uses the lesser caldron and furnace the middle and lower dantian and all eight of the extraordinary cardinal tracts qijing bamai . As the adept res the elixir gently with wuweitype concentration, closed to the outside world and watching the elixir like a hen brooding over her eggs, with his inward vision he perceives the elixir in an inde nite form, abiding within the region of the two dantian, mystic and hazy yinyun . Later during this stage, the adept continues to re it as he circulates it throughout the entire body along the eight tracts. This stage is a symbolic gestation of the holy fetus, and lasts ten months. At the end of ten months, the fetus ascends from the middle dantian to the upper dantian to become the yang spirit. During this fourth stage, the adept nurtures the yang spirit, then trains it to return to the void or the heavens, or the Dao. For three years, the adept suckles the infant through shouyi guarding unity, then for six years he nurtures the growing child, training it to exit and reenter through the fontanel, and gradually take longer and longer journeys away from the body. At the end of nine years, the adepts yang spirit will be able to leave his mortal body for 324

A penis that can retract into the abdomen, like a horses, is one of the thirtytwo major marks xiang of a buddhas enjoyment body or retributionbody, sabhoghakya; Foguang da cidian, s.v. mayin cangxiang , 4348. The alchemical term may allude to this.

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good, as a transcendent. Such is the standard account of the four stages of inner alchemy. It represents a solo cultivation alchemical synthesis from the Ming and Qing periods, based on Southern Lineage teachings as they were taught within Quanzhen lineages. It oers a good basis for comparison, but should not be mistaken as an underlying structure of all inner alchemical teachings. In his article on Wuzhen pian, Azuma notes that commentators throughout history have interpreted the teachings of this classic quite variously, and because contemporary Chinese scholars use the relatively perspicuous Jindan sibai zi and Qinghua miwen to interpret the cryptic Wuzhen pian believing that Zhang Boduan is the author of all three works, their conclusions are not completely reliable.325 I approve of Azumas skepticism, and his proposal of scraping away the outer layers of paint daubed on by later interpreters paint that is colored by the standard account to nd what we can of the earlier classics underneath. Yet, in this section on the stages of practice in inner alchemy, I have found it convenient for heuristic purposes to present the standard account at length, then note some qualications to this account, rather than as would be more accurate treating the standard account as only one variation within the larger historical eld of inner alchemy. §4.9.2, Two general divergences.

One major divergence from the standard

account, found among many forms of inner alchemy, is a stage of harmoniously uniting re with water hehe shuihuo . This re is also correlated with the heart or heart mind, middle dantian, spirit, mercury, dragon, and li , while the water is also correlated with the kidneys, lower dantian, essence, lead, tiger, and kan . Some of these correlations have not been discussed yet in this chapter, but will be discussed below. This is an inversion, a process of turning these two pharmaca upside down, then smelting them together in the center. The heart is essentially ery but its core contains a uid yin within yang, or li ; the heart is yang and thus associated with ascension, but its pharmacon is yin, which sinks. The kidneys are essentially watery but their core contains metal or qi yang within yin, or 325


303

kan ; the kidneys are yin and thus associated with sinking, but their pharmacon is yang, which rises. The two pharmaca, one sinking and one rising, meet in the center to form an initial elixir, called yellow sprouts. This whole complex is very important within inner alchemy of the period of nascence, of the formative period e.g., the Zhong L teachings , and even of the classical period of Southern Lineage alchemy e.g., Weng Baoguang326 . It is found as late as the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as we see in the Neijing tu Chart of the inner tracts and related materials studied by Despeux.327 This melding of opposites through inversion is the key practice within the initial stage of Zhong L alchemy,328 and this trope is repeated throughout the second and third Zhong L stages as well. Inversion is also the most important trope within sexual alchemy. The standard account of solo alchemy, however, can only give lip service to the inversion of opposites, by saying that this is contained within lesser orbital circulation, when primal spirit yang, ery is drawn down to unite with primal essence yin, watery , or by putting this in merely symbolic terms. Late imperial solo cultivation teachings emphasize sequential sudden appearances of singular pharmaca rst outer, then inner, greater, and the yang spirit rather than the joining of two pharmaca, and so the classic alchemical idea of inverted union no longer has a central place in the standard account. The second major divergence from the standard account in some teachings is the inclusion of multiple alternative practices within a single stage. For example, whereas the standard account gives a set sequence of sub stages within each stage,329 early Quanzhen texts such as Jinguan yusuo jue may oer multiple alternative practices within their early stages.330 If we may illustrate the practices of the standard account with a linear diagram, we would have to illustrate Jinguan yusuo jue with a diagram like 326


327

Despeux, Taosme et corps humain, 149; Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5.114 15.

328

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 230; Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 206; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 298.

329

The standard account is a modern construction, and dierent scholars or qigong lineages construct it dierently, but they always speak of a set sequence of sub stages. For example, Ma Jiren lists six sub stages within stage two, ve within stage three, and three within stage four. Ma does not consider tamping the base to be a separate initial stage, and within his stage one he includes what I am calling stages one and two. 330

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 469, citing DZ 1156, Chongyang Zhenren jinguan yusuo jue. For studies of this text, see Komjathy, Cultivating Perfection; Hachiya, Chy shinjin kinkan gyokusa ketsu ni tsuite.

304

a tree. At this point in my research, I cannot say whether we can restrict this arbiform diagram of practices to ZhongL or ZhongLlike teachings, or whether the linear standard account is a misleading simplication of the actual state of a airs, and in fact teachers from all over the alchemical eld could give di erent sequences of practices to di erent students as appropriate to their individual circumstances. §4.9.3, Other divergences, by era.

With the standard account as a paradigm, we

can turn to look at a few di erent alchemical systems to see how they diverge from this paradigm. This is not a comprehensive survey. Texts from the period of nascence await further study. The one text from this period that has been extensively studied is Cantong qi; since this text is more theoretical than practiceoriented, I doubt that it would contain a sequence of stages of practice. Chen Tuans Wuji tu , from the formative period perhaps dating to the Five Dynasties, is a simple diagram said to represent ve stages of practice:331 1 nding the ancestral qi zuqi in the xuanpin or, mingmen between the kidneys,

2 rening essence to qi, and qi to spirit, 3 transporting this spirit through the ve viscera ve qi pay court to the prime, wuqi chaoyuan , 4 forming the holy fetus by equalizing kan and li, then 5 a return to the Limitless Wuji. Liu and Ma believe that Chen Tuans teachings conform closely to the standard account, but this merits further study. Chen Pus Chen Xiansheng neidan jue332 also belongs to the formative period. Chen Pus sequence of nine stages shares some practices with other alchemical systems from this period, but on the whole does not resemble any other inneralchemical text. Some of Chen Pus terminology and ideas about the alchemical body may be unique. ZhongL texts belong to both formative and classical periods in my schema. Li and Hao to say that the ZhongL teachings are the source of the fourstage 331

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 322 33; Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 51. Chen Tuans Wuji tu is no longer extant; modern reconstructions of it are based on descriptions by Huang Zongyan 1616 86, Taiji tu shuo bian, in Yixue bianhuo; and Zhu Yizun 1629 1709, Taiji tu shoushou kao, j. 58 of Pushu ting ji. I include a version of Chen Tuans Wuji tu as gure 4.10 on page 335 below.

332

DZ 1096, Chen Xiansheng neidan jue also in DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu, j. 17, with the title Cuixu pian. Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 300 11.

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sequence of the Southern Lineage teachings,333 which would make them structurally equivalent to the standard account; indeed, the stage structures from some Zhong L texts do appear relatively equivalent to the structure of the standard account. According to chapter 18 of ZhongL chuandao ji,334 there are twelve stages or, classes, ke , divided into three vehicles sansheng/sancheng or sancheng .335 Lesser vehicle: 1 uniting yin and yang pipei yinyang : ingesting atmospheric qi and directing it to the ve viscera; 2 collecting and dispersing water and re jusan shuihuo ! : cultivating the uid of the bladder orb; 3 causing dragon and tiger to copulate jiaogou longhu # : producing two pharmaca, qi from hearts uid and uid from kidneys qi, then joining them in the Yellow Court; 4 roasting and rening the elixir pharmaca shaolian danyao " % : smelting the two initial pharmaca into a holy fetus; Middle vehicle: 5 causing crystals of metal to soar up behind the elbows zhouhou fei jinjing : lesser orbital circulation; 6 the recycled elixir of jade humor yuye huandan $ : swallowing saliva, which is a uid from the kidney orb; 7 rening the body with jade humor yuye lianxing : lesser orbital circulation of the kidney uid; 8 the recycled elixir of gold or, metal humor jinye huandan $ : gathering uid from the lung orb; 9 rening the body with gold humor jinye lianxing : lesser orbital circulation of the lung uid; Greater vehicle: 10 rening the qi by paying court to the prime chaoyuan lianqi : circulating the qi of the ve viscera, based on complex seasonal timing; 11 gazing within upon the mingling and replacement neiguan jiaohuan & ; 12 transcending through parturition, and dividing the bodily form chaotuo fenxing . In the sequence of stages above, stages 1 2 are homologous to tamping the base, stages 3 5 and 6 9 look like a reduplicated version of rening essence into qi, stages 10 11 would be equivalent to greater orbital circulation and rening qi into spirit, 333

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 231, 351; Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 242.

334

ZhongL chuandao ji, in DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu, j. 14 16.

335

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 224 40; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 291.

306

and stage 12 is homologous to causing the spirit to return to the void. Other Zhong L esque sequences, such as that of the Quanzhen text Dadan zhizhi, are more dicult to accord with the standard account.336 Here is the sequence of stages in Dadan zhizhi: Methods of lesser completion xiaocheng fa : 1 copulation of dragon and tiger longhu jiaogou %! : lesser orbital circulation of atmospheric air to cause the inverted union of kidneys qi and hearts uid in the middle dantian; 2 ring periods of the celestial orbit zhoutian huohou : lesser orbital circulation of this qi to produce an inner pharmacon; 3 causing crystals of metal to soar up behind the elbows zhouhou fei jinjing : recycling metallous essence to replenish the brain; a form of huanjing bunao; Methods of middle completion: 4 the recycled elixir of golden or, metal humor jinye huandan ' : swallowing this metallous essence down to the Yellow Court, cycling it among the ve viscera to produce a lesser recycled elixir xiao huandan ', then cycling it among the three dantian to produce a greater recycled elixir; 5 rening the form with the great yang taiyang lianxing " : smelting the qi of the ve viscera in the upper dantian, then transporting this qi throughout the body ; 6 the three dantian in equilibrium santian jiji & : uniting kidneys water and hearts uid in the esophagus to form saliva, then swallowing it down to the middle dantian; Methods of greater completion 7 rening the spirit and causing it to enter the crown lianshen ruding " : visualizing the spirits of the ve viscera meeting in the upper dantian; 8 rening the spirit and causing it to unite with the Dao lianshen ruding " $ : the qi follows the spirit from the middle to upper dantian, where the two combine to form the yang spirit; 9a discarding the husk and ascending to transcendent hood qiqiao shengxian ; 9b transcending the profane and entering the holy chaofan rusheng # . This sequence of nine stages in Dadan zhizhi is reminiscent of the twelve stages in ZhongL chuandao ji, which I have said is reminiscent of the standard account, but I would say that Dadan zhizhi is structurally about twice as far removed from the standard account as Chuandao ji was, and so Dandan zhizhi is not very homologous to the standard account. Dandan zhizhi and the standard account are both constructed 336

DZ 244, Dadan zhizhi, ascribed to Qiu Chuji, founder of the Longmen lineage of Quanzhen Daoism. In the following summary, I paraphrase Belamide, SelfCultivation and Quanzhen Daoism, 157 64.

307

out of similar conceptions and elements, however. Zhang Boduans Wuzhen pian, the text most quoted by inner alchemists after Cantong qi, comes from the classical period. There is no doubt that a sequence of stages lies behind Wuzhen pians cryptic phrasing; this sequence is probably linear in structure, and largely equivalent to the standard account; yet I cannot say with certainty what this sequence would be. Azuma notes that each commentator interprets Wuzhen pian somewhat dierently; his solution is to remain skeptical of all commentaries while giving more credence to the earliest ones.337 Bai Yuchan, another key author from this period, is more explicit. One cycle of Bais alchemical poems hints at a sequence of stages:338 1 returning to the mountain; 2 gathering the pharmaca; 3 furnace and caldron; 4 the ring periods; 5 bathing; 6 incubation; 7 parturition; 8 the golden elixir; 9 shooting upward to the heavens ; 10 kinship. Elsewhere in his writings, Bai oers a sequence of nineteen formulae jue , which also reect a sequence of stages: 1 gathering the pharmacon caiyao ; 2 forming the elixir jiedan ; 3 tempering penglian : tempering the body by circulating metallous uid; 4 reinforcing and bonding guji : ceasing thought and forgetting the physical form; 5 martial ring wuhuo ; 6 civil ring wenhuo ; 7 bathing muyu ; 8 grains of elixir dansha ; 9 crossing the passes guoguan : the fetus ripens; 10 parturition fentai ; 11 incubation wenyang ; 12 guarding against dangers fangwei ; 13 training gongfu ; 337


338


308

14 copulation jiaogou ; 15 great recycling dahuan ; 16 holy fetus shengtai ; 17 nine revolutions jiuzhuan ; 18 switching to a new caldron huanding : myriads of transformations and propagations of new spirit selves ; 19 Grand Ultimate Taiji : body and spirit are perfected, and unite with the Dao. Li Yuanguo and Wang Li say that the standard sequence of re ning essence into qi stage 2 of the standard account, re ning qi into spirit stage 3, and causing spirit to return to the void stage 4, can be found in Bai Yuchans teachings.339 Wang identi es formulae 19 with stage 2, formulae 1215 with stage 3, and formulae 1619 with stage 4. While Wang and Li are probably right in the main, we ought not to assume that Bai Yuchans teachings match the standard account in detail. For example, greaterorbital circulation seems not to play as important a role in classic Southern Lineage teachings such as Bais as it does in the lateimperial standard account. We will see that this is also true for Chen Zhixus SouthernLineage teachings in chapter 5. In the period of integration, alchemists such as Li Daochun, Yu Yan, Chen Zhixu, and Wang Daoyuan began to combine Quanzhen and SouthernLineage teachings. Li Daochun seems to have been working with a version of the fourstage sequence with some dierences from the standard account,340 yet in his panjiaolike schema for classifying alchemical teachings he seems to correlate tamping the base with his upperlevel marginal teachings pangmen, and the second, third, and fourth stages with his lower, middle, and upper vehicles, de ning his own highest vehicle as superior more loftily cosmic to anything found in other SouthernLineage teachings.341 Yu Yan teaches a simpli ed form of SouthernLineage practice, emphasizing only lesserorbital circulation and dropping the higher stages of

339

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 393. Wang Li, The Daoist Way of Transcendence, 30210.

340

For example, unlike the standard account, Li Daochun emphasizes the practice of ve qi paying court to the prime wuqi chaoyuan ; Crowe, The Nature and Function of the Buddhist and Ru Teachings in Li Daochun, 199, 270. 341


309

cultivation the third and fourth stages in the standard account.342 Wang Daoyuan seems to follow the fourstage sequence, though without including many of the details found in the standard account;343 this is also true of Chen Zhixu. The inneralchemical eld during the late imperial period is too broad and understudied for me to summarize with condence. There are at least two hundred extant texts from this period. However, we can use the issue of sexual alchemy to draw a simple plot of the eld during this period, distinguishing between teachers who downplay or exclude sexual alchemy and those who include it as recommended or essential. Most of the solocultivators belong to the Longmen lineage of Quanzhen Daoism. While we can identify a general trend in Longmen teachings toward agreement on the standard account in both outline and detail, I cannot say at present how many of the nonLongmen teachers follow the standard sequence of stages, and how many depart from it signicantly. I believe that most nonLongmen teachings are similar in structure to the standard account, but some may, while taking the standard account as a basis, depart from the standard account in new directions. This is the sense one gets from Li Xiyue, in whose teachings substages of the standard account are doubled or expanded into many new series of substages.344 Qiu Zhaoaos sequence of seven stages is structurally similar to the standard account, yet he expands some elements e.g., initial sexual training while reducing others e.g., stages three and four of the standard account.345 We may say the same about female inner alchemy ndan from the lateeighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While female inneralchemical texts oer diering sequences of stages,346 Hao Qin and Despeux say that it conforms roughly to the standard fourstage sequence, with major dierences at the standard stages one and two.347 While men and women both 342


343

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 497 505.

344

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 338 46.

345

Azuma, Ch Hakutan Goshin hen no kenky to k sh , 109. Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 180.

346

For example, Ndan shize teaches a tenstage sequence, N jindan an eighteenstage sequence, Kunyuan jing a sevenstage sequence, and Jinhua zhizhi ngong zhengfa

a ninestage sequence; Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 375 76. 347

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 375 76. Despeux and Kohn, Women in Daoism, 221 41.

310

begin by cultivating their essence, for men this essence is related to semen, and for women it is related to menstrual blood. A mans sublimated semen primal essence, yuanjing and a womans sublimated menses perfected blood, zhenxue both originate in the Pit of Qi Qixue , but whereas the mans Pit of Qi is his lower dantian, the womans is between her breasts.348 There are many other important dierences between the subtle physiologies of man and women. After stage two, when a womans breasts disappear and her body becomes like that of a prepubescent boy, her cultivation process ought to be equivalent to a mans.349 §4.10, Inner alchemists . . . monitor their progress by means of temporal cycles, hexagram cycles, psychophysiological responses, or inner vision.

Inner alchemists rely on various

sorts of evidence and calculation for monitoring the eects of their practice, and determining when they have successfully completed a stage of cultivation and are ready to begin a new stage. Adepts may use external temporal cyclessuch as one hundred days, or ten monthsto regulate their progress. They may rely on outer physiological signs, such as healthy teeth, voice, and eyes showing the essence, qi, and spirit are replete,350 sweating during the stage of bathing the elixir,351 an erection of the male member when the outer pharmacon arrives at the living midnight hour, or shrinking of the male genitals when the greater pharmacon arrives at the primary midnight hour, the production of copious and sweet saliva when the pharmaca pass through the palate and tongue, or snot and atulence if the pharmaca are lost at the upper and lower Magpie Bridges. Adepts may await internal proprioceptive or imaginary signs, such as a feeling of heat when the tracts open up, kaiguan , a quaking of the six senses and something like a vultures cry in the back of the brain at the primary midnight hour,352 the feeling of a great axe

348

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 193, 203.

349


350

Zhang Zhenguo, Fanpu guizhen, 231.

351

Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 144, citing Min Yide.

352

Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 204, citing Wu Shouyang.

311

splitting the brain when the yang spirit exits the fontanel for the rst time ,353 or psychic powers e.g., the six spirit pervasions, shentong , related to the Buddhist abhij . Adepts may use internal vision to watch colored qi cycle between their viscera, or gaze upon the elixir cooking within the lesser caldron and furnace. They may encounter celestial music, visions, and deities when the elixir is complete, or temptations and obstructions created by marademons mozhang during the process.354 The adept always relies on his feeling of intention. He may con rm these dierent forms of evidence through the counsel of his fellows and master, and by comparing them against the words of Cantong qi, Wuzhen pian, and latterday classics. One case that combines several of these forms of evidence is the sexual alchemists evaluation and gathering of the outer pharmacon. Sexual alchemists must gather the outer pharmacon from the right kind of female partner, and at the correct time. To do this, the sexual alchemist relies on outward physiological signs e.g., testing the vaginal uids ,355 and temporal cycles the age of the partner, and the timing of her qicycle or menstrual cycle , which are correlated with the lunar hexagram cycle of the Twelve Sovereign Hexagrams. Immediately after gathering the outer pharmacon and bonding it to his inner pharmacon, the sexual alchemist uses intention and inner vision to guide the pharmaca through lesserorbital circulation and into the caldron. Finally, all of these signs must be corroborated by the words of teachers and alchemical classics, and the adepts own intuition, as part of a hermeneutical circle of prior expectation and subsequent experience. §4.11, Inner alchemists do this . . . in order to create, gather, rene, crystallize, incubate, purify, and sublimate elixirs within themselves.

There are many dierent descriptions

of inneralchemical elixirs within the literature. Usually there are several stages of elixir within the system of a single teacher; as we have seen above, these systems vary by teacher, and so will their descriptions of the elixirs. Even teachers whose systems 353

Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 213, citing DZ 244, Dadan zhizhi.

354

Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 22728. This is a common theme in inner alchemy and other forms of Daoism. There is a long discussion of maras Lun monan in Zhong L chuandao ji, in DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu 16.22b26b; translated in Wong, The Tao of Health, Longevity, and Immortality, 13541.

355

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 175, citing Jindan jieyao.

312

are similar may use di erent metaphors to describe the elixirs, and this variety of metaphors may also be signicant. The two most common terms for elixirs are waidan outer elixir and neidan inner elixir. These terms are sometimes used to distinguish laboratory alchemy waidan from inner alchemy neidan, but more often they refer not to two forms of alchemy, but to two entities within inner alchemy, what I have been calling the outer pharmacon waiyao and inner pharmacon neiyao.356 I prefer to call these initial reagents pharmaca rather than elixirs, but generally the initial reagents

pharmaca are of one kind with the later elixirs. In SouthernLineage alchemy and its heirs in the lateimperial period, the sequence of reagents and elixirs begins with the amassing of essence/qi, leading to the outer pharmacon waiyao, waidan and inner pharmacon neiyao, neidan; these are rened together into the elixir a.k.a. holy fetus, shengtai, which is rened further into the yang spirit no longer elixirlike, which returns to the Void or the heavens. The situation is more complicated in ZhongL alchemy. In ZhongL teachings, the inner elixir neidan is an initial product, created through the inversion of the ve agents between heart and kidneys see pages 338 39 below, and the outer elixir

waidan is a more advanced product, involving combining corporeal mercury extracted from cinnabar with silver extracted from black lead see page 344 below and rening them through lesser orbital circulation.357 This neidan and waidan would also be called the lesser and greated recycled elixirs xiao/da huandan respectively.358 Xiao Daocun . 1260, a later inheritor of the ZhongL tradition, speaks of seven types of elixirs: three important ones elixir of purple gold, zijin dan ; golden elixir, jindan ; and elixir of the dragon and tiger, longhu dan , and four less important ones elixirs of liver, heart, lungs, and kidneys.359 356

Robinet, Sur le sens des termes waidan et neidan discusses the history and variations of these terms.

357

BaryosherChemouny, La qute de limmortalit en Chine, 98; BaldrianHussein, Inner Alchemy: Notes on the Origin and Use of the Term Neidan, 186; BaldrianHussein, Procds secrets du joyau magique, 18 19. 358

Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5:77, citing DZ 150, Xiuzhen taiji hunyuan zhixuan tu.

359

BaryosherChemouny, La qute de limmortalit en Chine, 98; cf. DZ 149, Xiuzhen taiji hunyuan tu, by Xiao Daocun, and DZ 150, Xiuzhen taiji hunyuan zhixuan tu.

313

Elixirs are often called golden elixirs jindan or recycled elixirs huandan. As we saw on pages 230 32 above, these terms come from early laboratory alchemy: jindan comes from mercurygold alchemy, and huandan was a term used within all forms of laboratory alchemy. In inner alchemy, jindan, rather than meaning golden elixir, usually means metallous elixir. This metal is the lead which comes from water, correlated with agent metal born from agent water cf. pages 336 38 below. Huandan means an elixir that is produced through a cyclical process huan, but also an elixir that causes the alchemist to revert huan to physiological youth, or to a pre cosmic state. Recycling or reversion is an extended conceptual cluster in inner alchemy cf. page 322 below. The two types of huandan mentioned most often are jadehumor recycled elixir yuye huandan and goldhumor recycled elixir

jinye huandan . These always come as a pair, but their referents vary by tradition and even within a tradition or a single text. The terms yuye huandan and jinye huandan are much used within ZhongL texts; sometimes they refer to recycled saliva, sometimes to the qi of certain viscera. I will not discuss this further, but only note that jinye is always the more rened of the pair. In sexual alchemy, yuye refers to the initial stage of tamping the base, when the adept amasses, renes, and controls his sexual energy, and jinye refers to the stage of gathering the metal yuanqi from the female partner.360 Elixirs may be given dierent evocative descriptions. Beginning with the Cantong qi if not before, elixirs were likened to millet grains shumi , broomcorn millet or to the dust dancing in the sunray of a window mingchuang chen

.361 They were called or described as chicken eggs jizi , tangerines

hongju , and all manner of pearls. Elixirs are called millet grain pearls shumi zhu , precious pearls baozhu , mystic pearls xuanzhu , numinous pearls lingzhu , divine pearls shenzhu , asyoulikeit pearls ruyi zhu

, mani pearls moni zhu or mouni zhu , a wishgranting pearl from Indian Buddhist lore, nightglowing pearls yeming zhu

, also from Buddhism, 360

I analyze Chen Zhixus possible uses of the terms yuye huandan and jinye huandan on pp. 549 50 below.

361

For shumi in Chen Zhixus writings, cf. Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed. 3.74b; for mingchuang chen, cf. ibid., 1.35a. Also cf. Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 25.

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radiant pearls mingzhu & , barbarians pearls huzhu #& , seedpearls zizhu & , black pearls heizhu .& , red pearls chizhu & , and rosegem pearls qiongzhu 4 & . They are called owing pearls liuzhu !& , i.e., drops of mercury; for the sexual alchemist, this is the neiyao/seminal essence. And they are called lipearls lizhu 6& , alluding to the pearl found beneath the chin of the black dragon.362 This metaphor is especially apt for sexual alchemy, where it would mean the neiyao within the male adepts dragon. Finally, the elixir may, of course, be mysticized. Some alchemists, such as Li Daochun or Liu Yiming, say that re ning the elixir is after all just a metaphor for cultivating the inherent nature xing .363 §4.11.1, Inner alchemists . . . create . . . elixirs within themselves through gathering the spark of pure yang qi left over from the time of cosmogenesis.

The yuanqi that an

alchemist nds and gathers is actually a bit of stu remaining from the time of cosmogenesis. As Chen Zhixu says, This is the method of the golden elixir: to plunder that one point of incipient qi from before heaven and before earth, in order to re ne the recycled elixir. , 3'-% /2364 This is also an anthropogonic stu , remaining from the time of anthropogenesis, received from father and mother at the moment of conception: Now, a human being is born possessing one point of precosmic perfected yang qi, and is the most numinous of all creatures. This qi increases day by day; in its

powers of creation and transformation it is united with the primal chaos of heaven and earth in io tempore. 0 3'-%"+5% 1 ) $* 365 The moment of gathering caiqu ( is one of the most important stages of the entire alchemical process, especially for sexual alchemists. The alchemist must gather this cosmic stu carefully; it is often emphasized that he must gather it immediately, but then again, it must be gathered at the proper moment when it is neither too stale 362

From Zhuangzi, chapter 32 Lie Yukou , H.Y. 32.44; in Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 360.

363


364

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4.25a10b1.

365


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nor too fresh. As the Wuzhen pian says, The lead is produced when it encounters gui the yin phase of agent water , and you must hurriedly gather it .366 For a solo cultivator, if the pharmacon is lost or the gathering is bungled, he may simply try again. For a sexual alchemist, the moment of gathering is a time of great anxiety mixed with sexual and emotional excitement, when the rst step toward transcendence may be attained by gaining the outer pharmacon, or when he may lose his own seminal essence, and with it, days or years of his lifespan. This raises an interesting issue: is this one point of precosmic qi the outer pharmacon or the inner pharmacon? For the sexual alchemist the one point of qi is most certainly the outer pharmacon. But it may be the case that, for the solo cultivator, the one point of qi is usually the inner pharmacon. Robinet has noticed this as a point of dierence between Chen Zhixu and Li Daochun: for Chen it is the outer pharmacon which is the cosmic stu, whereas for Li the outer pharmacon is the gross and postcosmic three treasures i.e., seminal essence, respiratory qi and cognitive spirit, and it is the inner pharmacon which is the one point of primal yang.367 This jibes with the standard account of solo alchemical process discussed above see pages 3012: according to the standard account, the outer pharmacon is an initial and lessrened product, leading to the sacred inner pharmacon. Robinet is puzzled by this contradiction between the accounts of Chen and Li, since she believes that the teachings of these two authorities ought to be the same and that both are solo cultivators. Her solution to the problem is to point out that, later in the same text, Li resolves both outer and inner pharmaca into a single stage of the process of cultivation.368 In the standard account, this would be stage two, the stage of rening essence into qi. Robinet does not discuss alchemical cultivation on the microcosmic register at all in this article, only alchemical discourse on the mesocosmic register. Yet this may be an important insight. For the study of inner alchemy to progress, we must develop new tools for distinguishing between the discourses of 366

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 1.22a67.

367

Robinet, Sur le sens des termes waidan et neidan, 27, citing DZ 249, Zhonghe ji 2.4a6b, 3.25a, 3.28a.

368

Robinet, Sur le sens des termes waidan et neidan, 28, citing DZ 249, Zhonghe ji 2.6b7a.

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laboratory alchemy, solo inner alchemy, and sexual inner alchemy as well as other forms of alchemy that cannot be reduced to any of these categories, such as purely cosmological alchemical discourse. Perhaps the concept of the one qi of primal yang could help us in distinguishing solo from sexualalchemical discourse. Can we make the generalization that solo alchemists invariably gain the one qi when they gather the inner pharmacon, and that sexual alchemists gain it when they gather the outer? This question is worth investigating further. §4.11.2, Inner alchemists . . . create . . . elixirs within themselves through . . . inverting and uniting contrary principles.

Most forms of alchemy, in China and other

civilizations alike, aim at the union of opposites, what Carl Jung calls the coniunctio, or Mircea Eliade calls coincidentia oppositorum.369 In China, this dyadic pair of opposites will always be interpreted in terms of yin and yang. However, the union of opposites in inner alchemy is not a simple union of pure yin kun and pure yang

qian . Rather, it is a union of yangwithinyin kan and yinwithinyang li , the union of two opposites, each of which already harbors the germ of the other within. On pages 33031 below, I discuss the question of why the inneralchemical union of opposites is actually a union of alreadymediated opposites. In microcosmic terms, some alchemists from the ZhongL or other early traditions may represent this union of opposites as the union of the hearts humor xinye and the kidneys qi, while sexual alchemists may view it as the union of male and female sexual energies within the male in the form of the inner and outer pharmaca cf. pages 33941 for both. Note that this is an inverted union: the theme of inversion links it to the rich conceptual complex of diandao topsyturvy, which I discuss on page 323 below. §4.11.3, Inner alchemists . . . create . . . elixirs within themselves through . . . rening essence into qi, qi into spirit, and spirit into void, as

I have discussed in section

4.9 above on pages 299311. §4.11.4, Inner alchemists . . . create . . . elixirs within themselves through . . . rening the postnatal three treasures . . . into the prenatal three treasures. 369

Inner

Jung and Eliade view the conjunction of opposites as a universal feature of human psychic process Jung, or of the sacred Eliade. I do not have space to introduce their ideas about conjunction here.

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alchemists re ne seminal essence into primal essence, respiratory qi into primal qi, and cognitive spirit into primal spirit. I have already introduced the concepts of qi and spirit above.370 I have been alluding to jing essence, seminal essence and yuanjing primal essence, sublimated sexual energy throughout, without a detailed de nition yet. I will now de ne the two concepts jing and yuanjing together, paraphrasing and developing Hao Qins words.371 Jing is the primal stu of life, promoting vitality, growth, and fertility, and necessary for spiritual and sexual reproduction alike. In Chinese medicine, jing, in the broad sense of the term, refers to the subtle substances that constitute corporeal life, including semen, blood, and saliva; and jing in the narrow sense refers exclusively to the essence of the kidneyorb, i.e., a mans semen and a womans qi and blood. Inner alchemists develop and transform these medical concepts, distinguishing between prenatal xiantian and postnatal houtian jing. Prenatal jing is also called primal jing, perfect jing, and prenatal jing of utmost yang. We common humans inherit this from our fathers semen and mothers blood, and it is this yuanjing that determines the waxing and waning of our life, fertility, and reproductive functions. For alchemists, this is the perfect pharmacon or utmost pharmacon. Postnatal jing is also called turbid jing or reproductive jing, and is what the physicians call jing of the ve viscera or kidney jing. We form our post natal jing from water and grains; its function is to maintain life activity and organic metabolism. Yuanjing is contained in the kidneys, and rooted in the lower dantian. Postnatal jing is contained in the ve viscera, and rooted in the kidneys. Inner alchemists regard yuanjing and postnatal jing as dierent manifestations of a single underlying substance or reality, codependent and mutually promoting one another. Postnatal jing is rooted in yuanjing, and yuanjing is nurtured by postnatal jing. If a mans jing is stirred by sexual desire, and he ejaculates, the jing has become postnatal jing; if it is not stirred by desire, and remains replete within the body, then the jing retains its prenatal quality. The rst rule of cultivation is to avoid losing any more postnatal jing through ejaculation or menstruation. Most Chinese would say 370

See pp. 23235, 25254.

371

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 18081. Also cf. Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 2023.

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that losing post natal jing will make one sick and can lead one to an early death; sexual cultivators such as Chen Zhixu would even say that the death of any person is in fact caused by the loss of post natal jing over the course of a lifetime.372 The solo alchemist begins his cultivation by rening post natal jing into the outer pharmacon of yuanjing. In the standard account, the yuanjing is closely related to semen, but in Zhong L teachings, jing also manifests as saliva the adept passes the pharmacon across his upper Magpie Bridge in the form of saliva . The adept then renes this yuanjing through lesser orbital circulation to produce the inner pharmacon of yuanqi primal qi . The sexual alchemist also begins by cultivating his own yuanjing here called the inner pharmacon ; he combines his yuanjing with the female partners yuanqi the outer pharmacon , which is rooted in the womans post

natal jing menses or sexual uids . Robinet takes highly sublimated and mystical forms of alchemy e.g., in Li Daochuns teachings as her paradigm for inner alchemy per se, and implicitly rejects more physiological forms of alchemy e.g., in Zhong L teachings as spiritually second rate. Thus, she emphasizes that the jing of the alchemists is not a physiological entity, is not semen.373 According to Hao Qins explanation of jing, Robinet is correct: seminal jing and yuanjing are two manifestations of a single underlying reality. Yet, Hao continues, the yuanjing of the alchemists is inextricably linked with semen. Robinet seems to be aware of this but loathe to acknowledge that the subtle stu of alchemy is in fact indissociable from the corporeal body.374 Just as the alchemist renes post natal jing into yuanjing, he may also rene post natal qi atmospheric air into yuanqi, and post natal spirit cognitive spirit into yuanshen. The rening of post natal qi into yuanqi is less clearly evident within most forms of inner alchemy than the rening of jing into yuanjing and shen into yuanshen. Some early forms of inner alchemy do speak of ingesting atmospheric qi and turning 372 Cf. Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 6: The Chinese noted that sexual potency declines with age. Thus, sexual energy must be a nite quantum in the organism. Taking this reasoning one step further, the inner alchemists believed that it is not age that causes sexual decline, but rather sexual mismanagement that causes aging. 373


374

She acknowledges it later in this section: Nevertheless . . . the light of the original jing uid cannot appear without the light of the everyday jing. Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion, 251, citing DZ 240, Qinghua miwen.

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it into yuanqi.375 The cultivation of primal spirit out of ordinary mental activity is a major goal of Quanzhen alchemists in particular. In general, we may say that the creation of the yang spirit is equivalent to the transformation of post natal spirit into yuanshen.

§4.12, Inner alchemists do this . . . in order to . . . stimulate and enlighten the intellect.

As

I have discussed above, Robinet says that It is, in e ect, as a kan that neidan acts on the spirit of the adept.376 Like Chan Buddhist masters, inner alchemical masters try to induce mystical experiences in their disciples, not only by the ancient physiological practices, but also by harnessing the mind to disentangle knotty problems and break logjams.377 Knotty problems include paradoxes such as the child gives birth to the mother er chan mu or zi sheng mu or the mother hides within the womb of her child mu yin zitai . In one familiar version of this paradox, teachers point out that Metal gives birth to Water and is its mother . . . but Metal is also within Water.378 That is, according to the mutual production sequence of the ve agents wuxing xiangsheng , metal produces water as when dew forms in a bronze mirror , yet according to alchemical process, the yang primal qi i.e., metal comes from utmost yin i.e., water .379 So metal produces water, and water produces metal. Seemingly paradoxical statements are not always meant to be taken as paradoxes, however. For example, when Chen Zhixu writes Although every family possesses it, it is not owned by ones own family ,380 Chens meaning is that every household possesses the outer pharmacon within the body of a wife or partner , and the male adept does not possess it himself in his own 375 Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 224, discussing Zhong L texts. The standard account may also account for the rening of qi into yuanqi in a roundabout way by saying that qi circulation during the stage of tamping the base leads to the appearance of yuanjing, and since jing is after all a form of qi, this yuanjing is also yuanqi. 376


377


378


379

This reversed production sequence of the ve agents is called interlaced waxing of the ve agents wuxing cuowang . See pp. 336 38 below. 380

The quote is from one of Chens comments in DZ 142, Ziyang zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 1.10b9 10.

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body. Chen means for the uninitiated to take this statement as a paradox, and the initiated to take it as a simple truth. Here, paradoxical language is being used more for rhetorical reasons for managing mastership, or contributing to the masters authority than for intellectual or spiritual contemplation. §4.13, Inner alchemists do this . . . in order to . . . grasp the handle of cosmic creation and transformation

wo zaohua zhi bing . Robinet writes that

interior alchemy . . . is above all a technique of enlightenment including a method of controlling both the world and oneself and a means of fashioning zaohua and hence understanding in the sense of an existential and intellectual integration.381 Elsewhere, Robinet has identi ed the sages ability to integrate himself with the cosmos through understanding its transformations as a trope common throughout Daoist texts, and even the Xici zhuan: The interplay of the transformations of life is a process of alternation, the balancing of forces, and the circulation of energies. When arriving at a terminal point of development, each thing reverses itself into its opposite or otherwise changes its form. . . . Ordinary humans do not, however, . . . see what passesimperceptibly, tenuously, and progressivelyfrom one form to another. Ordinary humans only see the rupture in forms. Thus to grasp the changing unity and . . . to know the bianhua of things is the hallmark of spiritual knowledge. As the Xici says, He who knows the way of the bianhua knows how spirits operate. And a few centuries later a commentary on the Duren jing states that knowing change bian and knowing how to transform oneself hua is to be ling spiritual or luminous; it is also what one calls the Tao.382 By knowing the transformations of all things in Heaven and Earth, the sage can not only predict the future, but achieve a state of harmony with the Dao. Sivin describes laboratory alchemy in similar terms: The dominant goal of Chinese alchemy was contemplative, even ecstatic. . . . The alchemists constructed their intricate art, made the cycles of the cosmic process accessible, and undertook to contemplate them because they believed that to encompass the Tao with their minds . . . would make them one with it.383 This knowledge itself is salvi c: as Sivin says, to grasp the unchanging reality that 381


382

Robinet, Taoist Meditation, 15455, citing Yijing, Xici zhuan, 1.9.10 Rutt, The Book of Changes Zhouyi, 416, and DZ 87, Yuanshi wuliang duren shangpin miaojing sizhu 1.1b.

383


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underlies the chaos of experience is to rise above that chaos, to be freed at least for the moment from the limits of personal mortality. This is none other than the thirst for the real, the sacred, the presence of the gods, the origin, or the ground of reality, felt by Eliades homo religiosus.384 Just as laboratory alchemists aim not only to ingest an elixir, but to touch the Dao by contemplating the transformations of the elixir during the alchemical processes, the inner alchemists aim not only to create and ingest internal elixirs, but to touch the Dao by grasping the handle of zaohua. On pages 3236 above, I termed these two aims primary salvation and secondary salvic eects. §4.14, Inner alchemists do this . . . in order to . . . reverse cosmogonic devolution, and return from a postcosmic state to a precosmic state, or from postnatal deterioration to prenatal wholeness.

There is a mythic narrative sometimes found in

inner alchemical texts385 in which the male human being falls from a state of youthful perfection that is, a state of pure yang into degeneration, old age, and, nally, death a state of pure yin . This fall is caused by the loss of the seminal essence, through ejaculation, over the course of a lifetime. This fall from yang to yin corresponds to the macrocosmic cosmogony, the unfolding of the cosmos from a holy and nondual state of primal undierentiation into the profane and heterogeneous disorder we see in the world around us. The aim of the alchemist is to reverse this cosmogony, which is also a microcosmic anthropogony, and return to a state of primal unity, by regaining the energy he lost. Alchemists symbolize this process of loss and redemption using four trigrams from the Book of Changes, qian and kun , kan and li . Qian symbolizes the pureyang body of the preadolescent male. With the sexuality of puberty, the central yang line within the trigram qian is lost, and becomes lodged within kun , to make kan . This leaves the depleted male as li , that is, yang on the outside but hollow yin within. The goal of the alchemist is to recover the central yang line from its lodging place within kan, to replace it within his li, and to turn this li back into a state of immortal, pureyang qian. This is primal 384

E.g., Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 80.

385

This seems to be especially common in sexual alchemy or sexual cultivation. I discuss Chen Zhixus tellings of this saga of devolution and redemption on pages 43539 chap. 5, §3.0.2 .

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state is both precosmic precosmogonic and prenatal preanthropogonic. §4.15, Inner alchemists do this . . . in order to . . . ow backwards against the life current of the natural man which leads toward death.

Of the many dyads in inner

alchemical thought, one of the most important is shun going with the ow and ni going against the ow, widdershins. Ni and other terms such as diandao upsidedown, topsyturvy, inverted, huan recycling, and fan reversion form a conceptual complex that alchemists apply to such themes as 1 the reversal of cosmogonic devolution, 2 the reversal of the anthropogonic fall toward old age and death, 3 the inversion of yin and yang, 4 the inversion of water and re or kidneys qi and hearts uid, 5 the inversion of the ve agents, 6 the inverted relation between child and mother with child spawning mother, 7 lesserorbital circulation as an inversion, 8 recycling the seminal essence to replenish the brain huanjing bunao, 9 or otherwise using sexual energies for personal transcendence ni ze chengxian rather than procreation shun ze shengren , and even 10 the inverted position of male and female partners in sexual alchemy! Robinet would also add the inner alchemists transgression of the laws of logic, language, and ordinary life, through their discourse, as a form of ni or diandao.386 The terms ni or diandao may encompass any of these themes, and alchemists fully exploit these conceptual links in their rhetoric. Whereas the common man follows the natural ow, a downhill slide toward old age and death, the adept travels against the current of cosmogonic and anthropogonic devolution, back to the state of primal perfection. This idea gave alchemists an excuse to resist social norms and clan responsibilities, and allowed them to feel and represent themselves as special, superior to the common man. Inversion and reversal can be polemical concepts. While we usually think of Daoism as teaching naturalness, the inner alchemical concept of the nature is nature in its primal and unspoiled form, not the fallen nature of adult humanity. Regaining this unspoiled nature may require acting unnaturally with respect to norms or concepts of this world. §4.16, Inner alchemists do this . . . in order to . . . return to a state of youth and health. 386

Inner alchemists take radiant youth and health, with white hair reverting to


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black, and the teeth that have fallen out growing anew , as an initial goal. This is a common trope in medieval Daoism e.g., in early Lingbao texts such as Duren jing. Inner alchemists repeat these words, but with their own interpretation: teeth and hair belong to the kidneyorb, so healthy teeth and hair are signs that ones essence is full, and one is ready to produce the pharmacon. Some texts also mention radiant health as a byproduct of the successful completion of the elixir.387 §4.17, Inner alchemists do this . . . in order to . . . escape from the round of birth and death sasra.

While the round of birth and death lunhui , shengsi is

a Buddhist concept from India, by the Song dynasty it had become a commonplace within inner alchemical discourse. Inner alchemists believe that, whereas the common man wanders through rebirth after rebirth, bueted by the forces of karma, the alchemist is in control of his own destiny, working toward perfection, apotheosis, and immortality. §4.18, Inner alchemists do this . . . in order to . . . perfect their inherent nature xing and life endowment ming.

As discussed above, the dyad of xing and ming is

another register by which inner alchemists understand their practice. Xing is the abstract essence of mind and spirit, and ming is the abstract essence of physical vitality. Both xing and ming can come in postnatal and prenatal forms. Postnatal xing is the passions of the mortal mind, while prenatal xing is the nature humans share with the Dao; postnatal ming is an individuals limited lifespan, while prenatal ming is the bodys quantum of pure yang remaining from before the cosmogony. Inner alchemists cultivate mind and spirit with the goal of replacing their postnatal with prenatal xing, and cultivate essence and qi with the goal of replacing their postnatal with prenatal ming. The adepts goal is to complete xing and ming liao xingming , that is, to merge them into a single entity and transcend them.388 §4.19, Inner alchemists do this . . . in order to . . . give birth to a new inner self, or

387

Huiming jing, j. 10, 38a1 Zangwai daoshu ed..

388

Pregadio and Skar, Inner Alchemy Neidan, 486, citing Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 165 95, and Despeux, Immorte es de la Chine ancienne, 22327.

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spirit of pure yang.

In most teachings, the highest goal389 that an alchemist may

attain through alchemical practice is to produce a viable spirit body, called the yang spirit yangshen , which is able to live forever in the Heavens as a celestial transcendent, tianxian , or in the Dao. The creation of the yang spirit is the alchemists goal throughout the process of transforming essence into qi and qi into spirit. Also, as discussed above, the creation of the yang spirit may be understood as the transformation of the postnatal cognitive spirit or desiring spirit into pre natal primal spirit yuanshen . And, as discussed below, the creation of the spirit of pure yang may be understood as the transformation of li into qian . The yang spirit is also called a body beyond the body shenwai youshen

. Sometimes this creation of the yang spirit is described, not as the creation of a single being, but of multiple sons, each of which produces multiple grandsons, in uncountable myriads of transformations . This process may even be depicted in a sort of tree diagram, with the adept producing ve spirits, and these ve each producing another ve spirits.390 The concepts of primal spirit and yang spirit overlap, but primal spirit is a broader category. Primal spirit is an important concept throughout the entire alchemical process, while the yang spirit only appears in the nal stage of that process. The primal spirit is at once an object the material on which the alchemist works and a subject an agent and an aspect of the alchemists self , while the yang spirit is always described as an object, like a child whom one must carefully train. The yang spirit, when ultimately complete and fully trained to leave the body, must represent the alchemists new me, rather than a sort of alchemical o spring that would survive after the death of the alchemist as a subject. There must be a point in the process at which the yang spirit would switch from child to me, yet I do not know how alchemists would imagine this switch to take place. Also, I have never 389

In texts such as ZhongL chuandao ji, in addition to the goal of becoming a celestial transcendent, there may also be other, less ambitious, goals, such as living forever among people as a merely undying human transcendent renxian , or in the mountains as a powerful earthly transcendent dixian . This tripartite hierarchy of goals looks like the Three Vehicles of Mahyna Buddhism, but actually it has preBuddhist roots: the terms occur in Baopuzi neipian for example Ware, Alchemy, Medicine, and Religion, 4748 .

390

Cf. Huashen wuwu tu , in Xingming guizhi, section, n.p., in Zangwai daoshu, 9:589. Also, DZ 235, Danjing jilun 9a710.

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seen any alchemical writing that would answer such questions. We might expect alchemical writers to attend to such an issue, but perhaps they did not.391 §4.20, Inner alchemists . . . seek immortality or transcendence in the heavens and/ or union with the Dao.

Sometimes inner alchemists describe their nal goal as entry

into the ranks of transcendents in the heavens; sometimes they describe their goal as yu Dao hezhen #" , which could be translated uniting with the Dao in perfection, or uniting my perfection with the Daos perfection . Union with the Dao would be a state beyond all limitations of time unlimited by lifespan or kalpic cycles , space roaming throughout earth and the heavens , or form not limited to unitary bodily form .392 One might imagine such a state to be beyond individuality or personality, but I have never seen this sort of statement. Union with the Dao is not envisaged or not emphasized as a loss of personal identity. Other terms for the Dao include the One, the Limitless Wuji

, or voidnonbeing xuwu .393

Alchemists may also describe this state using Buddhist language. Li Xiyue describes this state as great nonbeing, as empty yet beyond simple emptiness,394 as utterly and constantly quiescent, as great detachment chaotuo , great liberation and enlightenment jiewu ! , great purity qingjing , and perfect enlightenment yuanjue ' .395 Do some alchemists seek to join the ranks of the celestial transcendents? Do some seek to unite with the Dao? Are these two goals distinct? Or are they 391

Further work on this question perhaps should begin with the idea that human beings speak of themselves as a single subject with multiple selves; Steven Bokenkamp, What Daoist Body? citing the work of George Lako and Mark Johnson . 392

Some inner alchemists do explicitly aim to produce a mutable body that can live forever, transcending the kalpic cycles of macrocosmic destruction and cosmogony. As Wang Daoyuan says, When one completes ones life endowment, one will live forever. This body will pass through the kalpas without decaying, able to take on various forms, transforming itself wherever it goes

% &($ DZ 1074, Huanzhen ji 2.5b910, cited in Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 500 . 393

A Daoist philosopher might object to equating Dao directly with the One or Wuji, saying that the other entities ought to be seen only as secondary manifestations of the Dao, but alchemical discourse is more poetic than it is philosophically rigorous.

394 Viewing emptiness as empty? is itself empty, yet there is nothing empty about emptiness. While that which is viewed as empty is nonexistent, regarding nonexistence as nonexistent is itself nonexistent ) . This discourse derives from Tangdynasty DoubleMystery texts, which draw on Mah y na Perfection of Wisdom literature. 395

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 533, citing Li Xiyues Wugen shu ci zhujie.

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equivalent? My answer to all of these questions is Yes. This is a complex issue. Some scholars assert that the goal of inner alchemy is union with the Dao, and not personal transcendenthood. Robinet takes such a position: The ultimate goal is no longer illustrated and incarnated by the somewhat fantastic image of the Saint. References to this gure in interior alchemy texts are rare, abbreviated, and scattered. As we shall see below, Wang Zhe denied that such operations can result in bodily immortality, and his disciple Qiu Chuji told Genghis Khan that the elixir of immortality does not exist. The ultimate truth is the unity between the Tao and the world see, e.g., DZ 1067, 8.5b 6a and the Tao and the xin human spirit.396 Robinet has written much about the gure of the saint her generic term for zhenren , xianren , shengren in early medieval Daoism.397 If she means, in the passage above, that inneralchemical texts devote less space to inspired literary depictions of the celestial perfected than Shangqing texts do, then I would agree with this claim. But if she means that transcendenthood is not an important goal within inner alchemy, this would be an eccentric position. In fact, transcendents are very important within alchemical discourse, mythology, lineage, and imagination. Skar notes that we see a new type of transcendent in inneralchemical traditions: These new traditions claimed their origins from a new type of supralocal transcendent being who resembled the cultivated gentlemen he sought to attract.398 Zhongli Quan , L Dongbin , Liu Haichan , and Zhang Sanfeng are examples of this new type of being.399 These patrilineal structures stressed transcendents literate and sacred learning rather than their place in an otherworldly bureaucracy, and matched parallel e orts of gentry to situate themselves in local society.400 The gure of the transcendent is central within the mythology of the inner alchemists, and alchemists also hoped to meet such gures in this world, and, eventually, to become like them. If transcendenthood and union with the Dao are both potential goals of 396

Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion, 219. I address Robinets citation of DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan daoyao, in chapter 5, §1. 397

E.g., Robinet, Taoist Meditation, 42 48.

398


399


400


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alchemical practice, how do alchemists choose between these goals, or integrate them? Komjathy notes this duality of goals within the early Quanzhen movement which overlaps broadly with inneralchemical tradition, and oers an explanation: At rst glance, it appears that there are competing, even contradictory, views concerning immortality and perfection within the early Quanzhen movement. At times, the early Quanzhen adepts seem to suggest that religious praxis results in a state of mystical absorption, wherein one becomes permeated by the Dao and lives in carefree bliss. At other times, it seems that immortality is understood as involving transcending the mundane world and the physical body. After death, ones yangspirit, or the bodybeyondthebody, enters the ranks of immortals. Beyond dismissing the early Quanzhen adepts as unsystematic or confused, there are a number of ways to make sense of these seemingly contradictory views. From my perspective and based on my research, the most viable interpretation is that in dierent contexts the early adepts are discussing dierent aspects of selftransformation. . . . In certain instances they are attempting to characterize . . . the transformed existential mode, which results from Quanzhen training regimens. . . . This is often experienced as a feeling of mystical communion with the Dao . . . At other times, the early adepts are emphasizing what is believed to occur after physical death . . .401 This is the right sort of answer to such questions: these writers use dierent concepts or modes of discourse within dierent contexts, and the better we understand these contexts, the better we will understand their thought and practice. While these two perspectivesthe transcendentoriented and the Dao orientedare both found within inner alchemy, they have separate origins in early Chinese culture. As Skar points out, During Warring States times, two main models emerged for selfcultivation, one based on manipulating qi in order to embody the cosmic Way, and another based on interacting with spirits who are agents in a bureaucratized pantheon.402 These were once competing perspectives,403 but in Daoism of the midmedieval period they are frequently combined. §5, Symbolic Elements §5.0, Inner alchemy . . . uses symbolic terms drawn from 1 the Book of Changes Yijing, 2 the cosmology of yinyang and the ve agents, 3 the numerology of the River Chart 401

Komjathy, Cultivating Perfection, 283.

402


403

Puett, To Become a God.

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Hetu , and 4 other systems.

The symbolic registers of trihexagrams, yinyang

veagent cosmology, and RiverChart numerology are especially important404 within inner alchemy, from both etic and emic perspectives. From an outsiders point of view, these symbolic registers are a hallmark of inner alchemy, distinguishing it from other forms of Daoist or nonDaoist practice. Robinet writes that the joining of trigrams and chemical terms is the distinctive element that distinguishes interior alchemy from the ancient breathing exercises.405 Extrapolating from Robinets informal statement into a formal denition, we could call inner alchemy a reinterpretation and development of fetal respiration taixi , using laboratory alchemy for a few general metaphors, and the trigrams plus the hexagrams and other registers for its symbolic language. Of course, these symbolic registers do not constitute the entirety of the inner alchemists language, but they are the alchemists most important linguistic resource. Inner alchemists reliance on these symbolic registers are more than just a convenient marker for a denition of inner alchemy, however: the adepts symbolic manipulation is an integral part of their practice, or is even a form of practice itself. As Robinet says, much like Chan Buddhists practicing with kans, alchemists achieve a sort of enlightenment that inheres within language itself rather than existing outside of language. Just as the earlier alchemists contemplation of chemical reactions within the laboratory was itself a form of salvic practice, inneralchemical oral and written discourse is also a practice in itself, and aimed at salvation on page 439 below, I call this discursive practice a secondary salvic eect . While adepts would not agree with this outsiders view that their alchemical practice is, to a certain extent, just symbolic manipulation,406 they would agree that the symbolic registers are especially important within inner alchemy. §5.1, In symbolic terms, the inner alchemists goal is to unite contrary principles i.e., yin and yang, especially in their mixed forms of yangwithinyin and yinwithin yang in order to recover a state of perfection, described in terms such as pure yang, the 404

These symbolic registers are also important within other forms of Daoism, but to a lesser degree. Saso, What Is the Hotu? mentions some uses of the River Chart and Luo Writ within past and present Daoist ritual. 405


406

Adepts would not agree that they are aiming for an enlightenment inhering within languagethey would say that they are aiming for real immortality in the heavens or in the Dao what I call primary salvation .

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One, Taiji the Great Ultimate, or Wuji the Limitless.

The union of opposites in inner

alchemy is not a simple union of pure yin kun and pure yang qian ; rather, it is a union of yangwithinyin kan and yinwithinyang li . Why is the inneralchemical union of opposites actually a union of already mediated opposites? Robinet sees therein an underlying idea that there must be an impurity within each of the two contrary principles that will serve as a motivating force for their rejoining.407 Another reason is that the inner alchemists are aiming at two goals at once: the union of yin and yang, and the attainment of pure yang. Life belongs to the category of yang, and death to the category of yin; alchemists often understand their goal as longevity in this world or the heavens, and represent this in symbolic terms as the attainment of pure yang. If they were simply to unite qian and kun, this would produce the trigrams kan and li as a result. Kan and li represent the mixed, fallen, postcosmic, postnatal, mortal state, not the pure state that alchemists have as their goal. The pureyang state of union must come from the union of mixed contrary principles. This is sort of yinyang wholeness which somehow is yet yang is found as an ideal in other, unrelated cultures as well. Many cultures have a myth of a primal androgyne who was sundered to create the human race as we know it with male and female sexes, and may also have a myth, fantasy, or soteriological goal of rejoining of the male and female halves to reform the primal androgyne.408 However, this primal androgyne, while being both male and female, is often also somehow male! Jerey Kripal uses the term male androgyny for this phenomenon: readings of androgyny as expressing a kind of spiritual wholeness or gender balance . . . capture part . . . of the truth, but they need to be deepened and qualied . . . Recent scholarship . . . has demonstrated that androgyny is often actually a kind of male androgyny that admittedly includes but does not grant equal semiotic weight to the feminine . . . One also thinks of . . . Daoist sexual yoga: . . . even though heterosexual intercourse was used by Daoists to reconstitute the primordial androgyny of the dao as yin and yang, its primary purpose was to allow the male practitioner to 407


408

The most famous example of such a legend is in Plato, Symposium 189c193e.

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steal the mysticoerotic energies of the woman in order to reconstitute that unity in himself.409 This goal of male androgyny is not unique to sexual alchemy of course: it is the goal of all forms of inner alchemy, and is found in other traditions and cultures as well. As Ge Guolong notes, while one would think we could call the precosmic unity of yin and yang either Pure Yang or Pure Yin, the inner alchemists are not philosophically consistent. Because yang is good relative to yin, the good primal stu can only be called yang.410 Daoism does possess the concept of a primal state of union of yin and yang, the Taiji . While the Taiji symbol itself with its twin commas or sh may be a Songdynasty invention, the concept of Taiji, the state in which yin and yang are rst emerging yet still not separate, is ancient. Inner alchemists do sometimes use the yinyangneutral concept of Taijior other concepts of entities which precede any appearance of yin and yang, such as Wuji , the One, or the Daoto describe their goal, but most often, they describe their goal as pure yang. The One, for example, is usually envisioned as the One Qi, which for them is yang. The alchemists asymmetrical view of yin and yang may have general social eects. Sangren notes that, by marking the cosmic whole as yang, and correlating it with order and orthodoxy, Chinese folk ideology perpetuates orthodoxy as a value.411 The yangyin hierarchy in folk ideology may also perpetuate a malefemale hierarchy in the social realm. One wonders how the inner alchemists inordinate emphasis on the priority of yang over yin might be related to a priority of men over women in actual social relations. §5.2.1, According to trihexagram symbolism, the union of yin and yang involves reversing the course of cosmogonic devolution leading from the trigram qian pure yang; to the trigram kun pure yin; . . .

The inner alchemists quest for salvation is based on an

underlying myth of anthropocosmic fall and redemption, the fall of the human being from a state of youthful perfection that is, a state of pure yang into degeneration, 409

Kripal, Sexuality: An Overview Further Considerations , 12:8243b. Kripals characterization of Daoist sexual yoga is accurate for all but the earliest and most recent forms of sexual cultivation. I oer a general picture of sexual alchemy in chapter 5 that con rms this account. 410


411

Sangren, Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy, and the Structure of Value in Chinese Rituals.

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old age, and, nally, death a state of pure yin. For the male, this fall is caused by the loss of the seminal essence through ejaculation over the course of a lifetime. In terms of the trigrams, qian symbolizes the pureyang body of the preadolescent male. With the sexuality of puberty, the central yang line within the trigram qian is lost, and becomes lodged within kun , to make kan . This leaves the depleted male as li , that is, yang on the outside but hollow yin within. If he does nothing, he will lose even the outside yang, and end up as kun, completely yin, and dead. §5.2.2, . . . by wedding the trigrams kan yangwithinyin; and li yin within yang; , extracting the single central yaoline of perfected yang from the trigram kan and applying it to the brokenyang trigram li , repairing it by replacing its single central line of yin with a line of yang . . .

The adept aims to remake qian by

reversing the path of qians depletion. Just as qian lost its central yaoline to kun, and the two transformed into li and kan respectively, the adept aims to remake qian by taking the central yang yaoline of kan and placing it within li. What does this really mean, though? The meanings of this narrative of qian, kun, kan, and li dier according to the register on which we view it. On the macrocosmic level, it represents the cycles of cosmic time: dayandnight, the lunar cycle, or the year. On the microcosmic level, it represents cycles of human time, especially, the lifespan of an individual. On the mesocosmic register, this narrative of qian, kun, kan, and li is a story of the interaction of images xiang , following their own law. Adepts from dierent traditions may interpret this narrative dierently, even within the same register. If we look, for example, at correlations between the mesocosmic register of signs and the microcosmic register of body, mind, and spirit, we may see solo practitioners correlate 1 the extraction of the yang yaoline from kan with 2 the gathering of primal essence yuanjing from the adepts kidneys or lower dantian; and 3 the replacement of the yang yaoline within li with 4 the perfection of the primal qi yuanqi of the heart or middle dantian. Sexual alchemists, however, correlate 1 the extraction of the yang yaoline from kan with 332

2 the gathering of the female partners yuanqi; and 3 the replacement of the yang yaoline within li with 4 the repair of the lifeenergies of the male body as a whole. For the sexual alchemist, kan symbolizes the womans sexual and metaphysical water the outer yaolines of kan are yin , containing primal qi the central yaoline of kan is yang . Li is the hollow body of the adult male, yang on the outside, but containing the mercurial yin essence within, so slippery and liable to ow away and be lost through ejaculation. Yet when one reads inneralchemical literature, especially texts from before the Ming dynasty, one often gets the sense that the saga of the trigrams can also stand on its own, without reference to the microcosmic register of body, mind, and spirits . Robinet explains this sort of free oating trigramdiscourse as linguistic play. She argues that inneralchemical explanations do not aim at explaining i.e., do not oer causal explanations in terms of an underlying psychophysiological register , but rather aim only at showing operations and applications of the symbolic system.412 To this I would add a second explanation for the seeming independence of trigramdiscourse from macrocosmic or microcosmic meanings: it is the central myth of alchemical religion, a myth of fall and redemption, which is the teacher reenacts with each retelling. I mention this alchemical myth again on pages 43539 below. §5.2.3, . . . relying on agent earth as an intermediary, in the doubled form of wu earth and jiearth, . . .

Inneralchemical process requires a catalyst; in the mesocosmic

eld of abstract signs, the catalyst is agent earth, the central member of the ve agents. In the narrative of qian, kun, kan, and li, the catalytic agent earth is redoubled into the yang wuearth wutu and the yin jiearth jitu . The wu and ji earths are the central yaolines of kan and li in their mediating function. That is, kan and li yearn to rejoin one another, and their points of contact and exchange are their central yaolines; the wuearth is the yang yaoline of kan, insofar as it yearns to return to li and to remake li into qian ; and the jiearth is the yin yaoline of li, insofar as it yearns to return to kan and to remake kan into kun . Alchemists may also write as if the joining of the wu and jiearths is a goal in 412


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itself, rather than just one aspect of the remaking of li into qian. For example, inner alchemists may take the term daogui lit., spatula; i.e., a spatulaful of elixir, a term from laboratory alchemy, and interpret the character gui as a cover term for the union of the two earths + = . This sort of kenning or serious punning is called cezi plumbing a character. In the mesocosmic eld of abstract signs, it is agent earth which catalyzes the reaction of kan and li to remake qian. In the microcosmic eld of mind or spirit, agent earth is correlated with guiding intention yi , and in the microcosmic eld of the subtle body, earth is correlated with the Yellow Court, or with the Spleen Palace Pigong and its energies. It is intention which catalyzes the reaction of the outer and inner pharmaca to make the elixir; some alchemists may also say that the reaction occurs in the Yellow Court, or through the work of the spleenorb. As for the interpretations of the wu and jiearths, as distinct from agent earth en simple, solo alchemists may correlate both with guiding intention yi ; or, they may correlate the yin jiearth with the cognitive spirit shishen , and the yang wuearth with the primal spirit yuanshen .413 Sexual alchemists instead interpret the wu and jiearths as the sexual energies,414 or the sex organs, of the female and male partners, respectively. Since the sex organs within sexual alchemy are practical, powerful, and dangerous, clamoring for the alchemists sublimation throughinterpretation, while the cognitive and primal spirits in solo alchemy are vague, and perhaps even completely theoretical and not practical concepts at all, it is not surprising that the wu and jiearths gure more prominently within sexual alchemy than within solo alchemy. The solo alchemists from the late imperial period who interpret wu and jiearths as cognitive and primal spirits probably do so in reaction to, or as complementary to, the sexual interpretation. §5.2.4, . . . to remake the trigram qian pure yang; .

This corresponds on the

microcosmic register to the wondrous perfection of both physical body and spirit xingshen jumiao and rebirth as a perfected yang spirit. On the 413

Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. liuwu jiuji , 1260, citing only Ming and Qingdynasty texts. 414

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 32, citing Jindan zhenchuan.

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macrocosmic register it corresponds to the unmaking of cosmogony. §5.3.1, According to veagent symbolism, the union of yin and yang involves reversing the cosmogonic expansion and devolution from Taiji to the ve agents, and then to the myriad existents . . .

Figure 4.10 below, Qiu Zhaoaos lateimperial version of the famous

Wuji tu ascribed to Chen Tuan,415 shows two paths: the path of following the current shun, and the path of advancing against the current ni. The natural course of the cosmos or the human being follows the current, owing downward from top to bottom. The cosmos and human being develops out of the Limitless Wuji, topmost circle, into a state with yin and yang yet intertwined Taiji, circle #2, expanding into the ve agents circle #3, and nally into qian and kun or man and woman circle #4, and the myriad existents bottommost circle.

Fig. 4.10, Forward and reverse cosmogonies416 415

Chen Tuans original Wuji tu is lost, but survives in the descriptions of Huang Zongyan and Zhu Yizun p. 305n331 above.

416

Figure 4.10 comes from Qiu Zhaoaos Guben Zhouyi Cantong qi jizhu, reproduced in Zhijizi and Putuanzi, Can Wu jizhu, 38889.

335

§5.3.2, . . . by condensing the ve agents together into three, and then into one: . . .

Beginning in this natural and fallen state, the adept advances against the current, forging upward against gravity, as it were. Making use of both being and nonbeing you and wu , the two circles on the bottom ,417 the adept unites the qi of the ve agents in the Central Palace Zhonggong ; square #3 , then unites the three the three owers; circle #2 and the two kan and li; also circle #2 , and returns to the One the Dao; topmost circle . Circles two and one also correlate with the joining of primal essence and primal qi to make primal spirit. Moving backward against the current, the adept reverses cosmogony and anthropogony by condensing the myriad existents into the ve agents, then condensing the ve agents into three, the three into one, and returning to primal chaos hundun and the Dao. We may say that Chinese alchemy in general is a dao of condensing cuancu zhi dao . Alchemistsinner alchemists and laboratory alchemists alike condense space and time, capturing macrocosmic zaohua creation and transformation within the microcosm of the caldron or body, or reducing the cycle of a year into a month, a month into a day, a day into a doublehour, and nally all into a mere tick ke ; a notch on the waterclock of thirty minutes.418 The concept of condensing the ve agents cuancu wuxing may be discerned within the Cantong qi, though the term does not appear there.419 §5.3.2.1.1.1, . . . uniting the ve agents symbolically through condensing the ve . . . into one elixir . . . in terms of abstract mesocosmic signs, by turning the ve agents upsidedown, . . .

The ve agents are condensed by reversing the usual sequence of

the ve agents: this is called wuxing diandao turning the ve agents upside down or wuxing cuowang the interlaced waxing of the ve agents . As I discuss above on page 261, standard Chinese veagent cosmology includes several 417

For Qiu Zhaoao, the author of this version of the Taiji tu, being would correlate with sexual alchemy, and nonbeing would correlate with formless mental cultivation. Chen Zhixu would agree. As I show on page 632 below, Qiu Zhaoao is an indirect heir of Chens teachings.

418

Sivin, Chinese Alchemy and the Manipulation of Time; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 161; Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 100.

419 Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue, 201. Zeng lists a locus classicus of the term cuancu in Ruyao jing , in the line condense the ve agents, and cause the eight trigrams to meet , but the version of Ruyao jing with this line can be traced back only as early as 1260 cf. F. BaldrianHusseins entry for DZ 135, Cuigong ruyao jing zhujie, in Schipper and Verellen, The Taoist Canon, 2:844 .

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general sequences of the ve agents, including the cosmogonic order, the mutual production order xiangsheng , and the mutual conquest order xiangsheng " or xiangke . The alchemists wuxing diandao corresponds to none of these standard sequences, but rather involves the reversed relations of metal to water, and wood to re. According to the mutual production order, metal produces water, and wood produces re, but according to the wuxing cuowang sequence, it is water which produces metal, and re which produces wood. The term wuxing cuowang comes from a line in Cantong qi: The ve agents wax in an interlaced fashion, depending on one another for production '&. Yu Yan interprets this line as follows: When metal produces water, and wood produces re, this is the normal ow of the ve agents, according to the constant Dao. But now, if we are speaking in alchemical terms, wood and re are mates, and contrary to the normal ow , re produces wood. Metal and water dwell in union, and contrary to the normal

ow , water produces metal. This it is said, The ve agents wax in an interlaced fashion, depending on one another for production. $# %

%! '&420 Water produces metal, and re produces woodthis is an inneralchemical commonplace, yet concrete applications of the principle di er by tradition. Solo alchemists may correlate water producing metal with kidneys or lower dantian

producing primal qi i.e., the generation of yang from yin ; and they may correlate re producing wood with heart producing humors ye

or middle dantian

producing primal spirit421 i.e., the generation of yin from yang . Sexual alchemists may correlate wuxing diandao with the production of primal qi metal by the female partner in conjunction with her sexual or menstrual uids water , or the production of seminal essence mercury, wood by the male adept who is yang, i.e., ery .422 More often, though, alchemical texts do not openly o er concrete applications, only a maze of symbols, as in this typical passage by Weng Baoguang: 420

DZ 1005, Zhouyi Cantong qi fahui, by Yu Yan, 7.5a610. This passage in DZ 1005 is discussed in Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 1617; Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. wuxing cuowang ', 1245; Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue, 200.

421

Zhang Wenjiang and Chang Jin, Zhonuo chuantong qigong xue cidian, s.v. huozhong mu , 201.

422

The correlation of agent re with the alchemists male gender is tentative.

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Cardinalred granulated cinnabar belongs to the category of re, and re is li. When mercury which is correlated with wood emerges from granulated cinnabar , this is, contrary to expectations, re producing wood. Therefore we say the child gives birth to the mother. . . . Black lead belongs to the category of water, and water is kan. When silver which is correlated with metal emerges from lead, this is, contrary to expectations, water producing metal. Therefore we say the child gives birth to the mother. (8'6( #&!* %-01 8 '31 #& !*"%-423 Weng rejects a ZhongLstyle application of these abstract signs: Latterday folks take the qi and humor of heart and kidneys as the dragon and tiger or lead and mercury. . . . These words are like childish japes and nothing more! If you want to complete the great pharmacon, how could you be perverse like this ? $ /),'4 424

152+7.

We see that Weng rejects some concrete applications of these symbols, but does not oer any of his own. Is this because he thinks alchemists ought not to ground alchemical symbols in the microcosmic register of body, mind, and spirit? Probably not. I do not believe that Weng is seeking an intellectual enlightenment that exists only within the sphere of discourse itself as Robinet might say. Is it because Weng is covertly teaching sexual alchemy as Li Yuanguo would say? I suspect so, but Wengs teachings have not been studied well enough yet to say this with condence. In sum, wuxing diandao applies the multifaceted alchemical theme of inversion and reversion ni, diandao, huan, fan to the concept of uniting the ve agents. In my discussion of inversion above, I stated that alchemists in their rhetoric fully exploit the links between dierent aspects of the conceptual complex of inversion, and we can see this in the quotation from Weng above, where he connects wuxing diandao with the inverted relation between child and mother. §5.3.2.1.1.2, . . . uniting them symbolically through condensing the ve . . . into one elixir . . . in terms of the body microcosm, by uniting the ve qi of the ve viscera, . . .

On

the microcosmic register of the body, mind, and spirit, the condensing of the ve agents into one is correlated with a practice of condensing the qi of the ve viscera 423

DZ 141, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu, by Weng Baoguang, 4.7b3 5, 7b10 8a2, cited in Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 17. 424

DZ 141, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu, by Weng Baoguang, 4.8a7 8, b1 2.

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within the Central Palace, a practice called wuqi chaoyuan ve qi pay court to the prime .425 In one well known form of wuqi chaoyuan practice, found in Zhong L texts or texts drawing upon Zhong L teachings , the adept should circulate primal qi among the ve organs. For example, according to DZ 150, Xiuzhen taiji hunyuan zhixuan tu, the adept transports perfected yang primal qi from the kidneys through the liver, heart, and lungs, then down to the middle dantian related to the spleen , to make the lesser recycled elixir xiao huandan .426 Other teachers, such as Li Daochun, envision wuqi chaoyuan as a formless practice accomplished through wuwei. As Crowe explains, for Li Daochun, wuqi chaoyuan, in which all of the senses are muted or stopped, is a method for retaining various forms of qi in their proper bodily locations. Li Daochuns wuqi chaoyuan is a form of samatha, a kind of bodily, inner alchemical correlate to the practice described in purely mental terms as cessation in the Mah y na Awakening of Faith or the Great Cessation and Contemplation of Zhiyi.427 Harmoniously uniting the four images sixiang hehe is another related term for condensing, in concrete terms, the ve agents into one. Bai Yuchan describes sixiang hehe in a diagram: the four heraldic animals dragon, bird, tiger, and murky warrior are correlated with the four senses eyes, ears, nose, and mouth , and four viscera liver, lungs, kidneys, and heart , with no thought wunian in the center linking them all.428 §5.3.2.1.2.1, . . . or condensing the three . . . into one elixir . . . in terms of abstract mesocosmic signs, by uniting the three cardinal agents water, re, and earth . . .

Sometimes alchemists focus on three cardinal members of the ve agent schema. These three agents may be water, re, and earth en simple, or they may be agent earth 425

Other related terms for the symbolic union of the ve agents are ve e orescences pay court to the prime wuhua chaoyuan , ve dragons attend and support the holy wulong pengsheng , ve minds pay court to heaven wuxin chaotian , and the ve agents all gather wuxing zongju . 426 Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5:70; Baryosher Chemouny, La qute de limmortalit en Chine, 98. Not all forms of mutual irradiation this is Needhams term are directly equivalent to wuqi chaoyuan. There is another form of mutual irradiation in DZ 149, Xiuzhen taiji hunyuan tu that involves a set of viscera including the standard wuzang plus bladder and gall bladder; Needham, ibid., 74 76. 427

Crowe, The Nature and Function of the Buddhist and Ru Teachings in Li Daochun, 199.

428


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together with two combined agents repluswood and waterplusmetal .429 Cardinal agents is my own term; a term used by the alchemists for this tripartite set is three natures sanxing or . The equilibrium of agents water and re shuihuo jiji through the catalytic agency of agent earth is an important theme within most forms of inner alchemy, though it is not emphasized in Qiu Zhaoaos chart in gure 4.10 on page 335 above. For solo practitioners, the equilibrium of water and re corresponds to the union of ascending energy from the kidneyorb and descending energy from the heartorb. The kidneys are usually associated with water yin and the heart with re yang , but their energies may also be described as kidneysqi yangwithinyin and heartshumor yinwithinyang . This concept appears most often in ZhongL teachings and later teachings drawing on them. Sexual alchemists may likewise correlate the agents water and re with the kidneys and heart, but they are more likely to correlate water and re with the outer pharmacon the female partners primal qi and the inner pharmacon the male adepts primal jing . This union of the energy of heart and kidneys is an inverted union of opposites cf. page 317 above . Sometimes alchemists may link the condensing of the ve with the condensing of the three, resulting in a sequence in which ve is condensed into three, and then into one. We see this in Yu Yans symbolic union of the ve agents. First, four are condensed into two: the four images sixiang; here, not the heraldic animals, but the agents water, metal, re, and wood are united into the two substances ti , i.e., two pairs of agents, called dragon re plus wood and tiger water plus metal . Dragon and tiger are formed when metal descends into water, and wood ascends into re. Finally, these two substances are united with the center we may discern a union of three here . Yu Yans term for this nal union of ve into three into one is wu xianglei the ve agents correspond with one another by category .430 While this sort of vetothreetoone sequence is very evident in the union 429

The product of the sum of agents re and wood may be called wood humor muye , and the product of water and metal may be called metallous essence jinjing ; Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. sanxing , 1140.

430


340

of the three ves of River Chart numerology discussed below, and can also be discerned in Yu Yans wu xianglei which may actually be inspired by the River Chart, the ve three one sequence is not universal. It appears that ve to one sequences e.g., wuqi chaoyuan above or three to one sequences e.g., sanhua juding below are more common than ve three one sequences. §5.3.2.1.2.2, . . . or condensing the three . . . into one elixir . . . in terms of the body microcosm, by uniting the three owers essence, qi, and spirit . . .

As we can see in

gure 4.10 on page 335 above, the adept unites the ve square #3, then the three and the two both in circle #2, and returns to the One topmost circle. The term for uniting the three used in this chart but also found widely in the literature is sanhua juding three owers gather in the crown. These three owers are almost always glossed as essence, qi, and spirit.431 What would it mean for essence, qi, and spirit to gather in the crown? We have seen above that the inner alchemical path is commonly described as the transformation of essence into qi, and qi into spirit with all three elements inhering in the process throughout the process. We have also seen that the entire process takes a progressive upward direction: the pharmaca of the essence to qi stage are gathered from the lower dantian, the elixir of the qi to spirit stage the holy fetus is red in the middle dantian, and the elixir of the spirit to void stage the yang spirit is nurtured and trained in the upper dantian.432 The concept of three owers gathering in the crown brings these concepts together: by the nal stage, the three owers have gathered in the upper dantian in the crown of the head, where the adept trains the yang spirit to enter and exit through the fontanel. In Zhong L related teachings, there is a similar term, sanhua chaoyuan three owers paying court to the prime, that refers to something quite di erent: the gathering in the crown of the three yang qi of the kidneys, lower dantian, and

431

Other, more common, terms for the essence, qi, and spirit together are three treasures sanbao , and three essentials sanyao .

432

The pharmaca and elixirs of each stage may circulate throughout the body, and are not restricted to the cardinal bodily register for that stage. For example, although the primary focus in the essence to qi stage is on the kidneys, the outer pharmacon is circulated along the superintendent and conception tracts.

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heart.433 This suggests that the idea of three somethings ascending to the palace in the brain is more basic than the identity of these somethings. Just as the meanings of the ancient alchemical terms nine recyclings and seven reversions jiuhuan qifan in inner alchemy are often reduced to the numerological signicances of nine and seven, the general idea of uniting three somethings into one is what gives signicance to sanhua juding or sanhua chaoyuan,434 rather than the specic identity of the somethings. My point is supported by the fact that the term three natures sanxing can refer either to the three cardinal agents, or to the three treasures, and the three agents and three treasures are not mutually synonymous.435 §5.3.2.2, . . . or uniting . . . the ve agents . . . numerologically through condensing the three ves, according to RiverChart numerology, into one Taiji.

According to the

mesocosmic eld of abstract signs, inner alchemists condense the ve agents into the three cardinal agents, and then into the one Taiji, by adding their numerological values. According to the River Chart, the numerological value of agent wood is 3, and the value of re is 2; the sum of these values is 5. Next, metal 4 and water 1 are added to give a second 5. The value of agent earth is also 5. These three ves are joined together to make one, a clear sequence of ve to three to one.436 In microcosmic terms, the ve agents or qi of the ve viscera unite to form a single elixir. In macrocosmic terms, the ve agents unite to remake the Great Ultimate. The three ves are discussed in a verse in Wuzhen pian: Three, ve, and one just three characters altogether yet how few indeed are those people of past or present who have understood them! "

Easts 3 and souths 2 together make 5; norths 1 and wests 4 join them too. 433

The 1 kidneys qi is yangwithinyin yinzhong yang !, the 2 perfected qi of the dantian dantian zhenqi is perfectedyangwithinyang yangzhong zhenyang !!, and the 3 qi of the hearts uid is yang withinyang yangzhong yang !!; BaryosherChemouny, La qute de limmortalit en Chine, 121. Terms such as yangwithinyang are not found in SouthernLineage teachings. 434

I would not say the same about the union of the three cardinal agents re, water, and earth. While re, water, and earth have very rich conceptual overtones in inner alchemy, the three owers do not. 435

Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. sanxing , 1140.

436

The clearest exposition of this idea in secondary literature is in Wang Mu, Wuzhen pian qianjie, 2426.

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Wu and ji dwell independently; their production number is 5. The three houses meet one another to form the infant.

The infant is one, holding perfected qi within; after ten months the fetus is whole, and enters the sacred base. 437 Later inneralchemical texts such as Jindan dayao that draw on Wuzhen pian often cite this verse. All modern reference works that I have seen gloss the phrase three houses meeting one another sanjia xiangjian as the union of body, heart mind, and intention, or the three treasures essence, qi, and spirit, always citing the lateimperial text Xingming guizhi, and sometimes Wuzhen zhizhi or Wuzhen pian zhengyi.438 However, the manifest meaning of the phrase three houses meeting one another in this Wuzhen pian verse is the meeting of the ve agents in the form of the three cardinal agents, not the union of the three treasures. Despite this consensus among modern interpreters, there is no clear, direct correlation between the three houses and the three treasures in this Wuzhen pian verse; rather, both concepts manifest the same underlying alchemical concept of condensing the three into the one. §6, Allegorical or Visionary Elements In this section, I will discuss the allegorical or visionary elements of inner alchemy, such as lead and mercury, dragon and tiger, or maiden and squire. Like yin and yang, the ve agents, or the trihexagrams, these elements are xiang images existing on a mesocosmic plane, yet they di er from these abstract xiang because they are likened to concrete objects or beings. To distinguish them from the abstract 437

Wang Mu, Wuzhen pian qianjie, 24. This is verse 15 in Wang Mus sequence, but verse 14 in the sequence found in DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 2.16a, edited by Chen Zhixu or his disciple Zhang Shihong. The sequence of verses in Wang Mus edition comes from his chosen base text, Wuzhen pian zhengyi, dated 1788, by the Quanzhen Daoist Dong Dening; ibid., preface, 8. 438

Wang Mu, Wuzhen pian qianjie, 26; and the entry in each of the following: Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, 1240; Huang Jian and Zhu Huiqin, Jianming qigong cidian, 31 32; Li Yuanguo, Zhonuo daojiao qigong yangsheng daquan, 68; L Guangrong, Zhonuo qigong cidian, 36; Lu Jinchuan, Qigong chuantong shuyu cidian, 39; Ma Jiren, Shiyong yixue qigong cidian, 140 41; Zhang Wenjiang and Chang Jin, Zhonuo chuantong qigong xue cidian, 62; Zhang Zhizhe, Daojiao wenhua cidian, 750. All of these sources cite Xingming guizhi. The passage they cite is entitled Sanjia xiangjian tu and Sanjia xiangjian shuo , from Xingming guizhi, section, n.p., in Zangwai daoshu, 9:526.

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mesocosmic signs, I call these elements gurative mesocosmic signs. §6.1.1, In terms of allegorical, visionary, or gurative mesocosmic signs, the inner alchemists goal is to unite mercury with lead . . .

Of the various forms of laboratory

alchemy existing in earlymedieval and Tang times, inner alchemists adopted their theoretical basis from leadmercury alchemy, in which perfected lead is the yang drawn from the yin of native lead, and mercury is the yin drawn from the yang of cinnabar. Within inner alchemy, in terms of abstract mesocosmic signs, the yang withinyin is the the central yang yaoline within kan , and the yinwithinyang is the central yin yaoline within li . These united to form pure yang qian . In terms of gurative mesocosmic signs, the yangwithinyin is lead i.e., perfected lead, and the yinwithinyang is mercury. Lead and mercury are not richly gurative in inner alchemy. Inner alchemists especially sexual alchemists take mercury as an eective concrete metaphor on the microcosmic register for male seminal essence, which, like quicksilver, is liquid, di cult to control, and liable to ow away and be lost. The slipperiness and volatility of mercury likewise describes the ightiness of primal spirit, which like the sexual instinct is di cult to control. I am not aware of any comparable use of lead as a concrete metaphor for primal qi. §6.1.2, Or, . . . in terms of gurative mesocosmic signs, the inner alchemists goal is . . . to unite the dragon with the tiger . . .

Dragon and tiger are ubiquitous Chinese

symbols for yang and yin, respectively. Dragons represent majesty, the moistening inuence of rain, good fortune, life; tigers represent wild and dangerous power, death. In inner alchemy, the dragon is correlated with the trigram li , yin within yang, the male, the east, spring, the liver, wood, and the hue qing usually, blue green or cyan, while the tiger is correlated with representing the trigram kan , yang within yin, the female, the west, autumn, the lungs, metal, and the color white. Thus, the dragon represents verdant life that harbors the seed of decay, while the tiger represents the threat of death that harbors the seed of eternal life. While the dragon is usually equated with li, and the tiger with kan, there are cases in which the interior of li is called tiger, and the interior of kan is called dragon.439 439


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Sexual alchemists take dragon and tiger as metaphors on the microcosmic register for the male and female sex organs: the male organ is said to look like a dragon, while the female organ is a threatening entity like a tiger, since this is where the male adept could lose his life endowment ming through ejaculation, if he were to lose control. Solo alchemists do not use dragon and tiger as concrete metaphors, but only as abstract metaphors. In Zhong L alchemy, the perfected tiger is 1 the qi from within 2 the perfected water from within 3 the kidneys uid, while the perfected dragon is 1 the perfected qi from within 2 the uid from within 3 the hearts qi.440 Inner alchemists may also use dragon and tiger as quasi independent signs, with only abstract correlations to macro or microcosmic registers. For instance, the reaction between yin and yang i.e., the reaction between yin within yang and yang within yin is seen as the copulation of dragon and tiger longhu jiaogou , or as a erce struggle, in which the dragons keening is matched by the long roar of the tiger longyin huxiao . When depicted in alchemical illustrations, though, dragon and tiger are drawn in parallel stances and not actually entwined. The successful smelting of the dragon tiger pair into a single elixir is called defeating the dragon and subduing the tiger xianglong fuhu . Male sexual alchemists also interpret the phrase xianglong fuhu to mean subduing their own unruly sex organs and instincts defeating the dragon, and absorbing the female partners primal qi

subduing the tiger. In Chinese cosmology, the cyan dragon of the east and the white tiger of the west are joined by the cardinal red bird zhuque of the south, and the murky warrier xuanwu of the north a turtle and snake entwined, to make up the four heraldic animals, the sixiang .441 These animals, as gurative mesocosmic signs, do not play a signicant role in inner alchemical discourse. Rather, inner alchemists are more likely to the see the sixiang lit. four images as qian, kun, kan, and li, or

440

Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. longhu jiaogou , 1247.

441

This set of four tutelary beasts dates back to the Han or earlier; Despeux, Taosme et corps humain, 115.

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dragon, tiger, water, and re,442 or water, re, metal, and wood,443 than as the four beasts. This is instructive: it is abstract signs such as the four trigrams, not gurative signs of the four beasts, which dominate the mesocosm of inner alchemy. The gurative signs of the four beasts are used within meditation in other Daoist traditions, such as the Shangqing tradition described by Robinet.444 We may see the dierence between inneralchemical and Shangqing teachings by contrasting their uses of the term sixiang: whereas the referents of sixiang in inner alchemy are elegantly abstract, the referent of sixiang in Shangqing tradition is more richly concrete. §6.1.3, Or, . . . in terms of gurative mesocosmic signs, the inner alchemists goal is . . . to unite the gold or metal crow in the sun, with the jade toad or rabbit in the moon . . .

Alchemists use the gurative mesocosmic signs of gold crow in the sun and

jade rabbit in the moon riwu yuetu , jinwu yutu , or toad and crow chanwu , or stellar cloudsoul and lunar whitesoul rihun yuepo to correlate key alchemical concepts of yinwithinyang and yangwithinyin or, in abstract mesocosmic terms, li and kan with the macrocosmic celestial bodies of sun and moon, as well as to link alchemical ideas with ancient Chinese lore. The gure of the alchemical toad was popular in the Tang and Song dynasties, with the legendary and historical patriarchs of the Southern Lineage, Liu Haichan and Bai Yuchan taking the toad as part of their sobriquets. Liu Haichans pet three legged toad, originally an alchemical allegory, became part of Chinese popular culture.445 §6.1.4, Or, . . . in terms of gurative mesocosmic signs, the inner alchemists goal is . . . to wed the lovely girl from the east, who rides the cyan dragon, to squire metal from the west, who rides the white tiger . . .

Below is a chart of the dierent meanings of

these symbols on dierent registers:

442

Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue, 97, citing DZ 1008, Zhouyi cantong qi, by Chu Huagu ca. 1100 50. The idea of the sixiang as four trigrams comes from the Xici zhuan.

443

Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. hehe sixiang , 1254.

444

Robinet, Taoist Meditation, 41, 74.

445

Cho, Images of Liu Haichan is a study of Liu and his pet.

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Figurative mesocosmic terms The lovely girl from the east, riding the cyan dragon Figurative and abstract mesocosmic The waxing qi of the dragon long zhi xianqi terms Figurative terms laboratory alchemy The mercury within the granulated cinnabar shazhong gong Abstract mesocosmic terms Microcosmic terms early solo cultivation Microcosmic terms later solo cultivation Microcosmic terms sexual alchemy

The central yin yaoline within the trigram li Hearts uid esp. in the ZhongL tradition Primal spirit in the heart Seminal essence and/or primal essence in the male sex organ

Figurative mesocosmic terms Squire metal from the west, riding the white tiger Figurative and abstract mesocosmic The waxing qi of the tiger terms Figurative terms laboratory alchemy Silver within lead; lead within water Abstract mesocosmic terms Microcosmic terms early solo cultivation Microcosmic terms later solo cultivation Microcosmic terms sexual alchemy

The yang yaoline with the trigram kan Kidneys qi; saliva from the lungs Primal essence in the kidneys Primal qi from the female sex organ

Fig. 4.11, Corellations of yangwithinyin and yinwithinyang

The origin of this terminological complex seems to be in the use of the terms lovely girl chan and squire metal jingong 446 in early laboratory alchemy, both as coverwords for mercury.447 The lovely girl also appears in Cantong qi, but not squire metal. The locus classicus for this terminological complex is Wuzhen pian, where the lovely girl appears thrice, squire metal four times, and the couple appears thrice together.448 While the lovely girl and squire metal appear sparingly in ZhongL texts, or in Quanzhen texts related to the ZhongL teachings,449 it is the terms appearance in Wuzhen pian, and the popularity of Wuzhen pian, which made them popular in the alchemical discourse of the classical period, period of integration, and 446

A.k.a. old metal man jinweng or stalwartsquire din ong .

447

E.g., DZ 885, Huangdi jiuding shendan jingjue 1.6a10; translated in Pregadio, Great Clarity, 172.

448

Squire metal appears twice as jingong, once as din ong , and once as jinweng . The couple appears once as niun i.e., the cowherd and the weavergirl, once as the elder male and junior female zhangnan

, shaon , and once in the line the woman wears a cyan robe, and the young lord drapes himself in unbleached silk DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhenpian sanzhu 5.1a4. 449

The lovely girl appears in the later ZhongL text DZ 149, Xiuzhen taiji hunyuan tu 7a2, 13b2 3; translated in BaryosherChemouny, La qute de limmortalit en Chine, 148, 160; also mentioned in Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5:75. Here chan refers to hearts humor, and is paired with the naked infant, rather than with squire metal. Both lovely girl and squire metal appear in DZ 1156, Chongyang Zhenren jinguan yusuo jue, and DZ 1158, Chongyang zhenren shou Danyang ershisi jue, both ascribed to Wang Chongyang, the founder of the Quanzhen movement. DZ 1156 is probably a later text, and draws on ZhongL teachings.

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late imperial period. In Wuzhen pian, the lovely girl and squire metal seem almost like characters in an epic, fated to unite in matrimony, orin the form of niun , the oxherd niulang and the weavergirl zhin as starcrossed lovers. It may be that adepts actually visualized such gures as part of a drama within their own bodythis may be why the famous Chart of inner tracts Neijing tu depicts the couple as oxherd and weavergirl.450 I have never seen explicit evidence of this, however. I have also never seen evidence that these gures represent corporeal spirits one could easily imagine them to be spirits of the heart and lungs, for example. These are allegorical gures or freeoating signiers, not deities in a spirit bureaucracy, and they are unique to alchemical discourse.

§6.2, . . . through the mediation of the yellow dame in the center . . .

Unlike the lovely

girl and squire metal, which to at least some extent are characters in an allegorical narrative, the yellow dame huangpo or matchmaker mei is a cipher, not a character at all. As suggested by her color and function, she is correlated with agent earth in abstract mesocosmic terms, and the spleen or Yellow Court in microcosmic terms. For the sexual alchemists studied by Wile, it seems that the yellow dame may be an actual procuress employed by the alchemist.451 §6.3, . . . and bring about the birth of the naked infant, the alchemists new self.

The gure of the infant yinger or naked infant chizi is already familiar to us as the holy fetus or yang spirit. While we would expect the union of the lovely girl and squire metal to lead inexorably to the conception of a fetus, it seems that alchemists do not extend the allegory this way. To my knowledge, while do they speak of the joining of the couple, and they do speak of the conception of an infant, these are two dierent symbolic complexes. So, while the allegorical marriage of the lovely girl and squire metal does lead to the birth of the infant, this is not an allegorical infant, but rather a nascent spiritform. The infant belongs to the

450

Despeux, Taosme et corps humain, 46. In this picture, the weavergirl is a spinnergirl, with a spinning wheel.

451

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 158, 161 citing Jindan zhenchuan, 173, 176 citing Jindan jieyao.

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microcosmic register rather than to the mesocosmic register.452 §6.4, Other allegories or visions include the goatcart, deercart, and oxcart by which the alchemist transports the pharmaca during the process of circular renement, ...

Alchemists uses three animaldrawn carts to symbolize how the pharmaca are to be transported along the superintendent tract in the back. When transporting the pharmaca through the Tail Gate Pass in the coccyx, the adept must proceed slowly, as if driving a goatcart with his intention . When transporting it through the Spinal Straits Pass in the center of the back, the adept can rush along with abandon, as if driving a deercart. When transporting the pharmacon through the Jade Pillow Pass at the base of the skull, he feels as if he must bull his way through an obstacle, symbolized by driving an oxcart.453 These three carts are allegorical expansions of the simple original symbol of the heche river cart, or chainpump .454 The names of the three carts are drawn from the famous parable in chapter 3 of the Lotus Stra, in which a rich man the Buddha promises three kinds of carts the Hinayna, Pratyekabuddhayna, and Mahyna as gifts for his many sons sentient beings to entice them out of the burning mansion of many rooms sasra . The parable in the Lotus Stra teaches that the three vehicles according to Mahyna teachings are all expedient means, and only the teaching of the Lotus Stra the One Vehicle, Ekayna

is ultimately real. None of this is evident in the three carts of inneralchemical orbital circulation, however: the alchemists seem only to have taken the names from the Lotus Stra, and not the concepts. The three alchemical carts are further expanded into a true allegorical narrative in the Mingdynasty novel Journey to the West Xiyou ji

452 In some alchemical texts, the lovely girl may appear paired with the infant, rather than with squire metal. Cf. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5:75 citing DZ 149, Xiuzhen taiji hunyuan tu , and Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. huangpo meijie , 1261 citing Ruyao jing, a commentary compiled by Peng Haogu, . 15861600 . Chen Zhixu solves this contradiction by linking the infant and squire metal together as two lifestages of a single character, whose milkname is yinger, and later takes the name jingong DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 3.3a2 . 453


454

Generally, the internal mechanism for transporting the pharmaca is called the heche. Needham identi es the heche as a squarepallet chainpump Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5:225 or currentdriven water raising machine ibid., 5.5:60 .

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.455 §6.5, Other allegories or visions include . . . the description of the inner landscape of the body, with sun and moon, mountain peaks, gates, bridges, towers, springs, and lakes.

This is what Schipper calls the Daoist symbolic body. Although this Daoist

body does appear in alchemical texts, as Despeux shows in Taosme et corps humain, it is not central to inner alchemical thought and discourse. Many of the materials studied by Despeux should not be called inner alchemy,456 but there are materials in Despeuxs book that are alchemical and do include visions of the inner landscape of the body. One example is Chen Zhixus Chart of the Corporeal Images of Primal Qi

Yuanqi tixiang tu , an illustration of the alchemical body gured as a mountain, copied from an earlier text.457 This illustration does not represent Chens usual body discourse. The place, in his teachings, of the vision of the body as a mountain is comparable to quotations from Mencius, Chan Buddhist kans, or Prajpramit inspired language from the Tang dynasty scriptures of Double Mystery Daoism:458 all of these are materials external to inner alchemy which he absorbs into his alchemical religion.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have oered an analytical overview of inner alchemical tradition, building on and criticizing previous overviews of inner alchemy by Chinese and Western scholars. In my discussion, I take the late imperial or modern standard account as a paradigm of what inner alchemy ought to look like, and then test this paradigm against other forms of alchemy that diverge from the standard account. I 455

Oldstone Moore, Alchemy and the Journey to the West: The Cart Slow Kingdom Episode.

456

That is, they should not be called inner alchemy if we follow the denitions of alchemy that I use in this chapter, such as Robinets hundred word denition on page 215 above. 457

DZ 1068, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao tu 3a; copied from DZ 90, Yuanshi wuliang duren shangpin miaojing neiyi 8b9a.

458

E.g., DZ 620, Taishang Laojun shuo chang qingjing miao jing, or DZ 641, Taishang Laojun neiguan jing. Chen cites these in DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie, his alchemical commentary to the Duren jing.

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had hoped thereby to achieve a rich hermeneutical circle, whereby I would begin with the standard account as a paradigm, modify the paradigm in the light of con icting evidence, then apply the new paradigm to further evidence, then repeat the process. Using this approach, I aimed to avoid the aws of the Western pioneers in the study of inner alchemywhose accounts of inner alchemy are hesitant and partialby infusing my account with the learning of Chinese contemporary traditional scholars, and reworking this according to my own lights. But I do not feel that I have quite accomplished this aim yet. Until I can read more widely in the primary literature, it will be dicult to transcend the standard account. On the other hand, to merely read primary texts without a solid paradigm in mind would also be a misguided approachit would be too dicult to begin to draw the disparate data together without an initial framework. Work on inneralchemical texts will always be workinprogress; this chapter re ects an early stage of my own hermeneutical process. This chapter does accomplish a more modest purpose of providing a backdrop and eld of comparisons for the next chapter on Chen Zhixus alchemical teachings.

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Appendix 1 to Chapter 4, Questions for the Comparative Analysis of Any Inneralchemical Text A. General Questions A.1. In this teaching, what are the interpretations or denitions of dandao alchemy , or dan elixir ? A.2. What are the interpretations of the chamber shenshi , danfang

? A.3. What are the interpretations of terms such as ding caldron , lu $ stove, furnace , yanyue lu $ crescentmoon furnace , xuantai ding # caldron of the suspended fetus ? Are they important in the teachings? The terms almost never occur in ZhongL texts; how often do they occur in Quanzhen texts?

A.4. Are yin and yang or zhenyin and zhenyang equally important, overall as in the phrase partially yin and partially yang, pianyin pianyang ; or is yang emphasized much more than yin? Does yin become valuable in some situations? Is the regeneration of qian the exclusive goal? Or is there a rare

mention of the regeneration of kun ? A.5. What are the interpretations of basic alchemical concepts such as jiuhuan nine recyclings , qifan seven reversions , jiuzhuan " nine revolutions , huangya yellow sprouts , and baixue white snow ? Are these given strictly metaphorical, numerological, or metaphysical interpretations, or physiological interpretations as well? Is sulfur mentioned at all? Sulfur hardly ever appears in neidan texts, unlike in the texts of laboratory alchemy.

A.6.1. What is the theory of jing essence, seminal essence ? A.6.2. Is jing clearly equivalent to sexual energy or not? A.6.3. Is it cosmic? What is it called? A.6.4. Is sexual energy to be totally sublimated and the sexualenergy system emptied of energy?459 A.7. What is the theory of qi? A.8. What is the theory of shen spirit, spirits ? A.9. Are yuanjing primal essence and yuanshen primal spirit important within the system? What names are they known by? 459

Relevant terms include: suogui % retraction of the turtlehead , guisuo buju zhi jing % scene in which the turtlehead retracts and does not rise , mayin cangxiang ! the horses netherregion hides its marks .

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A.10. What do dragon and tiger mean? A.11. What roles do the ve agents play? What is the interpretation of wuxing diandao A' inversion of the ve agents , cuancu wuxing B= condensing the ve agents , wuxing cuowang ; interlaced waxing of the ve agents ? Is there an emphasis on the union of the ve agents? Does the term wuqi chaoyuan *3 the ve qi pay court to the prime appear? Was this originally a ZhongL term? How about the four images sixiang 6 ? A.12. What roles do water and re play? A.13. What roles do metal and wood play? A.14. What roles do the eight trigrams play? Are they used in both houtian ! post cosmic and xiantian precosmic arrangements as in the ZhongL tradition , or merely in the precosmic arrangement as in the Southern Lineage ? A.15. Are there any distinctive uses of trigram or hexagram terminology? Do any of the following trigram or hexagram schemas play a role? a. najia , Matching Stems theory; b. shier xiaoxi gua +( Twelve Hexagrams of Waning and Waxing or shier pigua 8 Twelve Sovereign Hexagrams ; c. the six vacuities liuxu 5 ; d. guaqi * HexagramQi theory using sixty out of the sixtyfour hexagrams . Are the hexagrams jiji "< and weiji < prominent? Do any uncommon hexagrams appear, such as tongren or guimei >? A.16. How important is Hetu 9 River Chart numerology within the system? Is Luoshu $) Book of the Luo numerology used at all? A.17. Do sun and moon have a place in the teaching e.g., in solunar ingestion, or cosmicization of the eyes ? A.18. What does yinfu 1/ yin tally mean within the teaching? Does it refer to the renmai - conception tract , or to the elimination of yin? A.19. Is zaohua 0 creation and transformation mentioned? B. Tradition B.1. Is there a schema for categorizing di erent traditions or forms of practice? Are there more than one such schema? B.2. Is the teaching based on the Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian? How often are they cited? B.3. Does the teaching employ terms reminiscent of the ZhongL tradition, or explicit mentions of the ZhongL tradition or teachings?460 B.4. Is the teaching based on specic Daoist but noninneralchemical classics, such 460

Examples of ZhongL terms include zhouhou feijin jing !& 2; minhuo , chenhuo , junhuo ; sanmei huo # ; fenshen 4; chao shangqing 3.; chao taiqing 3 .; chao yuqing 3.; chuanxi zhi fa %

7:; jinguan yusuo @?.

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as the Daode jing, Huangting jing Scripture of the Yellow Court, Yinfu jing

Scripture of yin tallies, Yuhuang xinyin jing Jade Emperors mind seal scripture, Chongxuan Double Mystery texts, or Lingbao texts? B.5. Does the teaching emphasize certain historical or legendary teachers, sages, or transcendents in particular? B.6. Which geographical regions or sites is the teaching associated with? C. Practice C.1. Does the teaching include the xiao zhoutian lesser orbit, and da zhoutian greater orbit? Are they known by these terms, or by others such as huangdao (* ecliptic, tianhe niliu ! reverse ow of the celestial river, huanghe niliu (! reverse ow of the Yellow River, lulu 01 windlass, falun zizhuan ,/ the wheel of dharma turning by itself? How important are the three heche waterwheels? Does the process work through breathing

or reverse breathing, ni huxi !, ideation, or spontaneously? C.2. Does the teaching include a progression from zhuji ." tamping the base to rening essence into qi, qi into spirit, and spirit into void? What is it called? What are its sub stages? Or instead of this sequence, is there an unrelated sequence of stages? C.3. Does the path to salvation involve multiple kinds of practices to choose from at each stage as in Zhong L texts, or only one choice? C.4. Which practices are specically rejected? C.5. Which times of day, month, or year ought one to practice? Which times ought one to gather the pharmacon? C.6. What are the durations of cultivation required at each of the various stages? C.7. How is the ring actually done? What is ring? C.8. How are the huohou ring periods calculated? Is there a strong correlation between alchemical and mensual cycles e.g., the four points on the lunar cycle, hui, shuo, xian, and wang #$? Is there a strong correlation between alchemical and seasonal cycles e.g., the twenty four nodal qi )? C.9. What is the teaching regarding muyu physical secretions such as saliva?

bathing or basting? Does it involve

C.10. What are the signs that the elixirs are ready, or completed? Are the signs spontaneous erection, stirring in the dantian, and ecstatic feeling as in the Southern lineage or Wu Liu teachings; or, retraction of the male sex organs as in the Wu Liu teachings or those of Zhao Bichen? Are terms such as xiaoxi , huo zishi , zheng zishi , yanuang sanxian ' % used? C.11. Is there a nal requirement to perform three thousand deeds jigong leixing man sanqian - &+? Does this mean good deeds, or some other action? 354

D. Pharmaca D.1. What are the pharmaca or other foci of cultivation? What is the theory of the precosmic One Yang xiantian yiqi " ? Are terms such as zhenzhongzi $1, neiyao :, waiyao :, danmu , dayao :, taier , yinger 6, shengtai 0 , huangya /, baixue *, yangshen .% used? D.2. What is the outer pharmacon waiyao : or xiaoyao :, and how and when is it gathered? Is it gathered through breathing and ingestion of air or saliva, through awakening it in the kidneys, sexual alchemy, or other means? How is it initially re ned? Is it re ned through breathing, ideation, or both? D.3. What is the inner pharmacon neiyao :, and how and when is it gathered? D.4. What are the interpretations of terms such as jinye ( gold humor, yuye ( jade humor, zhenye $( perfected humor, jinshui gold water, jinjing 2 gold elixir, shenshui % divine water, jin uid, yujin jade uid, yujiang 3 jade broth, qiongjiang 83 rosegem broth, and so on? D.5. Is salivaswallowing important?461 D.6. Is blood an important element? How about other bodily uids? E. Goal E.1. Is the goal to become one with the Dao, to go to heaven e.g., the Grand Veil Heaven, Daluo Tian 9 , to escape sas ra lunhui 4&, shengsi , to revert to the primal origin, or to reverse ones age and achieve longevity in a youthful body? If more than one goal is mentioned, what are the relative emphases on the goals, or the relation between the goals? Does one discard the body qiqiao '+, or perfect it xingshen jumiao % and rise with it to heaven bairi shengtian ? E.2. What is said about the yang spirit? Does it multiply zi you sheng sun !? Is it called dharma body fashen ? F. Alchemical Body and Alchemical Person F.1. How much terminology is there related to corporeal sites or processes? Are there any distinctive terms? F.2. What roles do the heart and kidneys play? F.3. What roles do the ve visceral orbs wuzang ;, wunei play? How about the six digestive viscera liufu ,? How important are the liver, spleen, lungs, and bladder? 461

Terms related to salivaswallowing include huachi -, yuchi qingshui ) , bian chilong 75, chilong jiaohai 5<#, and qiongjiang 83.

355

F.4. What kinds of channels are mentioned? Are any channels mentioned by name besides the tracts of conception and superintendency rendu ermai >*, such as qijing bamai ?*, shier zhengjing ?, chongmai *, or yongquan 5!? F.5. What are the terms used for the three dantian? Is there an emphasis on santian fanfu 4 the inversion of the three dantian or santian diandao L$ the three dantian upsidedown? Is the child produced in the middle dantian? F.6. Is the body yin or yang? F.7. What are the interpretations of sanyuan three primes and sanguan K three passes? F.8. What is the interpretation of the huangting :' Yellow Court? F.9. What is the interpretation of xuanguan yiqiao KI the one pore of the mysterious pass?462 F.10. What is the interpretation of xuanpin or xuan and pin ? F.11. Are there any striking physiological references, such as to the gonads or anus e.g., gudao @, or the Deer Exercise? F.12. Are the third eye and associated phenomena tianmu , huiyan D1, baihao guang . important? F.13. Is there an emphasis on corporeal spirits? F.14. Is there an emphasis on corporeal heavens, hells, astral features, and other geography?463 G. Meditation and Mental Training G.1. Are breathing techniques important? G.2. What is the emphasis put upon mental cultivation? G.3. Is stillness, quiescence, nonaction wuwei 6", and/or the cutting o of emotions strongly emphasized? G.4. Is purity qingjing /0 greatly emphasized? How is purity understood? G.5. What is the place of intention in the alchemical cultivation process? Does the term yitu < intentionearth; agent earth correlated with guiding intention occur? What is the interpretation of huangpo :+ yellow dame? G.6. Is formless or semiformless meditation emphasized? Are these used only at the advanced stages, or are they emphasized consistently throughout, or even 462

I list alternative names of this locus in appendix 2 to this chapter.

463

Relevant terms include Luofeng JO, Fengdu O2, Huagai 8B, Yuluo MJ, Shangqing /, Penglai E9, Sandao &, Jiuxiao F, Jiu Diyu A, Tonggong C%, Kuhai #(, Huangquan :!, Wuyue H, Yushan , Yujing Shan , Kunlun Shan ,- , Jiuzhou , Shenzhou Chixian )G, Tiangang N, Zhuling Huofu 3 , Ziji 7=, Ziwei Shanggong 7;%.

356

exclusively? G.7. Is interior vision or visualization neiguan $, huiguang fanzhao , jizhao emphasized explicitly? Is it an important element but not mentioned by name? G.8. Are eye movements important? G.9. Are light phenomena shenguang , jinguang , changuang " , yanuang sanxian mentioned? G.10. Is shouyi guarding unity emphasized? H. Philosophy or Thought H.1. What is the teaching on xing inherent nature and ming life endowment? Is xing emphasized? What are the relative values or priorities of xing and ming? What about mind xin ? What about the pair xing and qing dispositions? H.2. Is subitism dunwu preferred over gradualism jianwu , or a great vehicle dasheng over a lesser vehicle xiaosheng ? Is there a ranking scheme of practices? Or are certain practices appropriate for dierent practitioners? H.3. Are paradoxes and other mystical elements emphasized? H.4. Can we see a distinctively inneralchemical use of or view of language? H.5. Does the teaching contain an explicit or implicit theory of ontological registers? H.6. What are the interpretations of shunni going with or against the current and diandao # topsyturvy? H.7. Does the teaching include an embryological theory? What is it? I. Sexual Elements I.1. How much sexual imagery is used? What are its meanings? Is it merely metaphorical? I.2. Is sexual alchemy yindan ever acceptable? I.3. How often are sexual practices mentioned? I.4. What is the attitude toward huanjing bunao ! recycling seminal essence to replenish the brain? What kind of huanjing bunao is taught? J. Other Traditions J.1. What is the attitude toward waidan laboratory alchemy? J.2. How are Buddhist elements used in the teaching? How much is Buddhist karma 357

theory emphasized? Is xianjianxing chengfo actualizing ones buddha nature and becoming a buddha presented as a goal? J.3. How are Confucian elements used in the teaching? How much is Confucian morality emphasized? J.4. Is there any trace of Tantric teachings? K. Other K.1. Here is a list of distinctive terminology to look for: a. terms regarding the sword jian +, zhujian 6+, huijian ,+, baojian 4+ ; b. terms regarding the elixir, milletgrain, or pearl xingru jizi 2, xingru hongju /, shumi ', shuzhu '!, shumi zhu '!, xuanzhu !, mingzhu !, moni zhu - !, mouni zhu !, baozhu 4!, lizhu 8!, zizhu !, ruyi zhu )!, xuanzhu 5!, yishu zhi zhu '!, chizhu !, heizhu (!, huzhu !, shenzhu "!, yeming zhu !, lingzhu 7!, qiongzhu 3!, liuzhu !, taiyi liuzhu !, wuya zhu ! ; c. terms distinctive to Chen Pus teaching baozhu 4!, honglian ., chishui , jiuhou zhu !, xuanzhu !, tianqiao 1, diqiao 1, yangsha huangu &%# . K.2. Are spirit penetrations or transcendental powers shentong "$ 464 emphasized? K.3. Is there an emphasis on celestial deities e.g., Yuanshi Tianzun 0 ? Is there an emphasis instead on patron saints and demigods e.g., L Dongbin * ? K.4. Is the meditator enjoined to seek solitude in the mountains and forests, or can one practice in the busy marketplace? Must one renounce the world, or can one remain in a householder?

464

This term is derived from a Buddhist term Skt. abhij .

358

Appendix 2 to Chapter 4, Alternate Terms for Corporeal Sites, as Found in Inneralchemical Texts465 Diyi ., Gushen <, Jiaogan Gong V4, Jinmen )*, Jiuqiao d, Liaotian Y, Lingguan kh, Liuzhu Gong 094, Mingtang 'B, Moni Zhu ]9, Neiyuan ?, Nitan (_, Qianjia A3, Qingxu Fu GP$, San Modi ] , Shang Jinque )e, Shang Tianguan h, Shenshi <,, Shoucun , Taiwei Gong U4, Taiyuan H, Tiangen 7, Tiangu , Tianguan h, Tiantang B, Tianxin , Xinghai %8, Xuandu I, Xuanmen *, Xuanshi ,, Xueshan J , Yaochi Z, Yufang &, Yujing Shan , Yulu i, Zhengshi ,, Zhenji :\, Zifu M$, Zijin Cheng M)+, Ziqing Gong MG4, Ziwei MU, and Zuqiao ;d.

Upper dantian.

Jiufeng Shan 5 , Kongdong Shan D- , Kunlun EF, Xumi Shan Sb , Zengshan l , Zhurong Feng =`5, Zuigao Feng K@5. Crown. Brain.

Jiugong 4, Xumi Shan Sb , and Yulou ^.

Dongfang 1&, Huagai O[, Lujian gQ, Mingtang 'B, Shangen 7, Shoucun , Tianmu , Tianting 6, Tianzhong , Youque /e, Yumen *.

Brows and ophyron.

Dihu , Guangai Zhongyue jL a, Lujian gQ, Mian zhi Yueshan 2 a , Mingmen "*, Qiqiao zhi Zong d#, Renzhong , Shangen 7, Shanyuan W, Tiangen 7, Tianmen *, Tianzhong zhi Yue a, Xuanmen *, Xuanpin , Yulong f, Zhongyue a.

Nose.

Digen 7, Dihu , Huachi O, Pinhu , Taihe Gong !4, Tianchi , Tianguan h, Tianmen *, Xuanpin , Yuchi . Mouth.

Throat.

Mingtang 'B, Xuanying c.

Dongfang 1&, Huangfang T&, Huangzhong T , Jinque )e, Mingtang 'B, Shenshi <,, Tufu >, Xintian Shenfu
Middle dantian. Yellow Court. Heart.

R$.

Huangpo TC, Mingmen "*, Mingtang 'B.

Jingong ), Jiuding X, Shangxuan , Xuehai 8, and Yuanyang fu

465

The main sources of these terms are the following dictionaries devoted to Daoism and/or qigong: Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian; Huang Jian and Zhu Huiqin, Jianming qigong cidian; Li Yuanguo, Zhonuo daojiao qigong yangsheng daquan; L Guangrong, Zhonuo qigong cidian; Lu Jinchuan, Qigong chuantong shuyu cidian; Ma Jiren, Shiyong yixue qigong cidian; Zhang Wenjiang and Chang Jin, Zhonuo chuantong qigong xue cidian; Zhang Zhizhe, Daojiao wenhua cidian.

359

Liver.

Yinger o3. Chan , Huagai [h, Mingtang :P.

Lungs.

Changong vH, Danding e, Dantai g, Danyuan , Danyuan Gong H, Digen %I, Dihu %, Dongfang C8, Dongyang Zaohua Lu ;^Vx, Fuming Guan X4w, Guanyuan w, Guizhong U, Gushen 2 N, Hongmeng Qiao rqs, Huangjia _G, Huangjin Shi _>A, Huayue Shantou [pm, Huiyin `W, Hunyuan Danding Se, Jingfang f8, Jinghai fK, Jinglu fd, Jingshe f<, Jinmen b?, Jiuqiao s, Kungong 5H, Kunwei 5/, Linggen yI, Lingguan yw, Lingshan y, Longhu Xue n=#, Mihu Q, Mingmen 4?, Mingtang :P, Nei Sanyao E, Neiding e, Penghu j, Pingyi Xue 9#, Pomen k?, Qiaonei Qiaozhong Qiao sss, Qihai JK, Qiji Men Jl?, Qizhong t, Qujiang (+, Renmen ?, San Chakou 0, Sangong H, Sangu 2, Sanshiliu Guan w, Shang Tianti R, Shantou m, Shengmen !?, Shengsi Xue !*#, Shenlu Nx, Shenshi NA, Shouling ' y, Taixuan Guan w, Taiyuan T, Tandi i7, Tiangen I, Tianxin , Tufu O, Wailu x, Wuji Men ?, Xichuan . , Xifang ., Xinan Xiang .@], Xintian Shenfu "NZ, Xishan ., Xiyi Fu 1&6, Xuanguan w, Xuanmen ?, Xuanming F, Xuanpin -, Xuanpin Men -?, Xuanqiao s, Xuanxiang ], Xuwei Xue \$#, Yangding ê, Yinlu Wx, Yuangong H, Yuanyang Jinghai ^fK, Yuanyang zhi Men ^?, Yuchi ,, Yuding e, Yueku c, Yulu x, Zaohua Lu Vx, Zhenyi Qiao Ls, Zhongchi ,, Zhongji a, Zhusha Ding )De, and Zuqiao Ms. Lower dantian.

Yiqiao s, Zuqiao Ms, Yuanqiao s, Xuguan \w, Xuguan Yiqiao \ws, Xuwu Yiqiao \Ys, Zhenyi Qiao Ls, Zhenqiao Ls, Zhenkong Qiao Ls, Hunyuan Yiqiao Ss, Lingguan Yiqiao yws, Lingming Yiqiao y:s, Qixue J#.

Xuanguan.

Mingmen.

Mihu Q.

Danyuan Gong H, Jingfu f6, Mihu Q, Xiaxuan , Xuanpin -, Xuanxiang ], Youque Bu.

Kidneys.

Gate of seminal essence.

Yufang

8.

Tail Gate Pass.

w.

Anus.

Jinmen >?, Jingguan fw, Jingmen f?, Yangguan ^w,

Jinmen b?, Jiuqiao s, Longhu Xue n=#, Taixuan Guan

Dihu %.

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Appendix 3 to Chapter 4, Li Daochuns Classication of Teachings DZ 249, Zhonghe ji 2.12b117a7

A. The Nine Grades of Marginal Traditions pangmen jiupin

A.1. The Lower Three Grades xia sanpin

A.1.1. The Lowest of the Lower Grade DZ 249, 2.12b913a7

• Riding women within the bedchamber, • gathering and battling at the Three Peaks, • drinking from the breasts, • turning ones face to the furnace, • taking a woman as the caldron, • taking the menses or natural gui, tiangui as the pharmacon, • taking the vagina or birthgate, chanmen as the place which gives life to the body shengshenchu , • taking seminal essence and menstrual blood as the germ of the great pharmacon, • forging the male and female swords, • erecting the yin and yang furnaces, • calling the woman pure yang, • pointing to the menses yuejing as the ultimate treasure, gathering this and ingesting it, • taking one month as one recycling, • using nine women as nine caldrons, • making nine reversions in nine years, • compelling a virginal boy and girl to copulate, and gathering their rst emissions jing , • obtaining the milletgrainlike thing from within the yin region and regarding it as the mystic pearl, • or even prizing the golden ower and playing with the golden spear, • the seventytwo traditions of conquest in battle through force of weapons, • entering much and exiting little, • nine shallow and one deep perverse and absurd things like this are called mud alchemy to the number of more than three hundred items. This is a dao of great disorder, the lowest perverse dao of the lowest grade. A.1.2. The Middle of the Lower Grade DZ 249, 2.13a8b4

There are also eightyfour traditions of techniques of contact and thirtysix types of gathering the yin: • using the caul as the purple waterwheel heche

, • re ning urine into autumn stones qiushi , • taking the ingesting of ones own seminal essence as returning to the origin huanyuan , • taking the pinching of the tailgate coccyx as sealing the gate, • taking the stopping of ejaculation during coitus between husband and wife as no

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out ow, wulou ,466 • gathering the womans menses as the red circle. Some people re ne the ve metals and eight stones of laboratory alchemy to make a bolus, then compel a women to ingest it. After ten months, she gives birth to a lump of esh, which they take as the ultimate pharmacon, gather, and ingest. I do not wish to mention all of the absurd techniques like this. There are roughly three hundred items herein, the middle heterodox dao waidao of the lowest grade. A.1.3. The Higher of the Lower Grade DZ 249, 2.13b58

There are also the various grades of the elixir stove and furnace re i.e., laboratory alchemy : • roasting and working with the ve metals and eight stones, • cooking geng and drying mercury, • lighting cogongrass fuel and roasting gen , • stirring ashes and playing with re, • even the outer pharmacon of numinous granulated cinnabar , • the three escapes and ve reliances sanxun wujia ,467 • and the more than four hundred methods of ingesting metals, stones, and plants. These are the higher heterodox dao of the lower grade. As for the three lower grades above, with more than one thousand items altogether, are practiced by the people who are greedy, lustful, and fond of personal advantage. A.2. The Middle Three Grades zhong sanpin

A.2.1. The Lower of the Middle Grade DZ 249, 2.14a15

• Abstaining from cereal grains, • enduring the cold and eating cha , • eating from the prickly ash jiaomu , • exposing ones back to the sun and lying prostrate on the ice, • fasting once a day, • sometimes maintaining a pure fast, sometimes eating, • and doing a lot of odd and unusual things • some take drinking alcohol without becoming drunk as an ecacious sign of spiritual power , • some take the reduction of their food intake as the choutian subtracting and supplementing yin and yang quantities in alchemy , • some do not eat the ve avors but do eat the three white things,468 • some do not eat cooked food, • some drink alcohol and eat meat • not caring about their own person or lifeendowment, and calling this nonaction, toss and turn like stormy seas fancang daohai all these di erent kinds of weird fabrications are the lowest of the middle grade. A.2.2. The Middle of the Middle Grade DZ 249, 2.14a5b1

466

Wulou is a Buddhist term for an advanced attainment of one who is nearing arhathood or buddhahood, when one ceases producing new karma. 467

The ve reliances are ve magical methods of hiding the physical form Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. wujia, , 783, and wujia fa , 617 , and the three escapes sound like something similar. I do not know why these belong to the category of laboratory alchemy. Did alchemists rely on three or ve items to escape from the mortal condition? 468

This is a Buddhist term. The three white things are probably plain rice, water, and salt Hanyu da cidian, s.v. sanbai , though another de nition lists milk, cheese, and rice Foguang da cidian, s.v. sanbai shi .

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Gulping down auroras tunxia & and ingesting qi, gathering the essences of sun and moon, gulping down the radiances of asterisms and planets, ingesting the qi of the ve directions some gather the qi of water and re, some take the yunyong469 to be concentrating the thoughts and making them present in the imagination, then roving about the nine continents in thought , • some take the hehe harmonious union to be visualizing the two qi within the body in the form of a man and a woman, with the appearance of a human married couple copulating and gathering pharmaca all these visualizations, and many kinds of vapid and crazy methods, are the middle of the middle grade. • • • • • •

A.2.3. The Highest of the Middle Grade DZ 249, 2.14b26

• Transmitting and receiving the Three Refuges and Five Lay Precepts, • reading, chanting, and cultivating good habits, • transmitting and putting trust in the dharma, • obtaining karmic responses, • practicing examination and assignment of demons? kaofu , • obtaining a return route home guicheng ' , a return to emptiness guikong ' , ten trustworthy signs shixin , three intervals sanji ! , and nine meetings jiujie ,470 • gazing at the asterisms from afar and making reverence to the Dipper • some abstain from speaking, • some put their e orts into hard work, guarding their external merit all of the above is purposeful action youwei , thus the higher of the middle grade, gradually and by stages approaching the Dao. As for the three middle grades above, with more than one thousand items altogether, if you practice them unstintingly, you may gradually enter the realm of excellence. Pay great attention to this! A.3. The Higher Three Grades shang sanpin

A.3.1. The Lower of the Higher Grade DZ 249, 2.14b915a4

• Gazing inwardly in sam dhi, re ecting the physical form, and keeping it present in the imagination, • expelling stale air and taking in fresh air , massage, and extinguishing the breath, • the Eight Sections of Brocade and the Qi of the Six Characters,471 • watching the fontanel and concentrating on the root of the umbilicus, • gulping saliva and stirring up divine waters saliva 469

Yunyong usually means application, but in inner alchemy it means transporting pharmaca along tracts within the subtle body. 470

These are Buddhist terms. Guicheng may refer to a Chanstyle examination of ones original self. Guikong is a vague, common usage. Shixin are ten mental states attained by a bodhisattva. Sanji are three intervals of the year, or the three realms of past, present and future. I did not nd jiujie. Foguang da cidian, s.v. guicheng xiangcan ' , shixin, sanji . 471

The Eight Sections of Brocade is a daoyin guiding and pulling practice involving stretching and breathing, attested as early as the Song Dynasty and still practiced today; Hu Fuchen, Zhonuo daojiao da cidian, s.v. Baduan jin % and Baduan jin daoyin fa %$, 1031. The practice is encapsulated by a text of eight stanzas, thus its name. The SixCharacter Formula is a set of six breathingsounds# Xu! or Shi! , He! or Ha! , Hu! , Si! , Chui! , " Xi! each of which stimulates one of the viscera; ibid., s.v. Liuzi qijue , 1079.

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• some take a thousand mouthfuls of water472 to be envivifying, • some take the red dragon to be the tongue, • some take the ring huohou to mean rubbing the body until it is hot, • some seek longevity in one shout and nine massagestrokes, • some rene thick spittle as the perfected seeds zhenzhongzi , • some concentrate on the dantian, • some cup ? dou the genitals in hand, • even boiling the sea and watching the nose, taking saliva and spitfroth as the pharmacon this is the lower of the higher grade. A.3.2. The Middle of the Higher Grade DZ 249, 2.15a510 • Holding the breath and circulating qi, • stretching and crooking, guiding and pulling, • massaging the waist and kidneys, concentrating on the Seal Hall yintang , ophryon, • rolling the two eyeballs, shaking the shoulder blades, concentrating on the umbilical disk • some take the two eyeballs as sun and moon, • some take the point between the brows ophryon as the Mystic Pass, • some take gnashing the teeth as the Celestial Gate, • some visualize the yang spirit coming and going through the fontanel, • some dream of roving to the realm of the transcendents, • some silently pay court to the thearch on high, • some take sam dhi as a dusky, deep sinking a woozy feeling? , • some take the ring periods as counting respirations, • some visualize jiji , equilibrium, e.g., of water and re as the meeting of the black qi and white qi of heart and kidneys this is the middle of the higher grade. A.3.3. The Higher of the Higher Grade DZ 249, 2.15b14 • Transporting essence and qi, • causing the three res to revert to the umbilicus, • adjusting and harmonizing the ve viscera, • applying the sixteen methods of inner vision, • concentrating xedly on the dantian, • ingesting the yellow qi within the dantian , • recycling and reverting the three dantian, • replenishing the brain and recycling the seminal essence, • raising both of the golden wells,473 • transporting pharmaca through? the twin pass of the Spinal Straits, • clutching tightly and gazing within all of these kinds of transporting practices are the higher of the higher grade. As for the three higher grades above, with more than one thousand items altogether, if gentlemen of middling aptitude practice them, they may rid themselves of disease.

B. The Three Gradual Vehicles jianfa sancheng B.1. The Lower Vehicle DZ 249, 2.15b716a1 For the lower vehicle 472

The DZ 249 edition reads a thousand mouthfuls of wood mu , but this must be a transcription error.

473

This means constricting the Gate of Seminal Essence and the anus; Zhang Wenjiang and Chang Jin, Zhonuo chuantong qigong xue cidian, s.v. shuangti jinjing , 203.

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• the caldron and furnace are body and mind, • the pharmaca are essence and qi, • the water and re are heart and kidneys, • the ve agents are the ve viscera, • the dragon and tiger are liver and lungs, • the perfected seeds are essence, • the ring periods are carried out according to year, month, day, and doublehour, • the bathing muyu ! is irrigating by swallowing saliva, • the Three Essentials sanyao are mouth and nose, • the Mysterious Pass is in front of the kidneys and behind the umbilicus, • and the completion of the elixir is the mixture of the Five Agents wuxing hunhe $ This is a method of paci cation and enjoyment anle / comprising more than a hundred applications. If one is able to put emotional dispositions out of ones mind, one may nurture the life endowment thereby. It is somewhat similar to the higher three grades, but di ers in application. B.2. The Middle Vehicle DZ 249, 2.16a38 For the middle vehicle, • the caldron and vessel are qian and kun, • the re and water are kan and li, • the pharmaca are crow and rabbit, • the ve agents are essence, spirit, cloudsouls, whitesouls, and intention jing, shen, hun, po, yi -" .1+ , • the dragon and tiger are body and mind, • the perfected seeds are qi, • the ring periods are the cold and hot periods of one annual cycle yinian hanshu '( , • the bathing is irrigation with dharmawater fashui , • the reinforcing and bonding guji 4 is not coming out of the inner realm and not entering the outer realm , ,, • the Three Essentials are the Great Gulf Taiyuan % , the Crimson Palace Jianggong ) , and the Chamber of Seminal Essence Jingfang - , • the Mysterious Pass is the MudPellet Palace, • and the completion of the elixir is the mixture of essence and spirit. This middle vehicle is a method of nurturing the lifeendowment yangming 0 , comprising several dozen applications. It is mostly identical to the lower vehicle. If you practice it unstintingly, you may live long changsheng jiushi * . B.3. The Higher Vehicle DZ 249, 2.16a10b5 For the upper vehicle, • the caldron and furnace are Heaven and Earth, • the water and re are the sun and moon, • the catalyst of transformation huaji 3 is yin and yang, • the ve agents are lead, mercury, silver, granulated cinnabar, and earth, • the dragon and tiger are inherent nature xing and dispositions qing , • the perfected seed is thought nian , • the ring periods involve re ning thought by using the mind, • the nurturing of the re involves sti ing the thoughts xinian , • the reinforcing and bonding involves holding the light within hanguang , • the battling in the wilds yezhan &2 involves conquering and subduing the inner mara demons, • the Three Essentials are body, mind, and intention, • the Mysterious Pass is the Heart of Heaven, • the elixir is complete when the dispositions revert to the inherent nature qinglai guixing #5 , • the bathing is the harmonious qi rising like smoke.

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The higher vehicle is a dao of extending the lifespan; within it there is much that is similar to the middle vehicle, but the points of application are di erent. It also comprises several dozen items. If superior gentlemen practice it without changing from beginning to end, they may actualize the dao of transcendenthood.

C. The Supreme One Vehicle DZ 249, 2.16b917a6 The supreme one vehicle is the highest marvelous dao of ultimate perfection, in which • the caldron is the Great Void, • the furnace is the Great Ultimate, • the foundation for the elixir is clarity and stillness qingjing

, • the mother of the elixir is nonaction, • the lead and mercury are inherent nature and life endowment, • the water and re are sam dhi and praj , • the copulation of water and re involves the sti ing of desire and anger, • the conjunction of metal and wood involves the union of inherent nature and dispositions, • the bathing involves washing the mind and rinsing away cares, • the reinforcing and bonding involves maintaining ones sincerity and xing ones intention, • the Three Essentials are la, sam dhi, and praj , • the Mysterious Pass is the Center, • the e cacious reaction is illumination of the mind mingxin , • the crystallizing and forming ningjie is actualization of the inherent nature xianxing , • the holy embryo involves the mixing and union of the Three Primes, • the completion of the elixir is when inherent nature and life endowment are knocked together into one piece , • the parturition is having a body beyond the body, • and the nal completion is busting the void emptiness. This is the wonder of the supreme one vehicle. If gentlemen of ultimate aptitude practice it, when their merit is swelling and full, they may directly transcend through perfect and sudden

enlightenment, and physical form and spirit both wondrous, unite with the Dao in perfection.

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Chapter 5, Chen Zhixus Path to Alchemical Salvation This chapter is a study of Chen Zhixus sexualalchemical dao and its place within the eld of Chinese sexual cultivation. In section 1, I ask the question Was Chen really a sexual alchemist? and o er proof that he was. Section 2 is a historical and comparative introduction to Chinese sexual macrobiotics and sexual alchemy, drawing on the work of Douglas Wile and Hao Qin. In addition to taking a position on controversial subjects such as the nature of sexual energy in Chinese tradition , I also develop a general picture of the eld of sexual cultivation, based on ve ideal types. Section 3, the bulk of this chapter, is a comprehensive account of Chens sexualalchemical path. In section 3.0, I analyze one half of Chens transmission epistle to his disciple Deng Yanghao the other half was presented on pages 10914 . This epistle shows us what an adept must know as he sets out on the alchemical path. I divide the alchemical path proper into four phases, and discuss them in sections 3.1 through 3.4, o ering translations and close readings of selected passages arranged by topic. Within these sections, I make a number of di erent arguments on topics such as the human relationship or lack of one between the male adept and female partner s , the functions of the partners water during the moment of gathering the outer pharmacon, and the rich conceptual clusters that Chen expresses in his writing. I argue that there are some unusual aspects to Chens alchemical practice: for example, microcosmic orbital circulation plays a much smaller role in his practice than in any other I have seen, and his use of alchemical ring patterns is surprisingly abstract. In section 4, I analyze passages in which Chen translates his alchemical dao into the language of 1 Chan and Yogcra Buddhism, 2 Mencian Confucianism, and 3 solo inner alchemy. In the conclusion, I compare Chens teachings with other historical soloalchemical teachings as introduced in chapter 4 . 367

I also oer a comparison of Chens practices with other historical forms of sexual cultivation in section 2.4.

§1. But Was Chen Really a Sexual Alchemist? Dozens of Chinese commentators over the centuries have believed that Chen was a sexual alchemist, and I agree with them. Yet at least one Western scholarIsabelle Robinethas demurred. In section 3 of this chapter I analyze Chens alchemy systematically; yet because of the gravity of Robinets reservations, I must begin with a section addressing the question of whether Chens alchemy was sexual at all. My overall account of Chen Zhixu depends on my argument that he is a sexual alchemist, so I here defend this position at some length. This section is also a contribution to the general issue of classifying inneralchemical works: how do we know whether any particular text is discussing solo alchemy, sexual alchemy, or both? §1.1, Chinese Readers Many premodern Chinese readers have identi ed Chens teachings as sexual. In chapter 6, I will discuss the reactions of more than two dozen premodern Chinese readers, including a dozen of them who explicitly identify Chens teachings as sexual. Some later readers do not mention sexual alchemy at all, but to my knowledge, only one Chinese commentator has ever explicitly argued that Chens teachings are not sexual. This was the editor of a nineteenthcentury gazetteer for Mt. Jiugong.1 Some of Chen Zhixus readers in the lateimperial period are very critical of his sexual teachings. We can see one representative premodern reading of Chens Jindan dayao as a book on sexual alchemy in an essay penned by the Ming literatus Wang Shizhen 152690 . This is a book review of sorts: 1

Fu Xieding, untitled discussion in Zazhi section of Jiugong Shan zhi, 14.14b p. 476 in reprint ed. . Chen Zhixu was an eminent visiter to Mt. Jiugong in presentday Hubei Province , so this local, latterday, Confucian editor wishes to retain Chens good name, and the glory Chen brings to the mountain, while rejecting the practice of gathering and battling at the three peaks sanfeng caizhan . He reads Chens rejection of sanfeng caizhan as proof that Chen teaches that the pharmaca are within ones own body yao zai benshen . On pages 38082 below, I prove that Chen does not teach that both pharmaca are within ones own body.

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Chen Shangyang, named Zhixu, was a man of the Yuan dynasty. As for Daoist books, he read almost all of them. Although he was not able to achieve a docile re nement in his style, yet his book is still grand and unrestrained, erudite in judgment, and forms a school of thought unto itself. His discussion of essence, qi, and spirit is incisive and moving, justi ed with citations from dharmatalks. His sections on Marvelous Application of the Golden Elixir and the Pharmaca also have gleanable contents. But as for what he says about the crescentmoon stove in the section on the Caldron and Vessel, that the ingredient must be gathered from within the body of the woman, well, thats absurd! The one thing I nd odd is his preposterous citation of Confucians and Buddhists, impudently sullying the sages words. I feel that, if he did not ameliorate his guilt, it would alter his fateaccount with the Good Star. I have spoken of this in detail in my review of Wuzhen pian. . . . AM-6K S8:EH( i)b >NUL QaD8X%[W;=F^*XgI?/e+! .V]C(`jf-& $1c" _ '%\h,0P#5%O GZTJ3)9
2

Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou Shanren xugao 159.13a8b4 57:728384. I discuss Wang Shizhens paper war against Chen below on pages 61424. This passage is also translated on pp. 62021, with additional footnotes. 3

Wang Mu, Wuzhen pian qianjie, preface, 9, and 5.

4

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 41013; Qing Xitai, Zhonuo daojiao shi, 3:375; Kong Linghong, Song Ming daojiao sixiang yanjiu, 28081.

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dubious claim that sexual alchemy was practiced in the early Quanzhen movement.5 Hao Qin identi es Chen as a sexual alchemist.6 Ge Guolong identi es Zhao Youqin, Chens master, as a sexual alchemist.7 Yang Ming identi es the commentaries of Lu Shu and Chen Zhixu in DZ 142 as sexualalchemical precursors to Lu Xixings tradition.8 Zhang Zhenguo says that Zhao Youqin and Chen Zhixu altered the teachings of the Southern Lineage into sexual alchemy.9 Hu Fuchen and Zeng Chuanhui represent a sidebranch of contemporarytraditional scholarship. They claim that the form of sexual alchemy that Chen Zhixu teaches is dragontiger alchemy longhu danfa , in which the alchemist employs a copulating couple but does not himself have intercourse.10 I do not believe Chen Zhixu teaches this form of alchemy, but there is some evidence that Zhao Youqin does I discuss this issue on pages 45962 below. One authority on whom I rely in chapter 4, Ma Jiren, does not oer an opinion on whether Chen Zhixu teaches solo or sexual alchemy. §1.2, Robinet In contrast to these nearly two dozen modern and premodern Chinese readers, Isabelle Robinet argues against the claim that Chens teachings were sexual, addressing herself to Li Yuanguos position in particular. She notes that Lis sexual reading of Weng Baoguang and Chen Zhixu depends partly on Lis sexual reading of alchemical terms such as wo and bi or guyin guayang see pages 37273 below.11 As I argue above and in chapter 6, however, Li Yuanguos sexual reading of Chen Zhixu is not based solely on his interpretation of such metaphors, but on an interpretive tradition stretching back to Wang Shizhen and Wang Yangming in the 5

Liu Tsunyan, Lu Hsihsing and His Commentaries on the Tsantungchi, 204, 20911.

6

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 126, 311.

7


8

Yang Ming, Daojiao yangshengjia Lu Xixing yu ta de Fanghu waishi, 1920.

9

Zhang Zhenguo, Wuzhen pian daodu, 29.

10

Hu Fuchen, in Yuandai Cantong xue, by Zeng Chuanhui, third preface Xu san , 12; also, Zeng, ibid., 251.

11

Robinet, Sur le sens des termes waidan et neidan, 6.

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Ming dynasty, if not to Chens contemporaries Dai Qizong and Zhang Yuchu. As such, Lis views are by no means gratuitous and without any justi cation,12 as Robinet says. Robinet argues that seemingly sexual terms such as wo/bi or guyin guayang in the literature are merely metaphorical; she argues that the classic inner alchemists rejected sexual alchemy and taught solo alchemy, citing Chen Zhixu himself as an example.13 To a certain extent, Robinet is correct on each of these counts: alchemical language should not be read too rigidly, as if it had a single meaning; Chen was indeed rejecting a form of sexual practice; and Chen did teach solo alchemy to some of his disciples. But the fact remains that Chen was a sexual alchemist. Now let us look at each of Robinets points in turn. §1.3, Alchemical Language Robinet is right to warn against the mechanical interpretation of alchemical terms. As I have shown in chapter 4 in part drawing on Robinets work, any alchemical term can be, and historically has been, interpreted in many dierent ways. Lets take the Wuzhen pian line Let the other be the host, and the self be the guest 14 as an example. According to a sexual reading, this line is saying that the female partner ta , the other should take the active role, while the male partner wo , the self merely responds; this could refer to the woman riding the man, which is a position contrary diandao to comman practice.15 However, Wang Mu, a contemporary commentator writing from the solo alchemical perspective of the Longmen lineage of Quanzhen Daoism,16 understands the line quite dierently. For Wang Mu, the self here refers both to the trigram qian and to spirit shen

, while the other refers both to the trigram kun and to essence. According 12

Robinet, Sur le sens des termes waidan et neidan, 5.

13

Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 48 50. Robinet,Sexualit et Taosme, also dicusses the general subject of sexual metaphors in inner alchemy. 14


15

See p. 323 above for my discussion of diandao as a conceptual cluster, and p. 478 below for my discussion of this sex position in sexual alchemy. 16

Wang Ka Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing pointed out to me that Wang Mus commentary clearly re ects a Longmen perspective.

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to Wang Mu, the line is describing two things: 1 qians surrendering its position to li , i.e., the decay of the cosmos on the macrocosmic register or the trigrams on the mesocosmic register from the perfect xiantian precosmic or prenatal state of pureyang qian into the imperfect houtian postcosmic or postnatal fallen state of li; and 2 the degeneration on the microcosmic register of primal spirit yuanshen into mere cognitive spirit shishen , and of primal essence yuanjing into mere human semen or blood fanjing .17 The Wuzhen pian line is ambiguousboth sexual and nonsexual readings are valid within Daoist tradition, within the Wuzhen pian commentarial tradition, and arguably even within the original frame of meaning of the Wuzhen pian text itself as far as we can determine this. As Robinet notes in her book,18 and as I have shown in chapter 4, alchemical discourse contains multiple registers, and often activates homologies between elements on these dierent registers. Alchemical discourse is consciously and intentionally ambiguous, and this ambiguity has made alchemy a big tent able to accommodate radically dierent perspectives. Like the Daode jing, alchemical texts often oer hints of secret underlying meaning without committing themselves to any single straightforward reading. This, no doubt, has contributed to the popularity and prevalence of alchemical discourse in Chinese culture. Let us continue with another example. Robinet criticizes Li Yuanguo for taking the phrase guyin guayang as proof of sexual alchemy. Here is a passage in which Chen Zhixu uses the term: Nowadays, people sit dazedly in the mountains, with widowed yin and yang guyin guayang, taking this to be cultivating the dao, and wishing for long life. What a great absurdity! Dont they know that if yin and yang are blocked or obstructed, then they cannot achieve creation and transformation zaohua? How much the more for the dao of the golden elixir! 19 Is Chen criticizing selfcultivators who insist on celibacy as I believe, or is he merely cricitizing selfcultivators who do not know how to eect the alchemical 17

Paraphrased from Wang Mu, Wuzhen pian qianjie, 66, with added explanation.

18

E.g., Robinet, Introduction lalchimie intrieure taoste, 82, 91.

19

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 5.9a8b1 commentary by Chen Zhixu.

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reaction of their inner yin and yang elements as Robinet would believe? Robinet is correct to say that merely nding terms such as wo/bi or guyin guayang in Chens writing is not proof that Chens teachings are sexual. I believe that these terms may occur more often in sexual teachings.20 Yet these terms certainly can be found in nonsexual teachings too: the dyad of wo and bi is found in the writings of the Bai Yuchan, for example. Robinet notes that the phrase guyin guayang appears in the writings of other alchemists such as Xia Zongyu or Wang Chongyang, alchemists whom Li Yuanguo himself would consider to be solo alchemists.21 Other terms that have manifest and literal sexual meanings for sexual alchemists, but are also employed by solo alchemists, include shengshen chu the place that gives life to the body, goujing zhi chu the place where essences are copulated, and churu zhi menhu the gates for exiting and entering. For sexual alchemists, these terms all refer to the sex organs. For example, shengshen chu means the female sex organ: the place where the body of an infant is born, or where the adept is reborn. Yet for a solo alchemist, the shengshen chu is the site within his own body that gives him life, i.e., leads to transcendence.22 The argument for a sexual reading of Chens texts must be based on more explicit references, or a pattern of language, rather than merely upon the use of certain technical terms. Robinets critique of Li Yuanguos evidence for sexual alchemy in Chens writing holds, but the critique only invalidates one form of evidence, and does not solve the issue. I do hope that, one day, we may be able to identify certain alchemical terms or patterns of language which are distinctive of sexual alchemy. This would help us in the work of

20

Cf. Master Ans cryptic advice to Sun Ruzhongs father in the preface to in Jindan zhenchuan: When a hen produces an egg by itself, the chick does not form; Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 154. Also cf. Wugen shu, verse 4; Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 189. The locus classicus is the line If a hen lays eggs alone, the chick will be incomplete , from Cantong qi; cf. Zhouyi cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 2.63a2. 21

Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Tradition, 227, citing DZ, 146, Ziyang zhenren wuzhen pian jiangyi 2.8b, by Xia Zongyu, and DZ 1156, Chongyang Zhenren jinguan yusuo jue 5a, attributed to Wang Chongyang. Also, Robinet, Introduction lintrieure alchimie taoste, 49. Liu Tsunyan notes that later Chinese readers did think that Xia Zongyu was a sexual alchemist; Zhang Boduan yu Wuzhen pian, 802.

22

Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue, 203, citing Yu Yan. For Yu Yan, at least in the passage Zeng is citing, the shengshen chu appears to be related to the eyes.

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mapping the alchemical eld.23

§1.4, Orthodox vs. Heterodox Sexual Practices Robinet is also correct to say that alchemical writers such as Chen Zhixu or Weng Baoguang criticize some sexual practices,24 but she is wrong to infer that they therefore must be rejecting sexual practice as such. What Chen is criticizing is not sexual practice as such; rather, he is criticizing the perverse, strange sexual practice of gathering and battling at the three peaks sanfeng caizhan =FW, or the art of mounting women yun shu DH, which are distinct from his own orthodox practice: As for the yang essence, although one gets it within the bedchamber, this is not the art of mounting women. If you practice the latter art, this is a perverse dao: how could you live long this way? Thus the Buddha said: This man practices a perverse dao, and cannot actualize his tathgata.25 If it is not a perfected teacher who indicates the path of the yang essence, then this is one of the various heterodox marginal traditions, which are all perverse practices. The blind teachers of this generation transmit the strange arts of gathering the yin, the three peaks, and mounting women from one to another. This is what is called the blind leading the blind. MS[7+ +C1DH;H7$R BA /6 7$RA#&<1@>5M MSP2UK098 $R.>FJ=D)H]:E(,X..26 Chen is saying that, while his practice is indeed done within the bedchamber fangzhong +, it is distinct from the common arts of the bedchamber sanfeng caizhan, yun shu, or fangzhong shu. As I show on pages 41416 below, sanfeng caizhan gathering and battling at the three peaks is a practice involving oral sex. Gathering refers to gathering the pharmaca in any form of alchemy, and is not a 23

Of course, there are explicit and indubious terms found in texts on sexual cultivation, e.g., the ve aairs of concentrating, contracting, absorbing, inhaling, and locking cun, suo, xi, chou, bi, wushi Y"-I%, discussed in Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 14142, translating Zijin Guangyao Daxian xiuzhen yanyi. However, explicit terms such as these are di cult to nd in sexual alchemy texts.

24

Robinet, Introduction lintrieure alchimie tao ste, 50, citing DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 5.13a 31K0F S' 1 4ONZS; or Robinet, Sur le sens des termes waidan et neidan, 5, citing DZ 1067, 5.13a and 3.3b VL?G!S\*FT^*QSON.

25

This is a line from the Diamond Stra e.g., T 235, Jingang bore boluomi jing, 8:752a18 that is much quoted by Chan authors. 26

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4.17a6b1. My italics. Bold type indicates that Chan has taken words from the original text here, Wuzhen pian and woven them into his commentary.

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pejorative term. Battling invokes a military metaphor for sexual practice: the man is to attack and capture the spoils.27 The three peaks are the female partners mouth, breasts, and genitals, whence the man is to imbibe three dierent kinds of sacred uid.28 Ynu shu the art of mounting women or fangzhong shu the art

used within the bedchamber literally mean sexual technique as such; yet when they write scornful words about yun shu or fangzhong shu, Chen and his fellow sexual alchemists are scorning, not all forms of sexual technique, but the practices of common men, practices which are not necessarily Daoist at all.29 Later sexual alchemists such as Lu Xixing ' 1520 ca. 1601 and Sun Ruzhong b. 1575, . 1616 make similar distinctions between orthodox and heterodox practices. In describing a meeting with his transcendent teacher, L Dongbin -, Lu Xixing writes: At rst he spoke of attaining the Dao through uniting yin and yang. At that time I absurdly mentioned the teachings of the three peaks, and asked my teacher about them. He rejected them. () +"10

,.!! 30

Sun Ruzhong writes: In every case, the elixir scriptures say that it is acquired within the elixir chamber bedchamber, but this is not a case of mounting women or gathering and battling. * $ %&/ 31 Both of these texts are unmistakably teaching sexual alchemy, by Wile and anyone else who has studied them. Like Chen Zhixu, Lu Xixing and Sun Ruzhong reject sanfeng caizhan or yun shu as heterodox sexual practice, distinguishing it from their 27

Cf. the Wiles section The Battle of the Sexes, Art of the Bedchamber, 14 15.

28

Cf. Wiles translation of the Ming text Zijin Guangyao Daxian xiuzhen yanyi in Art of the Bedchamber, 140 41. This text promises longevity rather than celestial transcendence, and has relatively little mesocosmic discourse, so I call it classical huanjing bunao rather than sexual alchemy; see pp. 414 16 below.

29

These practices for common men would probably be much like the texts translated by Wile in his sections The Sui Tang Classics Reconstructed the Ishimp texts , and Medical Manuals and Handbooks for Householders, Art of the Bedchamber, 83 112, 113 46. 30 Lu Xixing, Jindan jiuzheng pian, preface, 8.14a10 12. For a loose translation, see Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 149. Three peaks sanfeng could refer either to the three peaks practice, or to the semi historical Daoists Zhang Sanfeng # . Zhang Sanfeng # may also be written # or #2 , though # is sometimes considered to be a dierent person. 31

Sun, Jindan zhenchuan, preface, 3.2a1 2. Cf. Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 154.

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own orthodox sexual practice. Because Lu and Sun were sexual alchemists who criticized sanfeng caizhan, Robinets argument that Chen Zhixu could not be a sexual alchemist simply because he criticizes sanfeng caizhan does not hold water. Known sexual alchemists and known critics of sexual alchemy alike both criticize sanfeng caizhan, so criticism of sanfeng caizhan alone informs us only of the critics view of sanfeng caizhan or at least his public position on this issue, and does not inform us of the critics view of sexual alchemy. Catherine Despeux has noted the di culty of identifying whether authors of the later imperial period are teaching sexual alchemy, strictly solo alchemy, or both. Her words are worth quoting at length I italicize the points most germane to my argument: Some alchemical schools rejected sexual partner practice; others integrated it into their system. The Northern tradition, including Complete Perfection, generally favored celibacy and sexual abstinence. . . . For them, the union of yin and yang took place inside the adepts body, and sexual energy was not to be used outwardly. The Southern traditions, on the other hand, made use of sexual intercourse in their practice . . . However, as time went on, in the Ming dynasty an increasing openness regarding sexual matters developed. . . . Some strongly sexual schools did not put their teachings into writing, while others publicly condemned bedroom arts yet undertook them in private. Documents emerged that rejected sexual methods up front but then discussed them in some detail in their midst. Some texts defended the practice openly and strove to delimit it clearly om marital relations and the bedroom arts. Others emphasized the spiritual dimension of twosome practice and its bene ts for women, described as equal and competent partners in the great work.32 Although she is talking about the Mingdynasty scene, Despeuxs points can be applied to the case of Chen Zhixu as well. Chen strives to delimit sexual alchemy clearly from marital relations and the bedroom arts, as well as from the techniques of other practitioners. In an article on Lu Xixing, Chen Zhixu, and other sexual alchemists, Liu Tsunyan notes that the dierences between heterodox and orthodox sexual practice are not easy to discern: it seems to be very clear to us that the dierence between the Taoist dual cultivation and the comparatively degenerate arts of love was very tenuous at that 32

Despeux and Kohn, Women in Daoism, 212.

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time, in fact it was so vague that even Taoist priests themselves would have some confusion in interpreting it. More often than not contradictory assertions may be found in one and the same work.33 Liu is right to see that the dierences between sexual alchemists teachings and the sexual teachings they rejected might not be obvious to an outside observer. Indeed, sexual alchemists were the target of criticisms from readers who did not understand the dierences between their orthodox teachings and gathering and battling, or perhaps did not consider the dierences to be signi cant. As Chen writes: The white tiger . . . is a thing di cult to attain. If you seek it without missing its timing, you will certainly have a future among the celestial transcendents. Only this initial period of the white tiger may, with di culty, be called the precosmic one qi. The transcendent teacher Zhang Boduan has gone to special lengths to leak the secret completely, and Xue Daoguang and Lu Ziye have glossed it in too much detail. Of the fools of this generation, some have pointed to this as a teaching of gathering and battling, while others have called it a technique involving elixir of the ladies quarters i.e., menses . Disaster will come to these critics personally. If the student knows that the moon comes out from the geng quadrant on the third day, only then may he seek to use the spiritwater of the oreate pool. *-I6 '0! #2 */>5 31J@AH:< ? =.,-7F C% GD 8)+B &"E).($ 9!; ; 4

34 Chen writes that readers of these two sexualalchemical commentaries to Wuzhen pian, by Xue Daoguang actually, Weng Baoguang and Lu Shu, regarded the commentaries as teaching sanfeng caizhan. These two commentaries were published together with Chens own commentary in DZ 142, and represent Chens own alchemical tradition. Chen is saying, in eect, that they think we are teaching sanfeng caizhan, but that is not what we teach. In the nal line of the quotation, rather than changing to a new topic, Chen carefully repeats his own sexual teaching, noting that the thing distinguishing his practice from sanfeng caizhan is that, in his practice, that the adept must gather the female partners outer pharmacon at the moment in the lunar cycle when it rst appears while it is still pure, not yet a dirty substance. So Liu Tsunyan is right in noting that the distinction between this orthodox sexual 33

Liu Tsunyan, Lu Hsihsing and His Commentaries on the Tsantungchi, 209.

34

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 5.7b39. My italics.

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practice and sanfeng caizhan was open to debate at the time. In his teachings, Chen is walking a line between his true teaching, and the various false teachings of 1 formless nonsexual practice, 2 substituting mere sophistic rhetoric for religious practice, and 3 the vulgar arts of the bedchamber: Alas! The foolish people of this generation, proud of their trigger and blade i.e., skillful Chan dialogue , wish to achieve linguistic understanding through words; proud of their intellects, they wish to achieve cognitive understanding by grasping with the mind. Some rely upon perversity, practicing gathering and battling; some merely sit in withered zazen, going it alone. #%" & &! $ 35 Chens rejects 2 mere linguistic uency, probably referring to Chan Buddhist kan practice associated with the Linji lineage, but perhaps also to people who approached alchemy in the same way. He rejects 2 the mere cognitive approach of the autodidact reader of alchemical treatises, who claims to understand alchemy but has never met a true teacher. He rejects the 3 dualpractice of the vulgar sexual arts, and 1 the solitary practice of calming meditation. He says that he practices none of the above; yet I will argue later in this chapter that Chens practices actually have anities with both the vulgar arts and concentration meditation. Liu Tsunyan is right to say that the line between the orthodox and the heterodox is a ne one, yet he is wrong to say that even Taoist priests themselves would have some confusion in interpreting the dierences between the two forms of sexual practice. The crucial dierence is that gathering and battling involves collecting material secretions from the female partner, whereas orthodox sexual alchemy involves collecting only intangible qi. This qi is collected from the woman at a certain point in her temporal cycle. This might be at a point in her menstrual cycle just before the appearance of her menses:36 We may say that, at this time, when the ingredient has just been generated, the source of the waters is perfectly limpid, never having been stirred. This is the moment when there is qi, but no material substance. The great cultivator must approach this moment in haste, equipped with his single wisdomeye, and then 35

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4.26b8 10.

36

Some sexual alchemical texts, such Jindan jieyao, ascribed to Zhang Sanfeng , mention more complex theories for identifying the arising of the womans primal qi, going beyond the manifest menstrual cycle. Cf. pages 177 78 of Wiles translation of Jindan jieyao in Art of the Bedchamber.

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determine its signs. &,- % !. ")' (#37 Chen Zhixus sexual practice involves gathering the primal qi generated in the woman; while the appearance of the qi is coincident with the appearance of the menses, Chens practice does not involve gathering and ingesting physical substances. This is the most basic distinction between his sexual practice and the vulgar arts of the bedchamber. Hao Qin claims that the sexual alchemists distinguish their teachings from heterodox sexual cultivation in terms of the position of women, saying that in true sexual alchemy, the woman bene ts too.38 While Chen Zhixu does hint that both partners bene t from the practice see page 467 below , he never cites this as evidence of the superiority of his tradition. I have never seen evidence to support Hao Qins claim, which re ects a modern rather than premodern moral perspective. Wile writes that the central problems for the sexual theoreticians themselves were practical not ethical.39 He notes that, at best, sexual cultivators such as Sun Ruzhong and Chen Zhixu, we could add have a moral concern not to leak the secret teachings to the wrong persons. Moral concern for the female partner is an issue that rarely arises in their writings. I discuss these issues on pages 46368 below. Chens sexual cultivation is a sublimation of the bedchamber arts. Chen was not the rst to sublimate sexual macrobiotics. Another notable sublimator is Yang Xi $* 33086 , the source of most of the early Shangqing scriptures. As Stephen Bokenkamp has shown, Yangs revelations include a description of hieros gamos marriage and sublimated sexual intercourse with a goddess using energies or spirits jing rather than physical contactand Yang Xis revelation is presented as an alternative to the bedchamber practices of his patron Xu Mi + 30373 .40 The 37

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 7.3a10b2. My italics.

38

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 305, citing DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4.11a2 Li Shus commentary .

39

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 17. Some premodern texts discussing sexual practice may consider the potential harm to the female partner from her point of view. The Laozi xiang er zhu asks But what creditor female partner exists who will loan? So they male adepts receive nothing; Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 125. I have not seen this perspective in the sexualalchemical literature, however. 40

Bokenkamp, Declarations of the Perfected.

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dierence between Chen and Yang Xi is that Chen s sublimation of sexual macrobiotics still involves physical coition, while Yang s does not. Or, we might compare Chen s tradition with that of the early Celestial Masters. Like Chen and his heirs, the early Celestial Master text Laozi xiang er zhu inveighs against the bedchamber arts of the Yellow Thearch, the Dark Maiden Xuann, Gongzi, and Rongcheng, while teaching the Celestial Masters own form of sexual cultivation, the sacred ritual of heqi

merging qi .41

§1.5, SoloAlchemical Teachings? Finally, Robinet argues that Chen Zhixu states explicitly that no ingredient needed in interior alchemy practice can exist outside the body.42 Robinet cites the following passage as evidence: As for the great Dao, within Heaven and Earth it produces beings. Qian and kun cover over and spawn the beings. Sun and moon, and yin and yang, unite with them or the Dao in creation and transformation zaohua . Within the human body, the situation is not outside of this. Heaven and Earth take yin and yang as bellows and tuyre, and the human body takes xuan and pin as bellows and tuyre. &'!( $%# " $%*)*)43 There is no evidence against a sexual reading of Chen s writings here.44 The passage merely correlates the Dao s power of zaohua in the cosmos with the same power in the human body, and correlates yin and yang in the macrocosm with xuan and pin which I will argue are the sex organs in the corporeal microcosm. Chen s reference to the human body here does not merely mean my body, but could mean the body of the partner as well. What Robinet would need to make this claim properly would be a phrase such as male and female within the body ; such a phrase can 41

Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 43 44, discussing Laozi xiang er zhu, which he dates to before 215 .

42

Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Tradition, 227.

43

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 11.7a3 6. Robinet makes the misleading citation DZ 1068.11.7a in the American edition of her book at least , but she must mean this passage at DZ 1067, 11.7a, since there is no such page in DZ 1068. 44

Perhaps Robinet reads Within the human body, the situation is not outside of this as It is within the human body, and is not outside of the body. Both readings are grammatically correct, but Robinet s reading presupposes a jarring turn in Chen s prose. Chen is simply comparing zaohua on the macrocosmic and microcosmic registers, and not throwing in an awkward tangential statement that zaohua is not found to be found beyond the human body.

380

be found in the writing of the solo alchemist Yu Yan,45 for example, but cannot be found anywhere in Chens extant corpus. There are even passages in Chens writings contradicting Robinets claim, in which he explicitly says that the precosmic yang qi, or the outer pharmacon, cannot be found in the adepts own body: Although it is found in every home, you do not possess it in your own home i.e., within your own body. XG99.

9(,46

My master Zhao Youqin said, The prenatal One Qi comes out of void and non existence. The Master of Highest Yang says i.e., I say, whoever can take this up, and attain this one sentence, is therefore a living transcendent! We may say that it comes from void and nonexistence, and does not drop down from the sky. It neither drops down from the sky, nor is it something that you possess yourself. #;= IF% J UB)KC/4 5RIF%04D M&2D M. ( 47 The Master of Following the Middle Zhao Youqin said, The one bit of yang essence is hidden within the mountain of the physical form. It is not in the heart and kidneys, but is within the one aperture of the Mystic Pass. Students do not recognize yin and yang, do not know the times and periods, and are unable to recycle and revert it. They do not go beyond groping within their own body, and take that bright and numinous cognitive spirit as true and real, revolving around and around, missing the mark and galloping vainly. TL YJQ@" H]ZV,\EJ +<8BW-* $PAS'33^^\?6>O[[ :N48 The inner pharmacon is naturally possessed by a ji self, while the outer pharmacon is produced by anothers body. The inner pharmacon is thus within ones own body, while the outer pharmacon is produced by anothers body. The inner pharmacon does not depart from within ones own body, while the outer pharmacon does not depart from within the shape of form or, a sexual shape.49 45

DZ 1005, Zhouyi Cantong qi fahui 7.24b8.

46


47


48

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 7.2b13a3, quoting verbatim from Xianfo tongyuan, by Zhao Youqin, 22b79, in Daoshu quanji, Zhongguo Shudian ed., p. 473.

49

The DZ 142 edition of Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu has jixiang 7 the shape of ji self ; 5.4b10. However, the other, later editions of Wuzhen pian sanzhu that I have been able to examine all have sexiang !7, which for Chen would have this double meaning in Buddhist Chinese, the term se translates Skt. rpa, form . Cf. Wuzhen pian sanzhu, Daozang jiyao ed., Kui 1 coll. 2, j. xia , 4b1. Fu Jinquans eyebrownote identies this

381

:( :&" :& :&" : 50 9 : 9* The above evidence notwithstanding, there is at least one passage in Jindan dayao where Chen does explicitly teach solo alchemy to a student. This passage would have served Robinets argument better. I will discuss this passage in section 4.3 at the end of the chapter pages 54851 . Robinet also cites as counterevidence a passage in which Chen says that the alchemical husband and wife are not like the husband and wife in the mundane realm: The husband and wife are actually not what are called husband and wife in the world. The husband and wife of the world take the begetting of male and female children as a joy, and the wasting of essence and spirit as pleasure. From this come kindness and love; from this come birth, old sage, sickness, and death; by this are people entwined in woe.

$'%2"8 )156.) 7,4-+;051 Again, this is no evidence against a sexual reading of Chens words. Here, Chen is warning against the common mans loss of seminal essence through conjugal intercourse, and the general loss of vital energies by anyone living a secular existence. In contrast to the common man, a sexual alchemist must avoid losing his seminal essence during coitionthis is the opposite diandao of natural behavior. Whereas the natural man follows the current of normal sexual activity to produce children, the sexual alchemist advances against the current to attain transcendence: Following the current leads to the birth of humans or other beings, while advancing against the current makes a buddha or transcendent. 3&#/&52 sentence as referring to sexual cultivation fangzhong zhi shi ! ; cf. Dingpi sanzhu Wuzhen pian, Zangwai daoshu ed., j. xia , 3b 11:843 ; Daozang jinghua ser. 6, no. 1, p. 438. The fact that the later editions reect Chens original wording, and that the DZ 142 wording * is wrong, is attested by Dai Qizongs quotation of Chens wording as * in DZ 141, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu 7.5a2. 50

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 5.4b710. Here, ji means several things at once: self, the abstract mesocosmic sign of jiearth, and the glans penis. For a preliminary justication for identifying ji with the male glans, see the translation on p. 394 below. 51


52


382

Another passage lists three functions possessed by seminal essence: is a metaphor for the river of love and sea of lust, and lovely girl chan is ones own essence, the yin mercury. What does numinous and most divine mean? This is said because work with the essence can give life to a person, can kill a person, and can also bring about the fusion of the elixir. On the river

& ) $ " (*+ +# 53 ! A mans work gong with his seminal essence can engender a child, lead to an early death through semen loss, or bring about the fusion of the elixir and, later, transcendence. The trope that sex can bring either life or death is found in earlier literature on sexual macrobiotics.54 According to my tentative results of an etext survey, this trope of shun zhi, sheng ren; ni zhi, zuo xian %

is not to

be found in soloalchemical texts. §1.6, Two Pieces of Evidence I have answered Robinets objections to a sexual reading of Chens writings,55 yet in addition to refuting counterevidence, I also ought to o er positive evidence. I will o er evidence for my sexual reading taken from every one of Chens texts. This is not to say that every passage in Chens writing is manifestly sexual, of course: much of Chens writing does not touch directly on sexual practice at all. Also, because of the multivalent meaning of alchemical language, even passages that do mention sexual practice also, at the same time, could be read as speaking to other aspects of alchemy, from the macrocosmic to the meso or microcosmic. §1.6.1, Inconclusive evidence.

When looking for further evidence that Chen is

teaching sexual alchemy, we should look rst for explicit references. In contrast to Mingdynasty authors, Chen almost never makes explicit references. I will list two apparently explicit references, arguing that the rst reference is actually not conclusive evidence, while the second one is conclusive. Then I will follow with a list 53

Jindan dayao, Daozang jiyao ed., 2.63a missing from the DZ 1067 and Jindan zhengli daquan eds..

54

Cf. DZ 838, Yangxing yanming lu, 2.12a9 trans. Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 122: The business of the bedroom can give life to a man but can also kill him '. 55

I have defended a sexual reading of Chen Zhixu, but in this dissertation I cannot address the question of Weng Baoguang or other potential sexual alchemists of the Song dynasty.

383

of passages, taken from all of Chens works, that I see as highly suggestive if not conclusive. One might take the following passage to be conclusive, but it is not: As for the yang essence, although one gets it within the bedchamber, this is not the art of mounting women. 56 This phrase, or close analogues of it, occur in many alchemical texts after Chens time. The phrase is often ascribed either to L Dongbin or to Qiu Chuji, founder of the Longmen lineage of Quanzhen Daoism, but I have not been able to track down the original source. The phrase may come from a Songdynasty verse ascribed to L Dongbin, or it may simply be based on verse 50 of Wuzhen pian itself.57 There is a range of interpretations by later alchemical writers regarding this phrase. As an unmistakeable sexual alchemist, Sun Ruzhong would seem to take fangzhong to mean fangzhong shu, the art of the bedchamber: In every case, the elixir scriptures say that it is acquired within the elixir chamber bedchamber, but this is not a case of mounting women or gathering and battling . . . 58 Yet Liu Yiming 1734 1821 and Li Xiyue 1806 56 take the phrase to be a metaphor only.59 In a commentary to the same verse 50 in the Wuzhen pian, Liu writes, Mistaking yin essence for yang essence, and practicing the arts of the bedchamber and of mounting women, sealing the Tail Gate coccyx, restraining the yin essence, and being nuts enough to hope to form the elixir, how could they complete it? As for the yang essence, although one gets it within the chamber, this is not a chamber in a house, but is a chamber within a body. Just like when the old transcendent Zhang Boduan says every home has it, or plant it within the family, this is the same kind of metaphor. How could one believe it is a chamber in a house? If students want to recognize the yang essence, they ought rst to seek the Primal Pass. When one knows the Primal Pass with certainty, the yang essence is here. 56

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4.17a6 7. My italics.

57

Chens line 4.17a6 7 comes from his commentary to verse 50; verse 50 includes both the phrases yangjing and fangzhong

58

Sun, Jindan zhenchuan, preface, 3.2a1 2. Cf. Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 154.

59

Li Xiyues discussion is in zhang 7 of his commentary to Huangting waijing jing. Lis text is in his collection Taishang shisan jing zhushi; this collection is reprinted in Daozang jinghua, ser. 2, vol. 4. I have only seen an etext version of this text.

384

nj]iCci,5WZ\.kP]i$f`YL' cioA5U+=5?5A 15%K6mFF )Fdh! êMUjC5?5l Xqci [ r;:rci#A060 Although Chen Zhixus use of the phrase looks much more like Sun Ruzhongs than it looks like Liu Yimings for example, neither Chen nor Sun say that the chamber is not a physical room, as Liu says , this cannot be certain. We see from this example how dicult it can be to prove any alchemical interpretation on the basis of a single passage. §1.6.2, Conclusive evidence.

Yet I think that this can be done in the following

passage, which may be the best single piece of evidence for a sexual reading of Chens writings: Only this precosmic one qi, although said to be within oneself , comes om outside. Thus the transcendent teacher Zhang Boduan has the secret instruction to rely upon the others seed. Cantong qi says Granular cinnabar and wood essence acquire the metal and become united. It also says The owing pearl of great yang constantly desires to depart from a person. Then suddenly it acquires the orescence of metal, and the two revolve and depend upon one another. These are none other than this one thing, leadmetal. One must only rely upon the mundane method of birth and nurturing by means of a man and a woman, and send the seeds backward to the qian palace. R* Io#+V3@H)2 2h+S(Q!> EiU<& cBJTX 4U
Wuzhen zhizhi, by Liu Yiming, 2.48a8b4.

61


62

See pp. 31819 above. Liu Yiming emphasizes that the yin essence and yang essence are di erent things; Robinet also emphasizes this distinction Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion, 227, citing DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 3.2b4a and 11.8b9a . Nevertheless, the primal essence and seminal essence are fundamentally linked. The alchemist who wastes his yin essence also loses his yang essence. For Chen Zhixu, during the stages of gathering the outer pharmacon and fusing it with the inner pharmacon, the yang essence does not replace the semen, but rather is an aspect of semen, or is found in conjunction with the semen.

385

§1.7, Prostitutes In addition to the most explicit reference above, there are also many references which are suggestive but not conclusive per se. For example, Chen says that the adept may visit brothels without losing his seminal essence: The characteristic of sex is that, although in and of itself it has no sharp blade, it has killed more people than knives and halberds! The great cultivator seems similar to the common man but is dierent: he never ceases disporting himself in the taverns and brothels, yet the not sexual is sexual; he who knows the sexual is not sexual; there is sexual in the non sexual; there is no xed sexuality in the sexual. %( !$ # &" ') %63 This passage is saying that, by adopting a detached and philosophical attitude during sex, the advanced cultivator can engage in sexual activity without disturbing his mental equanimity. The line % is a pastiche of phrases from DZ 19, Taishang shengxuan xiaozai huming miaojing, a scripture drawing heavily on discourse from Mah y na Praj paramit scriptures, and commonly chanted in Daoist monasteries. In its original context within DZ 19, the line would be read not form is form; he who knows form does not posit form; form is within the not form; form has no xed form. But Chen would read the line as the not sexual is sexual; he who knows the sexual is not sexual; there is sexuality in the not sexual; the sexual has no xed sexuality. The late imperial Wugen shu expresses the same ideas more openly: From ancient times, owers and wine have been the companions of the immortals. Houses of pleasure; Feasts of wine and meat. Do not be guilty of esh eating or lust. To be guilty of lust is to lose the treasure of long life. Wine and meat pass through the intestines, but the dao is in the heart. Open your door; Let me tell you:

63

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 8.8a.

386

Without wine or owers, the dao cannot be realized.64 Like in the passage from Jindan dayao above, the Wugen shu verse is saying that the sexual alchemist must employ ladies of the demimonde owers , yet by maintaining his mental quiescence, he will not be aected by his surroundings, and will not succumb to lust. Another discussion of prostitution can be found in Chens Wuzhen pian commentary. There Chen recounts a long tale about the transcendent L Dongbins dalliance with and teaching of his prostitute disciple Zhang Zhennu during the Xuanhe period 1119 26 .65 After visiting her over a period of months as a paying customer, L Dongbin reveals his identity to Zhang Zhennu, and transmits to her the great alchemical technique of rening the physical form with Great Yin . Chen identies rening the physical form as a form of inner alchemy specically for women.66 This tale appears rst in a preface to DZ 142 that is ascribed to Xue Shi , the third patriarch of the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir.67 The tale reects a tradition in which L Dongbin adopts the guise of a paying customer to save prostitutes while enjoying their favors; this tradition was developed further in the late imperial period.68 Actually, L Dongbins association with sexual cultivation occurs as early as the twelfth century.69 As I argue on pages 449 and 463 69 below, Chen Zhixu, like L Dongbin, advises the adept to make an exchange with the female partnerhis Daoist teachings for her sexual access. This sort of partner may well be a prostitute. §1.8, The Sex Act If we accept the possibility that Chen Zhixu is talking about sexual alchemy, many 64

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 189. Hao Qin notes two other examples of this in verses ascribed to Zhang Sanfeng; Longhu dandao, 305 6.

65

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 2.4a10 6a2, repeating the story from the preface ascribed to Xue Daoguang, Wuzhen pian ji , in ibid., 4a10 6a1. 66

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 2.4a6 10; also ibid., Wuzhen pian ji,4a6 10.

67

Baldrian Hussein says that this section of Xue Shis preface was taken from Chens commentary, rather than the other way around; Schipper and Verellen, The Taoist Canon, 2:823. Perhaps she is right. 68

Despeux, Immortees de la Chine ancinne, 77 82; Despeux and Kohn, Women in Daoism, 213 15.

69

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 148, citing Rongcheng pian , in DZ 1017, Daoshu 3.4b5 7b3.

387

references to sex acts will become evident in his writings. In the following passage from his Cantong qi commentary, he refers to the sexual positions of man and woman, correlating this with the positions of the sun and moon: Whenever the Great Yin moon in the heavens meets the Great Yang sun, sun and moon unite their tallies. The moon is below the sun, and the sun is above the moon. The moon receives the essential radiance from the sun which faces it squarely; this radiance is directed toward the sky, and is not something people can see. This is also like when a man and woman unite in sexual congress: with man above and woman below, the woman is occluded by the man, and cannot be seen. At this period of the darkmoon day and newmoon day, the moon is below the sun. The reected radiance of the sun on the moon has not yet appeared, comparable to a young yin person in the human realm.

'+ *& ! "(#/ ,%$ .) '70 By correlating the positions of the human male and female with the positions of celestial bodies, Chen is sacralizing the human sex act, a strategy of cosmization see footnote 98 on page 35 above . He is also performing, or ideologically reinforcing, the subordinate position of women to men in Chinese society. At the end of the translated passage, he indicates that the female partner is a young girl. As I argue on pages 45254 below, the partner would ideally be between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. The mention of the period between the last day of the former lunar cycle hui %, darkmoon day and the rst day of the new cycle shuo $, newmoon day

indicates that the adept should gather her outer pharmacon at an early point in the lunar and menstrual cycles, when the yang has just appeared out of pure yin.71 The above passage would also make sense to a solo alchemist, but as an extended metaphor. Ordinarily, the position of the adept and his partner should be the reverse of the natural position with the male on top, as described above. The adept should be beneath his partner: When the sage applies li and kan , he tips them upsidedown, calling this water above and re below. When he applies qian and kun , he tips them upsidedown, calling this earth above and heaven below. When he applies 70


71


388

husband and wife, he tips them upsidedown, calling this man on the bottom and woman on top. AI I K/ G 2'K K/ G * K/ G # 72 3K This is a form of diandao, and ties the sex act into the whole complex of reversion see page 323 above . Chen advises the reader to let the woman experience orgasm rst while maintaining his mystical mental composure: Let the other person whip rst, and take her pleasure, yourself remaining as if stupeed or tonguetied. LJ&!?>73 By maintaining mental composure, the adept may engage in seemingly lustful behavior without letting it disturb his selfcontrol: means that men of the world are lost within love and lust, but I possess my powers of discrimination while in the midst of love and lust.

Dierent than other men

8*+0*@F"-*@F 74 I will discuss this theme again on pages 48588 below. Chen Zhixu speaks of the adepts mental and genital control as a sort of formless, mystical meditation. §1.9, The Sex Organs References to the sex organs abound in every one of Chens texts. In Jindan dayao, we nd a veverse poem cycle on the alchemists sword.75 Ordinarily and not merely to speak of the dark of night , when perverse and strange sprites hear of it they feel the cold in their very bones. Hung in the great void, it is worthy of loving protection; you must use it to slay the tiger and draw from the tiger to replenish the dragons liver. ;59C=DD%)E 1 :6<(@M.47,BH$ If it can come alive, it oers great contributions to a man. With great76 vigor and swiftness it erects its mighty force or wind. It levels its head at all of the world systems of the ten directions and cuts them up, transforming demonic palaces into 72


73


74


75


76

Bf ng distinct from the more common bfng can mean very.

389

precious palaces. L?7'-p0!>E@bqfvuI*rI A Moye sword three chifeet in length rests in the empty void;77 its divine might is severe, and very heroic. Neither the holy nor the profane dare to raise their heads to look upon ita ray of miraculous light from between the Oxherd and Weaving Girl stars. {\G:K>jjzC^cYqAeK# Neither bronze nor iron nor gold, not dependent upon mundane re for its forging, my sword was originally a bone of heaven and earth. You must know it can both kill and produce life.78 =i=t"=<N]s&/k3%MD9LRL

If not sword skilled, spirits and transcendents cannot achieve transcendenthood, and the sword skill is not transmitted except by the spirits and transcendents. If I must speak of the numinous and miraculous aspect of the golden elixir, it would be that its merit is to rst erect a heaven inside the earth. K=k&kHK `Bh<y.U4$!% Here are two more poems on the same themes: On the peak of Mt. Taihua the tiger roars up a wind, startling heaven, stirring earth, and rocking the empty sky. I now have the sword of the Three Pure Ones cached within my sleeve, and I will propel it into an opening in the side of the mountain. ZJq;lEwO%n[:/V'SkW5d

79 The tiger has a numinous power of the wondrous dharmafor stripping o clothes. It sucks a mans blood and marrow, and eats a mans semen or, essence. I now cause it to come and go; the imperial guards and altar area aid me in completing the dao. ;'T).8y_(xFg,2P33QmoX+e&80 The symbol of the alchemical sword is not unknown to solo alchemists,81 but they do not speak of it this way! Note how in these poems Chen cosmicizes the sex organs, imbuing the male organ with an aura of sacrality and strength, and representing the 77

Moye was the name of a legendary sword, mentioned in Zhuangzi H.Y. 6.58 for example. Three chi were equivalent to 2.9 at that time.

78

Cf. similar language in DZ 838, Yangxing yanming lu: The business of the bedroom can give life to a man but can also kill him 61L La DZ 838, 2.12a9; trans. Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 122 . As I said, according to an unscientic etext survey, such language is not to be found in nonsexual alchemical texts.

79

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 5.24b910. References to male and female sex organs are unmistakeable!

80

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 5.25a23.

81

Cf., e.g., Li Daochuns paeans to the sword of wisdom; DZ 249, Zhonghe ji 4.22b123a6, 5.4a25. Li Daochun dwells mostly on the forging of the sword, but also calls it a demonslayer. He states explicitly that the sword is formless 4.23a3 .

390

female organ as the enemy. He calls the male organ a dragon, but also a Moye sword, a sword of the Three Pure Ones the highest celestial deities of the pantheon , and a cosmic bone suspended in the cosmic void. The female organ is likened to the void, to a mountain, to a demonic or precious palace, and to a maneating tiger. By demonizing the female organ, he contributes to normative gender ideology, yet this is not his main purpose. Rather, his purpose is to give the male adept a stock of images that he may draw upon during the sex act to temper his instinctive lust and restrain himself from spending his essence. Such tropes are familiar to us from manuals on sexual macrobiotics translated by Wile. In The Classic of Su N, for example, it is said that in engaging the enemy a man should regard her as so much tiles or stone and himself as gold or jade.82 This is a trick for avoiding semen loss, with the denigration of the female partner as a secondary eect. The following passage from Jindan dayao is another striking discussion of the adepts sex organ: Like the adamantine sword, it has a great vigor Skt. vrya; like the hundredfoot pole, it is straight and unbending; of all the armored warriors in the world, none could not break it. This vigorous heartmind has great courage and erceness. When all of the gods in heaven and people on earth see this vigor, their joy will be measureless. Utilizing this vigor, one becomes a buddha and a patriarch. ,+& * %!)+& #- +&.$%'"+&83 I have analyzed the above passage in my introduction to the dissertation see pages 23 and 3637 , noting its strategies: cosmicizing the body and the sexual act, re interpreting the Buddha and all Chan masters of the past as sexual alchemists, assimilating the sexual alchemist to the Buddha and the patriarchs, describing the participation of deities in the alchemists sexual practice, and enacting or performing of all these truths through an illocutionary speech act. One of the continuing themes throughout this dissertation is Chens use of Chan Buddhist linguistic, social, and textual forms. In the following passage, Chen cites a long list of holy Chan masters from the Tang dynasty, turning these citations into references to the sex organs. I have put the sexual references in boldface. 82

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 85. Wile dates The Classic of Su N Sunu jing

83


391

( to the Sui or Tang dynasty.

The import of golden elixir is none other than the import of Bodhidharmas phrase straight pointing at the human mind, or kyamunis phrase I alone am honored, or the Treasury of the Eye of Correct Dharma, the Wondrous Mind of Nirva received by Kyapa,84 or Mazus85 phrase its not mind, nor Buddha, nor thing, or when the Sixth Patriarch Huineng saluted Yongjia86 with the phrases nothing born, no speed,87 or Layman Pangs88 phrase in one mouthful I completely suck up all the water of the West River, or Yaoshans89 phrase the one thing is not the head,90 or when Danxia91 burned the wooden buddha image, or Shigongs92 bow and arrows, or Zhaozhous93 phrases turnips, cypress trees,94 and drink your tea, or Guizongs95 phrase the pre cosmic state is the ancestor of the mind. Finally, we come to mountains, rivers, and the great earth, walkingstas and agpoles, cudgels, shouts, and revealing the pillar, the lamp and the buddhahall, monastery gate and storehousehall, precious sword of the vajra king, Dongshans96 three catties of hemp, Shishuangs97 hundredfoot pole, Juzhis98 onenger Chan, Huanglongs99 red spotted snake . . . 9#)br8>#)EqY#)E`306S S yJd+#)MK;;(;7#)K c] ] ]U#)z2 I*e' '$#){ 7C s#)wo(#)m j#)fAk@nX L#)x1CK#& 5 !4 4,<-\ \W ?p p(_ :HN9G|gB Vv% -FD>su^t/ZT100 In this passage, Chen is repeating his point that the Buddha and all of his heirs in the 84

The legendary Chan dharma heir of the Buddha, rst Indian patriarch in the Chan lineage.

85

Chan Master Mazu Daoyi MKa 709 88.

86

Chan Master Yongjia Xuanjue c~ 665 713.

87

Nothing born could mean that sexual intercourse does not lead to the production of babies. No speed could refer to the unhurried process of gathering the outer pharmacon.

88

Pang Yun z} d. 808.

89

Chan Master Yaoshan Weiyan { Q 751 834.

90

I could not make sense of this citation, so I cannot say whether it would be a sexual reference. Elsewhere, Chen does mention the head glans as an element of sexual alchemy; see p. 394 below. Could Chen be using Yaoshans antinomian phrase to make an antinomian rejection of Chens own usual teaching?

91

Caodong lineage Chan Master Danxia Zichun wR 1064 1117.

92

Chan Master Shigong Huizang miy 9th c..

93

Chan Master Zhaozhou Congshen f"P 778 897.

94

Or, cypress seeds?

95

Chan Master Guizong Zhichang x1[O Tang dynasty.

96

Caodong lineage founder, Chan Master Dongshan Liangjie B . 807 69.

97

Chan Master Qingzhu hl 807 88.

98

Ven. Juzhi FD Tang dynasty.

99

Chan Master Huanglong Huinan ^ti= 1002 69.

100

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 16.4b1 10.

392

Chan lineages were teaching the dao of the golden elixir, that is, all Chan masters have taught sexual alchemy, in secret. Perhaps thirteen out of these twentyone references could be sexual references. Most of these references are phallic; there is no reason inherent within sexual alchemy for this to be so, since one would imagine that sexual alchemists ought to be just as obsessed with timing the womans pharmacon as with controlling their own pharmacon. Perhaps emphasizing the phallus gives the alchemist a sense of control, whether it be control of the alchemical process, of the female partner, or of the feminine in the abstract. Chen elaborates on some of these references, such as the lamp and the buddhahall, in other passages. It is worth looking at another passage in more detail, to see the workings of his interpretive mind: The buddhas and patriarchs are compassionate, and for the sake of all the people whose selfnature101 is not clear, they establish models, so that the people can picture things for themselves. . . . These triggers, because they are so shallow and near at hand, allow people to see the truth easily. Yet no one is willing to take up the burden! Then we come to mounting the monasterys main gate on top of the Buddha Hall,102 or putting the Buddha Hall into a lantern.103 One may well say, The Buddha Hall is needed for making o erings to the Buddha, so how could someone move the main gate over on top of it? How could this not be an o ense

to the Buddha? The lantern with a Buddha Hall placed inside it104how greatly does it seem to glimmer brightly! Furthermore, it reaches to the mountains and rivers and the world around it, to Sumeru and Mt. Kunlun. As for some of the Chan types, when they see this sort of discussion, they feel thoroughly as if they are chewing wax, and it is meaningless. They chalk it up as Chan triggers, or words tangled like vines, and then they shelve it and do not examine it. $9E@6 "*/;ON "K)Q#># 3 .'! 2+GJ#V4$F ,$F-R ZI$FD8($%?4-) :Y RZC$ F&TT #0DS<=PU5'BMAX 101

Selfnature: zixing "*, essence, Skt. svabhva.

102

The reference must be to section 248 in Yunmen Kuangzhen Chanshi guanglu T 1988, 47:563c17; App, Master Yunmen, 207 , but Chen has changed it. App has I pick up the lantern inside the Buddha Hall and place the main monastery gate on top of it. Chen may be combining this line with another line from Yunmen: Have a look at the old fellow me riding out astraddle the Buddha Hall 7 LV$F T 1988, 47:549c6; cf. App, Master Yunmen, 122 . 103 I could only nd a passing reference to the Buddha Hall entering a lantern $FRZ in ZZ 1307, Wansong Laoren pingchang Tiantong Jue Heshang niangu qingyi lu, 67:482c6; ZZ 1343, Baojue Zuxin Chanshi yulu, 120:228b14; and ZZ 1583, Xudeng zhengtong, 144:0504b2. It sounds like a familiar sort of Chan paradox. 104

This is a tentative translation. Iriya and Koga, Zengo jiten gives H[ for C. I read WW as WW 1 Zengo jiten, 301, provides justication for this reading of .

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`GMP]Z\YQ_O#=105 Chen has combined two unrelated references from Yunmen Wenyans L7A 864949 discourse record, reinterpreted them as references to sexual intercourse,106 set this within a broader picture of Chan masters mercifully hiding their secret sexual teachings in plain sight, and criticized the latterday Chan monks for not seeing this truth themselves, or for their despairing of ever nding an underlying meaning to their own k ans. Chen is competing with Chan monks for the denition of Chan itself, as well as for authority and patronage among unaliated lay cultivators. §1.9.1, An alchemical litmus test.

In the following passage from his Wuzhen pian

commentary, Chen describes how his master would test whether an interlocutors alchemical learning was true or false by seeing if the other adept could correctly identify the dragon and tiger as the two sex organs: My master Zhao Youqin , when he met someone, would chat about the dao all day long. Whenever the interlocutor said he had met and received instruction from an eminent person, Master would immediately bow before him and ask: Not daring to ask about your dao, let me just ask for now: What sort of thing are the dragon and tiger? The other person would say: Dragon and tiger are within your body. Master would say: What shape do they take? The other person would say: They are the liver and lungs. The master would say: You ought to go down to the hell where they pull out peoples tongues and receive your punishment there, never again to delude or cheat the people of this world! Old Man Ziyang Zhang Boduan has now indicated the twin things dragon and tiger too closely! Now, my thing is the dragon, and the others thing is the tiger. There is a distinction between self and other, so Wuzhen pian says each to east and west. The dragons head is ji, and the tigers gate is wu. The dragon and tiger rely on these for their coition . . . (W">-UXR*ZFS@H2>'89#BRE BR[6<%3[6!.>&%4 ,5; >!N 1$T/D+)JV^ IK?:[ [6 3aC (3<[03<6 0

105


106

Taken in isolation, mounting the monasterys main gate on top of the Buddha Hall need not refer to sexual intercourse with the woman on top ; indeed it need not refer to anything concrete at all. But if we accept that Chens discourse often refers to sexual practice, then this sexual reading becomes possible, and these jumbled Chan idioms take on a starkly concrete meaning.

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2@$ $80[ [ZB : :
S107

In some forms of alchemy, dragon and tiger are correlated with the liver and lungs among other things ,108 but Chen and his master insist on a primarily sexual interpretation of the dragontiger dyad. From the above passage, it seems that Chen and Zhao identify the jiearth and wuearth as the male glans and female vulva respectively see my discussion of the two earths on pages 33334 above . §1.9.2, Xuan and Pin.

The terms xuan and pin are also correlated with the sex

organs: Erect root and foundation: We

may say that xuan and pin are the human body s gates of egress or entry, and the golden elixir is cultivated and united by means of them. The great cultivator must rst achieve a penetrating understanding of the teaching on xuan and pinthis is the place where yin and yang mingle their essences in coition, and only thereby acquire the one pearl of numinous radiance. FK9X +3 <;*-D% D/"CA7 +)@NPQWML\^!H109 Since Laozi pointed out the words gates of xuan and pin, perfected masters and transcendent sages have acquired this teaching in order to begin their cultivation of the great elixir. Fools take mouth and nose as xuan and pin, and respiration as the dao. With an absurd and twisted understanding like this, how could they achieve the joining and union of the crow and hare? <(.,?>>4IEUL -T R YB +# #JB@V'O]61LG G5 %=110 Correct identication of the primarily sexual referents of the terms xuan and pin is another mark of true alchemical learning. As I mention on page 278 above, terms such as xuanpin or xuan and pin may be understood to refer either to concrete entities or to formless entities. The term xuanpin comes originally from chapter 6 of the Daode jing, yet within inneralchemical discourse it can take on any number of meanings. The list of possible referents to xuan and pin within inneralchemical discourse in general includes 1 the Limitless Wuji and the Great Ultimate Taiji , 2 heaven and earth, 3 mouth and nose, 4

107

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 3.17b818a6.

108

Robinet, Introduction l alchimie intrieure taoste, 88; and DZ 249, Zhonghe ji, by Li Daochun, 2.15b716a1 section B.1., The Lower Vehicle, on pp. 36465 above . 109

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4.9a36. Xuan and pin here are identied as the male and female sex organs. 110


395

the gate of generation and creation, 5 two pores in the heart, 6 the spot between the kidneys, 7 the sex organs, 8 the fathers prenatal essence and the mothers prenatal blood, 9 primal spirit or prenatal inherent nature, 10 the Yellow Court,

11 the spleen, 12 the dantian, 13 the high and the low, 14 the gate of marrow,

15 the One Aperture of the Mystic Pass, 16 the tracts of superintendency and conception, and no doubt many more things.111 Chen oers his own list of referents for xuan and pin: male and female, qian and kun, nonbeing and being, miao and qiao the marvelous and the aperture, from Daode jing, chapter 1, celestial horse and terrestrial ox, the terrestrial branch ji within the trigram li and wu within kan.112 While Li Daochun and Chen Zhixu would not accept every possible referent for xuanpin both of them criticize the identication of xuan and pin with nose and mouth, they would admit a range of referents, from the mystic to the prosaic. Yet Chen emphasizes a concrete interpretation of xuanpin, whereas Li would emphasize a formless interpretation. Chen would not reject a formless interpretation of xuan and pin he includes nonbeing and being within his own list of possible referents, yet he emphasizes a sexual interpretation. While emphasizing the corporeal, he does not overturn the usual ranking of the formless as superior to the corporeal. §1.9.3, Other texts.

Is it possible that some of Chens texts mention the sex

organs while others do not? No: like Jindan dayao and the Wuzhen pian commentary, Chens other two extant commentaries also contain unmistakeable references. The rst two passages below come from his Cantong qi commentary, and the third passage is from his Duren jing commentary I have italicized the most relevant phrases: If you show a shadow by erecting the hundredchifoot pole, or send an echo by hoering into the vaey of a thousand clis, yin and yang will spontaneously have intercourse through the inuences of these actions, with most wondrous eect. This way you can unite the ultimate images of the forces of creation and transformation zaohua of heaven and earth.

! !

111

S.v. xuanpin in Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, 1169 70; Zhang Wenjiang and Chang Jin, Zhonuo chuantong qigong xue cidian, 260; L Guangrong, Zhonuo qigong cidian, 168 69. 112

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.16a10 b1 missing from DZ 1067.

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Q : >113 Xing inherent nature is in charge of making ones essence or semen replete inside, and erecting the perimeter. Qing the dispositions is in charge of subduing the womans qi on the outside, and tamping earth to make the city walls. . . . At this time, the inherent nature of qian is straight in movement, and so essence or semen and qi unite their substances. The expression of kun closes in stillness, acting as a lodge for the Dao. The sti and straight one releases or ejaculates, shi and retracts; the pliant and exible one nourishes by disseminating lubrication.

#DF$ BG@9 9$ L+,EA; ;37# 8&*F FR"9 9M=/C(O1&'-*5 5. . 114

'J< < is the gate that produces humans and creatures, and the gate of transcendenthood and buddhahood.The gate which gives birth to me is the gate which kills methat which the Perfected Zhongli Quan referred to is none other than this gate. Because people do not understand, demons of lust take pleasure in standing athwart this door. The dao of Heaven is fond of and values life, yet people bitterly incline toward the dao of demons. The gate of life

)'%))PN4 !)! 6A)/I IC /? ?0K6 6C115 )/2*H6 The rhetorical purpose of the rst two passages seems to be to impart a sexual interpretation to the sacred words of the Cantong qi. The rst passage is just poetic e usion. In the second passage, Chen o ers a sexual reading of the key terms xing and qing, yin G and e @, as well as some titillation, perhaps. The third passage, from the Duren jing, repeats the message that sex can either give life by giving birth to an infant, or rebirth to an adept, or take life by causing semen loss. His mention of demons serves to impart a sexual meaning to an important concept from the Duren jing, reinterpreting the Demon Kings as lustful tempters troubling the mind of the sexual alchemist. §1.10, Apologetic statements Chen sometimes makes apologetic statements to bring his teachings in line with standard alchemical values. I argue above that, even though he interprets the term xuanpin in corporeal rather than formless terms, he still does not overturn the usual 113

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 2.62b46. This passage says that, by means of physical sexual intercourse, the alchemist can achieve the union of yin and yang in both ordinary and cosmic terms.

114

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 2.54b15.

115


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ranking of the formless as superior to the corporeal. Forced to justify corporeal practice in a realm of discourse where the corporeal is less respectable, he resorts to apologetics: Spirits and transcendents are none other than precosmic qi, and are its masters. Know that this precosmic qi is found amidst hazy faintness and acquired in deep dimness. Muddy it and it remains undeled; dirty it and it becomes even clearer. When the ancient transcendent said, The agrant comes om the fetid, and the sweet comes from bitter, he was probably speaking of this qi. *" % : #/ -!+(

1 ;< 60'.,=2& 9$ 116 This passage justies drawing the pureyang qi by a method that Chen admits is dirty. The unclean method of seeking the outer pharmacon does not dele its pure and formless nature. If Chen were teaching solo alchemy here, as Robinet avers, I do not know why he would take the trouble to justify his methods as correct although dirty. §1.10.1, Lu Shu.

We can make the same point with another passage from

Chens Wuzhen pian commentary. This text, DZ 142, is a compilation, by Chen and/or his disciple Zhang Shihong, of three Wuzhen pian commentaries. The rst commentary is ascribed to the third patriarch of the Southern Lineage, Xue Daoguang, but in fact is mostly the words of Weng Baoguang.117 The second is by Lu Shu 48 byname Ziye 3, . S. Song? , and the third is by Chen Zhixu himself. Lu Shu openly advocates a sexualalchemical interpretation of Wuzhen piancan this be in doubt when Lu states Kun is a person $,118 or There is no depletion for the other, and there is benet for me 57!

)!?119 Lu Shu begins his

preface to his Wuzhen pian commentary by saying, 116

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.26b710 missing from DZ 1067 . Elsewere, Chen ascribes this quotation to Wang Chongyang cf. DZ 1069, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao liexian zhi 3b78 . 117

Liu Tsunyan, Zhang Boduan yu Wuzhen pian, 800, notes that sixteen passages in the DZ 142 commentary attributed to Xue Daoguang are actually similar to Weng Baoguangs words in DZ 141, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu. DZ 141 is itself an abbreviation, edited by Dai Qizong, of Wengs words in DZ 145, Wuzhen pian zhushi. Actually, DZ 141 postdates DZ 142, since it cites Chens words from DZ 142. Liu holds out the possibility that parts of DZ 142 could truly have been from a lost work by Xue Daoguang ibid., 801 . The NeoConfucian Wang Yangmings claims that Chen Zhixu concocted all three commentaries in DZ 142 is simply false ibid., 799 . 118

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 1.7b89.

119


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When a righteous person practices a perverse technique, this perverse technique reverts completely to righteousness. Yet when a perverse person practices a morally proper technique, this proper technique reverts completely to perversity.

/D

/D120

Lu is saying that, despite the seeming perversity of sexual alchemy, this practice is sanctied by the moral impeccability of the practitioner. Chen Zhixu repeats Lus words twice, once in Jindan dayao, and once in his own preface to the Wuzhen pian commentary: This is not the technique of gathering and battling at the three peaks, nor is it a marginal path or crooked route. Those types are all wildly perverse teachers. For a long time, the righteous has been thwarted; instead, the perverse has been in the ascendent. When a perverse person practices a morally proper technique, the proper is perverted, yet when a righteous person practices the perverse, the perverse reverts to righteousness. # )0B4#8C@+-6&*E>"3 D121 Therefore the Perfected Zhang Boduan says in his own afterword, The Yellow Emperor and Laozi pitied their greedy grasping at laboratory alchemy, and so they made their teachings on the techniques for cultivating life follow what the fangshi desired, in order to guide them to the correct path gradually and by degrees. When Lu Ziye also says in his preface, When a righteous person practices a perverse technique, this perverse technique reverts completely to righteousness, with this he has deeply understood Zhang Boduans meaning. %, =95( 4<1?A 7 /D!'2.122 In the rst passage, Chen repeats Lu Shus idea that the moral turpitude of sexual alchemy is ameliorated by the righteousness of the practitioner. In the second passage, he compares this idea with Zhang Boduans own claim that the Yellow Emperor and Laozi taught inner alchemy in the guise of laboratory alchemy as a way to gradually convert the fangshi of the time. These fangshi were so besotted with laboratory alchemy that they would not have accepted the Yellow Emperor and Laozis true inneralchemical lessons right away. In essence, Chen Zhixu seems to be saying here that sexual practice is necessary as an appeal to the baser instincts of 120


121

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 5.28b missing from the DZ 1067 and Daozang jiyao eds. .

122

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu, preface, 4a10b2. The passage Chen quotes from Zhang Boduan is found in the postface Ziyang Zhenren houxu :;, $ , 1b910.

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men. Perhaps he means that the lustful aspect of sexual practice is a necessary hook for beginners, and that advanced sexual alchemists learn to abandon lust within their sexual practice. These passages, like the passage where Chen says that The fragrant comes from the fetid, are apologetic. Why would Lu Shu and Chen Zhixu say these things if they were not teaching sexual alchemy? §1.11, Conclusion The Ming texts studied by Wile reveal their sexual teachings openly, but Chen Zhixu is much more guarded. Proof that Chen Zhixu is a sexual alchemist must come from a preponderence of circumstantial evidence rather than from explicit revelations. I hope that I have supplied enough evidence and interpretation above to convince the skeptical reader.

§2, The Field of Sexual Cultivation §2.1, Basic distinctions On pages 37879 above, I say that there is a clear di erence between 1 the golden elixir sexual cultivation of Chen Zhixu and his tradition, and other practices such as 2 the arts of the bedchamber fangzhong shu ; yun shu , or 3

gathering and battling sanfeng caizhan . I say that the crucial di erence is that gathering and battling involves collecting material secretions from the female partner, whereas orthodox sexual alchemy involves collecting only intangible qi. Does this distinction hold when we look more broadly at the history of sexual cultivation, and not merely at Chen Zhixus claims about himself and his rivals? How do other scholars make distinctions within the eld of sexual cultivation? §2.1.1, Wile.

For our rst perspective on the taxonomy of sexual cultivation,

lets look to Douglas Wile. He divides the sexual cultivation texts in his study into four categories:123 123

Wiles fth category of solo ndan female alchemy texts is not relevant to this chapter on sexual alchemy.

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1 The Han Classics Rediscovered at Mawangdui 1.1 He yinyang Uniting yin and yang

1.2 Tianxia zhidao tan Discourse on the highest dao under heaven

2 The SuiTang Classics Reconstructed from the Japanese collection Ishimp 2.1 Sun jing The classic of Sun

2.2 Sun fang Prescriptions of Sun

2.3 Yufang zhiyao Essential of the jade chamber

2.4 Yufang mijue Secrets of the jade chamber

2.5 Dongxuanzi 3 Medical Manuals and Handbooks for Householders, from Six Dyn. to Tang 3.1 Fangzhong buyi pian !# Health benets of the bedchamber; before 682

3.2 Yun sunyi pian # The dangers and benets of intercourse with women; before 536?

3.3 Sun miaolun $ The wondrous discourse of Sun; Ming dynasty

3.4 Chunyang Yanzheng Fuyou Dijun jiji zhenjing The classic of perfect union; 1598

3.5 Zijin Guangyao Daxian xiuzhen yanyi '" Exposition of cultivating the true essence; 1594

4 The Elixir Literature of Sexual Alchemy, from the Ming and Qing dynasties 4.1 Jindan jiuzheng pian # Seeking instruction on the golden elixir; 1570s?

4.2 Jindan zhenchuan True transmission of the golden elixir; 1616

4.3 Jindan jieyao Summary of the golden elixir; before 1825

4.4 Caizhen jiyao & Secret principles of gathering the true essence; before 1825

4.5 Wugen shu % The rootless tree; before 1825

Wile has made these categories by grouping similar texts together. Categories 1 and 2 contain texts that were originally grouped together by ancient editors or scribes, so they ought to be coherent as historical categories. Category 4 contains alchemical works, and looks coherent, though I will call this into question below. Category 3 contains all the rest, and is the least coherent. Rather than representing a single historical moment, category 3 is a mixed bag of various nonalchemical sexual cultivation texts, dating from the Six Dynasties and Tang dynasty to the Ming.124 The most obvious dierences between the 4 alchemical texts and the 3 non 124

3.1 Yun sunyi pian may be a SixDynasties text: it is from DZ 838, Yangxing yanming lu, arguably compiled by Tao Hongjing 456536 . 3.2 Fangzhong buyi is a Tangdynasty text, from Qianjin yaofang, by Sun Simiao 581?682? . The other three texts are Mingdynasty works taken from R. H. van Gulik, Erotic Color Prints of the Ming Dynasty.

401

alchemical texts are that the former use alchemical discourse such as the Yijing related discourse of the trigrams qian and kun, kan and li and aim at transcendence, while the latter do not. I will argue in section 2.3 below that Wiles category of 4

alchemical texts includes both 4a goldenelixir sexual alchemy, and 4b huanjing bunao recycling essence to replenish the brain in alchemical language.125 These two types of sexual alchemy may come from similar milieux, however, since the eighteenthcentury compiler Fu Jinquan transmits both types.126 In this chapter, I will not be able to o er a denitive statement on the di erences and similarities between these traditions; I raise these issues because they are relevant to our study of Chen Zhixu. Chen claims that there is a deep gulf separating his 4a goldenelixir sexual alchemy from the perverse lineages xiezong . These perverse lineages would include what I am calling 4b alchemical huanjing bunao, 3 nonalchemical huanjing bunao, and other practices such as 3

sanfeng caizhan. Yet in this section I argue that there is a continuum linking 4a

goldenelixir sexual alchemy, 4b alchemical huanjing bunao, 3 nonalchemical huan jing bunao, and other traditions. I will not o er a nal answer to the question of how di erent Chen Zhixus practices are from the practices of the perverse lineages this would be a question for a larger study , yet I will show that the di erences between Chens tradition and the other traditions are not as great as Chen claims! Wile treats his alchemical texts as data points upon a general graph of trends within Chinese sexology,127 but he also considers the category of sexual alchemy alone, noting some distinctions between the 4 alchemical texts and the other categories 13 taken together: What distinguishes the texts of sexual alchemy from the other categories in this anthology? Above all, it is that the theme of immortality is no longer a literary convention but a literal and exclusive obsession. Questions of emotional harmonization, sexual synchronization, eugenics, and therapies for sexual dysfunction have become completely irrelevant. The adept enters a state of 125 The two texts on goldenelixir sexual alchemy are 4.1 Jindan jiuzheng pian, by Lu Xixing, and 4.2 Jindan zhenchuan, by Sun Ruzhong, Zhang Chonglie, and Li Kan. I say that the other three texts, all ascribed to the legendary gure Zhang Sanfeng, are teaching alchemical huanjing bunao. 126

Fu Jinquan supplies commentaries to both the goldenelixir text 4.2 Jindan zhenchuan, and the alchemical huanjing bunao text 4.4 Caizhen jiyao.

127

I discuss Wiles historical narrative on pages 4078 below.

402

meditative abstraction in which sexual arousal has been virtually divorced from personalized passion and in which the partner has been reduced to mere medicine. The emphasis on timing has shifted away from macrocosmic avoidances and taboos to the precise microcosmic moment when the yang essence . . . is ready for gathering . . . Finally, the yang extract . . . is centrifuged within the body of the adept by a process of microcosmic orbital circulation, which is indistinguishable from solo inner alchemy meditation.128 Wile disagrees with Liu Tsunyan, who says that practitioners of the bedchamber arts did not cultivate qi. Wile avers that it is the cultivation of qi which unites rather than separates them bedchamber arts and sexual alchemy and has been the most consistent theme underlying the diverse developments within the sexual school for more than two thousand years.129 On pages 41720 below, I will return to the issue of whether it is qi, or tangible secretions, that are used within the bedchamber arts. While alchemical texts and the texts of the other categories 13 share a common theme of qicultivation, sexual alchemy, unlike the other texts, emphasizes transcendence, and disregards calendrical divination, conception of children, passion, and human relations. Wile denes Chinese sexual yoga generally as the practice of sexual intercourse for the purpose of intergender harmony, physical and psychological health, and ascended states or immortality.130 Within this denition, the sexual alchemists disregard harmony and health, leaving only transcendence. §2.1.2, Hao Qin.

Hao Qin simply distinguishes bedchamber fangzhong

practices from pairedcultivation shuangxiu practices, and remarks that although the pairedcultivation school tries strenuously to show that it is not at all a bedchamber art, actually it is very di cult to distinguish an essential di erence between the two.131 Hao divides the eld into two categoriesbedchamber arts and sexual alchemyand says they are essentially the same. What about them is supposedly almost the same, though? From the context of his proximate discussion on this page, he means that women are exploited equally within the bedchamber arts 128


129


130

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 4. Wiles term for sexual cultivation is sexual yoga. The term yoga is not a good choice as a neutral term for discipline. Most people identify yoga with Indian gymnastics, spirituality, or philosophy, so the term is misleading when applied to Chinese practices.

131


403

and sexual alchemy. Perhaps he would say that the social and physiological di erences are minimal, while agreeing that there are major di erences of goal or discourse. I would say that the bedchamber arts usually aim at the goal of health rather than transcendence, and lack most of the distinctive mesocosmic discourse of inner alchemy. §2.1.3, Cai Jun and Li Wenkun.

In a general study of modern and traditional

sexology, Cai and Li o er a schema with four types of sexual cultivation xing xiulian : 1 pairedreplenishing type shuangbu lei , or bedchamber type fangzhong lei ; 2 pairedrening type shuanglian lei ; 3 pairedcultivation type shuangxiu lei ; and 4 purecultivation type qingxiu lei .132 Type 4, solo sexual alchemy, may sound oxymoronic, but it emphasizes a point also made by Wile, Hao Qin, and Despeux;133 that is, even solo inner alchemy is indirectly sexual since it is based on the sublimation of sexual energy. The other three types in Cai and Juns schema are prescriptive rather than descriptive. They think that adepts of shuangbu sexual cultivation produce a lesser elixir xiaodan through lesser orbital circulation xiao zhoutian , shuanglian adepts produce a middle elixir through greater orbital circulation, & shuangxiu adepts produce a greater elixir by regarding spirit and death as one shen yu si tong .134 Cai and Li assume that the standard account of inner alchemy is a true and scientic description of human physiology, and they assume that the various types of historical Chinese sexual cultivation can be pigeonholed into a hierarchy of elixirs. This prescriptive approach seriously distorts the data, and should not be mistaken for objective historical research. §2.1.4, Hu Fuchen.

Hu, a contemporarytraditional scholar and alchemist, says

that there are three forms of alchemy:135 132

Cai Jun and Li Wenkun, Xing kexue yu Zhonuo chuantong xing xiulian, table of contents, and p. 140. They ascribe these categories to a friend, Guo Changhong ; ibid., 139. 133

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 28; Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 24, 39; Despeux and Kohn, Women in Daoism, 184, 211.

134

Cai Jun and Li Wenkun, Xing kexue yu Zhonuo chuantong xing xiulian, 140.

135

The following is from pp. 1112 of Hu Fuchens preface Xu san to Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai cantong xue.

404

Alchemy taking heaven as prime tianyuan danfa

Celestial alchemy

Alchemy taking earth as prime diyuan danfa Alchemy taking the human as prime renyuan danfa

Laboratory alchemy Human alchemy

Fig. 5.1, Hu Fuchens three categories of alchemy

For other writers, tianyuan danfa means solo alchemy and renyuan danfa means sexual alchemy,136 but Hu places both solo alchemy and sexual alchemy within renyuan danfa. For Hu, celestial alchemy must mean something like the advanced alchemy of Li Daochuns four vehicles.137 Within the scope of human alchemy, there are three houses and four lineages sanjia sipai : Three houses sanjia

Four lineages sipai

Ordinary term

Seeking yinyang within ones own body zishen yinyang

Pure alchemy qingjing danfa

Physiological solo alchemy

Seeking yinyang within a partner of the same category tonglei yinyang Seeking yinyang within void emptiness xukong yinyang

Alchemy using the house of the other bijia danfa Dragontiger alchemy longhu danfa Alchemy of void and nonbeing xuwu danfa

Sexual alchemy

Formless solo alchemy

Fig. 5.2, Hu Fuchens categories of human alchemy

Yu Yan, Wu Shouyang, and Liu Huayang are examplar physiological solo alchemists, who seek yinyang within their own bodies, and practice pure alchemy. Liu Yiming and Min Yide are examplar formless solo alchemists, who seek yinyang within void emptiness and practice the alchemy of void and nonbeing. Within the category of sexual alchemy the search for yinyang within another person of the same category , there are those who practice bijia danfa, that is, nann shuangxiu , the dual cultivation of one male and one female partner i.e., one female partner at a time . Hu classies Lu Xixing and Qiu Zhaoao as examplars of bijia danfa. But there are also those who practice longhu danfa, using a living dragon and tiger shenglong huohu , and bringing the three parties to meet together sanjia xiangjian . Hu lists many of the known sexual alchemists in this category, including Chen Zhixu,

136

See page 284 above.

137

See appendix 3 to chapter 4 pp. 36166 .

405

Zhang Sanfeng, Tao Susi, Sun Ruzhong and his father Sun Jiaoluan, and Fu Jinquan.138 Hu says that contemporary scholars have some understanding of all of these categories, save longhu danfa. For Hu, longhu danfa is the most secret and excellent form of sexual alchemy, and it may well be that he actually practitices it. Hu says that the alchemical instructions for all of the three houses and four lineages can be found within Cantong qi. Zeng Chuanhui concurs with Hu Fuchen, saying that Chen Zhixu teaches longhu danfa. This is a controversial claim, as I will discuss on pages 45763 below. Much of what Hu says is traditionalist, and must be taken with a grain of salt, yet we must look seriously at the issue of longhu danfa. In longhu danfa, the alchemist orchestrates a coupling between a male youth the dragon and female youth the tiger, ingesting their sexual energies from afar without actually touching them. I will argue that Chen Zhixu is not practicing longhu danfa, though something like it may have existed within his tradition, practiced by both a patriarch Zhao Youqin and a distant heir Fu Jinquan. §2.1.5, Ideal types and continua.

How would I draw distinctions within the

eld of sexual cultivation? I delimit myself to sexual alchemy and its cousins rather than Chinese sexology as such from alpha to omega, and even within these limits I will only oer a tentative answer. In subsequent sections, I will argue for a multifactorial continuum of ve ideal types. These ideal types are categories of convenience, not an absolute list of all possibilities. In synchronic or morphological terms,139 the continuum stretches from 1 nonalchemical huanjing bunao, to 2 quasialchemical huanjing bunao, to 3 alchemical huanjing bunao, to 4 goldenelixir sexual alchemy from the lateimperial period, and 5 goldenelixir sexual alchemy from the classical period and period of integration.

Fig. 5.3, Morphological continuum of sexual alchemy 138

I discuss all of these gures in chapter 6.

139

I dene morphology as a logical, formal progression which ignores categories of space . . . and time, allowing the arrangement of individual items in a hierarchical series of increased organization and complexity; J. Z. Smith, Imagining Religion, 23.

406

In diachronic or historical terms, the continuum stretches from 1 classical huanjing bunao Han to Song dynasties to 5 classical goldenelixir sexual alchemy Song, Yuan, and perhaps later dynasties to 2 quasialchemical huanjing bunao, 3 alchemical huanjing bunao, and 4 lateimperial goldenelixir sexual alchemy Ming and Qing dynasties.

Fig. 5.4, Historical continuum of sexual alchemy

If Hao Qin is right, and solo inner alchemy developed out of huanjing bunao, then we may construct a third arrangement, a twodimensional diagram showing evolutionary relationships: huanjing bunao

solo inner alchemy

huanjing bunao

Fig. 5.5, Developmental diagram of sexual alchemy

Throughout the rest of section 2, I will describe and discuss these ideal types. Future research will probably complicate this composite picture, or suggest revisions. §2.2. The History of Sexual Cultivation §2.2.1, Wiles Four Tracers.

One of Wiles most noteworthy contributions is his

account of thematic progressions within Chinese sexual cultivation.140 He chooses four tracers to show trends over the centuries; these are A the pleasure principle, B the position of women, C ejaculation frequency and control, and 140

Here I am paraphrasing Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 4451.

407

D sexual energy. In the earliest texts, A sex is for pleasure, but in the householder manuals category 3 and treatises on sexual alchemy category 4, pleasure is de emphasized. Sexual joy has been replaced with the transcendental joy of salvation, and sexual pleasure is mentioned merely as a signpost for navigation during the process. In the early texts, B women are nearly equal partners, but the literature of sexual alchemy portrays women as at metaphysical props. Wile claims that in the full blown sexual alchemy literature, foreplay and female orgasm have all but disappeared, a claim which is belied by some of the material he translates.141 He notes that The theme of immortality for women disappears from the sexual literature after the Ishimp and only re emerges in the context of womens solo meditation. This is not entirely true recall the story on page 387 above, in which L Dongbin transmitted a specically female alchemical practice to Zhang Zhennu, but Wiles point is well taken. Wile also notes that, over the centuries, the requirement of youth in the female partner tends to be for younger and younger women, and nally, within sexual alchemy, focuses on the moment of puberty. C Ejaculation becomes less and less frequent over the centuries, until in sexual alchemy the male adept should not ejaculate at all. Finally, Wile notes a development over time in the interpretation of female D sexual energy and male gathering, rening, and circulating. The earlier texts, from the Han to Tang dynasties, leave room for ambiguity as to whether the essences involved are internal, external, or an amalgam of the two. Sometimes the terms essence and qi are used interchangeably for female sexual energy, and it is not clear whether the adept should pay attention to tangible uids or intangible qi. I will argue below that this ambiguity remains even within later sexual alchemical texts that reject any reliance on tangible substances. Because Wiles four categories are not strictly diachronic, his thematic progression is neither purely historical nor purely morphological. Category 3 householder manuals overlaps chronologically with categories 2 and 4, and therefore is a morphological rather than historical category. Yet Wile speaks as if the thematic progression is a historical progression themes changing over time, so this is a aw in his argument. 141

See pages 474 below and 389 above.

408

§2.2.2, Hao Qins historical narrative.

For Hao Qin, inner alchemy evolved out

of early sexual cultivation, specically, huanjing bunao.142 The Mawangdui manuscripts teach huanjing bunao, Wei Boyang teaches it in the Cantong qi this is an anachronistic and dubious claim , and Ge Hong recommends it.143 Sexual cultivation including both huanjing bunao and the Celestial Masters heqi, merging of qi went underground due to Kou Qianzhis , 365 448 prohibition of sexual cultivation within Daoism, and due to the social strictures of the Tang and Song dynasties; yet it never ceased transmission. This sexual current contributed somehow to the development of solo inner alchemy, and reemerged in the Southern Lineage of inner alchemy in the Song dynasty. Were the alchemists of the Southern Lineage solo alchemists or sexual alchemists? Hao Qin says that Bai Yuchan H was denitely a solo alchemist, but as for Bai Yuchans lineal predecessors Zhang Boduan .@, Shi Tai +, Xue Daoguang F<, and Chen Nan 7: we cannot say with certainty. Actually, while Bai cited and emulated these gures, he probably did not stand in a lineage of direct transmission with them.144 Hao Qin cites the following detail from Xue Daoguangs biography as evidence that Shi Tai and Xue Daoguang were sexual alchemists: Dezhi Shi Tai transmitted all of the oral instructions to him Xue Daoguang, and furthermore warned him, saying: As for this practice, if you have not the outer protection of a colossal squire, it is liable to lead to slander. You ought to go quickly and, relying upon a patron of virtue and power, attempt it. The Purple Worthy Xue Daoguang thereupon threw away his monastic kali, and came to the capital wearing a turban and scholars gown, mingling and harmonizing his radiance with common folk, and only then completing this aair of cultivation. / 0 62 ' I%G;,$!A &? 9B=3>*C8E1" &4(#145 142

Here I am paraphrasing Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 298 302. I have discussed this on pages 235 36 above.

143

Ge Hong accepts the bedchamber art as one of three fundamental forms of cultivation the other two being daoyin D and golden elixir laboratory alchemy , and for Ge the essence of the bedchamber art is huanjing bunao; Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 24. 144

This lineage was probably cooked up by Bai Yuchan or his heirs. Bai or his heirs may have written some of the texts ascribed to the SouthernLineage patriarchs, too. The works attributed to Chen Nan have long been considered spurious; Skar, Golden Elixir Alchemy, 248 49. 145

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 299, citing DZ 296, Lishi zhenxian tidao tongjian 49.14b2 4, and Shi Xue er zhenren jile F-)5 Abbreviated biography of the two perfected, Shi and Xue . I have not been able to nd

409

Why would Shi Tai and Xue Daoguang fear slander, and require a patron, if they were merely practicing solo inner alchemy? Hao Qin extends this line of thinking to Zhang Boduan as well, suggesting that perhaps the reason Zhang needed his patrons Lu Shen and Ma Chuhou was because Zhang was also a sexual alchemist. Whether we take this as convincing evidence or not, Chen Zhixu certainly interprets them this way, citing these two cases as examples of seeking patronage for sexual cultivation.146 Hao Qin thinks that Chen Zhixu and his master Zhao Youqin got their sexual alchemy through Shi Tais lineage; and that Weng Baoguang also received sexual teachings through a separate branch of the Southern Lineage, through Liu Yongnian . 1138 52, d. 1168. It is said that Liu Yongnian was a direct heir of Zhang Boduan, yet Liu lived too long after Zhangs demise for this to have been possible.147 Hao Qin says that SouthernLineage masters of the Song taught sexual alchemy in secret; Chen Zhixu and Dao Qizong taught sexual alchemy guardedly in the Yuan; and sexual alchemy became more popular and openly discussed in the Ming because the commercialism of Ming society led to a measure of sexual liberation. Despeux basically agrees with Hao Qin: Some alchemical schools rejected sexual partner practice; others integrated it into their system. The Northern tradition, including Complete Perfection, generally favored celibacy and sexual abstinence. . . . For them, the union of yin and yang took place inside the adepts body, and sexual energy was not to be used outwardly. The Southern traditions, on the other hand, made use of sexual intercourse in their practice . . . As time went on, in the Ming dynasty an increasing openness regarding sexual matters developed.148 Elena Valussi echoes this, mentioning a shift in attitude, from open to chastising, towards sexual techniques in the practice of inner alchemy from the end of the Ming dynasty to the Qing.149 Valussi cites the shift from Lu Xixings openness in the Ming to Li Xiyues prudishness in the Qing as an example of this shift. A study of sexual the source of this Shi Xue er zhenren jile; it is probably a lateimperial text, and not reliable evidence of the earlier tradition. The version of this episode in DZ 296 mentions the themes of patronage, and mingling with common folk, but not the threat of slander. 146

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 13.12b7 8, 14.8b10.

147

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 300, 352, 359.

148

Despeux and Kohn, Women in Daoism, 211.

149

Valussi, Beheading the Red Dragon, 43 44; also see ibid., 292n13.

410

attitudes in the Yuan and Ming would contribute further to this issue, but the central question of whether SouthernLineage masters practiced sexual alchemy awaits further study. §2.2.3, Lists of texts.

In lieu of contributing a historical narrative of my own, I

will contribute research materials for a future history of sexual alchemy. I will oer a list of the relevant texts in the Ming Daoist canon, and see what can be learned from it. As for the history of sexual alchemy from the Ming dynasty down to the present, I oer some discussion of this in chapter 6, but not a denitive account. In the two tables below, I oer two lists of texts from the Ming Daoist canon, dating from the seventh to fourteenth centuries, that either teach sexual alchemy or are relevant to the study of sexual alchemy. Figure 5.6 is a list of texts I am relatively certain contain sexual cultivation teachings. A few of these contain macrobiotic yangsheng sexual cultivation, but most contain sexual alchemy. Figure 5.7 is a list of texts that may or may not prove to contain sexual content. These lists do not give a full picture of the eld of sexual cultivation in Chinese society generally, only a picture of the eld within professional Daoist circles.

Tang dynasty

DZ 1032, j. 73

Yindan shenshou jue %+$ in Yunji qiqian )86 Sexual protoinner alchemy

Tang dynasty

DZ 1032, j. 64

Wangwu Zhenren koushou yindan mijue lingpian Sexual protoinner alchemy %$71 in Yunji qiqian

Five Dyn.

DZ 134

Yin zhenjun huandan gezhu

Early alternative sexual alchemy

1150?

DZ 1017, j. 3

Rongcheng pian in Daoshu

Revealing criticism of sexual alchemy

1180s1279 DZ 878

Zituan danjing &.,

Cites Wuzhen pian, Weng Baoguang

1222

DZ 151

Jinye huandan yinzheng tu !23/

Cites Weng Baoguang

Song dynasty

DZ 1034

Taixuan baodian 5

An anthology of macrobiotics and inner alchemy

1291

DZ 851

Sanyuan yanshou canzan shu 04

An anthology of macrobiotics

1173; 1335

DZ 141

Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu &(1'#

Editor Dai Qizong is a sexual alchemist see pp. 6012 below; Weng Baoguang may be

Yuan dynasty

DZ 555

Gaoshang yuegong Taiyin Yuanjun Xiaodao Xianwang lingbao A Jingming Daoist text; cites jingming huangsu shu %- 75"* Southern Lineage materials

12th c., 133135

DZ 142

Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu &(1'

Chen Zhixu and Lu Shu are sexual alchemists; Weng Baoguang may be

133136

DZ 106770, 1077

Jindan dayao

Chen Zhixu

411

ca. 1335

Daozang jiyao

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu & ,

Chen Zhixu

ca. 1335

DZ 143

Ziyang zhenren wuzhen zhizhi xiangshuo sansheng miyao 03$#$:;"%!

Editor Dai Qizong is a sexual alchemist; Weng Baoguang may be

1336

DZ 91

Taishang Dongxuan Lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhu Chen Zhixu C@/271

ca. 1350

DZ 1189

Yindan neipian + <

An alternative tradition of sexual alchemy

Fig. 5.6, Daoist sexual cultivation texts, up to the Ming dynasty

962

DZ 926

Da huandan zhaojian ?6B

Liu Tsunyan, Lu Hsihsing and His Commentaries on the Tsantungchi, 206, says it contains sexual alchemy; I reserve judgment.

Tang or Song dynasties?

DZ 32

Hunyuan yangfu jing )3*7

Wang Ka says it teaches sexual cultivation; Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, 37273.

ca. 110050?

DZ 660

Hunyuan bajing zhenjing ).$7

Cf. Liu Tsunyan, ibid., 212; I reserve judgment.

ca. 1173

DZ 145 Wuzhen pian zhushi #$<1A

By Weng Baoguang was he a sexual alchemist?

N. Song dyn.?

DZ 225 Taishang jiuyao xinyin miaojing ! 7

Cf. Liu Tsunyan, ibid., 227; I reserve judgment.

1227

DZ 109

Huangdi yinfu jing jiangyi 4+*7>8

By Xia Zongyu was he a sexual alchemist? Cf. Liu Tsunyan, Zhang Boduan yu Wuzhen pian, 802.

ca. 1227

DZ 146

Ziyang zhenren wuzhen pian jiangyi 03$#$< By Xia Zongyu was he a sexual alchemist? >8

1309

DZ 103

Yuqing wuji zongzhen wenchang dadong xianjing zhu (/5=$7

Song or Yuan dynasties?

DZ 399

Taishang dongxuan lingbao tianzun shuo jiuku miaojing Cf. Liu Tsunyan, ibid., 227; I reserve judgment. zhujie C@-;' 719

Cf. Liu Tsunyan,Lu Hsihsing and His Commentaries on the Tsantungchi, 207; I reserve judgment.

Fig. 5.7, Daoist texts possibly mentioning sexual alchemy, up to the Ming dynasty

From the list in gure 5.6 above, we can see that, whether or not Weng Baoguang and the Wuzhen pian teach sexual alchemy, they had become associated with sexual alchemy during the Southern Songby 1222 at the latest cf. DZ 151 , and probably earlier cf. Lu Shu , likely of the Southern Song, in DZ 142 . I would sum up the eld of preMingdynasty Daoist sexual cultivation into four categories: early sexual alchemy in DZ 1032, 134, and 1017 , sexual macrobiotics DZ 1034, 851, 32? , and one late alternative tradition DZ 1189 , with the rest and bulk of the texts containing sexual alchemy associated with the Southern Lineage. §2.3, Ideal Types and Procedures of Cultivation In section 2.1 above, I suggest that the Wiles category of alchemical texts includes both materials on goldenelixir sexual alchemy and materials on huanjing bunao in 412

alchemical language. I also suggest that the goldenelixir sexual alchemy, alchemical huanjing bunao, and nonalchemical huanjing bunao form a continuum. I will now show this by describing the practices from several of Wiles texts, ranging from classical huanjing bunao, to alchemical huanjing bunao, to goldenelixir sexual alchemy. I will also summarize Hao Qins discussion of sexual alchemy in the Western Lineage of inner alchemy. We will see that, within the continuum formed by these texts, there are both contrasts and similarities. The di culty is not that there are no dierences between the texts, but that it is open to debate which dierences are most signicant. The discussion in this section is relevant to the study of Chen Zhixus teachings in section 3 of this chapter because it will give us some points for comparison, and help us to locate Chens teachings within a broader eld of sexual cultivation. Also, because the Mingdynasty texts reveal their details more openly, comparing them with Chens writings will shed light on cryptic passages in the latter. §2.3.1, Type 1: Classical huanjing bunao, and sanfeng caizhan.

What is huanjing

bunao? Hao Qin takes it as the mainstream of sexual cultivation, and the origin of the key physiological elements of inner alchemy. Wile calls it the centerpiece of Chinese sexual practice.150 Cai Jun and Li Wenkun nd traces of this concept in every classic discussion of sexual cultivation, from Mawangdui to the Ming dynasty.151 For Ge Hong 283343 , huanjing bunao is an indispensible part of any regimen of self cultivation and a support for the greater work of laboratory alchemy : There are texts by ten or more experts on the techniques of the bedchamber. Some of them use this for replenishing and rescuing from injury and deterioration; some use it for attacking and curing the many diseases; some use it for gathering yin to benet yang; some use it to increase the lifespan; yet the great essentials lie in the one matter of recycling the essence to replenish the brain huanjing bunao, and nothing more. These techniques are transmitted orally by perfected persons, and originally were not to be written down. Even were one to ingest famous medicines, if one did not also know these essentials of the bedchamber, one could not achieve long life. 2! .&+, '# ($) 1 / 30.- %* "4

150


151

Cai Jun and Li Wenkun, Xing kexue yu Zhonuo chuantong xing xiulian, 151.

413

B8 $. 0&152 Ge Hong goes on to recommend huanjing bunao as a way for the male adept to avoid the twin dangers of celibacy with its mental demons and semenloss leading to early death . Wile characterizes Chinese male sexual cultivation in general as arousing and circulating internal energy without engaging in kinetic overkill or allowing the energy to escape,153 and throughout history huanjing bunao has been the main way that adepts have tried to do this. I take huanjing bunao as a thread running throughout the prealchemical sexual literature. It is not the only threadWile mentions other threads such as emotional harmonization, sexual synchronization, eugenics, and therapies for sexual dysfunctionbut it is the thread most relevant to our study of sexual alchemy. Descriptions of huanjing bunao can be found in Tang and Mingdynasty materials. Yufang zhiyao text 2.3, a SuiTang text from Ishimp says, The classics on immortality say that the dao of returning the jing to nourish the brain is to wait during intercourse until the jing is greatly aroused, and on the point of emission, and then, using the two middle ngers of the left hand, press just between the scrotum and the anus. Press down with considerable force and expel a long breath while gnashing the teeth several tens of times, but without holding the breath. Then allow yourself to ejaculate. The jing, however, will not be able to issue forth and instead will travel from the jade stalk upward and enter the brain.154 9A>;: <2> /3%+",) 6C* (! &D7@?= 5D'-#>> 0 148A: Here, it seems that it is tangible semen which is recycled to replenish the brain. In this case, it is only the male adepts jing that is recycled, but huanjing bunao often involves gathering and recycling the female partners jing as well. The following passage from Zijin Guangyao Daxian xiuzhen yanyi text 3.5, Ming dynasty includes huanjing bunao as an element within muchmaligned practice of sanfeng caizhan gathering and battling at the three peaks : Carry out nine times nine strokes with eyes closed and mouth shut . . . In this 152

Baopuzi neipian jiaoshi, 150. My translation, adding italics. Also cf. Ware, Alchemy, Medicine, and Religion, 140.

153


154

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 101. Chinese text from Yufang zhiyao, Shuangmei yingan congshu ed., 1b112a1 pp. 76 77 in reprint .

414

way, one rst absorbs from the lower peak. When the lower absorption has reached great intensity, the womans qi becomes expansive and stimulates the middle peak above. I slowly embrace her, suck the juices from the left and right breasts, and swallow them. After absorbing their wonderful essence one may stop. This then is absorption from the middle peak. When absorption from the middle peak has reached great intensity, the womans qi expands again and penetrates all the way to the upper peak. I allow my tongue to explore freely beneath the opponents tongue. Probing the two openings there, I suck the secretions, swallowing again and again. This then is the upper peak of the three absorptions. When the upper absorption is complete, the woman will be at the height of ecstasy and the true qi of her private parts will be released. At this time, one should withdraw the wonderful handle an inch or so and elevate the body like a turtle, raising a breath of qi directly to the upper dantian. Take in the opponents qi and absorb her secretions, circulating them throughout your body. At this point, the three absorptions are complete. The woman, too, is thoroughly satised from top to bottom; and her channels of qi open up and ow freely. Now exhale a breath or two of qi and have the woman inhale and swallow it to calm her spirit. When this art is thoroughly mastered, and when the true essence released by the partner is obtained and ones own unshed jing is returned, then this is of little harm to the woman and of great benet to oneself. When yin and yang obtain each other and water and re are in perfect union, this then is the marvelous benet of mounting women.155 1m("n .$W N BEoObc/pN 2`>3z:/v:LEU.-BN WEo Ob_[?N2r0?=0 x:9u3:H/CA& . BN BEwh\QOIyF]TYs8* {Ô @!M=O/3=Hfi

415

Guangyao Daxian xiuzhen yanyi recommends a fourteenyearold partner, which was actually the marriageable age for a young woman ,156 but as we shall see below, the same may be said of sexual alchemy. Why then did Chen hate sanfeng caizhan so much? On pages 11213 above, I quote Barend ter Haars view that the Yuandynasty Buddhist leader Pudus criticism of the practice of sexual techniques by Pupils of the Lotus Tradition, therefore, served two purposes: he defended his own tradition against potential suspicion and at the same time raised doubts about a competing and supercially similar tradition.157 In chapter 3, I argue that Chen rejects the bedchamber arts and sanfeng caizhan because he fears that outside observers might elide the distinctions between these teachings and his own. On pages 62324 below, I argue that Wang Shizhen, a famous man of letters in the Ming, rejects Chens sexual teachings because he fears others might infer wrongly that his relationship with his young female guru Tanyangzi involved similar behavior. We see the same mindset in all three of these cases. There may be cultural reasons why Chen rejects the cultivation of tangible jingye in favor of intangible jingqi he may feel that external substances are profane and qi is sacred , but the vehemence of his rejection may be a strategy for social competition, a way to install a rewall between himself and his rivals. §2.3.2, Type 2: Quasialchemical huanjing bunao.

Lets look at one more example

of huanjing bunao, in which the practice is glossed in inneralchemical terms. This passage is from Huanjing caiqi pian Section on recycling the essence and gathering the qi , in Shesheng zongyaog, a Mingdynasty anthology on macrobiotics yangsheng .158 If we are to speak of successful sexual practice but stop at nonejaculation, this is not yet to speak of the marvelous. The essential thing is in recycling the 156

From the Song to Qing dynasties, the age of marriage was set at sixteen for men and fourteen for women; Zhang Dapeng, Zhongguo gudai hunyin nianling de chansheng jiqi yanbian.

157

Ter Haar, The White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History, 1067.

158

I translate all of Huanjing caiqi pian except for some concluding verses. Huanjing caiqi pian is a subsection within the larger section Fangshu qishu , within the book Shesheng zongyao . Fangshu qishu is ascribed to Ren Dongming, Daoist of the Kan Palace Kangong Daoren Ren Dongming , about whom nothing is known. Shesheng zongyao was compiled by Hong Ji . 1638 , and is mostly medicinal prescriptions.

416

essence and gathering the qi: this is the great dao. Someone asks: What is recycling the essence and gathering the qi? I answer: In general, when one has slapped and drummed hundred or thousands of times, the woman will have yinconjunctions yinjiao ; expressions of yin in three places: 1 the two breasts, 2 two armpits, and 3 two kidneys. While slapping and drumming to and fro, gauge her sounds, tenderness, and changes of complexion. If her eyes are unfocused and her mouth closes, her hands are cold and heart is impatient, then at this moment immediately contract your lower body, humping up lit., squatting like a turtle. The secretions159 within her pin will be drawn into your numinous bough; thus, this is called drinking from the sea, the black dragon receives the jing . First, fuse it with your own primal yang, and then they can mix together and become one. From the Tail Gate the coccyx and through the Spinal Straits at midspine or shoulder height, it ascends to penetrate the MuddyPellet Palace the brain, then descends to the dantian, the perfected qi moistening and nourishing. How could this be only a minor tonic? We may say that the female body as a whole is yin, with only her secretions being yang. Thus we say that the lead within the water is her yang quality. This is also called the red dame. The male body as a whole is yang, with only his jingqi being yin. Thus we say that the mercury within the granulated cinnabar is his yin quality. This is also called the hoaryheaded old man. The red is lead, and the white is mercury. When the perfected Qi and humor fuse together, and you transport them up to the Muddy Pellet, then your teeth and hair will not fall out, and your complexion will be that of a youth. W.$"FL%ATGX,g]oT{J!7 g]r!}520n( kEC Ea EsQHD}ZF6j~+ 8xI\O mB-F1Sh4<R9P!u^v/+4 t di3Te;:blK)Y&p_]cz N BnfShtP!#|t *V[?

Btf]nP!>=n *'`VT|' T=_hU+wKMy3-q@160 In this lateimperial account of huanjing bunao, the sexual energy is drawn from the mans sex organ up his spine to nourish his brain, returning to the dantian. I call this quasialchemical huanjing bunao, since the mans white essence the semen and the womans red secretions the menses, or something related to them are correlated with the alchemical pharmaca mercury and lead. The idea that the lead within the womans body is yangwithinyin, and the mans mercury is yinwithinyang, is also 159

In classical Chinese medicine, the jin S and ye h are distinguished from each other, though not consistently. Generally, jinuids are relatively yang and may escape from the body, while yeuids are relatively yin and internal; Sivin, Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China, 166. I doubt the technical distinction between jin and ye applies here. 160

Primary material from Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 296, and an online etext widely available. I have not been able to consult the reprint of Shesheng zongyao.

417

derived from inner alchemy, and not from huanjing bunao. §2.3.3, What is jing?

These passages raise a question regarding jing: Is it

tangible matter, or intangible qi? It can be both: Wile notes that semen is thought to possess both a material jingye and an energetic jingqi aspect,161 and the same would be true for a woman, who has both jingye sweat, blood, or secretions and jingqi the qi within her yin jing. In the passage above from 2.3 Yufang zhiyao, the man seems to be recycling his jingye. In 3.5 Xiuzhen yanyi, the adept is told to take in the opponents qi and absorb her secretions, so he is using both material and energetic aspects of the partners jing. In Huanjing caiqi pian, the nature of the jing is quite ambiguous: the womans secretions jingye mix with the mans jing to become perfected qi jingqi within his body; and the womans pharmacon is termed both secretions jingye, and lead within water jingqi within jingye. We could imagine a range of relations between the two aspects of jing that is, between jing and qi, or between jingye and jingqi: these relations could include 1 jing + qi, or 2 jing = qi, or 3 qi within jing, or 4 qi signaled by jing, or 5 simply an undisambiguable jingqi. A similar ambiguity holds in solo alchemy. Hao Qin denes qi as the functional or energetic aspect of jing jing is the substance ti , and qi is the function yong , and says that jing and qi, in essence, are a single stu .162 Ma Jiren says that the three treasures, jing, qi, and spirit, are all derived from a common pre cosmic ancestral qi xiantian zuqi that divided into three di erent functions within the postcosmic world.163 Within solo alchemy, jing and qi may been either seen as separate entities, or as an ambiguous jingqi. For solo alchemists, the ambiguous relationship between jing and qi is mostly just academic, but for sexual alchemists, it is a live issue. The di erence between sexual alchemy and the bedchamber arts is sometimes stated in terms of jing and qi. Zeng Chuanhui says that in the bedchamber arts one takes tangible secretions as

161


162


163


418

pharmaca, while in sexual alchemy only intangible qi is used.164 Maspero and Needham would agree with Zeng, saying that it is jingye rather than jingqi which is circulated in huanjing bunao.165 Yet Maspero and Needham receive pointed criticism from Wile for this position. While noting the ambiguous nature of jing in his texts, Wile argues that what is circulated in huanjing bunao is almost always intangible jingqi rather than tangible jingye he would say the same thing for sexual alchemy . Hao Qins position di ers from all of the above: within sexual alchemy as well within the bedchamber arts, the inner pharmacon is none other than the mans semen, and the outer pharmacon is the womans secretions, and possibly the socalled female ejaculate.166 Yet elsewhere Hao says that the outer pharmacon is qi.167 Perhaps his ambiguity is related to his point that, when the male pharmacon is locked inside, it is primal essence yuanjing , and if it is ejaculated it becomes seminal essence.168 To recap: Standard position Zeng Maspero and Needham Wile Hao Qin

Sexual alchemy qi ? qi rarely, uid uid or qi

Bedchamber arts uid uid qi rarely, uid uid or qi?

Fig. 5.8, Views on jingqi and jingye in sexual cultivation

Rather than choosing one of these positions as correct, I prefer to bring ambiguity rather than clarity to this debate. The stu which is circulated in huanjing bunao may be jingqi, or jingye, or just jing. I will argue below that the situation within sexual alchemy is also ambiguous. This supports my point that, in some aspects such as the physiological aspect , it is dicult to draw distinctions between alchemical and non alchemical sexual cultivation, between jindan zhi dao and pangmen xiaoshu , and that the distinctions may be more rhetorical than praxological. A nal question arises regarding phrases such as the secretions within her pin will be drawn into your numinous bough in Huanjing caiqi pian . Is the male 164


165

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 56, 59.

166

Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 313. Hao correctly notes that the existence of female ejaculate in human beings is still a matter of debate. 167

E.g., Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 317, 321.

168


419

adept sucking female secretions through his urethra? Needham describes the vajrol mudr of modern Indian yogis, by which the penis performs a veritable seminal aspiration, the muscles of the abdomen creating a partial vacuum in the bladder and so permitting the absorption of part at least of the vaginal contents.169 Needham speculates that this skill may have come to India from China. While Indian texts themselves may indeed call this a Chinese discipline cncra , we should take Needhams speculations with a grain of salt, since he is an inveterate booster of classical Chinese civilization or his own view of it .170 As to whether Chinese adepts also did seminal aspiration, from the passages translated above, it certainly seems that they did. I have never seen this called a sacred and indispensible skill, however. §2.3.4, Type 3: Alchemical huanjing bunao.

Of the ve alchemical texts

translated by Wile, I consider the rst two, 4.1 Jindan jiuzheng pian, and 4.2 Jindan zhenchuan, to be sexual alchemy, and the other three, 4.3 Jindan jieyao, 4.4 Caizhen jiyao, and 4.5 Wugen shu, to be alchemical huanjing bunao. I will summarize and discuss the practices of 4.3 Jindan jieyao and 4.4 Caizhen jiyao here, and 4.2 Jindan zhenchuan below. The remaining two texts, 4.1 Jindan jiuzheng pian and 4.5 Wugen shu, do not openly reveal their practice sequences. §2.3.4.1, Jindan jieyao.

The Zhang Sanfeng text 4.3 Jindan jieyao begins with

instructions for heel breathing zhongxi , 17071 .171 The term alludes to a line from Zhuangzi: The perfected person breathes with his heels; the mass of common men breathe with their throats.172 Here, however, heel breathing means doing seated meditation with the heels pressing on the lower Magpie Bridge at the perineum, and the tongue forming the upper Magpie Bridge at the upper palate. While visualizing sun, moon, and a pearl within the inner landscape, the adept swallows qi in the form 169


170

Needham thinks that sex as a way of salvation has something suspiciously Chinese about it; Science and Civilisation in China, 5.5:283. When he says that, whereas Indian yoga was more extreme, Chinese practices were protoscientic, his bias is obvious; ibid., 288.

171

Both 4.3 Jindan jieyao and 4.4 Caizhen jiyao are ascribed to Zhang Sanfeng, and come from Sanfeng danjue, a small collection included within the larger collection, Jiyizi daoshu shiqi zhong, that was compiled by Fu Jinquan around 1825. I paraphrase Wiles translations Art of the Bedchamber, 16978 and 17888 , adding intext page number citations. 172

From Zhuangzi, chapter 6 Da zongshi , H.Y. 6.7; translated in Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 78.

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of saliva, and performs lesserorbital circulation. Next comes the stage of opening the passes kaiguan , 171 . The adept transports qi up from the yongquan points in the heels and around in lesserorbital circulation, does heel breathing while contracting the anus, does various rubbings and pattings to open up the passes, then causes his metallous essence to soar up behind the elbows zhouhou fei jinjing , a form of solo huanjing bunao. For rening the self with humors of jade yuye lianji , 17173 , the adept uses between three and ve female partners. They should be between sixteen and seventeen years old, or as young as fourteen. The text describes mutual masturbation or other foreplay, using two terms from Wuzhen pian: striking the bamboo qiaozhu and drumming on the zither guqin . The adept visualizes qi between the kidneys, and glares inwardly at his ophryon between his brows . He practices formless intercourse shenjiao ti bujiao 173 stopping after several cycles to breathe deeply and ingest the partners qi. Jindan jieyao discusses the requisites for sexual cultivation: funds cai , site, and companions 173 . It counsels the adept to live in a city, and rely on a rich and powerful patron clan, echoing the same phrases from the hagiography of Xue Daoguang see pages 40910 above . The adept ought to live in a compound with an altar for worshiping the patriarchs of the lineage. The adept must have companions and a yellow dame to look after him while he is drunk on the pharmacon, and guide him at the crucial moment of gathering. The text gives detailed instructions on choosing female partners 174 . The best is a fourteenyearold prepubescent girl who has lived 5048 days; her rst menses is a priceless treasure. Women in their late twenties can still be employed for practicing the sexual timing xilian huogong , or as a tonic for male impotence zipei ruolong . The yellow dame aids the adept in inspecting the partners menses and discharges in order to gauge the point in the lunar cycle when the partners pharmacon will appear 175 . The moment when the pharmacon appears is said to be three days after the sign of the termination of the menstrual period in 173

That is, he has physical intercourse without engaging with his spirit. The term is explained on page 424 below.

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the west, that is, three days after the juncture between pure yin on hui, the dark moon day and the birth of new yang on shuo, the newmoon day . Yet this is not the third day of a calendar month, nor even the third day of the womans individual menstrual cycle. Jindan jieyao oers a complex system for calculating the true hour of living midnight huo zishi

, based on the birthhour, day, month, and year of the individual partner 17778 . In addition to calculating the proper day for gathering, the adept must determine the proper moment during intercourse. When the tongue is like water, the medicine is about to arrive; when the dates are like re huozao ,174 the medicine is nearly ready 177 . This timing may be related to female orgasm, but exactly how is unclear. By watching the womans face, the adept can see when she will begin to produce yin water guishui ; he must gather when the yin water has run out and changed to yang water renshui . The adept transports a drop of perfected mercury from his perineum jin bianchu to meet the partners lead, and remains motionless as he gathers her outer pharmacon. As he is gathering it, he performs lesserorbital circulation; after he has gained it, he must disengage and withdraw for seven days of meditation, to form the holy fetus. This is the most advanced stage of attainment mentioned in Jindan jieyao. §2.3.4.2, Caizhen jiyao.

The Zhang Sanfeng text 4.4 Caizhen jiyao is a set of

laconic verses, with Fu Jinquans explicit commentary. Fu says many of the same things we saw in Jindan jieyao, adding some details. In his commentary to the nal verse 18788 , Fu describes the process succinctly. First, the adept tamps the base zhuji for one hundred days, circulating qi and locking the seminal essence, and holding the breath. Then, he must do thirty hours of preliminary sexual intercourse to open the passes and apertures, adjust the heartmind and inherent nature xinxing , as well as the essence and qi, the sword, the water and re of heart and kidneys? , and the humors, qi, and blood. Then he approaches the chosen partner of ve thousand and fortyeight days, or around fourteen years, of age . 174

For a discussion of ery dates, see p. 534n307 below.

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After foreplay, and intercourse with the partner on top symbolized by the hexagram tai , i.e., yin over yang , he will feel his coccyx become stimulated and naturally constrict. Now, the adept must lock his seminal essence by clenching his anus, closing his eyes, halting his breath, and using erce guiding intention. He brings the tiger to the point of ecstasy, swallows her cold, clear saliva, and gathers her metallous qi by sending a drop of his perfected mercury from the coccyx to meet it. Then he must withdraw, grasp the crooks of his knees, and perform nine rounds of huanjing bunao while concentrating on the Mystic Pass xuanguan , followed by lesserorbital circulation. He circulates his own perfected mercury through his cranium and nose, passing it down his throat in the form of mucus. Below the esophagus, the recycled male sexual energy will meet the womans metallous humor jinye that the adept swallowed before, and he transports both to his middle dantian zhongji , central limit . Continuing to inhale atmospheric qi and swallow it as saliva, his spirit and qi become one. Practicing this way, the adept will have no di culty attaining the highest dao. Hao Qin discusses several Zhang Sanfeng texts, as well as some short passages from Shesheng zongyao. His discussion of the Zhang Sanfeng material, based on several texts from Zhang Sanfeng Xiansheng quanji,175 adds little to Wiles materials. Hao does add one piece of new information: in Xuanji zhijiang, the sort of huanjing bunao practices that we saw above in Jindan jieyao and Caizhen jieyao are not the end of the practice sequence, but are followed by more advanced practices that correspond to the stages in the standard account of solo inner alchemy of greaterorbital circulation da zhoutian , or rening of qi into spirit lianqi huashen .176 In section 2.4 below I compare all of the di erent forms of sexual cultivation discussed in this chapter, arguing that the Zhang Sanfeng texts are huanjing bunao in alchemical language, and lack many important features of inner alchemy, yet the inclusion of the advanced stages of alchemical practice within Xuanji zhijiang show that some forms of sexual cultivation ascribed to Zhang Sanfeng may be more fully 175

Xuanji zhijiang, Dadao lun, and Xuanyao pian. These texts were probably composed by Wang Xiling 16641724 , or may have been transmitted to him by Zhang Sanfeng through spirit writing; Wong Shiu Hon, Investigations into the Authenticity of the Chang SanFeng ChuanChi, 1012, 100. 176


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edged sexual alchemy. §2.3.5, Type 4: Lateimperial goldenelixir sexual alchemy.

This ideal type is

represented by the text Jindan zhenchuan.177 This text was written by three authors working together: Sun Ruzhong supplies his fathers teachings, Zhang Chonglie supplies the commentary zhu , and Li Kan supplies the discursive commentary shu .178 While the book is credited to Sun, the prose of Zhang and Li tells us more than Suns verses do. The text I use was edited and with eyebrow notes on the upper margin of the page by Fu Jinquan, the same man who transmitted 4.4 Caizhen jiyao. 1, Tamping the base

Zhuji; 15658 . The male adept draws blood and qi from

the female partner into his dantian, where they coalesce with his own essence and spirit. This stage takes one hundred days. He may use either the prenatal blood within the uterus? or postnatal blood menses . The qi is contained within the blood; or, rather, blood and qi are two energyforms of a single underlying stu , jingqi. The adept practices formless or wuweistyle sexual intercourse. The phrases shenjiao ti bujiao or qijiao xing bujiao mean although one is engaged in intercourse, it is as if one was not 158 . 2, Obtaining the pharmacon

Deyao ; 15859 . The adept draws the outer

pharmacon from the postnatal caldron into his body, combines it with the qi and blood gathered in stage 1. He uses his postnatal substance zhi ; i.e., semen to receive the prenatal qi, which stabilizes his semen to turn it into true mercury zhengong ; i.e., yuanjing, primal essence . He must use his sword to separate the yang water renshui from the yin water guishui , gathering the yang water several times until his three dantian are full and his elixir foundation danji is rm. Several people participate at this stage: the male adept, an external yellow dame wai huangpo , perhaps a chaperon or procuress , and multiple companions lban who together with the adept are three persons with one will tongzhi sanren 177

I paraphrase Wiles translation Art of the Bedchamber, 15369 , with intext pagenumber citations.

178

Sun Ruzhong b. 1575, . 1616 received teachings from his fathermaster Sun Jiaoluan 1505 1610 , and compiled the book together with two kindred spirits, Zhang Chonglie from Henglu , the foothills of Mt. Heng in Hunan and Li Kan byname Chuyu , from Yingcheng county, or present day Dean county, Hubei . The book was produced in 1616 by Sun Ruzhong and his brother Sun Ruxiao . Zhang and Li were not students of Sun; it seems they all were equals.

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. The adept probably uses two female partners at this stage, though we must consider the possibility that this is longhu danfa, with an alchemist orchestrating, from a distance, an encounter between two other persons. When the adept gathers the outer pharmacon, he will feel as if drunk or bewitched, and the companions and yellow dame must look after him. 3, Fusing the pharmacon

Jiedan ; 15960 . The adept fuses the outer

pharmacon with his own yin mercury yingong , seminal essence, or perhaps primal essence , to form an inner elixir neidan like a glowing red tangerine within the lower dantian. Blood is tranformed into seminal essence, and essence into perfected mercury primal essence . When this stage is complete, the adept has become a transcendent in the human realm renxian . 4, Rening the self

Lianji ; 16061 . The adept renes the elixir, a fusion

product of the womans outer pharmacon and his own primal essence, within his body to transform it into cinnabar. The discursive commentary says that Although one employs caldron and furnace, zither and sword, partner and yellow dame, one must remain proper and dignied, so this stage still involves sexual activity. Within the body, the adept renes the pharmaca until their yin aspect is completely extinguished. Outwardly, he transforms all of his tangible bodily uids semen, saliva, and humors, blood, sweat, and tears into rosegem ointment qionao , and transforms his esh into jade. The yellow dame and companions keep watch on the adepts rhythm and timing. 5, Recycling the elixir

Huandan ; 16164 . This stage involves both

gathering and rening. The adept should gather the pharmacon when its yang qi is freshest, that is, in the interval between the darkmoon day hui ; the last day of the month and the newmoon day shuo ; the rst day of the month , or between pure yin and the emergence of new yang. According to the cycle of the month, the adept should gather between hui and shuo; but it is also said that the adept should gather eight liangounces of yang on the eighth day of the month dui , and eight more on the twentythird gen . These two eightliang measures are added to make a whole catty jin of yang. The rst sort of gathering is an external, sexual 425

gathering of the outer pharmacon, while the second sort of gathering is an internal, meditational gathering of yang qi from the fusing pharmaca, to make an inner elixir of pure yang. In addition to the lunar cycle, a cycle of six periods hou is also mentioned. During the rst two periods, the adept gathers the pharmacon from the partner, and during the nal four periods, he works on fusing the elixir within his own body. Three companions are required at this stage. Li Kans discursive commentary records a solemn sexual ritual in which the adept approaches the altar with the pace of Yu Yu bu on the fteenth day of the eighth month, and, clasping the hands of the dragon to the left and the tiger to the right, attains the fusion of water and metal, and the return of the yang yaoline into the dragons li . It seems that the adept is using both a male dragon and female tiger

companion here. Another companion sits within a tent, making plans zuowo yunchou , perhaps as a sort of project manager. 6, Incubation

Wenyang ; 16466 . This is a purely internal stage. The

adept cooks the elixir within his inner caldron, the middle dantian near his heart. He res the elixir over ten lunar cycles, and one calendar year, using the twelve Sovereign Hexagrams pigua , and adjusting the level of re to suit each of the twelve lunar cycles. The text also o ers cryptic instructions on the ring cycle during each day, with 216 units of re during the rst half of the day the period of advancing the yang re, jin yanghuo , 144 units of re during the second half of the day the period of retracting the yin tallies, tui yinfu , adding up to 360 units per day. After ten lunar cycles, the holy fetus shengtai will appear. 7, Parturition

Tuotai ; 16667 . The elixir ascends from the middle

dantian to the brain the upper dantian , bursts through the crown with a peal of thunder, and emerges as the yang spirit. One is greeted by the gods, and becomes a terrestrial transcendent dixian . One trains the yang spirit to roam progressively further and further from the body. 8, The Mysterious Pearl

Xuanzhu ; 16768 . Moving from the level of a

terrestrial transcendent to a celestial transcendent requires realizing the non duality between self and other, or between self and all things. It also requires 426

gathering the mysterious pearl, the precosmic metal within the precosmic state xiantian zhong zhi xiantian qian , produced in the prenatal crucible over a period of 5,048 days i.e., 13.8 years without error 167 , that is, it has developed in a fourteenyearold girl of rare perfection, as she has grown up. Most cannot hope to nd such a caldron because she is extremely rare, so instead one receives the pearl from the gods as recompense for ones virtuous deeds. 9, Proceeding to the Jade Pool

of the Queen Mother of the West Fu Yaochi

; 16869 . The adept receives a fantastic welcome into Heaven, and a post in the celestial administration. §2.3.5.1, Lu Xixing and Li Xiyue.

Hao Qin oers an extended description of

SouthernLineage sexual alchemy. This is based almost exclusively on DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu by Chen Zhixu, et al. Hao also includes sections on the alchemy of Lu Xixing founder of the socalled Eastern Lineage, Dongpai , and Li Xiyue founder of the socalled Western Lineage, Xipai . Hao asserts that Lu Xixing and Li Xiyue are carrying on the distinctively SouthernLineage form of sexual alchemy, but tells us almost nothing about what sexual practices they might actually have been doing. Like the others who have studied Lu Xixing Li Yuanguo, Liu Tsunyan, Wile, and Yang Ming , Hao discovers little about Lu Xixings sexual practices, except for one passage suggesting that he teaches sexual alchemy at a distance geti shenjiao .179 Perhaps we will never know much about them. Li Yuanguo, for his part, mentions several key unexplained terms from Lu Xixings sexual practice: opening the passes and spreading the apertures kaiguan zhanqiao , crossing through the pass and ingesting guoguan fushi , and lifting and sucking, chasing and controlling tixi zhuishe .180 The last term must be related to anal constriction and urethral suction, as we saw in the Zhang Sanfeng texts above. Haos discussion of Li Xiyues alchemical system citing Jiuceng lianxin, Daoqiao tan, and Sanche mizhi does contain several hints of sexual alchemy such as the phrases forgetting the passions as one stares at the scene, duijing wangqing ; and lead in the house of the other, bijia zhi qian , but 179


180


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tells us next to nothing about our subject. Li Xiyue has yet to be studied systematically.

§2.4, Comparison Lets return to my notion of a morphological continuum of sexual alchemy with ve ideal types, as shown in as in gure 5.3 above. These ve types, and their representative texts, are 1 nonalchemical huanjing bunao, or sanfeng caizhan §2.3.1

• 2.3 Yufang zhiyao and 3.5 Zijin Guangyao Daxian xiuzhen yanyi 2 quasialchemical huanjing bunao §2.3.2

• Huanjing caiqi pian, from Shesheng zongyao 3 alchemical huanjing bunao §2.3.4

• 4.3 Jindan jieyao and 4.4 Caizhen jiyao 4 lateimperial goldenelixir sexual alchemy §2.3.5

• Jindan zhenchuan 5 SongYuanperiod goldenelixir sexual alchemy • Chen Zhixus teachings What can we say about the similarities and di erences between these types? Following Wile, I will choose several tracers to show thematic progression: alchemical language, explicitness, conception of jing , stages of cultivation, and goal. In type 1, there is almost no alchemical language; the sexual language is highly stylized, yet explicit. The jing to be circulated is primarily the male adepts jing, which is primarily tangible seminal essence. In sanfeng caizhan the female partners jing may also be used, in both tangible and intangible forms. There are no stages of cultivation to speak of, and the goal is physical health, vitality, and longevity, rather than transcendence. The only important distinction between types 1 and 2 is that, in type 2, some language and concepts have been adopted from inner alchemy. This is a signicant distinction, though. In inner alchemy, language is not mere dressing added to a praxological core: language is as much a part of the essence of inner alchemy as physiological practice is. Or, we could say that alchemical language represents a form of practice too, linguistic practice.181 Thus, by adding alchemical language to 181

On the topic of alchemical language as practice, see my discussion of Chens homily to Deng Yanghao on pages 43539 §3.0.2 below.

428

huanjing bunao practice, type 2 moves closer to inner alchemy in a real way. In type 3, alchemical language is employed fully. The texts in type 3 may not develop alchemical language to the same extent that Chen Zhixu does, but they do use it as extensively as plenty of other inneralchemical texts do. The sexual language is explicit. The balance of emphasis on the jing of the male adept and the jing of the female partner is the same as we nd in sexual alchemy. The jing is both tangible and intangible. While there is a striking emphasis on swallowing the saliva jing of both adept and partner, the partners jing is also gathered as qi. Unlike in types 12, there are stages of cultivation in type 3; this idea must have been adopted from inner alchemy. Oldfashioned huanjing bunao is still an important practice here, but now it is part of an overall alchemical framework. Like goldenelixir sexual alchemy, type3 texts begin with a stage 1 of rening the self, then a stage 2 of gathering and initial fusion of the two pharmaca to make an elixir. But whereas in sexual alchemy the holy fetus is red for ten months to produce a yang spirit, in type3 texts the path ends after seven days of ring to produce the fetus. Hao Qin reports that some Zhang Sanfeng texts include the entirety of stage 3 of internal ring to produce a yang spirit; this might make them full sexual alchemy rather than alchemical huanjing bunao. The goal of type3 texts is ambiguous: it seems to be more than health, vitality, and longevity, but a full expression of Daoist apotheosis is lacking. Type 3 is essentially huanjing bunao set within an alchemical pathframework and expressed in alchemical language. Types 4 and 5 are fulledged sexual alchemy. I will be discussing type 5, Song Yuanperiod goldenelixir sexual alchemy, for the rest of the chapter, but I will mention it now briey. If type 3 is huanjing bunao in alchemical terms, then type 5 is inner alchemy that has drawn some key elements from huanjing bunao, and type 4 is type5 alchemy with an expanded sexual dimension. In type3 alchemical huanjing bunao, stage 1 of rening the self involves sexual intercourse. In Chen Zhixus type5 sexual alchemy, rening the self is done through concentration meditation alone, without intercourse. The adept may test his mental control through intercourse during this stage see pages 44446 below , but he builds up his seminal essence

429

through meditation alone, not through intercourse. The type4 sexual alchemy of Jindan zhenchuan requires intercourse as an essential element in stage 1 of rening the self. This suggests that type 4 is type 5 crosspolinated by type 3. In type3 huanjing bunao and in Chen Zhixus type5 alchemy alike, after gathering the outer pharmacon from the female partner, the male adept should retire to circulate the initial fusion product. Yet in Jindan zhenchuan, the adept should continue to have intercourse during this phase of circulation phase 4, Rening the Self above . It also appears that the adept should continue to have intercourse during a subsequent phase called Recyling the Elixir,182 which may be an innovation. Finally, Jindan zhenchuan also has elements of Mingdynasty standard solo alchemy. For example, whereas for Chen, the inner pharmacon is simply the mans sexual energy, in Jindan zhenchuan, the inner pharmacon appears within the body of the adept aer the outer pharmacon has manifested and been rened for awhile, just as in the standard account of solo alchemy see page 301 above . So Jindan zhenchuan includes elements of 1 type5 classic sexual alchemy, 2 type3 alchemical huanjing bunao, and 3 lateimperial solo alchemy, and may 4 add its own innovations as well. My initial comparison of ve types of sexual cultivation is tentative at best. I intend it to be a suggestion for future work, rather than a nished piece. These ve categories might require further adjustmentfor example, is Jindan zhenchuan a type or just an isolated case?yet I believe that my most general conclusion, that sexual alchemy is huanjing bunao plus solo alchemy, is a sound one.

182

It is also possible that the chapter on Recyling the Elixir, rather than describing a discrete stage, mingles references to both stage 2 gathering and stage 3 ring .

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§3, Chen Zhixus SexualAlchemical Path Chen Zhixu does not oer a numbered list of stages anywhere, yet he certainly does have a formal practice schema in mind. He oers details, hints, and alternative formulations throughout his writings, yet the practices he is referring to remain consistent. Beginning with stage zero gaining basic knowledge and trust in alchemy, followed by conversion and transmission, I list four stages in the path to salvation proper: 1 preparation, including: rening the self lianji , nding partner, place, and patron, approaching the partner, choosing the correct time to gather; 2 gathering caiqu and initial fusion hedan ; 3 forming the elixir jiedan through internal ring 4 transformation into a spirit shenhua . Chens sequence coincides roughly with the standard account of solo inner alchemy, but with signicant dierences, as we will see. §3.0, Stage Zero: Starting Out on the Path In this section, I discuss what the disciple ought to know as he embarks on his journey toward salvation. For this data, I translate sections of a representative transmission epistle: to know what Chen thinks the student should know, lets see what he actually says or, writes to a student. According to the Noble Eightfold Path of mainstream Buddhism, a Buddhist ought to begin by cultivating wisdom, before moving on to the practices of morality and meditation. Within the category of wisdom, the two pathfactors are 1 right views or right understanding accepting as true the Four Noble Truths, the doctrines of rebirth, karma, and so on and 2 right thought or right resolution straightening out the emotions and resolving to embark on the path. Just as in classical Buddhism, the path to deliverance for a student within 431

Chen Zhixus tradition must begin with a clearsighted recognition of the human condition, an implicit trust in the teachings, and a resolution to follow the path to the end. What should a student know as he begins the path? Lets answer this question by looking at the advice Chen oers to one disciple. The passages translated below come from Chens epistle to Deng Yanghao, the BuddhoDaoist seeker that Chen met at Yuzhang in the marketplace of daos. Twentythree such epistles are preserved in Jindan dayao; while there are dierences between them, Chens advice to Deng Yanghao below may represent them all. To Nanyangzi, Deng Yanghao

§3.0.1, Introduction: The Unity of the Three Teachings

That which Heaven ordains is called inherent nature xing. Following the inherent nature is called the Dao.1 This is the learning of the Doctrine of the Mean Zhongyong of the Confucian school Kongmen . Nonbeing in order to see its wonder; being in order to see its aperture

qiao .2 This is Master Laos dao of void and nonbeing. The treasure of the eye of the true dharma, and wondrous heart of nirva zhengfa yanzang, niepan miaoxin .3 This is the instruction of the Tathgata at the time of his extinction in stillness.4 Extinction in stillness always refers to empty stillness and extinction. This instruction includes teachings fa related to both a celestial trigger ji and a human application.Therefore the scripture says: I always cause beings to enter nirvawithoutremainder and cross over by means of extinction.5 Void and nonbeing does not mean empty void and utter nonbeing. This dao has a marvelous ability to generate buddhas and transcendents. Therefore the scripture says: It is empty without being exhausted: the more it works, the more comes out.6 Adapt the nonbeing in a vessel to the purpose in hand, and you 1

Zhongyong, chapter 1.

2

Daode jing, chapter 1. Most editions of the Daode jing have . Chen omits chang and yu , and writes qiao knack, pore, aperture instead of jiao

movements, chasings, manifestation, sprouting. 3

This is the essence transmitted by the Buddha to Kyapa, and thence on down to the other Chan patriarchs. Cf., for example, Wudeng huiyuan, Zhonghua shuju ed., 10. 4

I.e., nal nirva jimie , Skt. vyupaama.

5

This is a line from the Diamond Stra. Cf., for example Kumrajvas version, T 235, Jingang bore boluomiduo jing, 8:749a9. 6

Daode jing, chapter 5; trans. D. C. Lau, Tao Te Ching, 9.

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will have the use of the vessel.7 Equilibrium and constancy zhong yong a does not only mean being without inclination to one side or reliance on things. The learning of the Doctrine of the Mean has a principle of cosmic creation and transformation

zaohua m and continuous generation of life. Therefore the scipture says: Achieving equilibrium and harmony, Heaven and Earth will be settled, and the myriad things will be nourished.8 Confucius said: Dignities and emoluments can be declined; naked weapons can be trampled under the feet; but the course of the Mean cannot be attained to.9 Laozi said: There is a thing turbidly formed, born before Heaven and Earth. I do not know its name, but if forced to name it, I would call it Dao.10 kyamuni said: The Tathgata truly did not gain anything in the presence of the buddha Dpakara.11 In after times, persons of inferior spiritual capacity xiaji , displaying their useless wisdom, have not comprehended the point made by the great sages of the Three Teachings that one may become a sage, a transcendent, or a buddha. They have used false ideas to gloss the scriptures teachings, seeing everything in overly shallow and easy terms. After a myriad of generations, when a superior sort of person appears, it is already too late to rescue and correct the teachings. ACiCy2Nan?:1 ?23ony$HkZ|:2.>_s0 _sMOL_Is?01 &HSw;U nZ|4sQonMOLo)n?y1%6% :S wo4B^4r!t?n1&aMO7] X?1m%%jSwW@+5hvJ= hu#'#a#[31 Jg/(+%9K?*b*y.>,6 DEH{nDcR> l\~ G ex 0# x#/ #86`?w0-q}pfFVz" v

1PT!>Y#c4$d<12 Chen begins his epistle by quoting and interpreting famous passages from Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist classics.13 These quotations are selected and glossed to make the point that each of the Three Teachings speaks of the same cosmic dao. The Zhongyong speaks of a dao which Chen tells us is a cosmic dao that produces life

zaohua shengsheng zhi dao, corresponding to the Dao as mentioned in the Daode jing. 7

Daode jing, chapter 11, trans. ibid.

8

Zhongyong, chapter 1.

9

Zhongyong, chapter 9, J. Legges translation.

10

Daode jing, chapter 25.

11

This is a line from the Diamond Stra. Cf., for example, T 235, Jingang bore boluomiduo jing, 8:749c18.

12


13

Note the sequence of the Three Teachings Confucianism, then Daoism, then Buddhism. This is the way a literatus would order them. Also note that Buddhism for Chen is almost always Chan Buddhism in particular.

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The Buddha entered an ultimate stillness jimie and emptiness which likewise corresponds to the pregnant nonbeing of the Daode jings Dao. This section ends by saying that only in degenerate after ages did people begin to imagine that the Three Teachings taught dierent doctrines. Chen is arguing for the unity of the Three Teachings sanjiao heyi , an inclusivist position. Chen is continually reiterating this inclusivist position throughout his writings. The content of this rst section is not noteworthy per se; but it is perhaps noteworthy in that this is not the way we might expect an essay addressed to a pupil would begin. Many Daoist discourses begin by rehearsing the cosmogony and other rst principles, so to begin this essay by talking about the Dao would be expected. But why sanjiao heyi? Each of Chens essays to pupils begins with a general, impersonal prolegomenon like this. I believe that this is for the benet of a wider readership, to establish a tone for the piece and to identify Chen as a certain sort of authority, rather than for the benet of Deng Yanghao, the original recipient of the letter. By repeating known truths from the Three Teachings, Chen presents himself as a mainstream teacher. Then, when he oers surprising esoteric interpretations of the classic teachings, he may be able to catch his audience o guard, and convert them to his decidedly non mainstream perspective. The essence of Chan Buddhism that Chen mentions, The treasure of the eye of the true dharma, and wondrous heart of nirv a, was what the Buddha transmitted to K yapa, and so on down to the other Indian and Chinese Chan patriarchs in succession. Anyone thinking of this empty yet wondrous essence would naturally draw a mental association with the acts of Chan transmission down through the ages. Thus, by invoking it here, Chen is implicitly comparing himself to a Chan patriarch, and Deng Yanghao to a dharma heir. Chen is attempting to activate a distinctively Chan Buddhist master function in the service of the transmission of sexual alchemy. Several of the themes and theories I introduced in chapter 1, section 4, are evident here: esoteric strategy 2 stealing the lightning, the master function, and imperialist inclusivism. The most salient function of this passage is the re enactment of the actions of the sages secondary salvic eect 3.

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After this introduction follow several pages in which Chen 1 paints a portrait of Deng Yanghao, 2 describes the circumstances of his encounter with Deng in the Yuzhang marketplace, and 3 describes Dengs tearful conversion, and their ceremony of transmission. Almost all of this material is translated and discussed on pages 10914 above. After the transmission, Chen concludes with a homily and pep talk: §3.0.2, Homily: The Saga of Devolution and Redemption

Within the Dao, there are not multiple routes: you are united together with all the things produced by Heaven and Earth. Now, the Book of Changes discusses the Great Ultimate. The Great Ultimate produces the two standards, which produce the four emblems, which produce the eight trigrams.14 This is the Dao of Heaven and Earth in yinyang terms. The Dao produces the one, the one produces the two, the two produce the three, and the three produce the myriad things.15 This is the Dao of the human body in yinyang terms. Humans inherently possess the correctness of yin and yang qi, and they grow and develop based on this. When they reach the age of twoeights sixteen years old, the yang of nine threes is pure. At this age, how could you not be a great man of superior virtue? Suddenly, one morning, some fellows arrive seeking to repay Hunduns virtue, and each day they bore another hole.16 Thus your threenines yang gallops away with ying hooves, leaving you amidst sixsix pure yin. Because of this, qian C is not able to be pure, and breaks up into li X . Kun 1 begins to contain something within itself, and solidies into kan , . PI$9R# 6" =)5&L< /S/S JJ 0'#DKPP N6 ' .DKP ODK( (8* %; K @M<>B:T 3 GUEHFT7* [ W;KVZ2Y(-!
The two standards liangyi /S are yin and yang. The four images sixiang J, in this context, are greater and lesser yang, and greater and lesser yin.

15

Cf. Daode jing, chapter 42.

16

Referring to the fable at the end of Zhuangzi, chapter 7 Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 97.

17


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trigrams , to the universe as we know it. And in microcosmic terms, the cosmogony leads from the Dao, to the one spirit , to the two qi , to the three essence , to the human body as a whole.18 This human body, in its prenatal state, is the body of the prepubescent male, whose essence is full. But this state cannot last: with puberty, demonic forces maras; or the six thieves liuzei D, the sense organs in their aspect as semiautonomous forces of temptation entice the youth to waste his seminal essence. The nine threesthe male adepts inner pharmacon, or the primal essence of any male youth in the fullness of health19devolve toward the sixsix of pure yin.20 If ultimate persons, sages, or spirits are able to understand how the Dao divides while embodied as the Great Ultimate; understand how the roots of birth and death commence; understand how qian , kun , yin and yang dominate cheng . in succession; and understand how xuan and pin have intercourse if sages know all of this, then if qian and kun follow the current shun @ , creatures are born, while if yin and yang advance against the current ni 5 , then the elixir is generated. The sage embodies the substance, and applies the function. He models himself on qian and kun as the substance, and imitates kan and li as the function. He grasps the handle of yin and yang, then passes through the gate of birth and death. He builds up his e orts jigong G toward rening himself lianji B and awaiting the proper moment; he achieves the act of gathering the pharmacon in the space of a single hour. After this, he makes whole his hundunbody, and thereby shows forth the body of a perfected person. This is how he is able to be an ultimate person, sage, or spirit. - C34'EL A $4'1 $#4'6"9 ? $.4' $*6"@(&9?5( CL !L!%6" L/H ;9? +F JGB )0 78I0 :=< LK2 !$, C321 In the mesocosmic terms of the trigrams, qian loses its central yang yaoline to kun, 18 At DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 4.7b12, Chen Zhixu maps this famous Daode jing cosmogony onto the development of the human body. Just as the Dao produces the one, void xu > transforms into spirit; just as the one produces the two, spirit transforms into qi spirit plus qi make two ; just as the two produce the three, qi transforms into essence i.e., spirit, qi, and essence make three ; and just as the three produce the myriad things, essence transforms into the human body xing . 19 Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. jiu san , 1135, citing Weng Baoguangs DZ 141, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu. 20

Sixsix signies kun or pure yin , just as ninenine signies qian or pure yang . This may come from the two sixes in lines 67 of the hexagram kun in the Zhouyi, and the two nines of qian. Only the qian and kun hexagrams have a line 7. 21


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and qian and kun pure, precosmic yin and yang devolve into kan and li mixed, post cosmic yin and yang .22 Yet these degeneration products, kan and li, also hold the key to redemption. As the sages know, the current leading from life to death can be reversed through sexual alchemy, and the adept may regain his prenatal endowment. Note that Chen condenses the entire alchemical process down to the two stages of rening the self over time , and gathering the outer pharmacon in the space of an hour . This does not mean that he neglects the longer processes of fusing the pharmaca, ring it in the dantian, and training the yang spirit. As I will show in sections 3.3 and 3.4 below, these are very much a part of Chens teaching. Yet, clearly, the moment of gathering, and its preparation rening the self , are the heart of Chens alchemy. There is little new in this alchemical story of cosmogonic devolution and redemption. Anyone familiar with alchemical discourse may wonder why these basic ideas are worth repeating. Robinet has noted this same repetitive feature of inner alchemical texts: What is striking in neidan texts is that disciples always ask the same questions, and then reask them. And the masters say the same things repeatedlyeach time one and the same thing and each time in a slightly di erent way. The pertinent question for me is: why are these people repeating the same thing? One answer is that they do not and cannot succeed in saying it. And nevertheless they go on and on, striving to say it, because it is so strongly real.23 Robinet is probably thinking, once again, of the texts of Li Daochun here, such as his discourse records yulu such as DZ 249, Zhonghe ji, or DZ 1060, Qing an Yingchanzi yulu, in which disciples come forward to ask stereotyped questions and receive the masters replies. The simplest answer to Robinets question is that inner alchemists such as Li Daochun are mimicking the repetitive questionandanswer format from Chan Buddhist discourse records, in which the disciple asks Why did Bodhidharma come from the West? and the master responds with a ritualized

22

Also discussed on page 322 above.

23

Robinet, Response to Douglas Wiles Review of Introduction l alchimie intrieure taoste, 148.

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antinomian act.24 Like in the Chan case, the repeated asking and answering of simple questions about alchemy gives the master a chance to reenact his authority. Yet I agree with Robinet that this as behavior has a religious as well as political aspect. Why does Chen Zhixu bother to repeat these basic ideas to Deng? Why does he repeat either in speech or writing the ideas in this situation? Deng Yanghao had been practicing a form of the microcosmic orbital circulation xiao zhoutian for years, so Deng would have been extremely familiar with these concepts. Why does Chen Zhixu bother to repeat or refer to these basic ideas here, and so many times throughout the Jindan dayao? It is not just so that he can reenact his authority, though this aspect will always be present too. I argue that this repetition itself has religious meaning, in a number of ways. The alchemical cosmogonic story is a myth. By Wendy Donigers denition, for example, myth is a story that is sacred to and shared by a group of people who nd their most important meanings in it; . . . a story believed to have been composed in the past about an event in the past . . . that continues to have meaning in the present.25 The Daoist cosmogonic myth is the story in which alchemical adepts found their most sacred meanings, and which they repeated to each other, over and over, as a sign of their mutual understanding and solidarity in the communal enterprise of selfcultivation. I should add that the alchemical cosmogonic myth usually appears as a mythic theme rather than a fullblown mythic narrative. In a book on myth in early Daoism, Norman Girardot claims that myths do not die. They go underground and resurface as mythic themes in nonmythological literary forms. Girardot denes the mythic theme as the detectable presence in written texts of recurrent symbolic images, that both summarize a central mythological idea and condense in an ideal typical way the basic structure or logic of a set of myths.26 Girardot employs this concept of mythic theme to nd references to Daoist cosmogony throughout early 24

Foulk, Myth, Ritual, and Monastic Practice in Sung Chan Buddhism, 17779. These questionandanswer sessions often occur during ascending the hall shengtang or entering the chamber rushi ceremonies. 25

Doniger, What is Myth?

26

Girardot, Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism, 9.

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Daoist texts. Just so, I argue that whenever an alchemical author such as Chen Zhixu mentions the formation of kan and li out of qian and kun , and the replacing of the central yin yaoline of li with the central yang yaoline of kan to remake the original state of pure yang qian, this is a mythic theme, which activates the meaning and power of the entire cosmogonic myth. Because the reader would know the mythic patterns, it is often su cient for Chen to invoke them with these simple, abbreviated devices. This narration is a form of salvic practice, a secondary salvic e ect. §3.0.3, Pep Talk

Nanyangzi, as I have told you from beginning to end qianhou (, since your coming, in the past, the old man from Qingcheng entrusted me with this dao, which comes from a realm lost to this world.27 He repeatedly urged me to supply

it to others, and to guard it well myself. Today, I entrust it in turn to youso work hard! Now, practicing the Dao is not easy, and the hardest thing is to build up virtuous deeds. On this score, Laozi said: A man of the Dao conforms to virtue.28 Studying the Dao and not cultivating virtue is like walking without feet. Seeking the Dao and not building up virtue is like a hungry man lacking grain. You must apply expedient means;29 you must spread and magnify; you must build up; you must be courageous and erce; you must be rm; you must strive to make progress. Care for your whitesouls and embrace the One; concentrate on your qi, and devote yourself to yieldingness. Cleanse the mystic gaze, and clarify the four penetrations.30 Carry out the superior deeds of Wang Chongyang and Ma Danyang; practice the superior e orts of the Buddha. If you indeed do act like this, then in the future I will hold your hand above in the Nine Heavens!31 *9 (,<#&+0I4:"7H 1A2B8G -!) : $@=3D.:%" =?: /=65: @=6EC! ' 27 This term juexiang 7H or juexiang zhi yu 7H 1 occurs at two other places in Jindan dayao: at DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao, preface, 4a9 preface by Ouyang Tianshu >9 , and at Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.53a5 missing from DZ 1067 . In both other places it refers to a true teaching of the ancients that is no longer found in the present generation at 6.53a5 Chen is referring to the Confucian tradition of the Yellow Emperor, Yao, Shun, the sage rulers of the Zhou, and so on . 28

Daozhe tong yu de :%"= is a misquotation of Daode jing, chapter 23 :%":=%"= .

29

Ru qi ! XY is a repeated pattern here. I read qi as a modal must.

30

The mystic vision xuanlan F usually refers to active visualization, and the four penetrations sida ; may refer to knowledge of all past, present, and future events, as well as of events occurring in the heavens Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. sida ;, 471 . However, I speculate this may simply refer to the sense of sight xuanlan and the four other senses sida . 31

The Nine Heavens are the eight horizontal directions of Heaven, plus the center.

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5 7.$-*4/86 +' &3(:!2)0 "%# ,9 32 Chen welcomes Deng into his lineages, one lineage going back only to Chens Qingcheng master, the other through Zhao Youqin going back to Wang Chongyang, the founder of Quanzhen Daoism, and perhaps even to the Buddha. He enjoins Deng to work hard and cultivate himself morally as well as alchemically, and suggests that Deng will achieve an alchemical apotheosis, and return to his celestial home. §3.0.4, Conclusion.

This essay, and the many others like it preserved in Jindan

dayao, are a mixture of history, polemic and apologetics, alchemical instruction, and moral exhortation. All of these transmission epistles contain the saga of devolution and redemption, and all of them are couched through citations and glosses in the words of the sages of the Three Teachings. Here is what a student should know as he begins the path: • Mortal degeneration is a tragedy, but there is a promise of redemption. • Redemption can only be achieved by following the one true dao of the golden elixir. • This dao is both broad and narrow: • it is broad because traces of it are found in each of the Three Teachings, • and yet it is also narrow because it must not be confused with its closest analogues, such as false sexual cultivation, qi circulation, and Chan meditation.33 • In this world there are wise men and fools, and the disciple is one of the former, one of the chosen. • The disciple should continue his engagement with the world, doing good deeds. §3.1, Stage One: Rening the Self lianji 1 and Equipping the Chamber Having gained basic knowledge of and trust in alchemy, followed by conversion and transmission of the secrets, the adept is ready to embark on the alchemical path proper. Stage 1 is a stage of preparation, the male adepts rst step on his path to 32


33

Chen makes these points in the other part of the epistle translated on page 111 above, but not included here.

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recovery of his original, prenatal wholeness. Within stage 1, I include substages of

1.1 inner preparation, 1.2 outer preparation, 1.3 approaching the partner, and 1.4 timing the gathering of the partners pharmacon. §3.1.1, Inner preparation: rening the self.

First, the alchemist must practice

lianji rening the self. Lianji has similarities to the rst stage of zhuji @3

tamping the base in the standard account of solo alchemy see pages 300 1, but, as I will show, also important dierences. Lianji is a rich complex, including physiological, moral, mesocosmic, religious, and philosophical aspects. The most basic meaning of rening the self is the male adepts rening of his seminal essence: As for the dao of the recycled elixir, cultivating it is easy, but rening the self is the most dicult. Thus Zhang Boduan the transcendent teacher warned people to rst rene the self, just as Chunyang L Dongbin said: Recycling the elixir depends on a person: one must rst rene the self and await the proper moment. Why? We may say that re is the most numinous or, dynamic of things, something that humans cannot gauge. But then again, if you rst know the ring

periods, it is like the wick of a lamp. While even ordinary re is numinous or, eective, how much the more so is perfected re, that is, your own mercury! You must rst rene this perfected re, and defeat this perfected dragon, causing it to not gallop, and to submit to your own horsemanship. C =-&!<6D*.<1:C ;<)/ >+6F# 27(%'$ 9?A5 F"0 <0,0B8 34 4E In this commentary to a Wuzhen pian verse, Chen denes the object of lianji to be the adepts own mercury, or seminal essence. This is a perfected re, contained within the perfected dragon, the sex organ. Rening the seminal essence involves asserting control over the sexual impulses, both mental and physiological. When Chen says cultivating the elixir is easy, while rening the self is most dicult, he means that lesser orbital circulation xiao zhoutian is much easier than taming the sexual nature. If Chens lianji were closely equivalent to the stage of zhuji,35 then we would expect Chen to emphasize orbital meditation at this stage, devoted to opening up 34

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 5.7b9 8a5.

35

We have already seen zhuji in the standard account of solo inner alchemy pp. 300 1, the Mingdynasty sexual alchemy of Jindan zhenchuan p. 422, and the Ming alchemical huanjing bunao of the Zhang Sanfeng texts p. 424.

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the passes and building up a preliminary store of postnatal jingqi, and leading to the appearance of the pharmacon.36 Yet Chen does not tell us that the generation of the male adepts inner pharmacon is a laborious process requiring the adepts diligent attention. If you rid yourself of sexual desire, then the essence and qi will be whole. If these are whole, then you can defeat the dragon and subdue the tiger. If you can defeat and subdue them, then you can gather the prenatal one Qi. <$:+:+$-'A#-'A#$3 37 Within lianji, Chen spends his eorts on controlling the sexual impulses and energies, rather than on generating them. Chen is saying that, if the adept can rid himself of uncontrolled lust, then his essence and qi will naturally be full. This is quite dierent from what we have seen in the Mingdynasty materials, where the generation of essence and qi takes much time and stronglyfocused guiding intention. Lianji is not merely a trick of the mind or the sphincter urethrae, but is part of a conceptual complex that also includes ethical and philosophical aspects. In the following passage, Chen lists ascetic discipline lit. bitter practice, kuxing & , and the suering of humiliation to subdue the ego , within the scope of lianji: Treasure the seminal essence and make the qi full and rich: this is nurturing the self. Forgetting with the mind while facing the scene i.e., the partner: this is rening the self. Constantly still and constantly responsive: this is rening the self. Amassing virtuous power and accomplishing ones labor: this is rening the self. Bitter practice is called rening; practicing to the point of ripeness is called rening. Gentlemen who cultivate the elixir must rst rene the self, doing bitter practices and undergoing humiliation, hoping that, when they are able to enter the chamber, the six sensory roots will be in a state of great rmness. Only then can one make them pure and ripe, put out of ones mind what cannot be put out of mind, and thus be able to complete the aair. > 98C 0@0BC ?;4C D:7> &!C=!C( 6 &. 12%)*" ,=5/-438 Lianji involves cultivating a state of calm in which the adept is constantly still and constantly responsive, both during the act of sex, and when faced with the everyday 36

For solo alchemists, the stage of zhuji leads to the appearance of the outer pharmacon, which is further rened to produce the inner pharmacon. For sexual alchemists or sexual cultivators, zhuji produces the inner pharmacon. 37 Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 3.10a23 missing from DZ 1067 . 38


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tribulations of a sexual alchemist in a hostile social environment. Chen further links this state of being to the Prajparamit inspired philosophy of the Tang dynasty Daoist scriptures of Double Mystery Learning Chongxuan Xue *F , as we see in the following passage on cutting o loving fondness one of four essentials of lianji :39 The dao of defeating and subduing is rst to cut o the entanglements of loving fondness. Loving fondness arises in the scene that faces you. Whenever you grasp at the scene, then fondness arises, and from fondness comes love. Therefore, to cut o fondness and love, rst rid yourself of grasping. If you face the scene without grasping, the scene will not be grasped at and thoughts will not arise. The Scripture of Purity and Tranquility says, When you look at the heart mind within, the heart mind has no heart mind. When you look at the physical form without, the form has no form. When you look at objects in the distance, the objects have no object ness. Only if you maintain this sort of mental state can you be permitted to rene the lead and control the mercury, and obtain the supreme treasure of the rst passing shoujing zhi zhibao . + =,7-9E-9/$@? 8?&--&9/(7908 @? 8? 8&#H323<K! 6!K!6!BK!%%6!% ') 4;>"1,< J40 The passage above may appear vague or cryptic, but when we understand it within the context of sexual alchemy, we see that Chen is warning the adept against emotional attachment to his female partner; and he adds gravitas to this lesson by restating it in the prestigious discourse of Tang Buddho Daoist philosophy. As in all of the sexual cultivation texts studied by Wile save perhaps the earliest , the male adept must maintain emotional distance from the female partner, so as to avoid spending his seminal essence. This does not mean that the adept may abuse the partner. He must treat her with virtue, and pay her well. On the next page, we read that Virtue or spiritual merit and deeds complete each other, and funds move a persons heart; facing the scene, one forgets ones passions, and essence and spirit are

39

These four essentials are ridding oneself of sexual desire, cutting o loving fondness, caring little for wealth and goods, and being careful to act virtuously GID7-9A.5:C; Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 3.10a1 missing from DZ 1067 . I have not structured my discussion in terms of these four essentials, because they actually do not cover the full range of lianji at all. 40

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 3.10a8b2 missing from DZ 1067 . For the Qingjing jing quotation, see DZ 620, Taishang Laojun shuo chang qingjing miaojing 1b57. I discuss this supreme treasure below.

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plentiful and stable .41 I discuss this in more detail below. Lianji is an arduous process, and may require years of training. Chen takes a line from Cantong qi as a rule of thumb about the amount of lianji required: Seventy at rst: to amass ones own meritorious labor is the most di cult thing to do. In the end, three decades: this means the period of incubation, when you must be especially cautious. Seventy and three decades three tenday periods together make 206, or, altogether, 360 days, which is the whole number of four and nine, or

the su cient number of days in one cycle. Of the 360 days that I mentioned just now, take seventenths of these days for rening the self, and threetenths of these days for incubation. If you incubate for one year, then you must rst rene the self for three years. . %0# $ $!(-+*' / &, ) (-(-") 42 Thus, the entire alchemical process may be summed up as 70 percent lianji and 30 percent incubation, with the special onehour period of gathering in the middle. One year is the usual amount of time required for incubation, so according to this formulation, three years would be the proper length of the lianji training. Elsewhere, Chen speaks of spending a shorter period on lianji training. The following passage from Chens commentary to the Duren jing describes a lianji meditation retreat of onehalf to a full year in a secluded location, in preparation for sexual alchemy: Among the karmic delements of the Ten Evils, wantonness and lust stand at their head. Gentlemen selfcultivators ought rst to sunder themselves from this. When Qiu Chuji the Perfected of Extended Spring faced the Great Imperial Ancestor Chinggis Qan, he only took lust as the rst thing to be curbed. The Numinous Book of Great Sublimity puts lust at the head of the ten defeats.43 There is nothing else to selfcultivation: if one is merely able to truly sunder oneself from lust, then all other matters are easy. As for the belief among worldlings that cutting o lust is very di cult, this is an idiotic view. They do not know that the technique is very easy: they just havent tested themselves. Testing is a matter of rening the self. The beginning learner should test himself in a place with no other people around, practicing and sleeping alone, and even forsaking alcohol. By day, he is constantly relishing 41


42


43

DZ 179, Taiwei lingshu ziwen xianji zhenji shangjing 1a.

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the alchemical scriptures, while by night, he focuses his heartmind in a state of purity and tranquility. Since before his eyes there is no disturbance of his eld of perception, within his heartmind he has completely rid himself of all wild thoughts. If he has even a few demonic obstacles, then he makes his heartmind even stronger. Without, he does not allow himself to feel hunger or thirst; within, he constantly adds nourishing tonics. If he remains like this for half a year or a year, waiting until his essence and Qi become stable within, then he will naturally not think lustful thoughts. If he has not yet rid himself of lustful thoughts, his essence will remain incomplete, so he ought to make it even more stable. The elixir scripture says, He whose spirit is complete does not think of sleep, he whose Qi is complete does not think of eating, and he whose essence is complete does not think lustful thoughts. These are direct and ultimate words. Once the seminal essence is full, and one is also able to maintain this state indenitely, only then can one rene the recycled elixir. If you test this in practice, you will immediately see its result. We may say that one who practices rening the self in a place with no people around is called a lesser recluse. If your lesser reclusion is stable, then you can do a greater reclusion in the marketplace. If you cut o the eld of perception without, yet you have not rid yourself of thoughts within, then if you see somebody in your eld or perception you will be immediately stirred. This is not true and solid practice. xm[ab5(T|NYe fÛ [u8d[qab5H¢ 6he| ]G=2|[\K0 ;SJ>H\G6

3' K7=MF¢ 5L8} iRo¡ARrs,tQX¢~R*Dpj{/ n>%R!kyRo"z+0#.V> @R3W:_D'jZC)9@g)K W)KW`)KWI4< X) hNPN- $ 57;>c¢ wvK _B$& %|1Dj;7l0Oe 44 In this passage, we see a tight link between the adepts ridding himself of lust, and his amassing of seminal essence; mental cultivation and body cultivation make up a single process. At least in this stage, Chen takes a relatively formless approach to inner alchemy: the adept need only properly cultivate his mind or inherent nature xing E , and his body or life endowment ming ? will be cultivated too, as a side eect of the cultivation of xing. Here, Chen would be in disagreement with the standard account of solo alchemy and the Ming sexual texts, in which the cultivation of seminal essence is a more active process, and he would be in agreement with Ma Danyang or Liu Yiming, who advocate the formless cultivation of the inherent nature. Yet this agreement with formless solo alchemy does not last long: after the 44

DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie 1.18a719a5.

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lianji retreat, the adept should return to the marketplace, and test his powers of emotional or philosophical distanciation by letting desirous objects come within his visual eld. It appears that this may involve sexual intercourse: We may say that, if you do not rid yourself of lust, then the seminal essence will not be stabilized, and the Qi will not be whole. Not only must you rid yourself of it, but you must also be able to totally dissociate yourself from it. In the past, Liu Changsheng the Perfecteds three years of training in Luoyang were rening the self. When Chen Niwan the Perfected said Playfully training in the alehouses and bawdy houses, one after another, this is rening the self. When you have rened the self for a long time, rinsing and panning your dispositions and inherent nature, you will naturally forget even the forgetting. It is not that you must make a special eort to forget it: you must be able to defeat and subdue it. 58 "3 ! %)4 $ 7(#0 1 .(:*2,;911 1 -+/!' %)& 45 In the passage above, Chen cites examples of sexual selftesting by his alchemical patriarchs Liu Chuxuan an original disciple of Wang Chongyang, founder of the Quanzhen movement and Chen Nan the socalled fourth patriarch of the Southern Lineage. Chen applies the key idea of double dissociation shuangqian <6 from DoubleMystery philosophy as a justication for the importance of sexual selftesting within lianji practice. Chen says that the adept must forget even the forgetting. In Daoist DoubleMystery philosophy, or the philosophy of the Prajparamit stras of Mahyna Buddhism, the student must take two steps, rst using the concept of of emptiness unyat to rid him or herself of fallacious belief in substantial existence or belief in nonexistence, and then following this up by ridding him or herself of any grasping at emptiness itself. Chen Zhixu applies this same reasoning to the question of lust in sexual alchemy: not only must the adept rid himself of the emotional grasping which leads to lust, but he must rid himself of the ridding of lust, that is, he must rid himself of any grasping at celibacy. The same argument is found throughout Buddhist or other tantras, though this is probably a parallel development; I doubt Chen got this idea from Tantrism. §3.1.2, Outer preparation: nding mates and funds.

In order to gather the

precious pearl of pure prenatal yang, and rene it into the elixir, the sexual alchemist 45

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 3.10a4 8 missing from DZ 1067.

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must have the help of other people. As Chen says in verse 23 of his Twentyve Verses on the Golden Elixir, In seeking funds and companions for rening the golden elixir, Funds are not hard to acquireit is companions who are hard. If you have gained companions, funds, and plenty of external protection a patron, Then in cultivating transcendence, what is the need to cling obstinately to the supposed requirement of being a recluse deep in the mountains? %&& ' !46 What are these funds, companions, and external protection? If Chen were making the same sort of arrangements that we saw in the Mingdynasty texts above see pages 42027 , then we might expect Chen to need a yellow dame procuress or chaperon , two or more female partners, a patron, and perhaps other male friends, or even a dragon the male partner in socalled longhu danfa . Nowhere does Chen say that the yellow dame is an actual woman, though; for him, yellow dame always refers to a catalytic factor47 that mediates the fusion of the two pharmaca. Chen does speak of looking for companions and friends: As for lling my sack with elixir material, I knew not how to proceed. For two years I visited companions and sought friends, with the intention of collecting my a air. (

$"#48

Chens initial search for companions and friends led to his sojourn with Tian Zhizhai and his Hmong warlord clan. Chen uses the terms cai , l , and peng ambiguously. L can refer either to female partners, or to male friends. In both cases, the alchemist looks to his mates l for funds cai . When the mate is female, then she supplies an outer pharmacon as funding; if the mate is male, then the funding he o ers is nancial support, access to women, or a secluded place to practice. How many women does the alchemist need? I will address this question further below. The alchemists mates may also be, not just patrons or partners, but fellow 46


47

For Chen, the yellow dame could be guiding intention yi , the wu and jiearths, or the two sex organs; unlike in solo alchemy, he does not correlate the yellow dame with the Yellow Court or spleen. 48


447

male cultivators: Once you are able to rene the self, you must make alchemical friends, and take them as your outside protectors. Liu Haichan says, This one matter is not a common matter; one seeks for the proper person without nding them. Chen Niwan says, If there are no likeminded folks keeping each other in line and alert, then when the time comes one may fear that the ring periods within the furnace will be wrong. ,6@ >= .LE5IB (8 <9 ;%1N0:K43J2(49 We saw in the Mingdynasty Zhang Sanfeng texts that the adept must have male

friends on the scene to keep him from losing control during the gathering process, and to watch over him during the period of intoxication after gathering the pharmacon. Perhaps Chen is talking about friends like this here, though the details may dier from the Zhang Sanfeng texts. §3.1.2.1, The threeway exchange.

Chen envisages a threeparty transaction,

involving alchemist, patron, and woman. In the following two passages from his Duren jing commentary, Chen hints at this arrangement: We may say that the one who has funds provides the funds, and the one who has technique provides the technique. Also, the one who has the pharmacon provides the elixir. The one who senses the jing scripture / passing of menses applies or, provides the fa dharma / technique, so jing and fa are both clear, and fa and material are both roped in. There are always two things mentioned in the Duren jing, whether it be the denizens of heaven and human beings, or jing and fa. Thus, the denizens of heaven and human beings fulll the substance of qian and kun, and jing and fa fulll the application of the great elixir. Each one fullls his or her original years of life, with no cases of harm occurring in the meantime. D'+&'+&H'+ CA'+&-A&!$& G/!'F F A&)7# MA& "*N N?50 Gold and treasure buy the heart means trading funds for technique. Now, gold and treasure are what the generations of the world treat as important. . . . So, the supreme person renes the ninetimesrecycled divine elixir of golden uid, and relies on gold and treasure for his technique and funds. If one has technique but

no funds, the aair can rarely be achieved. If one has funds but no technique, he is no dierent than a fool. When jing scripture / passing of menses and fa dharma / technique ow unimpeded are exchanged in an economy of salvation, and 49

DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie 1.41b14.

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fa and funds are both employed, an alliance, based on a code, is announced, and only then can you bestow your item in trade. If you act forcefully or wildly, the aair is di cult to conclude. >piP8:>gp p6JC* * _>V lM Q> >pF:P':sP1m,k'Ps:-"] a:EX: RF&+1o!51 P32K.` Perfected lead,

that one thing, is the most di cult to nd. The poor man frets at having no funds, the man with funds frets at having no site for practice, the man with a site frets at having no thing, the man with a thing frets at having no comrade. The comrade is your outside protector. One who sets his will to seeking must rst amass technique and funds, and then select a site. Thus the Old Perfected Zhang Boduan has the sentence No one should see your conscious action in the beginning. If you do not obtain a good site, then people will see you and you cannot use your technique. Before I had entered the chamber, I didnt pay much heed to this. But when it came time to enter the chamber, with great trepidation I set my will to seeking and selecting a site, and only then realized that there are many matters that are di cult to accomplish, and had much extra distress.

Lc;Y8Z ZW=T[P'PT[$'$T[;';T[? ?=r ^Z= f:P)Bj$CN5'+[

/=IS4\$@ /) d#A G9 ^7(*Ahqq^Zj<%'oO1GnH052 In the rst two lines of the rst passage, Chen says that someone is providing funds, someone is providing alchemical knowledge, and someone is providing the material for cultivating the elixir. While he does not directly state that these three goods are provided by three separate parties, the word you strongly suggests that three parties are involved. Because these passages come from a commentary to a sacred text, Chen cannot reveal his message openly, and employs double entendre. Jing a means both daojing ba Daoist scripture , and yuejing a menses , while fa means both dharma true teaching, or truth and alchemical technique or method. Look at the double meanings of the clause wenjingzhe shi fa ea=D: in the rst passage. The one who hears the scripture provides i.e., shishe DU the Daoist dharma to all beings; or, the one who senses hears, or smells: wen e the coming of the womans pharmacon whose arrival is correlated with her menses

applies or uses i.e., shiyong D the alchemical method danfa : . In the second passage, Chen hints at a formal compact between the three parties. This is a three 51

DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie 2.51b1052a6.

52


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way economy of salvation, by which the alchemist, the patron, and possibly also the female partner can all move closer to liberation from the mortal condition. In the third passage, Chen also mentions the necessity of having a private site for practice. This could introduce a fourth party into the economy of salvation: a layman with a secluded courtyard e.g., Tian Zhizhai, or Zhang Shihong , or a knowing abbot with rooms at a mountain temple e.g., Che Kezhao, or Luo Xizhu . Chen takes the trouble to contrive this code, both to escape censure, and also to shine the sacred glow of the Duren jing, one of the Daoists holiest scriptures, upon his own marginal teachings. Also, at the end of the rst passage, he says that no party is injured in this transaction, and at the end of the second passage, he warns against aggression against the partner? . I will discuss these points below. The passages above are the only ones where Chen hints at a threeway exchange, but there are plenty of other passages where Chen speaks of exchanging alchemical instruction for funds: There are also ne companions who have never heard the dao. If they have extra funds, then it is appropriate to trade with them so that each party may complete his aair. Therefore Pang Yun the Chan layman sank his funds in the water to seek the pharmacon i.e., spent his money to get the pharmacon , and Fu the Mah sattva sang out and sold o his wife and children. Both were alike in this dao. <-D@6.G1(F*%3$/HJ?6"I: 7E'2@53 Even lower than that is one who is broke and living in a mean dwelling, without sucient funds for his needs, but solid in his will. He is nothing but busy and avid, forgetting food and sleep. Having already heard the ultimate dao yet lacking material for the elixir, he is cautious as if anxious and afraid. When he encounters one who has more than enough and is fond of virtue, then they can make a trade. This is called using both methods and funds; neither the one nor the other is lacking. &44K6 98##;C5 0D@ !.BB>>AG<,.3=*1+ 6%) 54 I believe that Chen is talking about an exchange of alchemical learning for nancial support, but because of the ambiguity of the terms shanl <-, haoshanzhe <,, 53


54


450

and cai ;/', there is a slight chance that he is talking about an exchange between the alchemist and a female partner. The chance is only a slight one because Chen would use a word of praise such as shanl H2 ne companion for social superior a patron rather than a social inferior a female partner . However, I will argue below that Chen may indeed be sharing alchemical learning with women. Chen projects his economy of salvation back onto the great patriarchs of the past. Xue Daoguang the so called third patriarch of the Southern Lineage sought patronage: Havent you heard the story of Purple Nobility? He stripped o his hair to become a Buddhist monk with the name Xue Shi, exhaustively researched the buddha dharma and true buddha nature for years without anything to settle on. One day he lodged in Shi Tai Xinglins station, and undeservedly received from Dezhi the Perfected Shi Tai the true essentials of inherent nature and life endowment. Shi Tai furthermore warned him, saying, Swiftly make your way to a central town well served by many roads or a metropolis, and, relying upon a powerful person, make plans to do this cultivation. Purple Nobility followed

this advice, and thereby attained the dao. PGTRGT3U5NX(C#08.VFKI D &/\Q8<>.,86%7-A*B+! 1O"5GT=4 L?55 Huineng, the sixth Chan patriarch in China, also sought patronage: Furthermore, Huineng did not have dharma funding. He thereupon got Shenhui to supply him completely. Huineng furthermore gained the outside protection of Liu Zhile. Subsequently, he hid among the hunters of Sihui County, and began his alchemical labors. E: F0; <9J)

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Generally, in the generations of today, foolish fellows and impure persons, as soon as they hear of technique and funds, will certainly have a big laugh, then say that the cultivator ought to be impoverished down to his bones, without a stitch on him. + / ."!0 %57

-#&(

Chen defends the exchange of symbolic and economic capital within a regime of self cultivation. Impoverished down to his bones recalls Bai Yuchans description of his time of anguished cloudlike wandering between monasteries yunyou *, as a young man;58 and without a stitch on is a Chan phrase suggesting lack of obscuration, mediation, or reliance on anything. §3.1.2.2, Who is the partner?

Wile also notes that, in the sexual cultivation

literature over the centuries, the requirement for youth in the female partner tends to be for younger and younger women, and nally, within sexual alchemy, focuses on the moment of puberty.59 Looking back at our Mingdynasty texts, we see that Jindan jieyao calls for a girl of sixteen or seventeen for gathering the pharmacon. Women as old as their twenties may also be employed, but for basic training only. The ideal is a partner 5048 days old, which would be 13.8 years in modern terms, or adding 300 days in the womb 14.65 years by the traditional Chinese count. Jindan zhenchuan also mentions a sixteenyearold partner, with a 5048dayold partner as the ideal. Chen Zhixu also hints at employing teenage females: Great Change is exchanging yin for yang, or exchanging li for kan, or exchanging the senior male for the junior female, or exchanging qian for dui. ')1$ 60 Most readers would understand the senior male and junior female here as the trigrams qian and dui , but I think Chen is referring to the age disparity between the two partners. Chen hints at the age of the female partner as being either fourteen or fteen, always justifying it with reference to scriptures or alchemical 57


58

True poverty, down to the bones and marrow zhen ge chegu chesui pin , in Bai Yuchans Shangqing ji ; DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu 39.1b9.

59


60

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.50a9b1 missing from DZ 1067 .

452

classics, of course. The rst passage comes from the Cantong qi commentary: Mouth, foureights; twoinch lip. The sum of four and eight is twelve; add two more to make a full fourteen. Fourteen is the initial fullness of the moon in the heavens. The moon in its fullness is pure yang. Only because its yang is pure can it produce the metal essence of One Yang within the caldron. Mouth and lips are the gates where metal and Qi conjoin; these are called the caldrons mouth and vessels lips. We call this two sevens, or fourteen. We call this the wondrous meaning of seven reversions. People of the generations have not understood Wei Boyang the Old Transcendents wondrous import, hiding wonders within wonders, with a meaning beyond the meaning.

"/ 9 " "! &+'44,03 #3023)8$7 9/ /,)-.*+=7 ;/ += +=( 6 %1 <> 5561 In this dense passage, Chen is justifying the need for a fourteenyearold partner. He manipulates the original line from Cantong qi, Mouth, foureights; twoinch lip, and the term seven reversions a phrase carried over from laboratory alchemy to produce the number fourteen. The correlation of fourteen with the fourteenth day of the lunar cycle, just before the full moon, is a bit unusual. He is gathering the outer pharmacon from the partner, but the outer pharmacon usually appears on the third day of the cycle zhen : , when fresh yang is just beginning to appear out of pure yin, rather than at the apex of yang. Chens logic here contradicts his usual teachings; this shows the situational exibility or lack of rigor of alchemical terminology and numerology.62 You must know the weight of the pharmacon in catties and liangounces, before employing it. We may say that this dui metal must weigh roughly fteen liang ounces, close to the standard of one catty. By this, Cantong qi says the metals sum is fteen. When the metal is as heavy as fteen liangounces, then it can produce the lovely water. What is meant by the number of water also resembles it? This is not saying 61


62

Aside from gathering the pharmacon at the beginning of the cycle, Chen also speaks of collecting yang qi from the elixir at the rst and last quarters of the moon, as I discuss below on pp. 510, 512, and 514. Some alchemists do speak of gathering yang qi on the full moon the fteenth day of the lunar cycle , which would be close to the fourteenth day that Chen mentions above. For example, Qiu Chuji speaks of gathering the inner pharmacon on the fteenth day; Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 169. Yet I dont think that Chens statement above is part of his usual system: it is numerological rhetoric.

453

that water is also fteen liangounces. You must weigh the water and metal together: if there are fteen liangounces of metal, then they must certainly be able to produce that much water, so Cantong qi says resembles it. Therefore Wei Boyang the Old Transcendent prompts us that only when overlooking the furnace can we be certain of the zhudrams and liangounces. If fteen liang ounces of metal have already produced ve parts of water, then the water is excessive and cannot be used. Thus Cantong qi says ve parts of water with surplus . . . G932Ì*A"^)-= E2I:J<W?C =H( =I42?M!n0,gd$&>1$ 2G]=D[&2= M!%B& &7 Lhk kp6 63a a2F2= !4 ?Zf f*" (f 63 C Again, Chen speaks of gathering the outer pharmacon when it weighs fteen ounces. Gathering at the fullmoon day is not his usual teaching: the adept must gather on the third day of the cycle during stage 2 , or the eighth and twentythird days during stage 3 . He means one must gather from a fteenyearold partner. This is the age when a partner is able to produce the lovely water lishui n , that is, secretions that signal the presence of the metallous outer pharmacon. Like Wiles sexual alchemists, Chen is focusing on the moment just before puberty. This jing is subtle and marvelous, saving all beings without limit. Of all the denizens of heaven and all human beings, none do not receive good fortune. Interpreting this according to daousage, this jing is none other than the supreme treasure, or the metal humor. Subtle and marvelous is none other than the white

tiger, or twosevens fourteen years old. Cui the Perfecteds Ruyao jing says Twosevens assemble the assisting wings. By means of this jings subtle and marvelous merit, people can follow the current and give birth to things, or advance against the current to form the elixir. Succoring broadly and with feeling, saving all beings without limit. )XV/S@Te R5cY Y"q)X.+o .= Q V/.#; .2 OK lm2\_j ) ) 64 XV/U?!8N?'bi(PS@Te0 In the passage above, Chen weaves his message about the wondrous ecacy of the pharmacon from a fourteenyearold partner into his commentary to the Duren jing, a scripture promising salvation to all sentient beings. Once again, jing means both scripture and passing of menses. His phrase weimiao V/ is none other than the white tiger may echo the common term miaoling /r a girl in the spring of youth . 63


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§3.1.2.3, Shoujing zhibao.

We have seen Chen use variations of the phrase

shoujing zhibao '6= supreme treasure of the rst passing several times; this term comes from Wuzhen pian, and is a controversial term. I will show that the term, for Chen Zhixu and others of his tradition, refers unequivocably to the female partners pharmacon, and almost certainly to menarche. Here is the original Wuzhen pian verse: The rst passing of the supreme treasure of the white tiger Is the perfected metal of the divine water from the oreate pool. Thus we know that the superior virtues font of benets is deep, And cannot be compared with common medicines. '6=2*) !14,/+< 65 The Wuzhen pian verse is rather incomprehensible without commentary. I do not think that the Wuzhen pian verse is necessarily sexual, but the commentaries in DZ 142 certainly are. Lu Shu writes: At twoeights sixteen years old a males seminal essence comes through, and at twosevens fourteen years old a females natural gui menses comes down. At the moment when it rst comes down, is this the rst passing, or not? O, when one meets a doughty ghter on the road one must display ones sword, and when ones zither music is heard by a friend who can truly appreciate it, only then should one strum. )9- #%5% ("'6$"'6 $7.3:08&;66 Lu Shu intimates that the shoujing zhibao is correlated with menarche, without committing himself to the statement, asking is this the rst passing, or not? This might be because there is an ambiguous relationship between the metallous outer pharmacon and the female partners water secretions, or menses . The pharmacon is qi, yet it is signalled by secretions. Like the adepts own primal essence and seminal essence, the partners pharmacon is an intangible entity, yet indissociable from tangible and dirty matter. Lu Shus nal couplet refers to sexual display and foreplay with a worthy partner. Xue Daoguang i.e., Weng Baoguang asserts that the shoujing zhibao is not 65

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 5.6a56. The line Gu zhi shangshan liyuan shen !14, echoes Daode jing, chapter 8. 66


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an elixir of the boudoir: . . . The rst passage is the rst waxing of the qi of the white tiger, and is not a technique of gathering and battling or boudoir elixirs. If one speaks of the three peaks, or the twentyfour items in the method of gathering the yin, this is to slander the great Dao: your ancestors to the ninth generation will forever sink down as lesser demons, and you will personally receive a nasty retribution in this lifetime. The Dao may not be slandered, just as one cannot ascend to the heavens by a staircase! >S( 45.A86F\ZG=Y ?9FJ 1;(_R UB* D',+LK3U RM P&67 Weng Baoguangs defensiveness here suggests that he like Lu Shu and Chen Zhixu

is a sexual alchemist, and he is concerned to distance himself from teachers of perverse arts such as sanfeng caizhan . An outside observer might lump sexual alchemy and these perverse arts together, so sexual alchemists must make a show of criticizing the latter. I make this argument in chapter 3, §1.1. In his commentary to this verse, Chen Zhixu says . . . It is only this rst passage of the white tiger which we may term, with diculty, the one prenatal qi. The transcendent teacher Zhang Boduan has gone to special lengths to leak the secret completely, and Xue Daoguang and Lu Ziye have glossed it in too much detail. Of the fools of this generation, some have pointed to this as a teaching of gathering and battling, while others have called it a technique involving elixir of the ladies quarters i.e., menses. Disaster will come to these critics personally. If the student knows that the moon comes out from the geng quadrant on the third day, only then may he seek to use the spiritwater of the oreate pool. $ 4>SE"!A@`VWÎOTQ =:
DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 5.6a8b2. The exact same passage is found in DZ 145, Wuzhen pian zhushi 2.45a24. Wengs commentaries in DZ 142 are always attributed to Xue Daoguang, but the commentary in DZ 145 is attributed correctly to Weng. 68


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alchemist Chen Yingning says that Xue i.e., Weng , Lu, Chen, and Qiu Zhaoao are mistaken about Zhang Boduans original intent. He advises against sexual alchemy in general: all the sexual alchemists he has personally known have failed in their quest.69 §3.1.2.4, How many partners are employed?

To my knowledge, all premodern

Chinese sexual cultivation teachings recommend a series of female partners for a single male adept. One reason for this may be because if you return habitually to the same woman, her yin qi will become progressively weaker.70 Chen states that neither partner is harmed. Many of the texts studied by Wile call for many partners. Sun Simiao calls for ten partners in a single night, and an ideal overall number of ninetythree. Yufang zhiyao calls for seven or eight, though the Yellow Emperor employed 1200 partners. Jindan jieyao calls for three to ve, and Caizhen jiyao calls for three.71 Presumably these are serial rather than group encounters, although the Mingdynasty texts Sun miaolun and Jindan zhenchuan do speak of arrangements involving one adept and two partners together.72 I have yet to nd any clear statements in Chens texts about how many partners the alchemist must usually employ. In one passage, Chen hints at employing a sequence of nine partners: Now, if a great sage again creates yin and yang, impelling the passions and uniting the inherent natures, revolving and joining, setting up additional elixir furnaces, and further creating the great elixir of nine caldrons, this is just like the Cog and Armil of the Dipper established again at the starting point of zi. !73

!

Chen takes the Yellow Emperor as a model here, as he often does. Chen cites the Yellow Emperor as a sage ruler who was an alchemist, but perhaps also because the Yellow Emperor is a hero of so many manuals in the history of Chinese sexual cultivation. There can be little doubt about the meaning of setting up additional elixir furnaces here. Yet I believe that this is an optional, advanced practice, rather than something all male adepts must do, so it does not tell us how many partners 69

Chen Yingning, Lun baihu shoujing , reprinted in idem, Daojiao yu yangsheng, 3068.

70

Yufang zhiyao, in Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 102.

71

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 11416 Sun Simiao , 100 Yufang zhiyao , 171 Jindan jieyao , and 185 Caizhen jiyao .

72

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 125 Sun miaolun , and 163 Jindan zhenchuan .

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would usually be needed in Chens teachings. I discuss this again on pages 52223 below. §3.1.2.5, Longhu danfa.

Hu Fuchen and Zeng Chuanhui think that Chen Zhixu

practiced dragontiger alchemy.74 This is an important issue that goes to the heart of Chens teachings, so I must address it carefully. I do not nd the evidence for this specic claim about Chen Zhixu convincing, yet it is certain that threeway sexual alchemy is not a modern invention projected onto the past, and there is evidence that Chens master Zhao Youqin may have practiced this. Hu Fuchen keeps the details of longhu danfa hazy, but we know that it involves three persons: In dragontiger alchemy, the three houses meeting each other are the qian caldron, kun caldron, and alchemist .75 The qian caldron would be male, the kun caldron would be female, with the alchemist as the third party. The idea of a threeway encounter is the main element distinguishing longhu danfa from other forms of sexual alchemy. The three houses in the phrase three houses meeting each other76 are an adept and two partners, not an adept, partner, and yellow dame; Hu mocks those who follow the latter interpretation. Hu hints that the qian and kun caldrons are to be treated with utmost respect,77 which leads me to suspect that there is no physical contact between the alchemist and the two caldrons. Another piece of supporting evidence that there is no physical contact is Hus hint that the two caldrons are not adults. Hu claims that, in the Avatasaka stra, when Maitreya meets Desheng Lad and Desheng

74

The main contemporary written source on longhu danfa is Yangsheng lice, an unpublished booklength collection of writings by Zhang Shangyi. It should be read together with a critique by Wuyouzi , Wuyouzi dianpi Yangsheng liceZhang Shangyi Xiansheng yuanzhu. Wuyouzi is the penname of another authority on these matters; his legal name is not revealed. Both of these works are widely available on the internet. They not critical scolarship, and should be regarded as primary sources rather than secondary sources. I do not use them here because I cannot vouch for their quality, and my points can be made citing Hu Fuchen and Zeng Chuanhui alone. 75

Hu Fuchen, in Yuandai Cantong xue, by Zeng Chuanhui, third preface Xu san , 13.

76

See p. 343 above.

77

Hu cites a line from Chen Zhixus Wuzhen pian commentary: As for the caldron and vessel, what are they? They are the numinous father and holy mother, the qian male and kun female DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 3.1b34 . Chens original meaning is simply to correlate the two human partners with the numinous father and holy mother a pair of Daoist entities or quasideities originally from the Shangqing scriptures , and reinforce the sacred nature of sexual alchemy.

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Lass,78 and receives from them a method of being xed in illusion huanzhu fa

,79 this is the longhu danfa.80 I take this as a hint of sexual contact between a lad and a lass. Hu believes that longhu danfa is a superior practice, suitable for alchemists in contemporary world, but I doubt he would ever advocate sexual contact between an alchemist and a teenage couple. Thus, I believe that in longhu danfa the alchemist does not touch the couple, and it must be a form of sexual alchemy at a distance, geti shenjiao bodies separate but spirits copulating . Perhaps the couple, as well as the alchemist, do not touch physically. While the term longhu danfa may be a modern term, the idea of a threeway encounter is not modern. In Jindan jieyao, at the stage of recycling the elixir, the alchemist clasps the hand of the dragon to the left and the tiger to the right. In another text, Fu Jinquan writes that true alchemical practice must involve three persons. He cites brief quotations from authorities such as Xue Daoguang, L Dongbin, Chen Zhixu, Zhongli Quan, Longmeizi, and Tianlaizi as evidence that the alchemical scriptures have many words about the companions. One should know that this is not done through a single person i.e., not just one companion

.81 None of Fu Jinquans citations are convincing evidence that his predecessors practiced threeway sexual alchemy, but they do show that Fu himself teaches this. While Fu does not directly say that the three persons are adept and two partners rather than adept, partner, and yellow dame, I believe that he is indeed talking about an adept and two partners. So how is all of this relevant to Chen Zhixu? Hu Fuchen and Zeng Chuanhui say that Chen Zhixu teaches longhu danfa. This claim is worth investigating, because there is evidence of some sort of threeperson sexual alchemy within the writing of 78

Desheng Tongzi Skt. risambhava? and Desheng Tongn , from, e.g., T 293, Dafang guangfo huayan jing, 10:809a20.

79

In the Avatasaka stra, this is the ability to see that all worlds are xed in illusion; Foguang da cidian, s.v. Desheng Tongzi , 6008. Hu seems to have garbled it into a method using illusion. 80

Hus claim of nding sexualalchemical teachings in the Avatasaka is outrageous, but has a long history in China, going back to Zhao Youqin if not earlier.

81

Dingpi Shijin shi, by Fu Jinquan, 3.13b9, in Zangwai daoshu, 11:883. Longmeizi is the author of the thirteenthcentury sexual alchemical text DZ 151, Jinye huandan yinzheng tu. Tianlaizi is the author of several alchemical poems from the Yuan dynasty? .

459

Chens master, Zhao Youqin. Chapter 2 of Zhao Youqins book Xianfo tongyuan, entitled Intimate Friends and Companions in the Dao Zhiyin daol 05J1 82 is an extended hint about some sort of alchemical practice requiring three people. Zhao cites many Daoist and Buddhist scriptures and essays that either mention intimate friends zhiyin , or various items in threes, including a quotation ascribed to Xue Daoguang, three people with one intention guard cautiously against threats "+4,!.83 Then Zhao adds his own comments: The teachings on intimate friends and companions in the dao are univocal in meaning. If only gentlemen of eminent understanding can silently recognize this and attune their heart minds to it, that is enough. Among the friends and companions, it is only the clear and pure family members, united in intention and of a single mind, who are the hardest to nd. So we know that the transcendents and buddhas of yore certainly relied upon companions in the dao, and only thereby achieved the dao. Therefore, the twenty sixth patriarch of the Dhyna or Chan lineage in India, Bodhidharma took leave of the king, saying, I wish that, within the supreme Buddhist vehicle, the king will not forget about outside protection waihu \ . Both Gushan Shenyan84 and Xue Daoguang the Purple Worthy have sayings about ten years of wandering in the lakes and seas. I sincerely appreciate that they would come to this ten years of bitter training, and always sigh three times for their eort. But as for the teaching of the three persons, among the gentlemen of the dao in the whole world, none may know this! 05J1P-I >;/SWC->?@A[ "+D3Y=0(7%R.J1:$J2 9X<Z.D 6F*\KOVGQ7%#E 8LTH'& M3 N) PUJ B:0 &85 Because of his emphasis on companions and outer protection i.e., patronage , Zhao Youqin sounds like a sexual alchemist in this passage and indeed, he reveals himself as a sexual alchemist in other passages from Xianfo tongyuan . Throughout the section, he claims to nd hints of three ness throughout Buddhist and Daoist texts, and here indicates that this three ness is related to companions, and is highly secret. I have not found evidence within Xianfo tongyuan indicating whether these 82

Xianfo tongyuan, by Zhao Youqin, 5a8a, in Daoshu quanji, Zhongguo shudian ed., 46466.

83

Xianfo tongyuan, by Zhao Youqin, 5b3, in Daoshu quanji, Zhongguo shudian ed., 464.

84

Gushan Shenyan , a Chan master active the late Tang or Five Dynasties periods; Foguang da cidian, s.v. Gushan shengjian, , 5714. 85

Xianfo tongyuan, by Zhao Youqin, 7b27, in Daoshu quanji, Zhongguo shudian ed., 465.

460

three people are adept, partner, and yellow dame, as is common in Mingdynasty sexual cultivation, or adept and two partners as implied by Hu Fuchen and perhaps Fu Jinquan. If the latter, then Zhao Youqins phrase clear and pure family members or, dependents qingjing juanshu "#$) suggests that this may be dry sexual alchemy, without physical contact between the alchemist and partners. Further research may clarify these issues. So, threeway sexual alchemy probably existed in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and may even have been taught by Zhao Youqin, so it is not impossible that Chen Zhixu teaches this too. Lets look at the evidence for and against this possibility. Hu Fuchens evidence is a line from Chen Zhixus Wuzhen pian commentary: As for the caldron and vessel, what are they? They are the numinous father and holy mother, the qian male and kun female &'* % ! ! .86 Chens original meaning is simply to correlate the two human partners with a pair of Daoist quasideities,87 and reinforce the sacred nature of sexual alchemy. This is not evidence of threeway sexual alchemy. Zeng Chuanhuis evidence is the following passage from Chens Cantong qi commentary: checks re, re checks metal, and metal checks wood. The four are all obliterated, and the meritorious labor is credited to the thick earth. Thick earth is jiearth. The three natures are wu, metal, and water.

Water

88

( (

Zeng argues that most alchemists would interpret the common phrase three houses meeting each other sanjia xiangjian as the meeting of agents water, re, and earth.89 Because Chen is talking about a di erent set of three agents, water, metal, and re, this suggests that he is talking about longhu danfa.90 I cannot evaluate this claim, since Zeng does not tell us how this triad of watermetalre is related to 86


87

Chen mentions the numinous father and holy mother at least eleven times in his corpus, but without dening them. This couple perhaps rst appears in DZ 1382, Shangqing jiudan shanghua taijing zhongji jing, an early Shangqing text; Schipper and Verellen, The Taoist Canon, 1:16465. 88


89

I discuss the meeting of the three cardinal agents water, re, and earth on pages 33940.

90


461

longhu danfa. Yet I can say that the phrase the three natures are wu, metal, and water appears nowhere else in Chens extant corpus, and thus must not represent his usual teachings. I do not take this as evidence of threeway sexual alchemy. The quotation that Fu Jinquan attributes to Chen in his section on threesomes, Having already attained a true master, you ought to rst seek alchemyfriends '$" +,91 does not exist in Chens extant corpus, and says nothing about threesomes anyway. Furthermore, the suggestive terms three persons sanren

and qian caldron qianding &- do not occur in Chens extant corpus. Yet there are several passages in Chens writings which do suggest three person sexual alchemy. Chen often cites holy persons of the past as models for latter day alchemists, and in several passages he mentions a holy exemplar who employed lads and lasses in alchemy. Chen recounts the tale of a Handynasty gure Deng Yuzhi /. Deng Yuzhi and Xu Lingqi #4* practiced alchemy sidebyside under the same master, but when they found they could only aord enough elixir funds dancai % for one person, Deng let Xu use these funds i.e., female partner s , while he went without. Deng was depressed to be without the means to practice alchemy, until Han Wudi received a portent pointing to Deng, and thereupon bestowed gold, silk, boy s and girl s , and permitted him to select a site on the Southern Marchmount and set up three halls upper, middle, and lower to cultivate the inner and outer elixirs. After more than two years, Deng came to the stone altar and ascended to the heavens. . (32, ! 92

0)1

Chen has copied this tale from his master Zhao Youqins Xianfo tongyuan;93 the tale speaks of boy s and girl s , which could be the socalled qian and kun caldrons; Zhao Youqin speaks of three persons. Yet Zhao does not speak of boys and girls together elsewhere in Xianfo tongyuan, and Chen does not speak of three persons. I think that this does not amount to evidence of threeway alchemy for Chen Zhixu. 91

Dingpi shijin shi, by Fu Jinquan, 3.14a12, in Zangwai daoshu, 11:883.

92


93

Xianfo tongyuan, by Zhao Youqin, 9b, in Daoshu quanji, Zhongguo shudian ed., 466.

462

How about the episode of Xu Xun !* learning a sword technique from the transcendent lads and lasses sent down from the heavens to teach him? Is this suggestive? Xu Jingyang sent ve transcendent lads and lasses to do swordplay, and execute the baleful dragon by decapitating it. ,' #94 $"-, Long ago, when Xu Jingyang was rening the recycled elixir, he stimulated the thearch s on high to send down to him ve transcendent lads and lasses bearing swords. After doing daily swordplay with them, Jingyang attained the dao. How is this not a case of protecting and receiving the jing menses within ones person! ! $/. %+", ( 0& 95

$ ) -,

These passages cite an episode from the legend of Xu Xun. Xu Xun was an important cultic gure in Jiangxi Province during Chen Zhixus lifetime, and Chen coopts Xu Xun and his cultic pantheon into his own alchemical mythology, as sexual alchemists. While the term transcendent lads and lasses xian tongn " is suggestive, there is no conclusive evidence of threeway alchemy here. Tongn " is an ambiguous term: I have translated it as tong lads and n lasses , but Chen could be interpreting it to mean tongn lasses only , rather than tong+n lads and lasses . I have found no strong evidence that Chens sexual alchemy involves three way sexual alchemy, and I tentatively reject the ascription of longhu danfa teachings to Chen Zhixu. Chens sexualalchemical triangle is not an adept plus a male and female partner, but rather the threeway exchange that I discussed above, with a master supplying teachings fa , a patron supplying money cai , and female partner s

supplying the elixir dan . §3.1.2.6, How does the adept get the partners agreement? By paying for it . . .

When one rst reads about sexual alchemy, the question of the womans position comes immediately to mind, so I will take the next several sections to discuss the relevant evidence in Chens writings. How does the adept come to terms with the partner? He must win the partners agreement with golden treasure: 94


95


463

Now, as for the technique of nine cyclings and seven reversions, one must unite the outer pharmacon with the inner. If there is not a pledge of golden treasure, then how could one attain the marvel of this jing? And how could one subdue the tiger and defeat the dragon? And how could one attain the prenatal Qi that comes out of void nonbeing? 9e>] ];%DH(U.% a8d*"dA:9 D7B_%DH +Qh5 96 Now, funds can be used to establish the caldron, or to favor the other, or to achieve the dao. If you use funds in order to impel the other, you must gain her emotions, then the mani pearl, that priceless treasure, can be obtained. EZN&XE4H6I;)CO [eH297 In the second passage, we see a naked commercial exchange: funds are exchanged for the pearl of the outer pharmacon. While the later stages of the alchemical process involve formless rening of an internal elixir through nonaction, the initial stages require purposeful action youzuo ', , even muddying ones hands with money: Do not cling to nonaction, doing absolutely nothing. When you begin your work you must also rely on funds to attractandemploy pin the partner. K0O>! > SFEW98 The funds are not given directly to the female parter, but to a matchmaker of some kind: Even if wood loves the obedient righteousness of metal, if not for funds then you cannot attain her joyous heart. Even if metal feels much passionate attachment to wood, if not for a matchmaker then she cannot break through by herself. Once the matchmaker has communicated the friendly feelings, and the funds have caused the joy to form, the two parties will naturally gulp each other down, and the male will become pregnant with a fetus. If you do not enfold her in your breast with virtuous power, and favor the other with cohumanity, then when you approach the aair, how could she go along with my employ? bT T9RV:E; H6f9 9bg g*#I I:M M; D+YM M =L$E Pf+? ?-G*1 1c@ A c\N ; `3JD^/<99 The passage above is couched in technical alchemical language, but this is not a 96


97

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 3.10b34 missing from DZ 1067 .

98

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 5.28b12 missing from both DZ 1067 and Daozang jiyao eds. .

99


464

cover language. As I have shown in chapter 4, alchemical discourse may operate on several di erent levels at once, so this passage is simultaneously about the interaction of agents wood, metal, and earth on the mesocosmic plane, pharmaca or sex organs on the microcosmic plane, and adept, partner, and matchmaker on the macrocosmic plane of human society. Money must be exchanged for the alchemical coupling to take place. The nal sentence says that human feeling is also necessary: how could the process work without the partners trust in the adept? Who is this matchmaker? Is it a brothel madam? A tracker in female servants, bondmaids, or female slaves bin ? A chaperon of some kind? I cannot say for sure. Chen Zhixu mentions prostitution often enough as I show on pages 38687 above that I suspect the rst possibility. Other sexual cultivation texts speak of employing bondmaids.100 Chen is skilled at overlaying instructions for sexual alchemy onto traditional Daoist discourse. In the following passage from his commentary to the Duren jing, he weaves together the sexual alchemists exchange of money for intercourse with the traditional o ering of precious goods to the gods during a Daoist masters solemn transmission of a scripture jing to his or her disciple, as pledges or sureties of the disciples sincerity and trustworthiness.101 Encomium: That secret , which the heavens above treasure, is not transmitted lightly. If you are favored with a personal transmission, you may rise to the heavens. The golden treasure discloses that which ones heart values. This jing is subtle and marvelous, with boundless auspiciousness. 102 Gold is o ered freely, without regret, for it expresses the sincerity in ones heart. For the alchemist, the monetary value of the golden treasure cannot compare with the salvic value of the jing menarche, and the outer pharmacon that comes with it. §3.1.2.7, How does the adept get the partners agreement? By doing no harm . . .

Ideally, harm should come to neither party: 100

Cf. Sun Simiao, Fangzhong buyi pian; or Zijin Guangyao Daxian xiuzhen yanyi; in Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 115, 144. 101

Cf. Benn, The CavernMystery Transmission: A Taoist Ordination Rite of .. 711.

102


465

The two do not injure one another, so virtue returns to you. )4E2LU103 The elder son of qian is called zhen, which means great. He is in charge of producing the mercury. The younger daughter of kun is called dui, which means small. She is in charge of producing the lead. When zhen and dui are regulated and harmonized, how could there by any injury? Both countries whole means the other su ers no loss, and I accomplish my a air. = 0&O'A% %, !'

AJ JO!N N 104 )>/-3CT$S( + E ) Chinese sexual cultivation often has a vampiric element. As one text says, if you return habitually to the same woman, her yin qi will become progressively weaker.105 Yet Chen is saying here that the female partner will not be depleted. §3.1.2.8, How does the adept get the partners agreement? By being nice . . .

To

gather the pharmacon, the alchemist must harmonize with the partner: Same qi is none other than same in kind. Having become same in kind, you must be able to equalize hearts. If hearts are equalized, only then can you accomplish the a air. 9# V3 *V:K K* 5K K:R(106 The alchemist gains the good will of the partner by giving her money, and also by treating her virtuously: It exists within this world: just use funds to gain her good will, and rely on virtuous behavior to succor her. D @;?*WPLS 107 If you are without the transgression of lust, and the ten karmic delements are all extinguished, then you will be equally united in benevolent love, encompassing both other things and yourself. The bones of strangers will become like those of your own kin refers to pity for the dead, and you will bring benet to both yourself and others. The country will be at peace and the folk will prosper, in a general state of joy and Great Peace. Country means the body. Folk means the essence and Qi within the body. MI5CH61KFG.$78B B<Q"">

103


104


105

Yufang zhiyao, in Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 102.

106


107

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 3.10b89 missing from DZ 1067.

466

@'? 4% % =108 The emotional harmony of the partners is free of lust. It is probably a kind of impersonal, patronizing benevolence, between a social superior and inferior, rather than a feeling between equals. §3.1.2.9, How does the adept get the partners agreement? She benets too . . .

As

we saw on page 408 above, Wile traces the position of women throughout the history of Chinese sexual cultivation, and nds that the literature of sexual alchemy portrays women as at metaphysical props.109 Yet the appearance of the phrase bringing benet to self and other zili lita "" in Chens writings suggests that the womans benet is not totally neglected. When the one above and the one below copulate with shared intent, the roof of the heavens is xed and the celestial radiance shines forth. By means of your awakening, bring about the awakening of those coming after. Bring benet both to yourself and to others. #&:CC,""110 If a person, bearing the ability of a superior gentleman who diligently sets to work, mingles with the worldly dust, distances himself from the vulgar, and mixes in the techniques of the nine schools and the hundred kinds of specialist, establishing virtuous power and meritorious labor, bringing benet to self and other, spreading virtue without hope of recompense, this is called complete in both ability and virtue, and we may trust that he will have the achievement of transcendenthood and buddhahood. 0 1; 6+""-> 958(.>2! ) $111 In the rst passage, the line the one above the the one below copulate with shared intent tells us that Chen is talking about sexual alchemy, and establishes the context of bringing benet to self and other rmly within the sexual encounter. The second passage is not about sex; rather, it connects selfcultivation and working for the benet of other beings as two indissociable aspects of the alchemical mrga. What we would call the exploitation of a minor female by an older male alchemist, is, in Chens eyes, part of a general Mahynaavored ethos in which the male alchemists 108

DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie 1.19a10 b2.

109


110

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.35a9 10 missing from DZ 1067.

111

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.23b1 3 missing from DZ 1067.

467

labor benets the female partner and indeed the whole world and all sentient beings within it. §3.1.2.10, Female sexual alchemy.

How does the female partner benet from

the encounter? Chens writings contain hints of female sexual alchemy. In his Wuzhen pian commentary, Chen oers a discussion of female solo inner alchemy, a rare discussion to nd before the Qing dynasty. When the woman cultivates transcendence, she takes her breasts as the site where the qi is generated. This technique is especially simple. Therefore, when a man cultivates transcendence it is called rening the qi, whereas when a woman cultivates transcendence it is called rening the physical form. When a woman practices selfcultivation, she must rst build up qi in her breasts, then set up the caldron and furnace, and practice the technique of rening the form by means of the Great Yin. By means of this dao, it is most easy to achieve the dao, and there are plenty of marvelous instructions for it. 3."%14 &#*A03 943 939=4("%8/;C 69 *#:7 ): 112 The passage above does not mention sexual alchemy, but the following passage may: The males is white, and the females is red: metal and water detain one another. The male belongs to the wood of the bluegreen dragon, and receives the Qi of dui metal. The female belongs to the metal of the white tiger, which is rened and reverted to red by the essence with its lire. !,2'D-> $, D+ ,5B <@?!113 If the essence with its lire is the mans seminal or primal essence, then it certainly appears that the female partner is using the males pharmacon just as he uses hers. While this one passage is too slight to carry much weight, I oer the possibility that a form of sexual alchemy for the mutual salvic benet for both partners exists within Chens purview. If, in the threeway exchange of teachings, funds, and elixir, the male adept is giving teachings to the female partner as well as to the patron, then the passage above might oer a clue about what these female alchemical teachings would be. While it is of course possible that I am reading too much into this passage, perhaps femalealchemical teachings are part of Chens repertoire but simply do not merit much discussion in his writings addressed to male 112


113


468

adepts. §3.1.2.11, Signs of conict.

Many sexual cultivation texts describe a battle of

the sexes, using military metaphors such as feints, generals, and gathering and battling caizhan =X .114 In Chens writings, we also see signs of hostility between the two partners: At the moment of gathering the pharmacon, the dragon and tiger wage a conict, and metal and wood are separated from one another. If as soon as one loses ones pharmacon, one prevents and blocks it from escaping, this must result in its escape through ejaculation. We may say that, if there is gain on my side, then the other loses, and if I lose, then the other gains. Thus Cantong qi says one side succumbs. At this time, only supreme persons, sages, or divine persons who have rened themselves until pure and ripe can prevent the loss due to a onesided succumbing. ,\S[(+8-EP"O2!BR; /& /&;0 9 9AJ14:M5I 6U7K K% 9A115 The idea of dragon and tiger battling each other before they nally fuse together is common throughout all forms of alchemy, but here, Chen is talking not merely about a battle between the two pharmaca, but between the two sex organs. The passage above seems to describe the usual state of a airs, rather than an encounter gone awry. It seems to belie Chens rhetoric of benet to self and other. Chen also describes the white tiger as a threat: The tiger has a wondrous dharmae cacy for stripping o clothes; it drinks peoples blood and marrow, and eats peoples seminal essence. Now I am getting it to come and go; guarding the altar and ritual area, aiding the completion of the dao. +?'^H]3Q #;$$*D 114


115


116


469

*+#(( *' "%' *$) (+#*117 The white tiger is a traditional demonic killer in Daoist and general Chinese folklore,118 and in alchemy it correlates to the female partner or sex organ. This symbolic coincidence becomes important to sexual alchemists because the idea of the female sex organ as a threat accords with the male adepts fear of losing his essence and lifeendowment during the sexual encounter. §3.2, Stage Two: Gathering caiqu & and Initial Fusion hedan After stage 1 of rening the self and preparing the alchemical requisites, the adept may gather the outer pharmacon and fuse it within his inner pharmacon. Within stage 2, I include substages of 2.1 timing the gathering, 2.2 gathering caiqu , 2.3 and fusing the elixir hedan , an initial joining of the pharmaca. §3.2.1.1, Timing the gathering: examining the water.

The male adepts goal

during the sexual encounter is not to attain pleasure for its own sake recall Chens rejection of lust , but rather to gather the partners outer pharmacon of pure yang qi, and draw it into himself as an ingredient for the elixir. The outer pharmacon is correlated with agent metal. According to the usual cycle of the ve agents in Chinese cosmology, the production cycle, metal produces water, just as dew appears on the face of a bronze mirror at night. Yet alchemy is governed by a widdershins diandao -! principle, and the ve agents interact di erently. The alchemist turns the ve phases upsidedown wuxing diandao ! , following the system of the interlaced waxing of the ve agents wuxing cuowang , , so in alchemy it is agent water which produces agent metal, rather than vice versa.119 For the sexual alchemist, likewise, the partners metal, or lead outer pharmacon appears within her water. The gathering of the outer pharmacon is the most highly charged moment in the sexualalchemical process, when life gained by gathering the outer pharmacon and death su ered due to losing the seminal essence hang by a thread. In all forms of alchemy, the successful 117


118

Cf. Hou Chinglang, The Chinese Belief in Baleful Stars.

119

I explain this on pages 33638 above.

470

completion of the elixir is said to be extremely di cult. Emphasizing the di culty of the process is a way for alchemists to justify the fact that alchemy usually does not work, and it also adds luster to the practice. The gathering of the outer pharmacon is said to be the most di cult thing to do: This stanza exclusively hints at the modelimages faxiang - of the outer elixir. If you obtain the outer elixir, then the matter which the spirits and transcendents are good at is already done. This is a warning not to take the enemy lightly when you approach the battlelines. For gentlemen selfcultivators, the only thing that can be called a di cult matter is making this one move. (")-# &3 3/1 #', 4120 The di culty of sexual alchemy is focused on the male adepts control of his seminal essence through lianji training, timing the moment of gathering the outer pharmacon, and performing the act of gathering. To time the gathering of the outer pharmacon, the alchemist must examine the quality of the partners water. The explicit Mingdynasty texts translated by Wile give us a sense of what examining the water can involve: in the Zhang Sanfeng text Jindan jieyao, the adept leaves a coin in the partners sex organ overnight then examines the discoloration of the coin, or sends the yellow dame to examine the partners menses.121 Typically, we cannot tell from Chens words to what extent he would agree with the Mingdynasty works. At least we can say that, although there was a matchmaker in stage 1, there seems to be no human yellow dame in stage 2 of Chens alchemical path. Chen says that the adept must gather when the water is clearest: Plumb its utmost clarity: when it is completely undisturbed, without substance and without aws, only then can it transform. This is called the highest virtue. $% %*0!*2* *. 5 +122 We may say that, at this time, the pharmacon has only just been produced, and the watersource is extremely pure, never yet having been disturbed: this is the moment when it has qi but no substance. The great cultivator will swiftly turn toward the water at this time, and, with his single wisdom eye, regulate and 120


121


122

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 2.55a45. The phrase shangshan + echoes Daode jing, chapter

8.

471

examine its signs. P37 X,YJ#=CS: 7(9BR>/"F123

8DTQ 6$2!

When the water is clearest, it possesses only an intangible qiquality, and no tangible, substantial quality no blood . Is Chen referring to a partner who is in the clear part of her cycle, or to a prepubescent partner who has never menstruated? While we saw above that Chen places high value on the rst passing of the superior treasure menarche , we can see that clear water may also refer to the clear part of a young adult womans cycle: The elixir caldron is no dierent: the caldronvessel in the human realm is called junior yin, and on the third day of every month, at sunset, she produces the Qi of One Yang in the district of ren and gui, serving as sign of the hexagram fu . Fu is one yang yaoline subduing ve yin yaolines. What is meant by seated in downhanging warmth? The cultivator, having already attained the caldronvessel, and coming to the moment of sunset on the third of the month, must sit and wait for the outer pharmacon, awaiting for its ery Qi to hang down, neither cold nor hot and dry, but warm. At this time, when its yang Qi is about to stir, you can quickly rene the elixir. OEHOUM?'. I+4 GFA*A-I? %V& &0K6$- ;OU N). & &"51)0#@W"K KE!)I< :2L 124 The outer pharmacon appears on the evening of the third day of the partners cycle, on the cusp between ren yang water and gui 4 yin water . I believe this means just before the menses appear. Dierent from lateimperial texts Jindan zhenchuan and Jindan jieyao, which tell the adept to discard the gui water and use only the ren water, Chen looks for the pharmacon within the gui water; this is just a semantic dierence, though. While the third day of the cycle appears again and again in Chens texts as the day for gathering, in one place Chen confusingly says that the day for gathering is the seventh day correlated with the hexagram fu , rather the third day: The return comes on the seventh day means that the moon hides its light, but on the seventh day again spits it forth. This is also like with people: when the menses have stirred for seven days, the yang is rst generated. 123


124


472

,B B0K."#$!CF@(D1125 Chen also describes this crucial moment as the time when there are two measures of water out of ve : We may say that this dui metal must weigh roughly fteen liangounces, close to the standard of one catty. By this, Cantong qi says the metals sum is fteen. When the metal is as heavy as fteen liangounces, then it can produce the lovely water. . . . If fteen liangounces of metal have already produced ve measures of water, then the water is excessive and cannot be used; thus Cantong qi says ve measures of water are surplus. If the dui metal is produced when the water has reached the moment of two measures, then it truly can be used; thus Cantong qi says take two measures of water as perfected. If these two measures of water denitely have roughly fteen liangounces of metal, then this is Cantong qis statement the metals weight is like at the origin. If the water has already reached three measures, it also cannot be used; thus Cantong qi says its three thus do not enter. I')38 -;0<2E453 3:& 3;/ -4?L+9 -3/ 4HJ J( 5 &J9)31/ = > 5

07> *' 8 -353 3;%19/0!A .G 126 5. Chen stretches the language of Cantong qi to say that, when the fteenyearold partner the fteen ounces of dui metal has produced two measures of water but not three or ve measures , that is the time to gather the metal. As for what two measures actually means, this is unclear. Measure fen could mean onetenth, or could mean an arbitrary fraction. It could refer to a moment during the menstrual cycle the moment of 20 percent? , or to the second day of the lunar cycle, or to a partner who has already had two cycles, but not yet a third. The rst interpretation seems most likely. While Chens exact meaning remains unclear, at least we can tell from his emphasis on watertiming that the timing for gathering the outer pharmacon is unlikely to involve the kind of calculations that we saw in the system of Jindan jieyao, involving the partners hour, day, month, and year of birth.127 Another dierence between Chen and other alchemists is that he rarely uses the term living midnight hour huo zishi 6= , which becomes a standard term in 125


126

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 1.35b89, 36a25.

127


473

later tradition. The term huo zishi appears only once in Chens extant writings.128 It appears that the water refers, not solely to menses or cyclical secretions , but also to sexual uid. In addition to waiting for a certain moment of the lunar cycle, the adept must wait until the right moment during the sexual encounter: Let the other whip rst and obtain her pleasure. 54+129 The lightning of kan is the moment when the others leadqi is aroused and vigorous. I immediately take advantage of the arrival of this time, and arouse the re of my Mt. Kunlun to respond to it. This is what is called Only one day in a month, only one doublehour in a day. . -$) #!#)&'

3 1 130 # It appears that the male adept gathers the outer pharmacon near, or at, the moment of the partners orgasm. On page 472 above, we saw the moment described as a time when the ery Qi descends warmly, neither cold nor hot and dry, but warm. Does the pharmacon appear at orgasm, or not? In some of the texts translated by Wile, the female partners jing appears at orgasm, and in some it appears at a point of heightened arousal before orgasm.131 The weight of evidence points to orgasm, but not denitively. §3.2.1.2, Foreplay.

Having chosen a partner, gained the acceptance of the

partner or her guardian, and identied the correct day for the sexual encounter, the couple engages in foreplay: Clasping the zither with a will, I pass by the western courtyard. The more the plucking, the sparser is that which can be heard. (+,%/

26

*132

Bamboo is a thing that is hollow all the way through on the inside and straight on the outside. If it is not straight, then tap on it, since you must make it respond to the thing. A zither has a will to have zithercord and strings in mutual 128 129 130

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4.23b8. DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 12.4a2. DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 3.10b24.

131

Generally, in the early literature, female jing comes at orgasm; Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 22. This holds for the lost Tangdynasty? version of Ruyao jing summarized in DZ 1017, Daoshu, Rongcheng pian "0 Wile, ibid., 27 , and the Mingdynasty texts Zijin Guangyao Daxian xiuzhen yanyi Wile, ibid., 140 and Caizhen jiyao Wile, ibid., 183 . Yet in the Sun jing Sui or Tang dynasty , the partners jing appears before orgasm; Wile, ibid., 89.

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474

harmony. If it is not in harmony, then tune it, and hopefully you will be able to accomplish the matter you are working on. ) 3%$* %(: :,-A $6@!+8* (=/-B"133 For Chen Zhixu, as for the Ming sexual cultivators studied by Wile,134 the alchemical language for foreplay is taken from a couplet in Wuzhen pian: Strike the bamboo and call the turtle to gulp down the jade exudations. Strum the zither and summon the phoenix to drink the spatulaful. :5E&96#<7135 Whatever Zhang Boduan originally meant by this verse,136 sexual cultivators have used it as a code for foreplay since the time of Lu Shu Southern Song or earlier. Alchemists in Chen Zhixus lineage even used this Wuzhen pian couplet to test the level of understanding of their rivals. In his long commentary to this bambooand zither couplet in DZ 142, Chen recounts an episode in which his lineal master Li Taixu used the couplet to defeat a debater bianshi C in single combat. Li sends his opponent packing with the comment You learned those words on the long linked bench! Go o and debate it with everyone else in the world! My place here is not the place for your calling the turtle! 2)'4 ?

.;

>C2D )5 5E1137 The remark This was learned on the long linked bench 2)'4 ?0

is found in Chan Buddhist texts, so the speaker

in this exchange whether it be Li Taixu himself, or Chen Zhixu concocting the story retrospectively is either speaking to a Chan or Daoist monk, or speaking like one. This bambooandzither couplet in Wuzhen pian seems to be a controversial one, an axis of polemic, a marker by which alchemists worked out or contested boundaries 133


134

Cf. Jindan zhenchuan and Caizhen jiyao in Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 172, 181.

135


136

Wang Mu thinks Strike the bamboo and call the turtle to gulp down the jade growths, means to cultivate the inherent nature until the lead the outer pharmacon, the primal essence appears within oneself, while Strum the zither and summon the phoenix to drink the spatulaful means to cause the primal spirit to descend and fuse with the outer pharmacon; Wang Mu, Wuzhen pian qianjie, 11617. I am not convinced that Wang Mus interpretation matches the original sense of the Wuzhen pian verse, but that does not detract from the value of Wang Mus work, if we treat his work as a primary rather than a secondary source. If we expected alchemical commentaries to remain true to the sense of the text they purport to explain, we would seldom be satised! 137 DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4.22a57.

475

within the eld of alchemy. §3.2.2.1, What is the pharmacon?

The simple answer is that the partners outer

pharmacon is qi, and the adepts inner pharmacon is essence: The inner pharmacon is naturally possessed by a self, while the outer pharmacon is produced by anothers body. The inner pharmacon is thus within ones own body, while the outer pharmacon is produced by anothers body. The inner pharmacon does not depart from within ones own body, while the outer pharmacon does not depart from within ones own match. The inner pharmacon only completes the inherent nature, while the outer pharmacon also completes the life endowment. The inner pharmacon is essence or, seminal essence, and the outer pharmacon is qi. When neither essence nor qi departs, this is called the perfected seed. Only when inherent nature and life essence are cultivated as a pair can one actualize celestial transcendenthood.

6$6"! 64 64&

6 6) 6$26$*2*4# + +1 5(7138 Yet Chen also says that the lead the qi and mercury the essence only become pharmaca when they touch one another: We may say that the yin follows the yang, and they only thereby become a matching category. The lead is projected into the mercury, and they only thereby become the pharmaca. The pharmaca transform into the elixir, and the elixir transforms into the spirit. With physical form and spirit both becoming wondrous, my life endowment depends on myself. 3.-/%8 806 66%

%,,' 139 In this formulation, it seems that the partners sexual qi and the adepts seminal essence appear in nonperfected perhaps tangible form, but are transformed into the perfected pharmaca during the sexual encounter itself. Thus, the two substances would rst appear in postnatal form, and become prenatal through the alchemical reaction. This sounds at odds with Chens discussion above. Above, we learned that the partners pharmacon should be gathered when it is in a pure, prenatal state at a certain moment in the partners arousal cycle, menstrual cycle, and life cycle , while here, it seems that the qi and essence only become pharmaca, only become prenatal, through the alchemical reaction. Both the mans essence and the womans qi appear in tangible, postnatal 138


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476

form. The postnatal form of the essence is obviously semen, but what is the post natal form of the womans qi? It is probably a tangible feeling of warmth: At this time, the cultivator ought immediately to seek the others prenatal Qi of the perfected monad, and send it down into the dantian. This is the return of the One Yang. Yet one ought to know the timing for causing the initial return of the yang, and ought to take warming Qi as a timing sign. ?'.$@ 7K(-A= 5IG)% D/+I1!>KJ;4 140 Warming qi is the sign for gathering the One Yang, that is, the partners outer pharmacon. Although we understand the pharmaca as two discrete entities, ultimately they are manifestations of a common, nondual, primal reality: This lead, hidden within the cavern of cosmic creation and transformation, was produced before heaven and earth. After it is produced, it increases and grows day and night, until it reaches the number of twoeights, or one catty. This is called plenty. Thus, existing in the postnatal or, postcosmic state, it is neither inner or outer, and yet is both inner and outer. So, we give it the convenience name of the two elixirs, inner and outer. :M P.ELC"%$M96,N2&

O:* 8.6"%#0:33% :B 141 Here, lead refers proximately to the female partners pharmacon, but ultimately to the One Yang that existed before the beginning of time and became lodged in the two pharmaca of mortal men and women. §3.2.2.2, Sex positions.

Chen o ers a few hints at sexual technique, but

without special emphasis. The cryptic but oftmentioned term caldron of the suspended fetus refers to the positions of the sex organs: Entering the furnace to the depth of eight cuninches, suspended within the stove, without touching the ground, this is the suspended fetus. R Q.FH"Q<: 142 Because it does not touch the ground, it is as if suspended within the stove. This caldron enters the furnace to a distance of eight cuninches, with its body and belly unimpeded and straight: this is called the yang caldron. 140


141


142

DZ 1068, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao tu 8b67.

477

.?1

"L1#E M-C;24AE143

The male adept may practice several cycles of tumescence: How would you give a shape to that thing called the suspended fetus? Now dead, now alive, mess around for a few bouts. %'*@DL6$)=144 While the nonalchemical sexual cultivators studied by Wile often speak of nine shallow and one deep strokes, Chen takes this as a hallmark of false cultivation, and does not teach anything like it.145 At some point, the male adept must assume a passive position underneath the woman, turning yin and yang upsidedown, and playing guest to the partners host: Yin is above, and yang gallops below.

is the water within the vessel, and yang is the re within the caldron. With water above and re below, water and re are in equilibrium or, like the hexagram Jiji 3I. Yin above and yang below is Earth and Heaven in a state of peace or, like the hexagram Tai 8. This is what Ziyang Zhang Boduan means when he says Let the other be the host, and me be the guest. Yin

AN5+5F4

8

The sage employs it by means of turning li and kan upside down, calling this water above and re below; or by means of turning qian and kun upside down, calling this Earth surmounting Heaven; or by means of turning husband and wife upside down, calling this male below and female above. B J J(K7&H 9/K K7H K7&H, 147 :K

1

As I mentioned on page 323 above, diandao is a complex conceptual cluster applicable to many dierent forms of inversion. Here, Chen correlates the inversion and equilibrium jiji 3I of yin and yang or water and re with the inverted position of the sex partners. The original reason for this position may have been to help the male adept control ejaculation, but Chen gives it an alchemical justication, 143


144


145

Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 104; DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 5.13a2.

146

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 3.80a13

147


478

reinforcing the correlation between the originally unrelated traditions of sexual cultivation and alchemical discourse. §3.2.2.3, Gathering and fusing.

Chen says that gathering the outer pharmacon

caiqu :( takes onehalf of a Chinese doublehour shi 8, or sixty minutes: On this night of the third day is the moment when the moon is born in the region of geng. At this time, the watersource is perfectly pure and totally undisturbed throughout. Quickly use half a doublehour to gather it, and make it revert to the place east of the Magpie Bridge i.e., to the front of the perineum, in the genital region. D#/ *+F#8C$;>?M918:(K ,LH-148 Actually, the gathering process takes, not a full sixty, but only forty minutes. The doublehour is subdivided into three tallies fu <. Gathering takes only one tally, that is, forty minutes. We say that there are six yaolines in a hexagram, and one yaoline has three are two hexagrams in a day, and thirtysix tallies in these two hexagrams. When yin and yang copulate, this does not need even as much as a doublehour, and does not exhaust the use of a single yaoline. This is like one doublehour having three tallies, but using only one tally. If one tally set in motion, then one yang yaoline is produced below kun to form zhen.

tallies. There

I'" " < <&'&'" < <=A5 8E @8" < << << <%0A,) G149 !G Chen also divides the doublehour into six periods hou 6. Gathering takes two periods again, forty minutes: If you condense one year into one month, then two and a half days equal six periods. If you condense one month into one day, then one doublehour equals six periods. Therefore the seventytwo watches of one year are condensed into one day. Thereby we know that there is only one day within the year, and only one doublehour within the day. The great cultivator must distinguish the mao and you points within a doublehour, and must know the six periods of the doublehour. We may say that the process of gathering the pharmacon and obtaining the lead uses only two periods out of the six periods in a doublehour, which is like using only one part out of three. And within one doublehour, it is especially the remaining four periods which have another marvelous use. J ,&46J,0862 6J, 3. "8 7%B 148


149


479

K< +91<:HBM,G<:A:D@# @#< J:&"(150 In this passage, Chen condenses cuancu OL the year into the month and day, and the month into the day and hour. As I note on page 336 above, Chinese alchemy in general is a dao of condensing space, time, and cosmic process. At the end of the passage, Chen says that the remaining four periods of the doublehour or, eighty minutes are reserved for some other marvelous process. This second process is hedan , an initial fusion of the inner and outer pharmaca through orbital circulation: Use only two periods for gathering, leaving four periods remaining within the doublehour. What you do within these four periods is called fusing the elixir. The wonder of fusing the elixir is in hurriedly fusing the lead with ones own mercury. At this time, regulate and harmonize your perfected breath, letting the fusing pharmaca ow everywhere within the six vacuities. From the Great Mysterious Pass, owing against the current to the Cavity of the Celestial Valley, gulp it down into the Chamber of Gold. This is the labor of lighting the re and beginning the process at the rst year. :8B,3< /J::4 (6 ) G0C< I-=;.7E$N?7%*# 'F25 C!> 151 For Chen Zhixu, the Mysterious Pass usually refers to the partners sex organ, but may also refer to a bodily site below the umbilicus near to or identical to the lower dantian .152 Although Chen may be drawing this passage from Li Daochuns teachings, Chen does not subscribe to Li Daochuns complex view of the Mysterious Pass.153 From the region of the lower dantian, the fusing pharmaca are transported to the upper dantian Cavity of the Celestial Valley , then to the Yellow Court near the middle dantian for ring. The stage of gathering takes forty minutes, and the stage of initial fusion takes eighty. §3.2.2.4, Gathering the outer pharmacon: physiological aspects.

The adept

transports a bit of essence to meet and fuse with the partners qi. It seems that this alchemical reaction takes place within the male sex organ: 150


151


152

Two passages identifying the Mysterious Pass as the partners sex organ are DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 5.7a10 and 7.3a1. Two passages identifying it as the lower dantian or a nearby site are the illustration at DZ 1068, Shangyangzi Jindan daoyao tu 3a, and Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.27b1 missing from DZ 1067 .

153

At DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 7.2a13, Chen cites Li Daochun as the source for a similar passage it is from DZ 249, Zhonghe ji 2.4b58 . I discuss Li Daochuns view of the Mysterious Pass on page 278 above.

480

Make the others prenatal perfect lead revert to within the caldron of the suspended fetus, and unite it with perfect mercury, then rene this into a grain of golden elixir. G)

EY^,a=ZE%U!0L154

Send it back into the caldron of the suspended fetus, project the mercury upon it, and cause it to enter the chamber i.e., dantian: this is called the outer pharmacon. â=Z]%48\ 155 Rene the owing pearl within the caldron of the suspended fetus; you are already fortunate that the metal has come home to the state of the origin of the inherent nature. The sages of the Three Teachings all follow a single track, but in these after times I follow a di erent path than the others. a=ZeU:DP0'^*-JW`5'$3BN156 The loss of seminal essence would be an utter disaster for a sexual alchemist: Thus you gain the tallies for the meeting of yin and yang without, and within you give birth to a body of perfected oneness. If you are ever incautious while transporting the heartmind, and the nodes and periods go o the mark, this means the lovely maid will ee and be lost, and the numinous fetus will not form. 6HIOTKEc>+X_V?AB#F d=R157 Yet while he must not allow his seminal essence to be lost, the adept must have sucient control to transport it within his body, from a site near the anus the perineum to his urethra: Transport one point of perfect lead the inner pharmacon from a spot below the kidneys near the place of excretion the anus to meet the outer pharmacon. ,S Q/1MX]EY.158 There is even a hint that the male adept would let it escape slightly, in order to e ect a greater gain: in front: let the other be the host. Hardness is applied behind: I, contrarily, am the guest. With mu, there is a minor egress at rst; then with pin there is a great return. Metal and qi are in conjunction, and yang completes its body of qian. Softness is applied

97,2b;@ @7,5$;[&- ("

'0C< 154


155


156


157


158


481

-#4159 Does minor egress mean the adept should ejaculate slightly in order to gather the outer pharmacon? Further research may turn up more clues. We may be sure that Chen is not doing what a tantric yogin would do, completely mixing his sexual uids with the partners uids within the partners sex organ or outside the body, then drawing the mixture back into his own body through his urethra or his mouth. For Chen, the initial fusion of the pharmaca occurs within the male sex organ. Yet the question of urethral suction must be investigated. On page 420 above, I discussed the possibility that Chinese adepts, like the Indian yogins described by Needham, perform vascular induction, sucking the jing of the female partner through their urethras and into their dantian. Does Chen Zhixu also draw in the partners tangible jing? Or does he merely suck the partners intangible, prenatal qi? The evidence is ambiguous. Sometimes Chen likens the gathering the outer pharmacon to eating claried butter, as in these verses on subduing the tiger fuhu : Entering the tigers den to seek the tigers claried milk: its avor is matchless, like claried butter. Only if someone attains a place like this will he be a great and manly man on the cosmic level of qian and kun. */, +)65%('# 160 I laugh at how you name the crescentmoon furnace: within the furnace is a sweet dew better than claried butter. If you try gulping down a drop of it, it will be like honey, or candy and claried milk. "$ 22 3)65.&0!17/,161 Tihu 65 Skt. maa is the purest form of claried butter ghee. In Indian Mahyna Buddhism it symbolizes something most delicious and pure such as nirva or buddhanature.162 Chens use of the term tihu here certainly suggests that the adept should somehow ingest a sacred substance, yet tihu could merely be a metaphor for qi. Chen also sometimes likens the gathering of the outer pharmacon

159

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 2.51a2 4.

160


161


162

Foguang da cidian, s.v. tihu , 6321.

482

to sucking up the West River in one mouthful:163 The Xici zhuans saying Gaining a friend in the southwest, or Wei Boyangs saying The perfected person cruises underwater in the deep abyss, or Tiantai Zhang Boduans saying Lead is produced when it meets gui, and you must swiftly gather it, or Mazu Daoyis saying Sucking up the West River in a single mouthful, are all references to this dao of the recycled elixir. E /<+"A9 J@?G&2C1 =;: $H ,3KF164 Though the dragon is ugly and evil in mien, its qi is vast and enormous. Being so huge and rockhard, it is never easy to defeat. Do not let it join the clouds in producing rain: rather, you want it to suck up the West River in one mouthful. %6*5(IB!.4 $

165

For Mazu Daoyi, the phrase Sucking up the West River in one mouthful would refer to enlightenment as a sudden, unexpected, enigmatic, and impossibly grand action. For Chen Zhixu, West River is correlated with both agent metal in the west as lead, the outer pharmacon and agent water the female uid as the source of the pharmacon. Does Chens use of this phrase imply that an actual uid is ingested through the ugly, huge, hard dragon? Perhaps. He certainly implies that uid is present during the process of gathering. Other evidence suggests that the adept should not actually suck up menses or other uids. In his chapter of illustrations in Jindan dayao, there is an illustration in which a number of throwing sticks have been successfully tossed into a vase or lie strewn around it. Chen depicts a stick labeled Marginal tradition: the numinous turtle drinking the sea, or the drinking of milk, blood, and uid 7-NOD8D'>166 lying on the ground farthest from the vase, signifying that this practice is the farthest from the true teaching. Here, Chen is rejecting the drinking of menses and uids through the male sex organ. So, while the sucking of water seems to be involved somehow in the process of gathering the pharmacon, if an adept focuses his attentions on this, it would be a false practice. How can we make sense of this? The following passage helps to clear 163

Mazu Daoyi ;:F 70988 once answered Layman Pang Yun LM) d. 808: When you can swallow the whole water of the Western River in one mouthful, I will tell you 0 $H #F. Cf. Wudeng huiyuan, Zhonghua shuju ed., 3:186; translated by Ogata in Tao Yuan, The Transmission of the Lamp, 293.

164


165


166

DZ 1068, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao tu 12a. This illustration is copied from DZ 252, Gushen pian.

483

up the confusion: If the numbers of the metal and water are timely and equal, then swiftly fuse two measures of re with it; thus Cantong qi says retwo makes a pair with it. When metal, water, and re have fused together, then re receives Qi from the metal, and also is well kept in check by the water, and they form the recycled elixir. Now this can transform, and has a shape like a spirit. In the labor of setting to work and approaching the furnace, nothing is more essential than this. 7-X<6G0 "3 V:-1 6/(-E@'H] ?_ _"+ +7>&\ 167 ^ B!58 The crucial sentence in this passage is When metal, water, and re have fused together, then re receives Qi from the metal, and also is well kept in check by the water, and they form the recycled elixir. While metal the outer pharmacon and re the inner pharmacon are the reactants, water somehow serves to stabilize the reaction. Another passage also mentions water as an indispensible party within the reaction: The turtle and snake coil and knit in the elixir furnace, and crow and hare meet to travel the ecliptic. The black and the white re ect their radiance at each another, and the rm and the yielding arise by turns. The jade furnace stores up good fortune, and the purple e orescence re ects the sun. The Dazzling Deluder Mars keeps to the western limit, and the cardinalred bird ames in the middle of the empty sky. Impel the water to transport the metal, thrust the re into the caldron. The subdued steam uses the Qi of the Great Yang to form into what is called the yellow coach elixir. aCYH) ^=%O#)LSM2;49Z^[AIJ2 UF)$P D*), .R-NT W K 168 L` HQL The rst part of this passage sounds like a description of stage 3, the internal ring of the elixir, but in fact it is a description of the moment of gathering the outer pharmacon during the one tally of time forty minutes . The key sentence in this passage is Impel the water to transport the metal, thrust the re into the caldron. The adept sends re seminal essence into his caldron of the suspended fetus sex organ , and causes the water the partners sexual uid to bring the metal the pharmacon . In the passage above, the water keeps the metal in check, and here the water transports the metal. In Chens teaching, the male adept is clearly working 167


168


484

with uids, though he may never need to actually draw the uids into his urethra. My partial reconstruction of Chens secrets has value for the comparative study of sexual cultivation, but I am also making a larger point here. This investigation reveals that the physiological, praxological di erence between Chens selfadjudged true dao gathering the metal by means of the water and the worst of the false daos the numinous turtle drinking the sea is very slight. From our overview of the huanjing bunao and sexualalchemical texts studied by Wile, we know that, throughout all of these texts, the line between qi and uid is very ambiguous see pages 41819 above . It is likely that practitioners of the numinous turtle drinking the sea would claim to be gathering not just uid, but qi. Recall that a similar term drinking from the sea, the black dragon receives yinhai heilong shou appears in the text Huanjing caiqi pian page 417 above , and in this case it is indeed a technique for gathering qi caiqi . Chens true dao is not qualitatively di erent. It involves the use of both qi and uid from the partner with the uid being both menses and sexual uid ; uid is intimately involved with the initial fusion of the pharmaca, possibly even within the male sex organ; yet ultimately Chen rejects the numinous turtle drinking the sea. At the gathering stage at least, the main di erence between Chens teaching and the false daos of his rivals are in the aspects of theory, rhetoric, terminology, or goal, rather than in the aspect of practice. §3.2.2.5, Gathering the outer pharmacon: mental aspects.

While the adept is

managing and manipulating the partners sexual energy and uids, and his own, he must employ the mental training that he developed during the stage of rening the self lianji; cf. pages 44146 above . The adept must maintain a state of passivity, deference, and singleminded concentration: At this time, it would be proper to be deferential in all things, for the moment. Let the other whip rst and obtain her pleasure, while you are as if stupeed or unable to speak. Display the characteristic attitude of a man of the Dao, politely taking the lower position, and not competing. This is actually the higher stratagem of a divine transcendent; only thereby may you approach the furnace and have something to celebrate. $" ! # 485

6 G ANuy(k169 People of this generation know only that macrobiotics ends in preventing lust, but they have no idea that if a single thought stirs, qi will follow the mind and be dispersed, seminal essence will be driven away, and qi will be forgotten. Those who undertake this dao must maintain a state of great void in heartmind and body, unied inside and out. +7o"5dlC73@HDqYhTD->)g 8c{[ &170 Chen describes the state of tranquility while gathering the pharmacon using a couplet from Cantong qi, The perfected person plumbs cruises underwater in the abyss, with his oating and cruising restricted to the circle of the compass. F nQPEZ'S171 For Chen, this state of being includes both mental and physiological aspects: At the moment of rst gathering the pharmacon, sun and moon meet in sexual joy, and dragon and tiger are about to have intercourse. At the moment of battle, The perfected person is already plumbing cruising underwater in the abyss, with his oating and cruising cautiously restricted to within the circle of the compass. We may say that, at this time, you close and block o the three treasures, and ought only to be singleminded and with utmost intention. If not, it will come to losing life and limb. 1:OwBz`s9L$p6jF n5QPEZ_ '5Si=BV^ xIcK?.,;(X/!2 0172 While oating and cruising, keeping within the circle of the compass: Within the circle of the compass is called the cave of creation and transformation. If you rene the great elixir within this, for the duration of one tally, you must be absolutely cautious and secret. Floating and cruising means ever still and furthermore ever responding, not leaving this state for even a moment. Keeping means diligently re ecting within, and there truly being something that you are relying upon. EZ'S8S%Ue@a5)RW\_J EZ8Mr*MtmBv)#' '8]]bf(4<173 Because Chen is talking about gathering the outer pharmacon, we can be certain that the perfected person is none other than the male adepts sex organ, while the cave 169


170


171


172


173


486

of creation and transformation is the organ of the female partner. Yet the perfected person cruising the abyss also represents the adepts mind in a state of deep tranquility. Through force of guiding intention yi #, he blocks o his three treasures of essence semen, qi respiration, and spirit outer senses. The metaphor nicely correlates corporeal sex with rened meditation, two aspects that we might not expect to nd together. Our assumption that sexual technique and meditation belong to dierent realms does not apply here. We should not too quickly attribute our diculty to Cartesian dualism, however: many of Chens contemporaries might have been similarly surprised to nd such a juxtaposition of sex and meditation. Chen also describes this state of mind using phrases from the Prajpramit avored scriptures of Tangdynasty DoubleMystery Learning: Thus, at the moment of gathering the elixir, tightly grasp onto a single thought, such as the concept of Gazing at the heartmind within, the mind is mindless. Gazing at the shape without, the shape is shapeless. Looking afar at the object, the object is objectless. If in fact you are able to meet the partner with this intention, then the mystic pearl will be produced within the dantian. & " '! '! %'! $ # 174 We already saw Chen using this language to explain how an adept may frequent brothels without losing his purity. Here, Chen is telling the male adept to repeat a line from the Scripture of Purity and Tranquility175 during the sexual encounter, as a sort of mental mantra. Chen uses a phrase from another DoubleMystery text, the Scripture for Protecting Life and Averting Disaster,176 to make the point that the alchemist must never become attached to his partner. Chen puns on the dual meaning of se as both form in the abstract, Buddhist sense and sex: What does Know that se is not se refer to? Its like that river water: the clear ow is slight and slow, with its water aiding the boat to reach the other shore. This boat and water are both external things. Didnt the patriarch Zhao Youqin say, After the dao is complete, as for the vessels of the elixir chamber, leave them behind by entrusting them to someone else? This is what it refers to. 174


175

DZ 620, Taishang Laojun shuo chang qingjing miaojing 1b5 7.

176

DZ 19, Taishang shengxuan xiaozai huming miaojing 1b8.

487

%W4##.2I=CCX"! .-*"T H>3EAP 90U, W177 The quote comes from Zhao Youqins Xianfo tongyuan.178 Chen even justies this brusque dismissal of the partner after the gathering is done by referring to the deeds of Buddha and Bodhidharma: If you have not yet rened the recycled elixir, you ought to swiftly rene it. If you have already rened the elixir, you ought to swiftly leave it behind. The Buddha

says, After the dao is complete, as for the vessels of the elixir chamber, leave them behind by entrusting them to someone else. If you do not leave them behind, then when the heartminds eld of consciousness looks ahead, one fears that there will be the distress of probably being ashamed. Bai Ziqing the Perfecteds Bai Yuchan sudden wind and thunder at midnight is evidence of this. Therefore, Bodhidharma left Changlu, and entered Shaolin in order to sit in the cold, without distress for even a single morning. OY:MO? O O:M$P90U , ?8 S)7B<
Chen often

repeats the inneralchemical commonplace that the outer pharmacon is kan , the inner pharmacon is li , and they must be joined to produce the elixir of pureyang qian . Kans nature as yangwithinyin correlates with the yang stability of lead female sexual qi within the protean yin water uids, or the female body and person per se . Lis yinwithinyang nature correlates with the yin instability of the mercurial 177


178

Chen quotes verbatim from Xianfo tongyuan, by Zhao Youqin, 13b1, in Daoshu quanji, Zhongguo Shudian ed., 468.

179

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4.27b510

488

male seminal essence within the yang stability of the male sex organ or body. On the mesocosmic register, agent earth catalyzes the reaction between agents water and re I discuss this on pages 33334: Use earth to x the lead, use lead to x the mercury, make both lead and mercury revert to the caldron, with body and heartmind unmoving. !@o!o@;o;{p?\180 Earths catalytic power works because earth itself is divided into yang and yin aspects, wuearth and jiearth. Chen correlates the wu and jiearths with several other yangyin pairs. In the following passage, he correlates the wu and jiearths with the female vulva and male glans: Old Man Ziyang Zhang Boduan has now indicated the twin things dragon and tiger too closely! Now, my thing is the dragon, and the others thing is the tiger. There is a distinction between east and west, so Wuzhen pian has each to east and west. The dragons head is ji, and the tigers gate is wu. The dragon and tiger rely on these for their coition . . . 8t/W*> rum:vcn[ dHW6OP0]mb ] mxMT3J xM,.?W43K =LSW.l F1+qAa#<9(hsy eiZQ%x xMJ}^ 8JTxEJTM-E 'I2x xwT MNT$ $xM*0& &k181 8S' Because the meeting of the two pharmaca takes place through the mediation of the two earths on the mescocosmic register, and through the mediation of these two parts of the sex organs on the physiological register, the wu and jiearths must correlate with the vulva and glans. In another passage Chen correlates the wu and ji earths the waxing qi of tiger and dragon: Therefore, the jiearth is the yin within the yang, and is the sign of the dragons waxing qi. The wuearth within kan assists the eorescence of the moon, dwelling above zi, so the winter sun is warm, and the winter nights are cool. Zi is the head point of yang, and the moon is yin. Therefore, wuearth is the yang within yin, and is the sign of the tigers waxing qi. Dragon and tiger harbor within their breasts the perfected earths of wu and ji. Therefore dragon and tiger copulate and wu and ji unite, wu and ji unite and lead and mercury meet, lead and mercury meet and the recycled elixir forms. S! i`gxDX7$5fCGR" j0VB_TiU0T`S!$ ìgMDX xM|$YS!xM&0$)$)0o;ko;k0z 180


181


489

% 182 Perhaps these waxing qi xianqi $ are the waxing sexual arousal of the two human partners. We will see on pages 51112 below that waxing xian means something quite di erent during the stage 3, when the adept is ring the elixir within it means the rst and third lunar quarters shangxia xian . How do the the wu and jiearths cause the two pharmaca to fuse? It is easy to see how they do this in their microcosmic identity as the vulva and glans, but the situation is more complex on the mesocosmic register. In terms of RiverChart numerology, the wu and jiearths fuse because they are both numbered 5 see page 342 above , and adding them makes a perfect 10: is a reference to an ultimate number. According to daousage, ten is the number of the birth and growth of heaven and earth. The two earths wu and ji, unite to make ten. Ten

&(' '!

"( 183

Strangely enough, Chen says the opposite in another passage: Heaven ve is jiearth, earth ten is wuearth. Wuearth dwells in kan, and jiearth dwells in li. When wu and ji are divided, the two earths number ten. When wu and ji are united, the two earths form the gnomon and number ve. Earth dwells in the center, and so makes a single ve. )! ( ! ( "#184 In the rst passage, wu and ji belong together because the sum of their two 5s makes a perfect 10, whereas in the second passage, when wu and ji are separate, their two separate 5s add up to 10, but when they fuse, they make a single 5. This may be a case of the rhetorical exibility of alchemical language. According to the concept of three houses meeting one another as discussed on pages 34243 above , it is necessary that agent earth form a single 5, so that it may join together with the two other 5s to make three 5s. The rst 5 is agent wood3 plus re2, the second 5 is water1 plus metal4, and the third 5 is earth5. The fusion of the pharmaca into an elixir is understood as the union of these three 5s. 182


183


184


490

Heaven three produces wood, earth two produces re. Fire is numbered two, and wood is numbered three. Three and two join their natures, integrated into a single ve. . . . Therefore wood and re make a single clan. . . . Heaven one produces water, and earth four produces metal. Metal is numbered four, and water is numbered one. One and four join their dispositions, to form a single ve. . . . Therefore metal and water make a single clan. . . . Once wu and ji have united, metal and wood will come together. When metal and wood meet, the dragon and tiger will have intercourse. When dragon and tiger have intercourse, then the three ves will unite into one. When the three ves unite into one, then the three houses will meet one another. When the three houses meet one another, then lead and mercury will knit together. When lead and mercury knit together, the infant will be complete, which is none other than the one qi. = = < $4. ,* .1 1 ''= = < 38. *'.1 1 )' 9' 9)?%?% ) ) 1/!1/!): 8: 8) 185 @"7( 2 In addition to the numerological mesocosmic explanations above, there is also a gurative mesocosmic explanation for how the wu and jiearths cause the two pharmaca to fuse: The ve of ji is the trigram lis earth; the ve of wu is the trigram kans earth. When li mingles with kan in the beginning, wu ows to meet ji. Within the wu earth is the lead, and within the lead is the saber dao , one half of the word daogui , the spatula. Within the jiearth is the mercury, and within the mercury is the granulated cinnabar. The essences of the two ves unite wondrously and crystallize. Water and re are in equilibrium, lead and mercury x and subdue each other, wu and ji unite and form the gnomon gui , the other half of daogui . .B .B&-5 :: 0 ;>+A: # 186 According to the gurative mesocosmic symbology of cezi 6 plumbing a character , the union of the two earths produces the character gui + = , part of the word daogui lit., spatula; i.e., a spatulaful of elixir . This explains why wu and ji are drawn together. This union of wu and ji also e ects the union of the two pharmaca lead and mercury because the pharmaca are contained within wu and ji perhaps because wu and ji correlate with the sex organs . This constitutes an 185

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 2.17a78, a9b1, b34, b67, 18b47.

186


491

alchemical argument for how the pharmaca react with one another. This is strange stu, but not unfamiliar: for Robinet, at least, this sort of discursive practice is the essence of inner alchemy. Chen correlates the wu and jiearths with other yangyin pairs as well. In the passage above, he correlates wuearth with the moon during the beginning of the annual solar cycle, it seemsa correlation between mesocosmic and macrocosmic registers. Elsewhere he correlates the wu and jiearths with dispositions and inherent nature qing 7 and xing ',187 and being and nonbeing you and wu @188 a correlation between mesocosmic and nonspatiotemporal registers. §3.2.2.7, Gathering the outer pharmacon: mixed symbology.

The gathering of the

outer pharmacon, and the initial fusion of the pharmaca, is a grand mystery reverberating on all the ontological registers, from macrocosmic, to mesocosmic, to microcosmic, at once a grand cosmic drama and a sexual encounter between two mortal humans: At this moment, Heaven and Earth mingle their essences,

and the myriad beings are born out of the void. Sun and moon uphold one another ; the crow and rabbit fuse together and do not part. The yang is masculine and towers rigidly; iridescentgreen and darkly mysteriously it spreads its transformations. Yin is feminine and opens, transforming the yellow enclosure in order to hold nourishment within. Within the vast mistiness of primal chaos, the two things

meet and touch each other. In the beginning quanyu means when the masculine and feminine rst copulate, rst establishing root and base. As for quanyu, this means the origin. . . . This is speaking of the initial fecundity of creation and transformation. But quan also means temporary, and yu means stable. This is saying that temporarily the eortful application must be most stable yet not sti like a corpse. Plan out and manage the one Qi in order to nurture the perimeter of the physical form , crystallizing and spreading the yang essence, in order to make the bodily form and material.

I>QGNJ)XB%T-5#/A:MDE 2,O . .

188


189

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 1.10b911a2, a35. The Daozang jiyao ed. has ; I have converted it to .

492

In this powerful passage, Chen rings the changes on alchemical myth, mysticism, and practice, moving from cosmogony to sexual technique, or using ambiguous language that applies to both at once. He begins making a macrocosmic statement about the zaohua creation and transformation of Heaven and Earth, with microcosmic resonance, in e ect correlating the moment of gathering the pharmacon with the moment of cosmogenesis. When he speaks of the indissoluble union of crow and rabbit, or sun and moon, or Heaven and Earth, he correlates these macro and mesocosmic realities with the human partners, who cling together as if they would never part. The towering yang and enveloping yin are the sex organs of the two partners, or perhaps the sex organs of male and female humans as such writ large on the mesocosmic register, at once abstract yin and yang and gurative towering and opening. The initial contact of the two pharmaca is also likened to cosmogenesis in primal chaos, then to the continuing fecundity of zaohua in the world. Finally, Chen speaks of the proper mental and physiological attitude during copulation. Chen has whipped up all of this mythical spume out of the cryptic phrases of the Cantong qi. This is a perfect example of what I call a secondary salvic e ect. This is not just wordplay, or Chens crafty justication of his eccentric reading of alchemical scripture within an arena of social con ict though it is indeed both these things. What Chen is also doing here is recreating the cosmogony in discourse, bringing it into the circle of the text, where writer and reader can bask in its power; and he is forging anew the bonds between macro, meso, and microcosmic registers, making them real, vivid, and sacred for everyone who accepts his words. §3.2.3, Fusing the pharmaca.

After the adept gathers the outer pharmacon

from the partners water, bonds it with his own inner pharmacon, and draws the two pharmaca through his sex organ, he performs hedan fusion of the elixir by transporting the fusing pharmaca along the ecliptic huangdao of his subtle body. In his commentary to the Wuzhen pian line Movement should be short in front and long in back , Chen describes this entire progression from gathering to initial fusion: While waiting for the moment of the rst stirring of the partners bi One Yang, when the prenatal perfect lead is about to come, none of the seminal 493

essence or qi in my body stirs at all, except for transporting one point of perfect lead the inner pharmacon from a spot below the kidneys near the place of excretion the anus to meet the outer pharmacon. This is called a short movement in the front. When the adepts perfect lead has crossed over the house of the Magpie Bridge the perineum and become mixed together with the outer pharmacon from the partner, it follows the perfect lead in ascending by means of the three chainpumps at the three passes in the spine, and travels through the double SpinalStraits pass to ascend to the MuddyPellet Palace, in the brain. The melding pharmaca move throughout the Nine Palaces in the brain, pour into the two eyes, descend the Golden Bridge between the upper palate and the tongue, go down the Storied Tower the trachea, and enter the Crimson Palace the middle dantian, near the heart, to be smelted together. This is wandering having its own method, this is called the back must be long. L9nB]X&Zu^.I46vY] ;l fD GdrZuC,|H H/jZuNg{Uwb(J}Z u7#3\ =tV<$RE{ Qy s/-+,|M MoF190 kV1,Os The adept gathers the partners outer pharmacon by meeting it with a bit of seminal essence from his perineum, then circulates the two pharmaca around the inner ecliptic of the superintendant and conception tracts rendu ermai %p[ , nally depositing them into the middle dantian. In another passage, Chen describes the inner sensations that indicate the progress of the fusing pharmaca around the ecliptic: The Master of Highest Yang said, The great cultivator, having already made the spatulaful of elixir enter the mouth, transports his own jade exudation in order to meet ? and nurture it. Generally, whenever you transport the re, you will suddenly feel a perfected Qi within your spine shoot upward to the Muddy Pellet Palace, in the brain. There is a purling sound, and within your head it feels as though there is an object that touches the upper brain. Suddenly, things like sparrow eggs, one after another, drop from the palate down the Storied Tower esophagus. They are fragrant and sweet like icy claried milk, with a matchlessly delicious avor. When you have this form of sensation, this is proof that you have attained the recycled elixir of metallous uid, so quickly swallow it send it back to the dantian. From this point onward, do it ever and again without cease. Close your eyes and gaze inward: the ve yang viscera and six yin viscera are layed out like shining candles; gradually and by stages, there is a golden radiance that envelops the body.

nT/N_ ) r!Azrx:3 \Z 5=i+`~0+> qo@*e2- Qy*'mSc"P8h+,?_EaWWK 190


494

'%"" $! 191

&

Note that the circulating elixir or fusing pharmaca crosses the upper Magpie Bridge from palate to tongue, and descends the esophagus, in the form of tangible uid, either saliva or mucus. My research suggests that Chens use of the classical inner alchemical practice of lesserorbital circulation xiao zhoutian along the superintendant and conception tracts is rather limited. Unlike solo alchemists in the standard account, who use lesserorbital circulation extensively to generate the outer pharmacon through tamping the base, zhuji # , and then to generate the inner pharmacon, I believe that Chen only uses xiao zhoutian circulation during the short period of eighty minutes, or four periods hou , within the 120minute sexual encounter. This is the only context within which he mentions xiao zhoutian circulation. Because this is a consciously intentional youzuo rather than non active wuwei practice, presumably the adept would need to train in this practice for at least a few months before applying it during the sexual encounter. Yet Chen does not mention this prepwork as a core element of rening the self. As we have seen, for Chen the adept amasses seminal essence during the lianji stage through calming meditation rather than orbital circulation. The relative underemphasis on xiao zhoutian circulation is a very distinctive feature of Chens teachings. In future research, I may be able to develop this insight, locating Chen Zhixus personal form of alchemy relative to other cognate or ancestral forms within an overall alchemical map, and discover where his practice actually comes from, morphologically and historically. §3.3, Stage Three: Forming the Elixir jiedan through Internal Firing After stage 2 of gathering and initial fusion of the elixir hedan come stages 3 and 4, during which the adept forms the elixir through internal ring in the middle dantian, then trains the yang spirit to ascend from the upper dantian and beyond the body. In this section, I discuss the stage of forming the elixir jiedan by ring or incubating it wenyang within the internal caldron. 191


495

§3.3.1, General descriptions.

After gathering the pharmaca, bonding them

together, and circulating them brie y around the lesser orbit, the adept res the elixir, called a holy fetus shengtai :, , within the Yellow Court. At the end of ten months or three hundred days , the yang spirit or infant yinger C$ appears, and after a thousand days or three years it is ready for apotheosis: A drop falls into the Yellow Court: how could nurturing the re be dicult? For nine cycles, wait until the tallies and periods have been carried out, cleansing the heartmind and rinsing away cares, in order to form the threehundredday fetus. Rene the spirit and return to the void, completing the great and manly a air. F;8.B JH(2-*>@5,E0 D64# 192 Project the outer yang onto the inner yin, and rene and nurture it during a long fast of a thousand days. Paying no attention to human a airs, the many delements all leak away. Then the holy embryo can be formed, and the infant will be born. This is called male pregnancy. 7F39B &G 1#A<=?':, 5C$)+" I, 193 This is equivalent to transforming qi into spirit as in stage 3 of the standard account of solo inner alchemy : Then we know that the physical form will transform into qi, and qi will transform into spirit, which is called the infant, or the yang spirit. '%!+//+0)C$)70194 When the two pharmaca have initially fused together hedan , the fusion product still contains equal amounts of yang and yin. The goal during the stage of elixir formation is to transform this into pure yang, extracting the center yaoline of kan the plumbous outer pharmacon and plugging it into li the mercurial inner pharmacon to make qian : The divine man swallows the doubleve spatulaful of elixir into his belly, tempers it in the chamber of gold, then practices the thousanddays labor, managing and moderating the ring periods. When the training is done, then water will conquer re, and yang will wipe out yin. When yin is almost exhausted then yang will be pure. With this, kan has recycled its middle yang yaoline to li, which we call The dao of Heaven liking to return. Li obtains the yang yaoline 192


193


194


496

within the heart of kan, and becomes qian. E5 ( #+VN T7;:* !_H BA098)SDPPJ]9SF=- S)c d`Y%cdK-S)'G195 This is equivalent to increasing the mercurial component of the amalgam this component was male essence while decreasing the plumbous component this component was female qi, until the mercury transforms into the pureyang cinnabar elixir: As for extracting and supplementing, after using lead to x mercury, gradually and day by day transport the re and add mercury. Mercury will gradually increase, and lead will gradually decrease. After a long time, the lead will be almost exhausted, the mercury will be dried up, and it will transform into granulated cinnabar, nicknamed the pure yang of the recycled elixir of metallous uid. 3M5 Z1.@W7LcFS196 Like the laboratory alchemists, the inner alchemist must pay close attention to his re: One renes them into a single lump, and keeps watch on them for a full ten months. One calmly listens to the keening of the dragon and the long roar of the tiger, and must not allow the watersupply go dry or the re to grow cold. If one has been able to remain at this stage , one must act with great trepidation. UI[&' aeb,)6^f/G)QK4R>? C197 Chen here repeats an inneralchemical commonplace, a battle between dragon and tiger, with the dragon making a yin , keening, or perhaps humming, and the tiger making a xiao ^ not a whistle here, but a long, drawnout sound. This description of the dragon and tiger is purely fanciful, without any complex correlative signicance beyond yinwithinyang and yangwithinyin. §3.3.1.1, Caldrons, furnaces, and orbits.

According to the standard account of

solo inner alchemy, during lesserorbital circulation xiao zhoutian 2 during stage 1 of tamping the base, and stage 2 of rening essence to qi, the adept uses the lower and upper dantian as furnace and caldron. These are called the greater caldron 195

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.50b47 missing from DZ 1067. The dao of Heaven liking to return Tiandao haohuan is an echo of Daode jing, chapter 30.

196


197

DZ 1070, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao xianpai 8b24.

497

and furnace da dinglu because of their distance from one another within the subtle body. Then, during stage 3 of rening qi into spirit, when the elixir circulates along the greater orbit da zhoutian , the middle dantian is taken as the caldron, while the lower dantian remains as the furnace; these are called the lesser caldron and furnace xiao dinglu . This is slightly di erent from earlier forms of solo inner alchemy, where the emphasis is upon heart and kidneys rather than middle and lower dantian these two pairs of sites are related, of course. During the nal stage of rening spirit and causing it to return to the void, the elixirasspirit remains in the upper dantian, and the furnacecaldron metaphor is not used.198 Chen does not use this terminology. The terms for the xiao/da dinglu in any of their permutations do not appear at all in his extant works; rather, his preferred binary pair is inner caldron the dantian and outer caldron the male adepts caldron of the suspended fetus. If he speaks of inner and outer caldrons, one would also expect to hear of inner and outer furnaces, but Chen never mentions an inner furnace, only outer furnaces, which are sometimes male and sometimes female.199 To further depart from the precision of the standard account, Chen refers to both the lower dantian and middle dantian as the inner caldron.200 Clearly, the distinctions between various internal caldrons and furnaces would not be important for him. His emphasis is not upon internal structures of the subtle body, but rstly, upon the intricacies of sexual physiology, psychology, and jingqi, and secondly, upon meditative concentration. Yet, although Chen does not speak of switching from the lesser furnaceandcaldron to the greater furnaceandcaldron, there is an implicit progression from lower dantian during the phase of hedan in stage 2 to middle

198

See pages 28687 above.

199

The two sex organs may be paired as yang furnace and yin caldron, in which case the furnace is male. But when the organs are paired as caldron of the suspended fetus and halfmoon furnace, the furnace is female. See DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 5.6b67 for the former case, and 5.8b29 for the latter. 200

For the inner caldron as the lower dantian, see DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 5.6b107a1; yet just a few lines later, Chen identies the inner caldron as the Yellow Court Huangjin Shi , i.e., Huangting ; 5.7a79. We know that Chen locates the Yellow Court near the Crimson Palace Jianggong ; see Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.27b5, missing from DZ 1067, so the Yellow Court would be associated with the middle dantian. Thus, the inner caldron can be either the lower or middle dantian.

498

dantian in stage 3 to upper dantian in stage 4, just as in the standard account.201 According to the standard account, after xiao zhoutian in stages 12 comes da zhoutian in stage 3. I have already discussed Chens xiao zhoutian circulation on page 495 above: it exists within his dao, but plays a reduced role. How about his da zhoutian? What, after all, is the da zhoutian? Lets look at what Zhang Zhenguo and Ma Jiren have to say. Zhang Zhenguo describes da zhoutian according to the standard account of solo inner alchemy: In greaterorbit training, one takes the middle dantian as the caldron and the lower dantian as the furnace. The distance traveled in the qicircuit is much smaller than in the case of lesserorbit training. Since the phenomena associated with the circulation of the greater pharmacon are not as obvious as in the case of lesserorbit training, we habitually use the term dense mist yinyun to express the circulating and rening of the greater pharmacon between the two dantian. Whereas in lesserorbit training, one relies upon purposive inner respiration to set the circulation in motion and attain reverse transport niyun , in greaterorbit training one relies upon the inherent energy of the pharmacon for circulation. In greaterorbit training one does not transport by means of the River Chariot: instead, the pharmacon moves above and below, before and behind, to the left and right.202 Ma Jiren adds that the adept then opens up his or her eight tracts tong bamai , and transports elixirqi along them. The usual practice is to transport qi along the eight extraordinary cardinal tracts qijing , but some adepts use the superintendent and conception tracts, and some even use the twelve regular cardinal tracts zhengjing : the case diers for each person.203 Thus the standard account. Yet the understanding of the greater orbit within the eld of inner alchemy varies widely. Wile says that da zhoutian can refer to 1 transmuting qi to spirit, 2 projecting qi into the meridians of the four limbs, 3 a shift to the middle dantian, or 4 merging the qi with the cosmos.204 To these we may add 5 causing the metallous crystal to soar up behind the elbows zhouhou jinjing 201

Chen mentions shifting the elixirasspirit to the upper dantian for stage4 training at DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 8.2a910 and 14.1b12.

202

Zhang Zhenguo, Fanpu guizhen, 234.

203

Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 206. An example of da zhoutian circulation using the superintendent and conception tracts is in the WuLiu text Wu Zhenren dandao jiupian, cited in Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 544. WuLiu alchemy contributed heavily to the standard account, so it is a little surprising to nd the rendu ermai used for da zhoutian here, contrasting with the standard account. 204


499

%0-D, a form of solo huanjing bunao in classic ZhongL teachings;205 and 6, transporting qi between the three dantian in quasiZhongL teachings attributed to Wang Chongyang.206 Lets compare these possibilities for da zhoutian with several passages from Chens commentaries. We will see that, just as Chens references to furnace and caldron are partially ambiguous and depart signicantly from the standard account, so too does his use of standard elements of da zhoutian circulation only intersect partially with the standard picture. The term hazy yinyun 8Q is one da zhoutian marker to look for. Chen usually uses the term to refer to Heaven and Earth in their xiantian state, but also uses it for a xiantian entity within the bodymicrocosm: Similar in category to a chicken egg: the recycled elixir now has a physical form. Black and white tally with one another: yin and yang have been matched. One cun inch across: when the elixir is rst forming, its coming is like an especially tiny grain of millet, and one gradually feels it is one cuninch wide. It is not only that the spirit chamber is full and replete, but also that it pervades the four limbs in a haze yun , moistening the ve viscera, and the sinews and bones at once all have a pleasurable and unimpeded feeling . When the labor of ten months is full, and the elixir has already taken form, it is freed from the placenta, and is nicknamed yang spirit.

^\ )[ #J3@)BH=ZU) G ,&I KS_ U U.";/NbO *VX aF (4MH H;207 <2$PR #A( Gentlemen who cultivate the elixir, if they desire to retain the dragon by using the tiger, must rst impel the tiger to approach the dragon. Then the two qi will exist in a haze yinyun 8Q, and the dispositions of the two beasts will copulate and unite. Expend your labor at tempering it, and it will naturally crystallize into jingqi of the perfected One. ?+9 9Y `+CYE078Q'>1] 6 5? L!EWG:T7208 While the rst passage refers to stage 3 of internal ring, the second passage actually refers to the initial fusion of the two pharmaca, during stage 2. This departs from the standard account, in which the haze of da zhoutian occurs during stage 3 only. 205

BaldrianHussein, Procds secrets du joyau magique, 237., discussing DZ 1191, Michuan Zhengyang zhenren Lingbao bifa; and Despeux, Taosme et corps humain, 151. 206

Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 467, citing DZ 1156, Chongyang Zhenren jinguan yusuo jue.

207

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 2.55a8 b1.

208


500

Another standard element of da zhoutian circulation is the idea of qi circulating throughout the entire body: not just along the superintendent and conception tracts, but along other major or minor tracts, or along nameless qi capillaries. The rst passage above conforms well to the standard account of the da zhoutian stage: during internal ring, the elixir product circulates about the body, pervading the four limbs in a haze yun j , moistening the ve viscera, and the sinews and bones. Yet compare this with the following two passages: Hot re spreads below, properly diligent in its sound day and night: We

may say that when the yang elixir rst arrives, there is a sign within it. When it has rst obtained the re from within the hexagram li, it ows all around the body day and night. The hundred joints and myriad spirits all receive their orders, and properly and diligently keep themselves inside, causing the sounds to grow silent and the thoughts to be harmonious, the Qi evenly to spread and the channel pulse to stop, and the elixir to begin to crystallize and form.

3I2L/bT4[R 6*) :Jf L/ ->'XWFK?i.1TT (bHU,G " 0Ò209 Use the four heraldic beasts, sixiang to x and subdue the Qi of cinnabar powder and perfected metal, and recycle it into the ve viscera within. When the elixir rst arrives, the qi is dispersed like mist, moist and lubricating like rain. The elixirs qi rises like smoke or steam, penetrating throughout to the four limbs. When the spirit and qi are complete, the complexion will be pleasing. The teeth will grow, the hair will blacken, and you will revert from old age to boyhood. You will alter your withered physical form, and forever escape the disasters of this world. Your physical form and spirit s both wondrous, you will be a perfected person of the purple auroras. <(+ @ @E8c ) 6 DM Mh h]aA A9 De e \ZY Y5FD;g!C_^S7 cN&)=V %# #Q %FB$PdE210 These two passages above sound like descriptions of da zhoutian circulation, but they are referring primarily to stage 2 rather than stage 3. The rst of the two passages is denitely talking about the phase of hedan during stage 2, when the yang elixir the female pharmacon and re i.e., the male pharmacon form an initial bond. The second passage covers both the hedan phase, and a later stage when spirit and qi are complete, perhaps stage 4, the completion of the path. Once again, the da zhoutian 209


210


501

like state is not limited to stage 3, as it would be in the standard account. Chen describes the completion of the path as a robustly physiological perfection, as well as a spiritual transcendencephysical form and spirit s both wondrous xingshen jumiao $# is a classic description of alchemical apotheosis. Also note the role played by corporeal spirits in the rst passage. As the fusing pharmaca circulate throughout the body this is probably xiao zhoutian circulation along the twin tracts , the corporeal spirits and other powers of the body receive the order to remain within the body. This is a theological description of the state of mind and body during concentration meditation. In conclusion, the standard account of da zhoutian circulation applies to Chens teachings only imperfectly, because Chens teachings are ambiguous on some points the caldrons and furnaces, and the circulation of qi throughout the entire body that the standard account tries to dene more strictly. §3.3.1.2, Reclusion and baoyi.

As we have seen in previous sections, Chen

derides the idea that inner alchemy requires retreat deep into the mountains; this is because he requires female partners and patrons, who are more easily found in the marketplace shichan : of the city. Yet, at the stage of forming the elixir, the adept ought on the contrary to go into reclusion: If you have never rened the recycled elixir then do not enter the enclosure hut . The germ of the elixir is mostly in the noisy groves.211 As soon as the infant and lovely maid have met joyously, then on the contrary you may turn toward the enclosure to nurture the great recycled elixir .

65 (; 32+49-;15212 After having obtained it, and as if by a uke ordered this treasure of life endowment, it is furthermore best to dwell deep within an undisturbed place, to incubate it, cherish and regulate it. Reducing and again reducing: with thoughts tend toward turning to ash, and one forgets ones desires; vigorous labor tends toward diligence; and, as for the scene, one tends toward forgetting it. Before you obtain the elixir, undertake the practices of a truly divine transcendent. If you have already obtained the elixir, harbor a mind that seems not to have obtained a thingthen all a airs and objects will have nought to do with the heartminds lord though you will not be without danger , all the way until the work is complete, the ring is sucient, and you may slacken. % /" 8'*).1!0, ,& 211

Could the groves lin be monasteries conglin 7 ? Or is this just a reference to an urban environment?

212


502

'FWFN"KF',E@$ATB$=E8 [L0E5+2\%"LX3# *"9213 Huineng cultivated both inherent nature and lifeendowment, using earth to x lead, and lead to x mercury. The two pharmaca returned to the caldron of metal. Then he entered deep into the mountains, to sit dazedly, to cultivate and nurture. IC/.Z? -QQ-(Y4R6 G &? U214 The adept may even sit in dazed zazen, as did Huineng, the sixth patriarch of Chan Buddhism. Sitting dazedly is usually a pejorical term for Chen, but it is actually appropriate for stage 3. Chen mentions entering the hut ruhuan ^. The meditation retreat within a huandu ]D was a distinctive Quanzhen practice during the JinYuan period.215 While this may have had special signi cance for Quanzhen Daoists wishing to echo their founder Wang Chongyangs years of trial in the grave of the living dead man huosi ren mu
>VJP

On the spiritual register, the One is the Dao; on the mental register, it is a mental state empty of de lements; and on the physical register, it is repletion with jing

seminal essence. In the following passage, Chen echoes another passage by Weng Baoguang: To ll the belly is to re ne the lead and cause the mercury to dry up. Do not 213

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 5.14a8 b3.

214

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 16.12b9 13a1.

215

Goossaert, La cration du taosme moderne, 171 219.

216


503

sway your seminal essence, which is mercury. If you ll your belly by guarding your mercury, then gold and jade will ll your halls. This is just what Laozi meant when he said embrace the One. The One is the elixir. Make your heartmind empty by embracing the One. If the heartmind is empty, then dust sensory delement will not adhere to it: only then will it be full. Rene the lead to control it. The mercury will dry up and the physical form will transform; you use embracing the One in order to empty your heartmind. With an empty heart mind and a spirit in a wondrous state, you unite with the Dao in perfection. 51*93-/0!77'5!1*(6. %'%&!&*4 ! 593" - %&!&,82 +217 In the passage above, amassing and retaining seminal essence lianji training ows seamlessly into internal ring of the elixir drying up the mercury in stage 3 , Buddhistic mental purication chen buli 4 , and nally union with the Dao at the end of the alchemical path. All of these stages involve concentrating and purifying the mind, or training the inherent nature xinong $ . It is sometimes said that training of the lifeendowment minong # and inherent nature xinong depend on one another. On page 275 above, I argue that obviously all minong must involve xinong, and here we do see that cultivating the seminal essence minong par exceence involves gaining control over lustful and distracting thoughts xinong . Yet alchemists belief that the opposite is also true, that xinong also naturally leads to the perfection of minong, is a point of faith that is not immediately obvious to common sense.218 §3.3.2, Firing periods huohou.

In this section, I argue against the importance

of ring periods in Chens meditational practice. Chens practice appears to lack a complex pattern of ring periods, either for lesserorbital circulation during the eightyminute period of hedan after gathering, in stage 2 , or for internal ring in stage 3 , or for training the yang spirit stage 4 . The complexity of Chens practice is found in the process of gathering the partners outer pharmacon, rather than in lesserorbital circulation or internal ring as in other forms of inner alchemy. 217

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 6.6b38. DZ 1067 has %, while the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds. have %. It is not clear what % would mean here. This is all a paraphrase of DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 3.7b14. 218

This point is not re ected in the passage above, though Chen does believe it. Cf. One may attain longevity through completing ones inherent nature $) Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 1.29b5 .

504

This is a controversial claim, and proving it will take us deep into the sea of alchemical technicalities. I am not saying that the concept of ring periods per se is underemphasized in Chens writingsChen does use the term huohou quite often. I am also not saying that the three major huohou schemata, the Matching Stems, Sovereign Hexagrams, and sixty hexagrams see below , are absent from Chens writings. Chen mentions trigrams from the Matching Stems such as zhen or dui throughout his writings; he also includes discussions of the Sovereign Hexagrams and the sixtyhexagram schema within his Cantong qi commentary.219 What I wi argue is that, while Chen talks about huohou and employs complex trihexagram schemata, when he talks about huohou he is not talking about the details of meditational practice, and when he talks about the complex schemata he is not applying them to meditation. Ultimately, his lesserorbital circulation stage 2 and internal ring stage 3 appear not to be complex regimens, following the waxing and waning of yin and yang; rather, they seem to involve concentration meditation only. What are these ring periods again? Picture the laboratory alchemists, weighing their fuel, carefully varying the height of re according to secret ring patterns, everfearful of scorching the budding elixir or letting it grow cold. Inner alchemists adapted this picture to their own practices, modulating their own ring of guided intention and breath according to similar patterns of yin and yang. Recall the discussion of the ring periods on pages 29399 above. Inner alchemists use at least three di erent temporal schemata for ring elixirs: the Method of Matching Stems Najia Fa , the Twelve Sovereign Hexagrams Shier Pigua , and the rarer Theory of Hexagram Qi Guaqi Shuo . The Matching Stems are the trigrams zhen , dui , qian , xun , gen , and kun . The Twelve Sovereign Hexagrams are fu , lin , tai , dazhuang , guai , qian , gou , dun , pi , guan , bo , and kun . The Theory of Hexagram Qi uses sixty of the sixtyfour hexagrams to represent days of the year six days per hexagram , with kan, li, zhen, and dui reserved for equinoxes 219

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 1.2a5b5, 2.51b46.

505

and solstices.220 Inner alchemists use these schemata to represent the correct patterns of waxing and waning of yin and yang throughout a cycle of ring. Zeng Chuanhui notes that the applications of these schemata vary quite a bit from one teacher to another. Zeng says that 1 Some solo alchemists use the Matching Stems for the ring periods of the lesser orbit, and the Sovereign Hexagrams for the ring periods of the greater orbit. 2 Some solo alchemists do the opposite. 3 Some solo alchemists use the Matching Stems for gathering the pharmaca and the Sovereign Hexagrams for the ring periods. 4 Some solo alchemists use the Matching Stems for the ring periods and the Sovereign Hexagrams for oral instructions regarding other issues . 5 Some sexual alchemists use the Matching Stems for the female partners pharmacon and ring periods, and the Sovereign Hexagrams for the adepts pharmacon and ring periods. 6 Some sexual alchemists use the Matching Stems for the pharmacon and ring periods, and the Sovereign Hexagrams as oral instructions when approaching the partner.221 One example of a huohou schema using Sovereign Hexagrams comes from the twentiethcentury traditionalist Wang Mu. Wang Mu includes a chart in his book correlating the Twelve Sovereign Hexagrams and the twelve terrestrial branches, dizhi with twelve sites on the twin tracts of superintendency and conception.222 In this chart, the cycle of orbital circulation begins with kun in the region of the lower dantian, proceeds to fu at the coccyx, then adds further yang yaolines at sites along the spine until reaching qian at the occiput; next, the chart adds yin yao lines, leading from gou at the crown of the head down the front of the body to reach kun in the belly again. Another example of a huohou schema comes from the lateimperial sexualalchemical text Jindan zhenchuan. As we saw on page 426 above, the adept must make ring calculations during the stage of internal ring or incubation, wenyang , with 216 units of re during the rst half of the day, 144 units of re during the second half of the day, adding up to 360 units per day. As far 220

Cantong qi uses the sixty hexagrams to represent days of the month, and reserves qian, kun, kan, and li instead; Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue, 227.

221


222

Wang Mu, Wuzhen pian qianjie, 9.

506

as I know, Chen never mentions any concrete instructions like this for the stage of internal ring; instead, he would apply this sort of calculation to the stage of gathering the outer pharmacon.223 §3.3.2.1, Chens huohou.

Chen uses the term huohou quite often, but what does

he mean by it? When you already know that the pharmacon has been produced, you still must fully understand the ring periods. The Perfected Person of Purple Nobility Xue Daoguang said: The sage transmits teaches how to gather the pharmacon, but not the ring. In the past, few people have known the ring periods. What is re? Fire is none other than the granulated metal. What are the periods? Waiting for the coming of the moment and the arrival of the re. When people in the mundane world rene common granulated cinnabar and ery silver should be mercury? into an elixir, they must also rst set it in the caldron, then place it upon the furnace, and watch for when the re may be aroused: this is ring according to periods. Taking care that the ring arrives at the correct time: this is ring according to periods. Making certain that the ring is not excessive or insucient: this is ring according to periods. Understanding the res qualities such as being overaged or tenderfresh, warm or attenuated: this is ring according to periods. If the elixir is already complete, then swiftly extinguish the re: this is ring according to periods. The dao of the great ninetimesrecycled metallous uid elixir of the upper transcendents is closely similar to this. 1,N>'5=L7E?N?8(5,% &.3%55)6(5)$4 C 3K #-DH;/P2)
starting at the right time; 3 not allowing the re to be too hot or cool; 4

understanding age or freshness laonen "I ; and 5 stopping at the right time. Number 1 is irrelevant Chen consistently rejects laboratory alchemy , numbers 2 and 5 are truisms, number 3 simply calls for constancy, and number 4 probably does not

223


224


507

refer to ring within the inner caldron.225 There is no evidence from this passage that Chen is using complex huohou. In the third fascicle of Jindan dayao, Chen has an entire section on the ring periods,226 in which he cites Cantong qi, Wuzhen pian, and a halfdozen other authorities including Weng Baoguang . Yet, in this section, if we discount his quotations from authorities whose alchemical teachings di er markedly from his own,227 and look at Chens own words, we nd that he is almost exclusively speaking about gathering the partners pharmacon with judging the right moment called a kind of timing , or the adepts control of his seminal essence essence is correlated with re , rather than to lesserorbital circulation or internal ring. Whereas laboratory alchemists locate the trickiness of the huohou in following the correct heating pattern, Chen locates the trickiness of the huohou in avoiding the arousal of any lustful thought while gathering or the brief period of lesserorbital circulation.228 In this whole section on huohou, the only two sentences on internal ring are When the perfected lead has reverted to within the Chamber of Gold, advance the re and set the tallies in motion evenly throughout the twelve nodes. $'6;4!# 52-229 As for supplementing the mercury and extracting from the lead, when the lead is exhausted and the mercury is dried up, the golden elixir is already complete, and the infant will soon appear.

+667)! :*,230

The rst sentence merely repeats what we already know about the transformation of 225

The term laonen appears three times in Chens extant works; of the other two instances, one refers to gathering the partners pharmacon Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 2.55a3 , and one refers to timing the brief period of lesserorbital circulation during the stage of hedan DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 12.3b9 . I know of no evidence that Chens lesserorbital circulation involves delicate timing. 226

Section on the Wondrous Application of the Firing Periods Huohou miaoyong zhang %/ . In the original layout of Jindan dayao this is in juan 3, but in the DZ 1067 edition it is in juan 6. 227

One example is Chens quotation from an anonymous Wuzhen pian zhu &'81 that speaks of fusing the qi of kidneys and heart; DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 6.4b39. The kidneysheart complex is important within mainstream inner alchemy, but quite alien to Chens teachings. 228 When the ring periods arrive at this, one absolutely must protect and nurture the lead and mercury. Now, when any man reaches adulthood, his thoughts stir, and the perfected qi is scattered and lost over time % 3"9 ('.0; Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 3.19a89 missing from DZ 1067 . 229


230


508

lead and mercury into the elixir. As for the second sentence, I will argue below that it refers only to a simple ring cycle. For Chen, the term huohou usually does not refer to lesserorbital circulation or internal ring at all, and when it does, there is no indication of a complex ring system. Indeed, Chen asks, How could nurturing the re be di cult? For nine cycles, wait until the tallies and periods have been carried out, cleansing the heartmind and rinsing away cares, in order to form the threehundredday fetus. 3 :7

'$! 12 *#231

Chen summarizes the internal ring as just a form of concentration meditation, with gentle, uninterrupted intention directed inward to the Yellow Court: Now, incubation is to let ones limbs and body fall away, to dismiss ones sharp senses of hearing and vision, to remain like a fool to the end of the day without violating this attitude ; one may not depart from this for even a moment. Like when a hen broods over her clutch, the warm qi may not be interrupted. Then, the meritorious labor of extracting and supplementing choutian will appear on its own. /3<;54(-0,89. %+6&232 Whereas stage 2 of caiqu and hedan is a stage of conscious action youwei or youzuo, stage 3 of jiedan is a stage of eortless action, in which there is no intentional action, yet nothing remains undone wuwei er wu buwei )")". §3.3.2.2, Chens Matching Stems.

I have argued that Chen appears not to teach

a complex ring system during stage 3. Yet there is a lengthy discussion of the Matching Stems in Jindan dayao, in which he correlates them with days of the month, hours of the day, the points of moonrise, and the waxing and waning of yin and yang or mercury and lead. What, then, are we to make of this passage? I argue that, despite the complexity of the system Chen is laying out here, he is not applying it directly to meditational practice, either lesserorbital circulation or internal ring. Rather, he is developing alchemical theory for its own sake, or in order to echo his sources such as Weng Baoguang. This passage is worth analyzing at length. Day 1 Each month, at the zi hour 23:001:00 in the early morning of the rst 231


232

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 6.8a10b2.

509

day of the new moon, sun and moon unite their discs at the position of gui, and a thin mist gathers above in the lunar mansions of Mao Hairy Head and Bi Net. This symbolizes the initial generating of the re. At this time, pure yin has already reached its apex, and a slight bit of yang is about to be generated; this is called the dragon cruising underwater. &76[*4ZTKaA !D. N! 6:CLJI>3XUY233 This is shuo 7, the newmoon day. Chen correlates day 1 with a specic hour, positions of sun and moon in the sky, and the initial generating of the re. Because re is correlated with seminal essence, Chen is speaking of rening the self, when the male adept amasses seminal essence through calming meditation. Day 1 correlates to the lianji stage. The dragon cruising underwater qianlong UY is the one yang yaoline cruising at the bottom of the trigram zhen W zhen will appear on day 3, but it also suggests the hidden power of the male sex organ the dragon during lianji training. Day 3 At the buhour 3:005:00 pm of the third day, the moon rises above the position of geng, and perfected yang has already commenced its waxing . Geng belongs to the direction of southwest. The Book of Changes says, One gains a friend in the southwest, and thereupon moves forward together with one of the same category. Cantong qi says, Kun rst transforms into zhen, and on the third day the moon rises at geng. We may say that, at this time, the pharmacon has only just been produced, and the watersource is extremely pure, never yet having been disturbed: this is the moment when it has qi but no substance. The great cultivator will swiftly turn toward the water at this time, and, with his single wisdom eye, regulate and scrutinize its signs. . . . b) 9IO)^%0+%0?, P] $=1(.`W)Q36 \-_ M#@Fc< 8GVR5$ 2!6';ESB/ "H234 Chen correlates day 3 with a trigram zhen , hour, position of moon in the sky, and the male adepts gathering of the metal pharmacon from the partners water. Day 3 correlates to the fortyminute period of gathering caiqu. Day 8 On the eighth day, at the hour of you 17:0019:00 , the moon has arrived at the heart of heaven, and its levelness is like a cord. This is called the day of the rst lunar quarter, when one obtains a halfcatty of metal. The Longhu jing says, Kun changes twice to become dui, and on the eighth day the moon rises at ding. 233


234


510

We may take this to resemble the process of lead and mercury gradually fusing into the owing pearl. At this time, the qi of metal and water halt, and one does not advance the yang re or set the tallies in motion, but only bathes, cleansing the mind.

5P87$*H| <]C"}An: )+. srq1uiITHPCRYkl (g-b[2SJ,235 This is the rst lunar quarter shangxian <. Chen correlates day 8 with a trigram dui , hour, position of moon in the sky, the waxing of metal, the fusion of metal and lead, and the alchemical phase of bathing the elixir at mao # I discuss bathing below. Day 8 correlates to the initial fusion of the pharmaca hedan. Day 15 Three ves is the full moon. At the full moon, sun and moon shoot rays at each other. Within yin the three yang yaolines are already replete, and have formed qian, which is like when the whitesoul of the moon gains the cloudsoul of the sun and becomes full. This is an analogy for lead and water being robust within the caldron, perfected yang plenteous and full, the re bright and the metal robust and thriving, just about to form a vessel. This is when the qi of metal and re are securely fused, and mercury and its mother feel loving attachment for one another. K^^@LOEcld,+Xhz]y,te rq0aVlt?C>\_+{HCRw19i1w 7%6LU 236 This is the fullmoon day wang ^. Chen correlates day 15 with a trigram qian , the positions of sun and moon in the sky, and the waxing of metal and lead in the caldron. Day 15 correlates to an early point in the stage of forming the elixir jiedan. Day 16 Arriving at dawn of the full moon day, the moon rises in the region of xin, and qian rst transforms into xun. This is the dao of the mutual transference of yin and yang. In the beginning, pure yin was able to intersect with a slight amount of yang and produce the pharmacon; now, afterward, yin holds yang qi within, and forms the elixir. Xun wind or respiration thereupon takes charge of the yin tallies. Yin qi gradually rises, and encloses and reinforces the yang essence, which thus does not stir or roam. Then the grains of metal fall into the placenta, which is yin harboring yang within. This is called returning home to the root. G^$?34XBf clL=p;ÈWc]'ml, &FEc!lR,+f =xcbcRu&!9lvDgZ jECMoNc/lH|~Q 237 Chen correlates day 16 with a trigram xun , position of moon in the sky, and a 235


236


237


511

moment when grains of metal fall into the placenta. I think he is referring to a point during the jiedan stage when the holy fetus shengtai eJ is beginning to form. Day 23 On the dawn of the twentythird day, the moon rises in the region of bing, kun copulates with the middle yaoline of qian to make gen, and the pharmacon within the caldron naturally crystallizes. At this moment, the yin and yang qi again come to a halt, the yin tallies not advancing their ring periods

either. One only bathes the nascent elixir , rinsing away cares. This is called the day of the last lunar quarter of yin , when one obtains a halfcatty of water. Take the halfcatty of metal from the rst lunar quarter of yang and the halfcatty of water from the last lunar quarter of yin , then unite the two hemispheres to make a total of one catty, in order to form the grains of elixir. Cantong qi says, The two hemispheres fuse their essence, and the bodies of qian and kun are thereupon formed.

&A7#=(O".H1goB/]l^FLY bM[P2YW)\a!R5Nhj.Fm?T %$ ?C%? %:?+k$ÎQ*E: ?+;iO=p ,238 This is the last lunar quarter xiaxian ?. Chen correlates day 23 with a trigram gen , position of moon in the sky, and a moment when the two hemispheres unite to form a one catty jin , or more grains of elixir. This also correlates with the bathing of the elixir at you 9. Day 28 On the dawn of the twentyeighth day, the moon rises in the region of yi. At this moment, yin and yang qi are both replete, metal and mercury fuse to form the fetus, kan and li transport qi into the caldron, and are sent owing everywhere within the six vacuities, between the images. This symbolizes the beginning and end of the golden elixir. When the day of darkness the last day of the waning moon arrives, sun and moon again meet in the region of ren, yin reaches its apex, and yang is again on the point of being born.

&AV-LYbMK8C4^.,J3nfM@g X0@U[cDYd .b S'6239 This is nearing the darkmoon day hui U, the thirtieth of the month. The dark moon day would correlate with kun , but Chen does not list a trigram for day 28. Chen correlates day 28 with a position of the moon in the sky, and the completion of the holy fetus at the end of ten months of gestation. The clause yang is again on the point of being born refers to the birth of the yang spirit from the holy fetus. The 238


239


512

owing of kan and li everywhere within the six vacuities refers to what, in the standard account of solo alchemy, is called the greater orbit da zhoutian . The birth of the yang spirit would correlate with the generation of new yang at the newmoon day shuo of the next cycle. What is going on in the passage above? The rst thing we note is that this cycle covers several stages of Chens alchemical path. Day 1 refers to lianji stage 1 , day 3 refers to caiqu in stage 2 , day 8 refers to hedan in stage 2 , and days 15, 16, 23, and 28 refer to internal ring stage 3 . So if we want to call this a schema of ring periods, we could only do this in an abstract way. The concept of ring itself, for example, does not have a stable identity here, shifting from cultivating seminal essence days 1 and 15 , to gauging the partners water day 3 , to intentional action in general days 8 and 23 . This is not a consistent microregime of ring like in the example from Wang Mu; rather, it is a ring schema applied to the alchemical path overall or rather, stages 13, but not stage 4 . In Wang Mus example, the cycle of ring i.e., lesserorbital circulation is to be repeated many times, but because Chens ring schema above describes the nearly entire path, it is not a repeatable cycle at all. In another passage, Chen admits as much himself: Although we use a lunar month to symbolize the undertaking, the work requires ten months: only then can you plan for the yang spirit to take form. 240 The long passage translated above is not evidence of a complex ring system to actually be used during meditation. Another noteworthy feature of the passage above is Chens instructions to gather elixir products at several points during internal ring. When yin begins its rise on day 16 trigram xun , the grains of metal fall into the placenta. This is yin harboring yang within: the metal elixir as yang, and the placenta itself is yin. On day 23, the adept should Take the halfcatty of metal from the rst lunar quarter and the halfcatty of water from the last lunar quarter, then unite the two hemispheres to make a total of one catty, in order to form the grains of elixir. To understand what this could mean, lets review some alchemical concepts. 240


513

§3.3.2.3, The standard ring cycle.

In inner alchemy, one full alchemical cycle is

bisected into a yang hemisphere, when the adept advances the yang re jin yanghuo EF , and a yin hemisphere, when the adept withdraws the yin tallies tui yinfu 6 ?< . Each hemisphere is further bisected by a moment of nonring, when the adept bathes muyu

4 the elixir; in microcosmic terms, this may involve breath

retention or formless meditation: Now, what is meant by bathing? The great cultivator completely and unfetteredly sheds the ordinary mind of melancholy, worries, and pains, and thoughts of clinging and greed. He is wholly without even a shred of care. He must only have a physical form like a withered tree, and a heartmind like dead ashes: this is called bathing. O 41L93N@*MP- 8D>H %T C=AB:;S(/J.+O 4 241 Do not allow tugging and suspended worries or old cares to rile the heartminds lord. This is called rinsing away ones cares and cleansing the heartmind; this is called bathing the elixir. If by chance in some case loving attachments remain, then we may worry that the mercury and lead will y away.

#;SQMG+OKM,+O !242

47&5R)2I0

The moment of bathing during the yang hemisphere is called mao , and its yin counterpart is you ". Alchemists may also speak of two types of ring: hotter martial re wuhuo ' and cooler civil re wenhuo . Usually, advancing the yang re means using martial re, and withdrawing the yin tallies means using civil re.243 There is a common idea that, during internal ring, 1 at the moment of mao, correlated with the rst lunar quarter shangxian $, a.k.a. the upper chord of bisection or pinnacle of waxing , the adept gathers eight liangounces of metal, and then 2 at you, the third lunar quarter xiaxian $ , the adept gathers eight liang ounces of water, and nally 3 the adept unites the two eightounce measures erba to make a full catty jin of elixir. With this background in mind, we may understand why Chen mentions gathering elixir products on day 8 the rst lunar quarter and day 23 the last lunar quarter . As for Chens instruction to gather on day 241


242


243


514

16, just after the pinnacle of yang at the full moon on day 15, this is something else, which I do not understand.244 What do these instructions mean on the microcosmic register, though? What timing calculations should the adept be making, how should he be applying his guiding intention yi , and what should he be feeling in his body? In the long passage translated above, Chen applies the various concepts of 1 gathering the two eightounce measures to make a catty, 2 jin yanghuo, 3 tui yinfu, and 4 bathing, in an abstract way to the entire alchemical path, rather than concretely to solo meditation either lesserorbital circulation, or internal ring as other alchemists would do. If we examine other occurrences of the concepts in his writings, we do not nd Chen applying these concepts to solo meditation there either, as I will show. The twoeights.

As far as I know, there are no other passages in Chens extant

writings that will help us interpret the teaching on gathering the two eightounce measures to make a catty during internal ring; instead, there are numerous passages in which the twoeights refer to the sixteenyearold partner. In the Wuzhen pian commentary, there is a relevant passage by Weng Baoguang wrongly ascribed to Xue Daoguang, which discusses gathering the two eightounce measures to make a catty;245 tellingly, this passage applies the concept mainly to the process of gathering the outer pharmacon, and only vaguely to internal circulation. We must conclude that, for Chen and perhaps also for Weng, this concept is not applied concretely to either lesserorbital circulation in stage 2 or inner ring stage 3. There is no evidence of a complex ring regimen here. Mao and you.

In Jindan dayao, Chen includes a section entitled Things

Necessary to Know about Punishment and Virtuous Power at Mao and You.246 This section is mostly about the mao and you points within the macrocosmic temporal cycles: the vernal and autumnal equinoxes of the year, eighth and twentythird days 244

This idea of gathering at the fullmoon day also appears in Xiao zhoutian ge ; Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 169. This text is ascribed to the Quanzhen patriarch Qiu Chuji, but is likely a lateimperial work.

245


246

Maoyou xingde xuzhi ; DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 7.8a89b5. Punishment and virtuous power xingde refer to autumn and spring. Autumn is the season of waxing yin punishment, and spring is the season of waxing yang virtuous power, or blessing.

515

of the month, sunrise and sunset within a day. Most important, however, are the mao and you points within the doublehour period of gathering the outer pharmacon. There is no indication that these concepts are applied to cycles of solo meditation. Martial and civil re.

In a passage in Jindan dayao on using martial re for jin

yanghuo and civil re for tui yinfu, Chen applies these concepts to the entire alchemical path, just like in the long translated passage above. Martial re is used for the rst threetenths of the alchemical path stages 1 and 2, while civil re is used for the remaining seventenths of the path stage 3; apparently stage 4 is not included here. We may say that, when there is a battle in the wilderness, then the dragon and tiger mingle and unite: this is what is called using threetenths martial re, or a short movement in the front. . . . Now, as for protecting the fortress, because the perimeter has already been erected, you must only incubate and bathe the elixir , guarding against faint aws and eliminating growing problems : this is what is called using seventenths civil re, or the back must be long. QCV5X2 9 /4$FW!61-SH

>LT(=+K&O97J3WEDPZ: A *"'JR# *5@)?"0G247 In another passage, the adept should use martial re at the beginning lianji, stage 1 and end incubation, stage 3, with civil ring in between during stage 2. Commencing with the civil makes it cultivable: When commencing to rene the elixir, cultivate it with civil re. At the head and tail points , however, use martial re. At the head point , use martial re to rene the self; at the end use martial

re to incubate the elixir . Therefore this is as the Song of the Caldron says, Martial at head and tail, civil inbetween. .,<1Y. . "< <-;%5:/ /;/ /Y /LT8MUN;%/I9248 B/ Again, these concepts are not applied concretely to meditation, but are applied to the entire alchemical path. There is no evidence of a complex ring regimen here either. §3.3.2.4, Firing as a secret teaching.

Xue Daoguang, the socalled third

patriarch of the Southern Lineage says, The sage transmits teaches how to gather

the pharmacon, but does not transmit the ring. In the past, few people have known 247

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 7.2a10b1, b26.

248


516

the ring periods .249 What does this mean? It could mean that each adept must work out the ring periods for himself; or that the master makes a wordless mind transmission xinchuan as in Chan Buddhism;250 but its main meaning ought to be that the ring periods are not to be written down. Indeed, within the Southern Lineage of the golden elixir, the details of the ring periods are rarely committed to writing. This need not be the case for all forms of alchemy, however. Some texts in the Zhong L tradition, for example, spell out a complex system of ring periods in full detail.251 Why does the master not commit his teachings on the ring periods to writing? One practical reason is that the student needs a teacher to monitor his or her progess, and advise him or her how to apply the teachings on ring according to his or her capacities, experiences, and level of attainment. Another reason is that the master is applying esotericism as a strategy: by advertising yet withholding his teachings, the master reinforces his authority as a master, or manages his mastership. A third reason that I am proposing for why Chen Zhixu would not transmit his ring periods openly is that Chen might feel a sense of disjunction between his alchemical practice and theory. Chens dao actually involves less complex ring than other alchemical daos do, yet Chen must somehow retain the complexity of alchemical discourse within his teaching, because this discourse comes from authoritative texts, and because it has intellectual cachet. He retains the discourse by applying the lunar ring cycle to stages 1 3 of the alchemical path as a whole, rather than to an actual regimen of practice. He cannot reveal his ring periods openly because this would reveal the divergence of his practice from the alchemical mainstream.

249

DZ 1088, Huandan fuming pian 4b3. Yu Yan 1253 1314 thought this text was not Xue Daoguangs but actually written by Bai Yuchan; Skar, Golden Elixir Alchemy, 188.

250 Chen does speak of something like mind transmission, but regarding the pharmacon rather than the ring periods: Now we realize that the dao is not revealed baldly in words. Only now do we realize that to know the aair depends on mind transmission DZ 1070, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao xianpai 8a10 b1 . This is a prayer to L Dongbin for a marvelous transmission of the teachings to the adept. 251

On pages 270 1 above, I briey discuss DZ 244, Dadan zhizhi, as an example of this.

517

§3.4, Stage Four: Transformation into a Yang Spirit shenhua > §3.4.1, General description.

At the end of ten months or three hundred days, the

holy fetus shengtai E7 is transported from the Yellow Court associated with the middle dantian to dwell in the upper dantian, where it will slowly transform into the yang spirit or infant. After a thousand days or three years the yang spirit is complete: In ten months the work is sucientthe holy fetus is already accomplishedso shift it to dwell in the upper dantian. Protect and nurture it, cause it to grow and mature, and over the course of one or two years it will transform into the yang spirit. (4E7B2A- 1J0+F2 5C>252 Although the process normally takes three years, it could be completed in two years as above, or even just ten months: Completing the work takes three years; if your labor is superb then it takes

one ji 6 three hundred days. G2 !?26253 These two years of cultivating the yang spirit are spent in advanced concentration meditation. The description of this meditative work by Chens teacher Zhao Youqin mingles language from inner alchemy, Chan Buddhism, and the Daode jing: Therefore my master, Zhao the Perfected, said, The entire matter of sitting in dhyna or, zazen and entering samdhi has to do with attaining the mani pearl. After the holy fetus has formed, we call this stage embracing the One and maintaining harmony, knowing the white but maintaining the black, or facing the wall and sitting upright, cultivating dhyna and entering samdhi, or rening the physical form and transforming it into qi, rening qi and causing it to revert to spirit,254 or physical form and spirit exit the womb, personally practicing matters already undertaken by the Buddha. 4':I= %N ,@#4&>7L5$ )255 Chen also describes the cultivation of the yang spirit as rening the spirit and 252


253


254

Cf. Daode jing, chapters 10 embrace the One, and 28 know the white but maintain the black.

255


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causing it to return to the void lianshen huanxu >.=4 : Whoever knows this dao will make his spirit happy and guard his physical form, nurture his physical form and rene his essence, store up essence and transform it into qi, rene qi and unite it with spirit, and rene spirit and cause it to return to the void. The golden elixir will then be complete: it is only a matter of the One Thing from before Heaven and Earth.256 '7(%.":">9<9->-.>.=4) & 257 The progression in this passage from essence to qi, then to spirit, and to the void, corresponds perfectly to the three main stages in the standard account of solo alchemy. The idea of returning to the primal, precosmic state of void through emptying the mind in concentration meditation re ects a deeplyengrained Daoist assumption that the adept may regain the sacred primal state through perfecting his own body and mind, because the processes of the microcosm correspond to the processes of the macrocosm.258 §3.4.2, Meritorious labor, moral and psychophysiological.

Chen often speaks of

building up meritorious labor jigong < , sometimes to the count of a full three thousand man sanqian 8 , as an integral aspect of the alchemical path. Usually this comes at the end of the path, as in the nal verse from the poemcycle Twenty ve Verses on the Golden Elixir Jindan shi ershiwu shou ) 6, : Superior gentlemen and heroes learn the teachings of superior transcendents. They build up their training and amass good deeds, to the full count of three thousand. Parturition from the fetal state, and transformation into a spirit, are common a airs for such persons. In broad daylight they spring up bodily, and ascend to the Nine Heavens.

+5; <1!8 2*.3/$?# 259 What does jigong leixing mean? I argue that, for Chen Zhixu, this term is an amalgam of two concepts from Daoist tradition: storing up bodily energies, and amassing spiritual merit. While Chens use of the term jigong leixing seems to be confused, 256

Cf. Daode jing, chapter 42: There is a thing, chaosformed, born before Heaven and Earth &0 . 257


258

Cf. p. 268 above.

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actually there is a deeper relation between these two concepts. Sometimes Chen uses the phrase jigong leixing simply to refer to internal work, ring and meditative concentration: Sitting in forgetfulness for nine years, you have great training in nonaction. When your practices are full to the count of three thousand, you can join the celestial spirits in communal joy. /!-4769260 1/ Concentrate qi until it is soft. Produce it and store it up. Build up meritorious labor and practices, guarding the infant. +'"

(:,;261

Many inner alchemists would hear the formulation jigong leixing :, as an echo of the phrase jijing leiqi :5,' from a couplet in the Huangting neijing jing: Transcendents and gentlemen of the Dao do not possess a spiritual nature : they bring about perfectedhood through amassing essence and qi. 3*:5,' !)262 Chen cites this particular Huangting jing couplet twice.263 The Huangting jing couplet refers to the basic practice of amassing of corporeal energies, while Chen uses the formulation jigong leixing to refer to advanced work during the nal stages of internal work. Sometimes Chen uses the phrase jigong to refer, not to internal work, but to doing good works for other people: If the inner elixir is complete, then amass outer deeds through cultivation. Then your merit will be fully attained. You will soar up to the Golden Porte, and wander to a banquet at the Jade Capitoline mountain. This is truly not vacuous! # :% 48.$<2&) 0264 What is meant by good? The answer is meritorious labor gong, practice xing , virtuous power de . Build up merit to receive transmission and hear the dao, spread virtuous power widely to invest your person with merit , store up practices to achieve transcendence. Practice upya in secret: this is called meritorious labor. Carrying it out for real, this is called practice. Spreading, increasing, and encompassing widely: this is called virtuous power. When the 260


261


262

DZ 331, Taishang huangting neijing yu jing 9b7 chapter 28.

263

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 4.7a2, and DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4.15b12.

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three are replete, then this person is permitted to hear of the ultimate dao. ;/ 8 :42781 )+# % ;(639% ;7 % ;8",$-

*42265 In the rst passage above, jigong refers to saving other beings, something that the adept does after completing the elixir. This idea is quite unusual within Chens extant corpus as a whole. The passage comes from Chens commentary to the Duren jing, and reects the Mahynist Lingbao idea that achieving salvation for oneself involves working for the salvation of others. In the second passage, Chen makes contradictory statements regarding the place of leixing within the alchemical path: at rst leixing refers to advanced work, then it is said to be a precondition for receiving the teachings at all. Sometimes the concept of jigong is ambiguous: When the eight hundred merits are complete, ying dragons will appear in the sky, with a thousand or hundred or hundred million transformations. When youve reached this stage , your meritorious labors will be full and you will be replete with the Dao, and called a manly man. &<5!02, 266 This passage could refer to either inner work or outer good deeds. In this context, the concept of jigong is probably undisambiguable. While we might insist on distinguishing internal work from outer deeds, Chen would see these two things as simply two aspects of the single concept of jigong. Sometimes when we nd troubling ambiguities in Daoist texts, we ought to look for how the writer is using terms strategically within an arena of social competition. In chapter 3, I argue that Chens use of the term 2 is strategically ambiguous. Yet I do not see any proximate polemical value of the term jigong in these passages, so I would look for a cognitive reason for the ambiguity of the term, rather than a sociological reason. The idea of an internal connection between psychophysiological qi cultivation and spiritual or moral cultivation of merit or virtue is not unique to Chen Zhixu, and is not even unique to Daoism. Recall Menciuss description of the cultivation of the virtues as the cultivation of a oodlike qi haoran zhi qi '. 265


266


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/: here, too, a single process of cultivation has both moral and psychophysiological aspects. As an educated man of the postZhu Xi, NeoConfucian era, Chen knows this Mencian passage well, and oers an extended interpretation of it, exploiting Menciuss words to argue that Mencius is actually teaching sexual alchemy!267 §3.4.3, Further training, meditative or sexual.

While Chen usually says that the

cultivation of the yang spirit takes three years to nish, he also speaks of a nineyear process: If the elixir is already complete, and the child is growing steadily larger, why not practice the superior training of a further nine years? . A%= #: 268 Sitting in forgetfulness for nine years, you have great training in nonaction. :"$7+5269 Embracing the prime and guarding unity shouyi, in nine years the labor will be complete. ' : 270 From the rst passage, it appears that the yang spirit will be viable without these nine years of cultivation, and that the nine years are optional work for advanced attainment. On page 457 above, I note a rare mention by Chen Zhixu of cultivation with additional sex partners, perhaps nine of them: Completing the work takes three years; if your labor is superb then it takes

one ji -. Now, if a great sage again creates yin and yang, impelling the passions and uniting the inherent natures, revolving and joining, setting up additional elixir furnaces, and further creating the great elixir of nine caldrons, this is just like the Cog and Armil of the Dipper established again at the starting point of zi. <)0)-@ . 93482 21 D?6*(271 &B,>!C63; D I believe that this is also an optional, advanced practice. The phrase impelling the passions and uniting the inherent natures, revolving and joining suggests sexual practice, and is very much at odds with the phrases sitting in forgetfulness or 267


268


269


270


271


522

embracing the prime and guarding unity. I cannot explain this contradiction. The phrase again creating yin and yang zaizao yinyang EFM may be of crucial importance for understanding this advanced practice. This phrase appears in two other passages within Chens writings: The Master of Highest Yang says, When the prior fetus is nished, and has already become a perfected person, then shift it to dwell in the upper dantian. But then readjust qian and kun, and again create yin and yang, so the child will further give birth to the grandchild, and a thousand or hundred or hundred million transformations.

M 06'H ; "T272

<1B, 29U@+EFM

This term rebirth refers exclusively to cultivation. When the elixir is complete, the yang spirit exits the womb. Again create yin and yang, doing again what the chapter above means when it says three bodies are reborn. !9 9AV:&

M=6EFMI5 G W9273

If we assume, based on the passage from Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, j. 2, that zaizao yinyang refers to advanced sexual cultivation,274 then the two passages above would refer to this too. They would be saying that, while the generation of a single yang spirit is done through internal ring, the generation of further yang spirits requires further sexual work. As for the phrase three bodies are reborn, who knows what Chen means by that! Could it be longhu danfathreeperson sexual alchemyafter all? §3.4.4, The yang spirit.

The yang spirit has a pliable spirit body, able to change

shape and transform at will: When your ten months of labor are full, and the elixir has already taken shape, it is released from its placenta, and known as a yang spirit. The signs of the yang spirit are that its prenatal Qi has knitted together, its bones thus are soft enough that they can be rolled up, and its esh is more resplendent and glossy than lead. Its not at all like when postnatal paternal seminal essence and maternal blood are taken to form humans or animals, with weighted bones and esh of mere dregs, which cannot transform. R (C) )7PM M=M=LJ ? 4 *#D D$ $Q QK#O O/83S% -.)? ?9$ $N> 272


273


274

The referents of alchemical terms vary so often that we should not assume a consistent referent for zaizao yinyang.

523

^275 The creation of the yang spirit out of the holy fetus may also be understood as the cultivation and perfection of the adepts ordinary corporeal spirits: the hundred spirits means after ten revolutions the hundred numinous spirits return to me, and after ten months the myriad Qi all become equally transcendent. There is a body beyond the body, and the perfected person appears.

Unite

#(@Y)(_$,)MS/&/? C276 Chen oers several dierent descriptions of the bodys ordinary corporeal spirits: When the elixir is complete, your body will become holy; the yang spirit will come out, and you will be called a perfected person. The yin marademons and devilish thieves will transform into dharmaprotector spirits dharmaplas . The denizens of the body, the bluegreen dragon, white tiger, cardinalred bird, dark warrior, three cloudsouls, seven whitesouls, Three Primes and Nine Palaces, three sets of eight phosphor spirits, ve viscera and eight consciousnesses, will all transform into independent spirits, and your thirtysix thousand glints of essence will transform into spirit soldiers. %8/NL@CO? E\AP9[3@/7W!5 % 'F2 RT = D G] Z:9@ M Q"9@+-277 Naturally becoming perfected means that the child in the womb is already complete. Within perfection there are spirits means that the fetus has already crystallized into spirits: LongLife controls the heart, Nonpareil controls the liver, White Prime controls the lungs, Grand Unity controls the head, Director of Destinies controls the spirit, Peach Vigor controls the spleen, and Union and Extension controls the kidneys.

*H%?;X%? ?&@;U@6 6 `<.! 4V0@>BJ#1I278 In the two passages above, Chen lists the following categories of corporeal spirits: the maratempters, who disturb the mind of the meditator; the tutelary beasts of the four cardinal directions Sixiang K; the cloudsouls and whitesouls, familiar in all forms of medieval Daoism; the spirits of the Three Primes, perhaps the spirits of the three registers of the body centered on the dantian, the spirits of the Nine Palaces of the brain or upper dantian, the twentyfour corporeal spirits from the Huangting jing see pages 25354 above, the spirits of the ve viscera, the eight consciousnesses, personications of a Buddhist concept see pages 535 275


276


277


278

DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie 2.41a10b2.

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39 below, the mysterious thirtysix thousand glints of essence, and the ve corporeal deities of the Duren jing Chen lists them as seven deities.279 With completion of the alchemical path, all of these entities will be transformed into spirits, perhaps changing from corporeal spirits into celestial deities. Chen does not say whether they will remain bound to the yang spirit of the adept, or whether they will go their separate ways. A similar question arises regarding the multiplication of the yang spirit itself. On page 325 above, I note that the creation of the yang spirit in inner alchemy generally may also be described, as the creation, not of a single being, but of multiple sons, each of which produces multiple grandsons, in uncountable myriads of transformations 1@. Chen also describes the yang spirit using these same words: The Master of Highest Yang says, When the prior fetus is nished, and has already become a perfected person, then shift it to dwell in the upper dantian. But then readjust qian and kun, and again make yin and yang, so the child will further give birth to the grandchild, and a thousand or hundred or hundred million transformations. Old Man Ziyang said, One child every year, and each of them able to ride the crane up to the heavens . Chen Niwan the Perfected said, In one year the fetus is born as a child. The child gives birth to the grandchild, who branches out further. Only this is the great and manly state . If you establish your merit in a timely manner, then your person will return home to the Three Pures. <*.:3+7$,0A5#89< 1@;<4>?"??=DE( 3 >.?"11'&- /B2 +!C 6 280 Who are these perfected corporeal spirits, or these sons and grandsons, relative to the adept? Are they self, or other? Henri Maspero suggests that there is an internal connection between the Daoist concepts of singular identity, physical immortality, and multiple spirits: For the Chinese, who believed in multiple souls, . . . the body was the sole principle of unity. Only within the body was it possible to attain an immortality which would continue the personality of the living person and which would not 279

There should be only ve of these Lingbao deities, but Chen adds two more, LongLife Changsheng ), and Union and Extension Heyan %, based on his misreading of the Duren jing. These ve corporeal deities are discussed in Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 38485. 280 DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 8.2a93b4.

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be divided into several independent personalities each functioning by itself. . . . It is this necessity of conserving the body . . . which gives birth to all the physiological practices I have mentioned above.281 I have my doubts about Masperos conclusion, which smacks of armchair anthropology, or the if I were a horse approach to understanding another culture.282 I feel that, unless the Daoists themselves say that only through apotheosis of the body can the adept keep the spirits together, we should not assume a real underlying connection between the two ideas in their thought. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any discussion within a Daoist text of the relation between multiple spirits and the self that would answer the question of how, or in what aspects, these spirits are me. In the passage from DZ 142, juan 2, translated above, Chen does not say that the perfected corporeal spirits remain with the adept, but that would certainly be the usual idea. For example, early medieval Daoist texts speak of the adept ascending to the heavens borne by his or her own corporeal spirits jing , phosphors. Masperos theory would apply to the DZ 142, j. 2 passage. But even Masperos dubious attempt at an explanation would not be able to answer the question of whether the adepts alchemical sons and grandsons are somehow him.283 §3.4.5, Leaving the body.

During the two years spent cultivating the yang

spirit, the adept trains the spirit to exit from and enter the brain, allowing it to depart progressively further and further from the body. This must be done carefully and without haste, for there are real dangers at this stage: Arriving at the tenmonth mark when the fetus is done, it is released from its husk and switches to a new caldron: you cannot protect and secure it. If the yang spirit comes out impulsively, then as soon as it is out it will lose the path, subsequently losing its dwelling and having nowhere to return home to. !284 281


282

Anthropologists such as Max Gluckman and A. R. RadclieBrown used this phrase to mock earlier anthropologists, comparing the earlier scholars seeking to understand the mind of primitive man to a businessman or a farmer seeking for a stray horse by asking himself if I were a horse, where would I go? The locus classicus is in Mark Twains Huckleberry Finn; Mair, Past and Present in the Present, 354. 283

Also see pp. 32526 above.

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Furthermore, after the elixir is complete, you still must recognize the true and distinguish it from the false. If your labor and practices are not complete, then before your eyes you will suddenly see many varieties of numinous oddities, strange and special things appearing by the hundreds, even the phenomenon of them being generated one after the other. If you have divine power of sight, you can always understand them clearly. In cases like this, its that demonic obstacles have already appeared. They are by no means real, and you should not believe that they are already sacred apparitions of the numinous elixir. These are the perverse and false illusions of tricky demons, who, seeing that your dao is complete, wish to tempt you to enter a perverse lineage, and throw your perfection into confusion. At this time, you must still persist in wisdom, protecting and nurturing your complete perfection. '&BHsMqTG,j[@80wZ#l6L) + 3$'P0ER:;G(`!CDun+2>Mi mDwfS1T.0-g&W 17d-M9 ^K cU5_o?p"M285 If the immature yang spirit is allowed to roam too far too soon, the adept will lose it. There is no sense here that the adept would thereby become soulless, only that he would have wasted all of his labors. Thus, the yang spirit here is the adepts vehicle, rather than his self. The second passage describes illusions wrought by mara demons.286 And then one day, suddenly, the yang spirit is ready, and departs from the body for good: There is the sound of a thunderbolt in the crown, and you depart. . . . Patriarch L Chunyang said, Having truly gone through nine years of ring periods, suddenly the Celestial Gate in the crown breaks open . The perfected person appears from inside with great spirit powers, and from this point you can be congratulated as a celestial perfected. Arriving at this, the great a air of the golden elixir is nished. ]=tvr*QbOJ%IMeh8k=]N M X P\V(Fa4(A< 3Y/287 This seems to be the moment when the yang spirit shifts from being an object to being a subject, from being a vehicle for the adept to becoming his very self. What, then, happens to the physical body? Question: After the fetus is nished, what is the work like? Answer: In ten months the work is sucient the holy fetus is already accomplished so shift it 285


286

See p. 312 above.

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to dwell in the upper dantian. Protect and nurture it, cause it to grow and mature, and in one or two years it will transform into the yang spirit. When the yang spirit exits and enters, coming and going, without obstruction, this is called parturition and departure. Question: If this is so, then would this physical body su er death and decomposition? Answer: Hard to say. 3"/) &0;38 .6+ ->,* =.1:5:5 (9@07 3 0.'$?2A% 288 Chen does not answer the question of what happens to the body. Throughout the history of Daoism, we nd two main conceptions of what happens to the body after apotheosis. Sometimes it is said that the body does not die, and sometimes it is admitted that the body does die. According to the rst possibility, the adept might betake himself to the mountains, leaving behind a simulated corpse through shijie <.289 Or, the adept might rise bodily to the heavens, as suggested in the common inneralchemical phrase physical form and spirit both marvelous xingshen jumiao # 54! . This is probably the primary goal of yangspirit cultivation in Chens teachings. As for the second possibility, in the second passage above, Chen also tacitly accepts it. The idea of life in the heavens after the death of the body was common in early Quanzhen Daoism, for example. Often, both possibilities coexist in the thoughtworld of a Daoist. Think of Tao Hongjings mourning for the premature death of his friend and disciple Zhou Ziyanghe mourns, even though, according to their shared doctrinal understanding, Tao should have been celebrating Zhangs successful apotheosis.290 Tao should have viewed Zhangs death as illusory shijie, but actually he understood it as a tragic demise. Or think of the poisoning deaths of alchemists in the Tang dynasty that were rationalized as successful apotheoses. For adepts unable to complete the elixir in this lifetime, Chen holds out hope that they might progress toward completion of the elixir in a later lifetime: this is how the Yellow Emperor did it.291 Chen also mentions the practice of guided rebirth, the adepts casting his spirit into a fetus within a womans womb, just as Hongren, the fth patriarch of the Chan lineage, cast his soul into the womb of his mother, ne 288


289

Cf. Campany, Living o the Books.

290

Bokenkamp, Declarations of the Perfected.

291

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 2.51b952a1 and 3.72b46.

528

Zhou ! . This is a heterodox practice, but Chen accepts it as a way to avoid total dissolution, and discusses it in some detail.292 He considers it to be a characteristically Buddhist practice. §3.4.6, Celestial rank.

Having exited the body for good as the mature yang

spirit, the adept is welcomed by celestial spirits, and receives an ocial rank within their number: Hundreds of millions or myriads postcosmic spirits and precosmic spirits attend and chase in their chariots and on their mounts. Having become a perfected person, one takes the reins of the cloudchariot, and travels to visit the Three Pure Ones, and receive transcendent rank in full. This is called ascending to the heavens in broad daylight. This is called the completion of the great and manly a air. <$E#$EcA\lhR'DeXiS_ M.2F>g! > 0O 293 This is how all the holy alchemists of the past received their deied status. Chen mentions the apotheoses of several of his favorite Jiangxi alchemical exemplars here, Zhang Daoling, Ge Xuan, and Xu Xun: We may say that the ancient transcendents and holy masters must have rened this great recycled elixir of metallous humor, and then soared up into the sky in broad daylight. For example, the Yellow Emperors apotheosis at Caldron Lake, or Zhang, Ge, and Xus ying ascent. This is the only thing that people of this generation know: how could they speak fully of it? But as for what they do not know, also, how much less could they speak of it? Therefore there has been a transmitted saying that, if we were to roughly record those who have soared up in ight, there would be more than thirty thousand, and as for those who have brought their entire households with them to the heavens, there would be eight hundred such cases. These are all people who attained transcendence through the dao of the golden elixir, and furthermore were able to build up meritorious deeds. How could this not be paying court to the Northern Porte on a soaring phoenix! b]C [)9Lj+
DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 5.20b921a2; DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie 3.11a6b2. This topic has been exhaustively researched in Eskildsen, Emergency Death Meditations for Internal Alchemists.

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The usual sort of transcendent post a successful adept may hope for would be on the transcendent isles, but an especially worthy adept may move directly to the highest heavens of the Three Pure Ones Sanqing A:295 When nine years are complete, you may lightly ascend, . . . and feast at the Jade Pool in perpetual joy. . . . Your name will be held in the registers of the Three Heavens. Taiyi will summon you, and you will be made a holder of an o cial position among the transcendents, and can move to dwell in the central transcendent isles. If you have eminent merit, you can soar up bodily to the three realms, received enfeoment and progress through the ranks, bearing registers and receiving charts. $S S[:R, ,U 9\B *46>7% P1H=Z_)O296 Doubtless, those adepts who are welcomed directly up to the highest heavens rather than undergoing preliminary eons of training at lowerranking transcendent posts are those who have built up more meritorious labor jigong during their last lifetime. As I argue on pages 51921 above, this extra jigong could involve either meritmaking through saving other ignorant beings, or further sexual cultivation. Chen also mentions several lessdesirable afterlife destinations: Now, when a person is alive, the corporeal spirits are yang cloudsouls, and when dead they are yin whitesouls. If the cloudsouls and whitesouls are dispersed and in disorder, then you can never keep them in hand, or order them to form units and protect the physical form and cloudsouls. If you cause them not to disperse and decay, then you will be able to control the marademons and protect your ascent, shifting your ocial post to the Southern Palace. Shifting your ocial post means that if you build up the many roots of virtue through meritmaking , then you will receive renement and transformation into a transcendent. If you have no merits or demerits, you will be saved and shifted du 2 to have rebirth as a human. If you cultivate the utmost jing scripture / outer pharmacon, then when your meritorious labor is complete, your living body will last long, for kalpa after kalpa, eternally saved from the three painful rebirths. DV#T& F 5IT5EX6TXFJC?3'D ]@( (^-[20/;20+6YWG<.) )L 6` "",2 K297 N)2%68! MQ.%" If a person does not practice selfcultivation at all, his or her self will dissolve upon 295

Sanjing P refers to the heavens of the Three Pure Ones. These are Yuqing Jade Clarity, Shangqing Upper Clarity, and Taiqing Great Clarity. The transcendent isles, oating in the eastern sea, are commonly listed as Penglai , Fangzhang , and Kunlun , but there are also other versions of this list. 296


297


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death, as the cloudsouls and whitesouls scatter. If one learns how to keep these corporeal spirits in hand during life, then at death one may hope at least to be remanded to the Southern Palace to be rened by re.298 A person with a neutral record will be reborn as a human being. And a person who has gathered the jing that is the shoujing zhibao #.5, the outer pharmacon that comes with the menarche of the female partner may hope to live forever as an embodied being, through innite cyclical dissolutions and rebirths of the cosmos. This adept will never receive a painful rebirth as an animal, hungry ghost, or hell being. This leaves open the possibility that the adept may be reborn periodically as a human being or celestial being, but Chen would be more likely to say that the adept will live on in just one embodied form, free from rebirth as such. After his assumption to the heavens, the adept may hope to meet all of the masters and friends from his past lives there: The great merit of saving others is boundless. Every sentence of the Duren jing

explains what good interpersonal attachments are . It is as if your masters and friends from the kalpa of Primordial Commencement will all meet again

today in the Grand Veil Heaven. %0 *-3 299 "64 ,1 % And more importantly, by saving himself through sexual alchemy, the adept also saves the souls of his ancestors, to the ninth generation: Now, one who has completed the dao unites his spirits with the Dao, and will be without decay for endless kalpas. What is more, his merits will also reach to his nine generations of ancestors, and they will ascend together to the heaven of

Upper Clarity in broad daylight. (/

'0/+2$ &!)300

Saving ones ancestors is a central goal of Daoist practice; within Daoism, this goal was rst emphasized in the Lingbao scriptures. Chen repeats this goal in his commentary to the central Lingbao scripture Duren jing, of course; yet because the passage above comes from Jindan dayao, we know that this must indeed be an ultimate goal of Chens practice, and not merely prompted by the requirements of 298

Bokenkamp, Death and Ascent in Lingpao Taoism.

299


300


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commentary to the Duren jing. §3.4.7, Union with the Dao.

The passage above says that one who has

completed the dao unites his spirits with the Dao. Union with the Dao is another ultimate goal of Chens practice: Transport the re for ten months, and your physical form will naturally transform into qi, and qi will transform into spirit. Embracing the prime and guarding unity, in nine years the labor will be complete. Your physical form and spirit both marvelous, you will unite with the Dao in perfection. The sages give this the makeshift name Great Ninetimes Recycled Elixir of Metallous Humor. %" $ '& )! ( 301 # On pages 32628 above, I address the question of how inner alchemists could describe their nal goal as both personal transcendence, and union with the Dao which we could imagine as an impersonal dissolution in the Dao . I concur with Komjathys insight that, Beyond dismissing the early Quanzhen adepts as unsystematic or confused, there are a number of ways to make sense of these seemingly contradictory views. From my perspective and based on my research, the most viable interpretation is that in di erent contexts the early adepts are discussing di erent aspects of self transformation.302 Assumption of the physical form into the heavens, escape from the physical form as the yang spirit, receiving a celestial rank, and union with the Daothese are some of Chens descriptions of his nal goal, which, perhaps, transcends such distinctions.

§4, Chens Adaptations of His Alchemical Dao Chen Zhixu adapts the presentation of his teachings to suit his audience. Chen believes that truth is univocal, and has been transmitted in secret from master to disciple since the beginning of the world. These two statements, taken together, explain the material I will discuss in section 4. In section 4.1, I present and analyze a truly bizarre passage in which Chen 301


302

Komjathy, Cultivating Perfection, 283.

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translates the stages of sexual alchemy gathering and initial fusion from stage 2, internal ring from stage 3, and yangspirit training from stage 4 into a unique Buddhist idiom. I have never found anything quite like it in any Buddhist text, or any Daoist text save Xingming guizhi , and I hope that in future research I may be able to identify it. At the end of this section I will entertain the term Apocryphal Buddhist as a description for Chen. In section 4.2, I show that Chen does a similar reinterpretation of the famous passage from Mencius on the oodlike qi. And in section 4.3, I examine evidence that, in addition to his sexualalchemical path that I have introduced in section 3 of this chapter, Chen also taught a strictly solo form of alchemy to some of his disciples. §4.1, Apocryphal Buddhist Sexual Alchemy Chen believes that the Three Teachings are univocal, not only at a hazy foundational level, but in the details of practice, as we see in the following passage. The passage comes from The Highest Pharmaca Shangyao , a chapter in Jindan dayao discussing the three treasures sanbao , essence, qi, and spirit. Chens discussions of essence and qi predictably dwell on the postnatal and prenatal forms of essence and qi in the body. His discussion of spirit begins with a passage not translated here listing the twentyfour corporeal spirits from the Huangting jing, and the spirits of the Nine Palaces in the brain,303 but then inexplicably veers into an uncharted territory of hybrid teachings, in which forms of consciousness from Yog c ra Buddhism have become spirits controlled by the mind of the sexual alchemist. While I note the sources of some of the Buddhist terms Chen uses, I do not know his overall source or inspiration for these teachings. They do not appear elsewhere in his extant writings, so one suspects that he is importing them from an outside source, though it is conceivable that he developed them in his lost commentary to the Diamond Stra. Some of the BuddhoDaoist discourse in other passages from Chens writings was inspired by his teacher Zhao Youqin, but none of the following material comes from Zhaos extant works. This material sounds vaguely 303

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 4.4a8 6a1.

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tantric, but perhaps only coincidentally so. Chen Zhixu begins by correlating the prenatal or primal spirit yuanshen E with the True Man of No Rank wuwei zhenren N#D, a phrase made famous by the Chan patriarch Linji Yixuan , and with a Heart Buddha: Now, we will speak of the prenatal spirit. This spirit is styled the True Man of No Rank. The Buddha called it Hrdaya Buddha.304 If you are able to recognize this spirit, it will then have a marvelous function. This spirit has exclusive mastery over killing a person or giving birth to people. As for those persons who cultivate transcendenthood and seek buddhahood, it is necessary for them that this spirit have mastery over life and death; only thus can they attain their goal.

E"*,EQN#D$ 9%6:$NNGFS$QFP0 <-I ,E I ,5B,E 5B,V2L ,E 2L?ME?MT,.OW/ 304

Helituoye 9%6: is simply a transcription of the Sanskrit word hrdaya, the eshly heart; Foguang da cidian, s.v. hanlituo !CR, 2471. 305


306

This is an echo of Daode jing, chapter 14: Meeting it, one does not see its head, nor, following it, does one see its end 4 ),@W ),8. 307 The re date huozao M is a fruit of the transcendents xianguo 1 . Eating it, one can ascend to the heavens. Cf., e.g., DZ 1016, Zhengao 2.19b3. Elsewhere, Chen takes it as a cover term for the outer pharmacon; DZ 1068, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao tu 10b. The term has a sexual referent in Jindan jieyao, but the precise meaning is unclear there; Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 177, 269n51. 308

DZ 31, Huangdi yinfu jing 1b34.

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276; )%22)2&2 309 0

'2:>/3' "2#310 The prenatal spirit is a formless cosmic entity, a mini me, and an awesome being governing the adepts fate. The functions of this spirit are to drive and employ the spirits of the four minds, the spirits of the four wisdoms zhi 8, and the spirits of the eight consciousnesses shi B. 23C282B2311 These spirits of the four minds, four wisdoms, or eight consciousnesses are not found in any other Daoist or Buddhist text to my knowledge, but enough echoes appear within Chan and Yog c ra Buddhist texts to indicate that Chen or his unnamed sources did possess some Buddhist learning. The four minds may draw on a tradition also found in Zongmi,312 and the four wisdoms313 and eight consciousnesses314 seem to draw on Yog c ra teachings. If Chen is drawing on Yog c ra, then his use of the terms departs rather far from their original meaning. Whereas for Chen these mental entities take the form of corporeal spirits, in Yog c ra they are abstract hypostases, or stages of attainment in understanding. Has Chen or his source invented these spirits, or is he drawing on teachings from 309

DZ 1067 has )%2 2)2 &2 , while the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds. have: )%22)2&2 .

310


311


312

Guifeng Zongmi 780 841, in his Chan Preface T 2015, Chan yuan zhuquan jidu xu, 48:401c18 25, gives a di erent list of four minds: 1 helituoye -!*. hrdaya1, the eshly heart; 2 yuanl xin ?=, the contemplative aspect of the eight forms of consciousness; 3 zhiduoye @. cetaya, the layavijnas activity of collecting and awakening jiqi 94 the seeds; and 4 ganlituoye 51*. hrdaya2, the mind of suchness, the tathgatagrbhamind; Foguang da cidian, s.v. hanlituo 1<, 2471. 313

In Yog c ra, the four wisdoms are 1 xiangwei shixiang zhi recognition that the forms of all types of sentient beings are not real, 2 wusuo yuanshi zhi recognition that the consciousnesses of all sentient beings are not real, 3 ziying wudao zhi recognition that the sensory elds occur naturally and are not delusions, yet are not real, 4 sui san zhizhuan zhi three wisdoms involving responding to sensory elds without grasping, or not even allowing elds to arise; Foguang da cidian, s.v. sizhi , 1770. 314

Foguang da cidian explains the similar term bashi xinwang B. The eight forms of consciousness bashi B, Skt. ashtau vijnni, as taught in Yog c ra or Faxiang (, Buddhism, are the forms of consciousness corresponding to 1 5 the ve senses, plus 6 mind, 7 tainted mind mona shi $B, Skt. manas or kliamanas, the illusion of self, and 8 the storehouse consciousness alaiye shi +A.B, Skt. layavijna. Faxiang Buddhism speaks of mindplaces xinsuo &, Skt. caitta and mindkings xinwang , Skt. citta corresponding to each of the eight forms of consciousness. The eight mindkings are the ontological essences of the eight consciousnesses shi zhi benti BD; they seem to be abstract rather than personied entities; Foguang da cidian, s.v. xinwang , 1398.

535

Esoteric Buddhism? The set of four wisdoms, for example, was developed in Esoteric stras, with the four wisdoms being associated with the buddhas of the four directions and a fth wisdom and buddha added. However, these Esoteric buddhas are not the ones mentioned by Chen Zhixu in the passage continuing below. More importantly, in the Esoteric stras, while these wisdoms are associated with specic buddas, the Esoteric stras do not personify the wisdoms themselves as spirits, while Chen does. So, while the idea of associating specic wisdoms with specic Buddhist deities may be related to Esoteric Buddhist materials, Chens teachings here depart from them too. This primal spirit is not only able to employ these spirits , it is furthermore able to cause them to transform: the eight forms of consciousness transform into eight vajras,315 the four wisdoms transform into four bodhisattvas, and the four heartminds transform into four buddhas. The rst is named Hrdaya1 Buddha, the second is named *Aladaya Buddha,316 the third is named Cetaya Buddha, and the fourth is named Hrdaya2 Buddha. Of the four bodhisattvas, the rst is named Bodhisattva of Great Accomplishment, the second is named Bodhisattva of MarvelousObservation Wisdom, the third is named Bodhisattva of Universal Sameness Wisdom, and the fourth is named Bodhisattva of GreatPerfectMirror Wisdom. #$$ 3 13!( *0 / . %" (*0'*04-(*0 )(*0+ 2(*0317 The names of Chens four buddhas seem to be based on the names of Zongmis four minds. The redundancy of the two Hrdaya Buddhas is also found in Zongmis list, but the pseudoSanskrit the name of the second buddha is not. The names of the four bodhisattvas do correspond to Yogcra terms, though in Yogcra they are types 315

I.e., eight guhyapda vajras a.k.a. vajranpnis, vajrasattvas, in Chinese called by names such as jingang miji !&, or miji lishi &, inter alia. These are erce yaksha spirits who protect the buddhadharma; Foguang da cidian, s.v. miji lishi &, , 4483. A set of eight would protect the eight horizontal directions.

316

Aladaya appears to be a faux Sanskrit word and hapax legomenon conjoining the / of / 1 alyavijna with the of hrdaya. Note that the names of buddhas nos. 1, 3, and 4 correspond to the names of Zongmis four minds cf. p. 535n312 above. Either Chen Zhixu or a teacher preceding him is ring on the Chan Preface in an as yet unfathomable way. The seventeenthcentury text Xingming guizhi has a similar, but less knotty, passage, at Zangwai daoshu, 9:514, Yuan collection , upper register, a9 11. This passage is translated and discussed in Darga, Das alchemistische Buch von innerem Wesen und Lebensenergie, 78 and 343 47. This merits deeper investigation.

317

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 4.6b3 8. DZ 1067 has '*0; the Jindan Zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds. have '(*0.

536

of attainment, rather than classes of bodhisattvas. The Bodhisattva of Great Accomplishment Dachengjiu Pusa .1: ought to correspond to chengsuozuo zhi / kty nu h naj na .318 Perhaps dachengjiu . here is a variant of chengsuozuo .319 It appears that whoever coined the name Dachengjiu Pusa actually did know the meaning of kty nu h na, so it may come from a Buddhist teacher, rather than Chens own gleanings from Buddhist texts. The names of the other three bodhisattvas correspond more closely to Yog c ra attainments.320 The vajras of the eight consciousnesses are: formconsciousness vajra, the sound, scent, taste, touch, and dharmaconsciousness vajras, the vajra of the consciousness of transmitting and sending chuansong shi 2,; , and the vajra of the consciousness of containing and storing hancang shi 9; .321 Now,322 as for calling the spirit emperors, the names of the spirits are numerous. People who do not know how to do selfcultivation properly will on the contrary be manipulated by these spirits. How can one drive and ride them? ;");")7'= ;")2,;")9;" )4*%*- !(8&*+>6

#323 The eight consciousnesses are a major Yog c ra doctrine. The odd chuansong shi is not an innovation by Chen, but comes from Chan and perhaps Lankavat ra

318

In Yog c ra, kty nu h naj na is produced when the fullyrealized buddha transforms his ve sensory consciousnesses; Foguang da cidian, s.v. sizhi xinpin / $, 1771. 319

Cheng refers to the buddhas successful chengjiu . compassionate responses; suozuo refers to the double benecent action zuo of helping self and others; Foguang da cidian, s.v. cheng suozuo zhi /, 292425. 320

The Bodhisattva of MarvelousObservation Wisdom Miaoguancha Zhi Pusa ?5/1: corresponds to the Yog c ra pratyaveka j na. This wisdom is produced when the fullyrealized buddha transforms his mind consciousness. Using this wisdom, the buddha calmly observes and preaches all of the buddhadharma; Foguang da cidian, s.v. miao guancha zhi ?5/, 2858. The Bodhisattva of UniversalSameness Wisdom Pingdengxing Zhi Pusa 0/1: corresponds to the Yog c ra samat j na. This wisdom is produced when the fullyrealized buddha transforms his kli amanas. Using this wisdom, the buddha sees self and other as equivalent; Foguang da cidian, s.v. pingdeng xing zhi 0/, 1916. The Bodhisattva of GreatPerfectMirror Wisdom Dayuanjing Zhi Pusa 3
I.e., layavij na. The term hancang shi occurs in T 1789, Lengqieaboduoluo baojing zhujie dated 1378 , and T 2006, Rentian yanmu, as well as the Chan texts T 2003, Biyan lu; T 2016, Zongjing lu; and the Platform S tra T 2007 and 2008 . 322

In the clause , I translate dao as a sentence initial particle now, . . . . Dao could also be a verb speaking of . . . , which would result in the same translation. The most obvious translation of the clause is the Dao calls spirit emperors, but this is an unlikely reading because Chen does not personify the Dao.

323


537

literature.324 The idea of the eight consciousnesses transforming into protector spirits is an unfamiliar one, however. This may be a previously unattested Esoteric Buddhist idea, or it may be the product of Chens inventive mind. After a long passage not translated ,325 in which Chen cites various Daoist prooftexts to make the point that the cultivation of essence, qi, and spirit is interrelated, Chen tells us how to employ the primal spirit to gather the pharmaca and cultivate the elixir, translating these processes into quasiBuddhist terms: If you want this One Thing to arrive, then you must rely on prenatal spiritwork, must employ the spirits of the eight consciousnesses, sending them out to gather the elixir and fetch the lead. Their strengths are shoring up and bonding, transmitting and protecting. -'+: />/! 1#95 0)@,"326

$;6

According to this Buddhistic formulation of sexual alchemy, the adept employs the vajras of the eight consciousnesses to gather the female partners lead qi , to shore up and bond the male adepts seminal essence preventing ejaculation during the moment of gathering , and to transmit the outer pharmacon into the male adepts sex organ, and from there together with the adepts inner pharmacon on to the path of lesserorbital circulation. Among the spirits of the eight consciousnesses is the spirit of the dharma consciousness, who is in charge of a persons guiding intention yi 8 . When the guiding intention moves, this spirit moves; when the guiding intention halts, this spirit halts. There is also the Bodhisattva of UniversalSameness Wisdom, who controls the vajra of the consciousness of transmitting and sending. There is also the Bodhisattva of GreatPerfectMirror Wisdom, who controls the vajra of the consciousness of containing and storing. They are all controlled by taking their orders from the spirit of guiding intention. When the guiding intention sends them away, then they leave; when the guiding intention makes them come, then they come immediately. > &>/ 8883%24= 60>(. 7?24=<>(.,A8/ 8! * 324 I.e., mona , kliamanas. The term chuansong shi 60> appears in three texts in the CBETA database of Buddhist texts: in T 2006, Rentian yanmu, 48:326a27; T 1789, Lengqieaboduoluo baojing zhujie, 39:350a08; and T 1791, Zhu dasheng ru lengqie jing, 39:444a02, 499b25. The Rentian yanmu passage cites a Lankavat ra text; this passage may prove important for unravelling Chen Zhixus sources. 325


326


538

327 This passage is confusing. First, it is unclear whether the vajra of the dharma consciousness the sixth of Yogcras eight consciousnesses is controlling the adepts guiding intention, or is controlled by it probably the latter.328 Then, we have two bodhisattvas controlling two vajras, which in turn are in charge of two aspects of the alchemical process, transmitting and sending the pharmaca back into the adepts body, and containing and storing the fusing elixir during stage 3 of internal ring. Do these two bodhisattvas and two vajras all take their orders from the vajra of the sixth consciousness? Or is the spirit of guiding intention the master of all the other entities? The ssures in this system of Buddhistic spirit entities suggest that the system is still only halfbaked. After a passage not translated in which Chen describes the spirit chamber chiey, the lower dantian as the home of the spirit of guiding intention,329 comes a polemical interlude, a passage comparing false Daoist and false Chan Buddhist teachings, copied verbatim from Zhao Youqins Xianfo tongyuan:330 My teacher said: The sage is fearful of revealing the trigger or secret of Heaven. The School of the Dao daojia takes the true emptiness and wondrous existence331 as its foundational principle or, ancestor, zong . There are many gures of speech for it: granulated vermilion cinnabar , quicksilver, red lead, black mercury, the infant, the lovely maiden, the lordling, the yellow dame, the yellow sprouts, white snow, and the like. When these terms come near to touching on reality, they cause deluded persons to speculate wildly. Students cling to that which seems to be but is not, believing that it really exists. They even say that the term metal mother jinmu is about tu the outer pharmacon. They are bogged down in the realm of physical forms and icky substances, or the lthy practice of gathering and battling caizhan , and even in the end never awaken to the wonder of true emptiness. 327

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 4.7b8 8a1. DZ 1067 has ; the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds. have . 328 Perhaps zhu ren zhi yi means is in charge of the domain of intention within a person that receives intentionrelated orders from a higherranking entity, the persons yuanshen. 329


330

Xianfo tongyuan, by Zhao Youqin, 32b6 33a2, in Daoshu quanji, Zhongguo Shudian ed., 478.

331

Miaoyou zhenkong . This sounds like a term from praj paramit avored DoubleMystery Learning

Chongxuan Xue . It is also a Chan term, found in the Chan Preface T 2015, T 2016, Zongjing lu, and a handful of other texts.

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2WxX<zV0$[@O6!Tk%PR |q35 pbpBjnD;oS` "rgJc-L(GAaO$IEL~;$1 ve)(hiY[@0332 Zhao and Chen repeat a familiar polemic against those sexual cultivators whose practice involved too much handling of sexual uids. I have argued that Chens and Zhaos sexual alchemy, quite dierent in theory from the huanjing bunao traditions that they condemn, dier from them only slightly in practice.333 The kyas i.e., Buddhists take the non emptiness of wondrous emptiness miaokong bukong 0@@ as their foundational principle. They use various analogies for it, such as: grandson of a fox and son of a dog, uncovering the sta and stpa pole, yellow owers and iridescent green bamboo, cudgel and y whisk, owers and herbs, the Buddha Hall in the lantern, the water of the West River, Zhaozhous tea, and the like. These are all meaningless, and make it impossible for people to understand. Students think about and discuss these without success, and so they call them Chan triggers Chan ji . Because they xedly take these Chan sayings as being nothing, they drift into an attitude of blockheaded emptiness wankong }@. From calming sitting they enter into samdhi, their spirits exit their bodies, and even in the end they never awaken to the wonder of non emptiness. 0@@O6!k>U= MHQpC'l:C ]+u*&#^nmtw4yYAK d{ aOmN;}@/ 7\ (hiY@0 Dont they know that Chan teachers are vexed by blockheaded sitting, and Daoists fear marginal traditions? _?}/z8ZF334 Here, Zhao and Chen directly compare false Daoism the marginal traditions of deviant sexual cultivation with false Buddhism zazen, and intellectual gymnastics with kans. They situate the true tradition their own tradition, which is also the tradition of all the sages outside of both of these false traditions. We would describe Zhao and Chen as Daoists and at one point Chen calls himself a Daoist,335 yet 332

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 4.8b4 9. Xianfo tongyuan has L~; DZ 1067 has Ls; the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds. have L . 333

See pp. 166 69 above, and pp. 419 and 485 below.

334


335

In a passage criticizing ignorance and corruption among temple dwelling Daoists, Chen writes Why dont they reect on what it is that we study in our religion! ,K.f9, Soon after, he writes My Most High Lord Lao said . . . . As Campany notes, in medieval China, The names, partial names, or titles of founding or paradigmatic gures are sometimes used synecdochally to refer nominally to what in Western

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because they reject false Daoism and false Buddhism in equivalent terms, they claim authority within both traditions, and so claim to speak for and stand within both traditions. Great is the One Matter of studying buddhahood and cultivating transcendent hood! From a single word I received from my teacher, I felt like there was a brightlyilluminated mirror suspended in a high hall. Of the objects coming and going, none were not illuminated and comprehended in my mind. Today I will make a special e ort to point out a single great road, and o er it for people to walk upon. p3P&;80\Q9 ,'CrLBZ[EE>a fUK^g(n 1336 Chen is describing a nondual state in which the usual division between self and things, or subject and object, does not apply. Chens enlightenment experience where he received the secret and shocking nal teaching from his master was, in a way, a Chan Buddhist experience. Chen learned how to feel Chan enlightenment, or learned how to talk about it, or learned how to feel this way by learning how to talk about it, by reading Chan texts and receiving Chan teachings.This is a sort of Chan developed especially by the Linji Chan master Dahui Zonggao mAD 1089 1163 , and indeed Chen often quotes the words of Dahuis teacher Yuanwu Keqin t R4d 10631135 , so Chen was familiar with this Linji Chan tradition. Peng Xiao the Perfected said: In one day, you can seize 4,220 years of correct qi of heaven and earth. The Master with No Name Weng Baoguang said: HeavenOne produces water; in humans, this is called essence. EarthTwo produces re; in humans, this is called spirit. Great selfcultivators should at the earliest chance utilize the Bodhisattva of MarvelousIntentionObservation Wisdom to put the Hrdaya1 Buddha to work. On the night of the third day of the eighth lunar month, at the midnight hour of the gui M day, rush to the West River, gather lead and fetch metal, and speedily mount the white tiger. Return together with the vajra of the consciousness of transmitting and sending, hand the ingredients over to the Bodhisattva of MarvelousObservation Wisdom, and send it all back to the spiritchamber. _W i!/-*"Ta)# + k*#+ XP1 .$6esj`bq7
DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 4.9a47. I read (n as =B.

541

#

%"!337

In this passage, Chen describes the phases of caiqu gathering and hedan initial fusion from stage 2 in his unique quasi Buddhist idiom of mental buddhas and bodhisattvas. On the third day of the lunar cycle zhen , when fresh yang appears anew out of pure yin, the adept spurs his wisdom bodhisattva number 2 to set his mind buddha number 1 to work presumably to gather the partners pharmacon. The buddha presumably returns to the adept together with consciousness vajra number 6, and delivers the pharmaca back to the spirit chamber, the lower dantian. Lesser orbital circulation is not mentioned at all here, which supports my argument on page 495 above that this phase is under emphasized in Chens teachings. Meeting face to face with the spirit lords Gouchen338 and Tengshe339 &, receive and store it, shut it up, lock it, and seal it tight. At rst, the tiger and dragon meet in battle; afterward, the dragon and tiger are defeated and subdued. The Bodhisattva of Marvelous Observation Wisdom and the Hrdaya1 Buddha, united in a common eort, guard the alchemical process day and night, not allowed to depart for even a moment. After preserving and caring for it like this for ten months, there will then appear a gold colored dhta ascetic monk, called the Perfected of Highest Yang.340 He is the master within, but the two buddhas are still in front of him on the outside, illuminating and looking after

him, not allowing him to exit lightly and take o for distant places. For one year and then two, the buddhas will give instruction to the Perfected of Highest Yang. Only after this can the reward be given and merit proclaimed to you, for your successfully completed cultivation. 337


338

Gouchen is one of the twelve spirit generals associated with the six ren divination scheme. He is associated with agent earth, and in charge of arresting and detaining gouliu ; Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. Gouchen , 772. Gouchen is mentioned as the image xiang of the position if agent earth the center in ZhongL chuandao ji, in DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu 14.20b4. In laboratory alchemy, gouchen was a cover name for cihuang , As2S2. I suspect Gouchen is here being associated with a central organ or location. 339

Tengshe is also one of twelve spirit generals associated with the six ren . He is associated with agent re, and arouses shock and terror jingkong $ ; Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. Tengshe &, 774. In another inner alchemical text, DZ 1098, Neidan huanyuan jue N. Song? , Tengshe is a cover name for the perfected pneuma of the gallbladder the organ associated with the center and agent earth ; Hu Fuchen, ibid., s.v. Tengshe &, 984. I think that here both Tengshe and Gouchen represent the Yellow Court, where the elixir is red.

340

This may be a unique idea. Gold colored dhta is an epithet for Mahkyapa the rst Indian Chan patriarch; Foguang da cidian, s.v. Jinse Jiaye , 3528 ; and Highest Yang is Chen Zhixus own title, Shangyangzi . Highest yang is not a common inner alchemical term, and I would be surprised to nd the title Perfected of Highest Yang in any other text. So, from its name, this entity seems to be a cross between Mahkyapa and Chen Zhixu himself. The Qing dynasty solo alchemist Liu Yiming also uses the term gold colored dhta in passing, perhaps adopting it from Chen Zhixu; Huixin neiji 1.32a2, by Liu Yiming, in Zangwai daoshu, 8:646.

542

[NF+pMF+C!%Slj?16;5gd@;g5B ,oXPQi[ID8A)_! `kbm#'9 n @=&Z7(f8W4 TE"*):U Y .\k]0V)[ TE@/c-341 Some entities bodhisattva 2 and buddha 1; what about vajra 6? meet two Daoist tutelary deities who are not elsewhere attested as corporeal deities at the Yellow Court; together they seal the pharmaca within and stand guard at the inner caldron, as dragon and tiger mercury and lead fuse together through a violent battle. For ten months, bodhisattva 2 and buddha 1 keep watch over the developing holy fetus. When the yang spirit appears in the form of a golden monk apparently an amalgam of a Chan Buddhist holy gure and Chen Zhixu himself, the two buddhas i.e., bodhisattva 2 and buddha 1? train him carefully, until the alchemical path is fully accomplished. The chapter ends after another short passage untranslated.342 Chen does not say that he has written this passage or Jindan dayao as a whole specically for readers literate in Buddhism, but from foregoing passage it seems that he is trying to catch the eye of such readers. Perhaps he has readers in mind like Wang Xiangweng. In Jindan dayao is a text, written in Chanstyle discourse, entitled A Piece Given to Wang Xiangweng [LG.343 Chen describes his encounter with Wang: When passing through Jingnan ,344 I met a man of great ability, I met the man of the Buddhist Way,345 Xiangweng. By his own account, in the past he had made visits to Chan monasteries, and deeply gained their purport. Upon further inquiry, I found out that he was a dharma descendant of Yingan hK.346 His teacher was a blind old fellow,347 and every time his teacher instructed him he

341

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 4.9b310. DZ 1067 has f8W, but I prefer f8W4 from the Jindan zhengli daquan and Daozang jiyao eds. 342


343

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 15.1a36a3.

344

This is the Nanping < or Jingzhou H$ region, in southcentral Hubei.

345

In Chan contexts, daoren W especially refers to young initiants who live in a monastery but have not yet taken the precepts; Foguang da cidian, s.v. daoren W, 5620.

346 Tanhua eR 110363, a.k.a. Yingan, was a Songdynasty master of the Linji lineage; Foguang da cidian, s.v. Tanhua, 623435. He received teachings from Yuanwu Keqin, and was visited himself by Dahui Zonggao ^2 3. Tanhuas dharmaheir was Mian Xianjie JK>O. Xiangweng would be quite a few generations removed from Tanhua. 347

Or perhaps his teacher was formally known as Xiaweng aG.

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would receive beatings from the varlet.348 He was unable to part from him even for a moment, and thus gained a certain amount of vitality ruzuo .349 1#,$7)"0'*8:(%6/ 9 .5" 2 34! %&;+

350 Perhaps it is for readers like Wang Xiangweng that Chen Zhixu has written the long Yog c rainected passage above on the function of mental and corporeal spirits in sexual alchemy. §4.1.1, Chen as an apocryphal Buddhist.

The English word apocryphal

derives from a Greek word meaning hidden away or secret, and refers to Christian scriptures whose value was suspect, and which thus deserved to be hidden away so as not to corrupt the public. Within Buddhology, apocryphal usually refers to scriptures that are not the direct word of the Buddha. While apocryphal is usually a word applied to texts and not to people, I propose that we call Chen Zhixu an apocryphal Buddhist. Chen is claiming to present Buddhist teachings which have been hidden away the original meaning of apocryphal , and which his opponents in the Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian establishments reject as heretical the common meaning of the term . Chen is appropriating and using Buddhist cultural and social elements from a common store of knowledge available to all educated Chinese of the time, whether they had taken the vows of a Buddhist or not. We can conceive of Chen Zhixus relation to Buddhism in a new way if we think of culture less as a great stream in which we are all immersed, and more as a bag of tricks or an oddly assorted tool kit . . . containing implements of varying shapes that t the hand more or less well.351 Chen is a bricoleur, treating Buddhism not as an integrated system but as a repertoire of elements from which he may select elements as he wishes to manipulate in new ways or turn to new purposes. This Buddhist culture, and these Buddhist social forms, are not necessarily the sole possessions of Buddhists they belong to whomever people decide they belonged to. Chen is 348

Si 3 or 3 = + < can mean lackey.

349

Ruzuo is dened as to act so as to take in vitality AC?@>B ; Iriya and Koga, Zengo jiten, s.v. irisaku , 359 . 350

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 15.5a3 7.

351

Swidler, Talk of Love, 24; also see idem, Culture in Action.

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trying to use these Buddhist elements for his own purposes, and judgments of whether this is a perversion of Buddhism or not will depend on communities of opinion among his immediate audience, or later audiences, such as ourselves. §4.2, NeoConfucian Sexual Alchemy Chen Zhixu adapts the presentation of his teachings to suit his audience. Some of Chens disciples are what we would call NeoConfucians: students of the dao of the sage rulers and teachers of old and the latterday sages of the Song dynasty. Chen attempts to speaks to them in their own language. As an educated man, he would count this as one of his own languages too, of course, yet the models for his aspirations are primarily Daoist gures, and secondarily Buddhist gures, with references to Confucian and other gures scattered throughout his works.352 While assenting to the truth of the words of Confucius and Mencius, and accepting their lineage as a lineage of true sages, Chen is always aiming to bend their words and lineage to his own uses. In the following passage, from a transmission epistle to a NeoConfucian disciple Zhenxi (' a Mongolian of noble blood , Chen attempts to graft the lineage of Confucius and Mencius into his own alchemical lineage, arguing that the true inheritors of Confucius and Mencius were not the Neo Confucians, but legendary Daoists: After Confucius and Mencius, the tradition of the sages was not passed on. As for the interval between Confucius and the NeoConfucians some say that many sages hid in the high mountains and dense forests, such as Huangshi Gong, Heshang Gong, Zhang Daoling , Xu Xun , Zhong li Quan , L Dongbin all of them live long and do not die. If those of this generation who have broadness of mind and experience do not have the opportunity to take part in this tradition, they cannot make out even the outline of it, and turn their focus on heterodox teachings and other a airs. . . . "5! ,429)*%3.% .%+08.$ 7: ,!/ 16&#-353 Sometimes we see Chen criticizing Zhu Xi and his latterday followers in the Yuan 352

The sage rulers of old often mentioned by Chen are Yao, Shun, and Yu, the Yellow Emperor, Zhou Wenwang, and the Duke of Zhou; the sage teachers of old are Confucius, Yan Yuan, and Mencius; and the Song Neo Confucians are Zhou Dunyi, Shao Yong, the Cheng brothers Cheng shi , and Zhu Xi.

353


545

dynasty as I show in chapter 3 and its appendix, yet his beef with NeoConfucians is not about the substance of their teachings, but about their assumption that the dao of moral selfcultivation is public and simple although di cult to embody. Chen believes that the single principle threading through all of Confuciuss teachings yi yi guan zhi Y is not cohumanity ren or any other virtue, but the dao of the golden elixir: The soleandunitary dharma tradition is none other than the dao of onethreading or the instructions on the recycled elixir <>. Yb .k(.354 Anyone who does not realize that the truth is hidden, and can be received only from a master, is tragically misguided. In the following passage, he pities Zhu Xi for his attempt to study the Cantong qi on his own, without the guidance of a master: Who can complete the aair by relying only on a text? The former worthy Zhu Wengong Zhu Xi desired to learn the ultimate dao, but did not obtain transmission from a master. He was terribly fond of this book Cantong qi . . . Now, the mystic words and secret instructions are unimaginable. What Wengong Zhu Xi repeatedly discarded as meaningless in Cantong qi , blind teachers will on the contrary want to guess at. He furthermore said, At another time, whenever I wanted to study it, I did not receive its transmission, and had no place to begin understanding it . Now, if a sageworthy is not a master, though

equal in wisdom to Confucius and Mencius, then how could anyone else

understand on their own? People nowadays are full of themselves, speculating and acting wildly. If we look at prior worthies, then their transgressions are many. If Zhu Xi had received transmission with instructions from a master, and greatly understood the dao of the Book of Changes of the sages, then he certainly would not have clung to the idea that Cantong qi is a book of divination! PN4+'3C"h)Ue-bRK]f&*M!1Q (DlcZ7T=KBIV\WL/Ui R6]ZX Aah?Kg#9J,^G ,d,2 %V%FH[@h6`$05jRKES;a :b 8 OF _M355 Chen criticizes Zhu Xi, not for his Confucian doctrine, but for daring to comment on the Cantong qi relying on public reason rather than esoteric transmission. Actually, Chen would never need to criticize Confucian doctrine, or any doctrine. Relying on the assumption that truth is known only to masters, on his own authority as a master, and on his formidable skills in misreading scripture, Chen can easily bend any 354


355

Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, Daozang jiyao ed., 1.37b1038a1, 38a738b1.

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canonical text to his own uses. For Chen, scriptures and classics are tools, not threats. What Chen nds threatening is not the written word, but persuasive words wielded by false teachers in facetoface situations within the marketplaceoral rhetoric wielded by teachers like himself. In the following passage, Chen rereads Menciuss classic passage on the oodlike qi haoran zhi qi .4 - , presenting it as esoteric references to sexual alchemy. Mencius said, I am skillful at nurturing my oodlike qi. Its qualities as qi are great size and rigidity. Nurturing it with straightness or, directly , there will be no harm. He also said, This is produced by the gathering together of righteousness; it is not that righteousness obtained it by a sneak attack. He also said, Uphold the will, and do not abuse the qi. He also says, When the will arrives there, the qi will be next. Next means that it will arrive following. He also said, The will is the commander of the qi. Since it is the commander of the qi, it must be the controller of the qi. As the controller of the qi, if it causes the qi to come then it will come; if it causes the qi to stay then it will stay. He also said, Match righteousness with the Dao. If you are of great wisdom, you can distinguish the pure from the turbid here. 5=.4 -)-+!=3, (67"#7@ &3<- 1-1"? "- %') %)- )

" /7: 8*2; $0>356 From Menciuss words, Chen develops instructions for the adept on training his sex organ during the lianji stage perhaps , and using his will zhi to control his qi. In Chinese correlative thinking, will is correlated with the urogenital system;357 thus, Chens Mencius would be talking about the adepts control of his inner pharmacon during stages 12 of the alchemical path. Why? He said, I am skillful at nurturing. Soon after that, he said, Nurture by means of straightness. This then develops and claries the concept of straightness in the Book of Changes, where it is said, Now, the stillness of qian is concentrated, and its movement is straight direct . Therefore it produces greatly. Therefore Master Zhou Dunyi loved the lotus, saying Unimpeded within, and straight without with the same meaning. Mencius also says, This is produced by the gathering together of righteousness; it is not that 356


357

Wile argues that The soporic state following emission also may have inspired the conceptual link in medical theory of jing 9 and zhi , both associated with the urogenital system the kidneyorb , and of the urogenital system and the brain; Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 6. Also see gure 4.3 on page 260 above.

547

righteousness obtained it by a sneak attack. At the end he says, Match righteousness with the Dao. Thus we know that Mencius is speaking of cohumanity and righteousness. He also says, Uphold the will, and do not abuse the qi, and When the will arrives there, the qi will be next. Thus we know that it is not the case that Mencius was only skillful at nurturing, but that he was also skillful at obtaining the pharmacon . One may ask, What is obtaining? The reply is, Obtaining by means of straightness. One may ask, How does it come? The reply is, It is produced by righteousness. One may ask, How does it appear? The reply is, It takes will as its commander. Knowing it thereby, and seeing it thereby, who is willing to stick out his head and take it on his crown? Thus the other the partner also has this knowledge and this view. !6"FQ 7.Q E-,. ='R @'> .8A 6)JPNB . 8I 8HK+1KT( 4

359

Cf. Yearley, Mencius and Aquinas, 15255.

548

Overall, I transmitted to a hundred persons or more, but only transmitted instructions on making their bodies whole by means of the dao. As for those to whom I could tell the secret of extending the lifeendowment by means of techniques, there were not even as many as two or three in a hundred. It is not that I dared begrudge the secrets. Their capacities di eredsome were sharp and others dull. 9M3F# )?U (N!BI360

*<'&6J,@.H

Based on this passage, the Qingdynasty sexual alchemist Qiu Zhaoao writes: Ziyang the Perfected Zhang Boduan was not able to keep the teachings secretly hidden, and so he met with celestial censure three times. Chen Guanwu knew this, so he gave oral transmission of yuye lianxing :E# rening the physical form by means of jade humor to no fewer than several hundred people, but as for jinye dadao -: F the great dao of metallous humor , he did not meet more than one or two appreciative friends who could receive this teaching. We can say that, able to keep the precepts, he feared heaven. AC5 87RGLS>T"+0D:E#, K -: F=+4O8$2%361 Qiu identies Chens exoteric teaching as yuye lianxing, and Chens esoteric teaching as jinye dadao. The terms yuye and jinye often occur as a pair within inner alchemy, but their referents vary.362 I think that Chen would agree with Qius statement. Lets see how Chen uses the terms yuye and jinye: The Dao is originally without action, yet leaves nothing undone. Nonaction is the great elixir of jade humor yuye ; leaving nothing undone is the recycled elixir of metallous humor jinye . F@1@ 1@1,: @ 1,-:P ;6.29a Having nothing to do is the postnatal; having something to do is the pre natal. The prenatal is the great recycled elixir of metallous humor jinye , and the postnatal is the ninetimes recycled elixir of jade humor yuye . The jade humor is the inner elixir, and the metallous humor is the outer elixir. The referent of Laozis saying Always be without desire in order to watch the wonder is the recycled elixir of jade humor yuye , and the referent of Always have desire in order to watch the orice363 is the recycled elixir of the metallous humor jinye . @1,/ 1, ,-: P/,: 360

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu, preface, 5b96a2.

361

Wuzhen pian jizhu, by Qiu Zhaoao, 1.22a69; Daozang jinghua ed., 43. Also in Zhijizi, CanWu jizhu, 357.

362

See p. 314 above.

363

Daode jing, chapter 1. Contrary to most editions of the Daode jing, Chen typically writes qiao Q pore, orice; knack instead of jiao V movements, chasings, manifestation, sprouting .

549

A8,8! 597G(&/8A 57G(B/,8A364 We see that yuye practice is wuwei practice, related to the inner elixir: it is the tranquil, ataraxic meditation of internal ring in stage 3 and perhaps also of lianji in stage 1. Jinye practice is youwei practice, related to the outer elixir: it is lustful coition, leading to gathering the outer pharmacon of metal. Qiu Zhaoao says that Chen taught yuye solo alchemy to many students, and jinye sexual alchemy to only a few. Chen himself does not refer to solo alchemy as yuye and sexual alchemy as jinye; rather, jinye and yuye are two aspects or stages within the overall alchemical path. Yet because jinye involves sexual gathering while yuye involves only tranquil meditation, Chen would agree with Qiu. Perhaps when Chen transmitted instructions on making bodies whole by means of the dao to more than a hundred people, he was selecting practices from the yuye and wuwei aspect of his alchemical path. Among Chens transmission epistles to his disciples, I have found one example of a purely soloalchemical teaching. It is from his epistle to Xia Yanwen 2 ., a physician, diviner, and spiritual seeker: Li is the heartmind, and kan is the body. Within the body, collect the yang of the wuearth within kan: this is called the outer elixir, or the crescentmoon furnace. Within the heart, supplement the void of the jiearth within li: this is called the inner elixir, or the caldron of the suspended fetus. . . . This is not the training of a moment: obtaining the elixir is easy, but doing the three thousand deeds and rening the self is extremely arduous. . . . Subduing it means subduing the water within the body. C$%$'')%<4F>C ;E1? -@ 63*:" #= 0D+'365 The passage includes references to lesserorbital circulation, the proper moment of gathering, and so on, all in the language of the Book of Changes. Chen does not often use this language from the Changes, but perhaps he considered it appropriate for a disciple who was a mantic specialist. Some of the soloalchemical language in this passage is unique. Statements like li is the heartmind, and kan is the body, or subduing the water within the body occur nowhere else in Chens extant corpus. 364


365

Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 6.38a34, 38b12, 38b9 missing from DZ 1067.

550

Chen Zhixu shaped the presentation of his teachings to his audience. For an audience of Buddhists or Buddhist seekers, he could translate his instructions on the alchemical path into quasiBuddhist terms. For a NeoConfucian audience, he could turn a passage from Mencius into an esoteric discourse on gathering the outer pharmacon. And he could transmit solo instead of sexual alchemy, as appropriate.

§5, Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that Chen is a sexual alchemist, I have mapped out the eld of Chinese sexual cultivation, and within it I have plotted Chen Zhixus sexual alchemical path from conversion to apotheosis. When I began reading Chens texts, I doubted I would be able to discover the concrete practices underlying his discourses,366 but the results of my eorts in this chapter are promising. Inner alchemical texts written in code can be decodedor at least some of them can be at least to a certain extent. Of course, if it ever happens that we cannot decipher a particular text, then we may shift our focus to study the texts indecipherability or oddity as itself a strategy,367 just as an ethnographer studying a secret society but barred from its inner councils may shift his or her focus from the content of the secrets to studying secrecy as a strategy.368 There is no danger in nding nothing to say about inner alchemy; yet we would like to have the luxury of being able both to decipher the text and to study its strategies. Discourse and practice.

One discovery I made in this chapter is that Chen

Zhixus discourse may diverge from his practice in surprising ways. For example, from the perspective of discourse, Chens dao is quite dierent from the practices of, e.g., 366

Perhaps, instead of saying the practices underlying his discourses, I should say practices as an aspect distinct from his discourses. I would not say that practice is a bedrock layer underlying discourse. Discourse is just as important within inner alchemy as practice is, and discourse can itself be a kind of practice; see pp. 43839 above. 367

This is what I do on pages 43839 above, where I argue that the very monotony of the saga of devolution and redemption is itself soteriologically signicant.

368

This is Urbans recommendation for esoteric studies; Urban, Elitism and Esotericism, 34, following Bellman, The Language of Secrecy, 3., and Lindstrom, Knowledge and Power in a South Pacic Society, 119. This approach has a nities with the poststructuralist focus on surfaces rather than on depths, or on publiclyavailable texts and symbols rather than on subjective inner meaning or experience; Wuthnow, Beyond the Problem of Meaning.

551

the huanjing bunao adepts that he so strongly condemns; yet from the perspective of practice they are unexpectedly similar. Before doing the research for this chapter, I assumed that, whereas Chen gathers an outer pharmacon of pure, intangible qi, the teacher of a marginal tradition pangmen would be mucking about with tangible sexual substances instead. Yet, after comparing the views of Wile, Hao Qin, Maspero, and Needham on sexual jingqi see pages 41819 above , and investigating what Chen is actually doing, I conclude that, from the perspective of practice, Chens true dao does not di er qualitatively from the false techniques of his rivals. I knew that Chen and his rivals were equally marginal and outrageous in their inclusiv ist cooptation of Buddhist or Confucian elements see pages 169 and 17374 above ; now it appears that their practices do not diverge much either. For Chen, the outer pharmacon is qi, yet it is signaled by secretions. His practice involves the use of both qi and uid from the female partner; this uid may be either menses or sexual uid probably both ; and the uid is intimately involved with the initial fusion of the two pharmaca, possibly even within the male sex organ. The partners pharmacon is an intangible entity, yet indissociable from tangible and dirty matter, just as the adepts essence comes in the two forms of prenatal primal essence yuanjing and postnatal seminal essence. While the doctrinal teachings of a rival huanjing bunao adept might lack some of these concepts, such as yuanjing, the practice of such a rival would be quite similar. At the gathering stage at least, the main di erences between Chens teaching and the false techniques of his rivals are in the aspects of theory, rhetoric, terminology, or goal, rather than in the aspect of prescribed practice these are real di erences, though, not just semantic di erences . Because so many participants in this debate over tangible and intangible jingqi express strong opinions about it this goes for Daoists, premodern commentators, and modern scholars both Chinese and Western , it appears that there is a psychological dynamic at work here perhaps involving repression , so a psychoanalytic approach may ultimately be necessary to explain what is going on, both for the Daoists and for those who study them. We see a similar disconnect between discourse and practice in the case of Chens ring periods. As an alchemist, he knows that the ring periods ought to be

552

one of the most important aspects of his teachings, yet I argue there is no evidence that, during the meditative stages of the process, Chen is actually using complex regimens of breathwork or guiding intention. Rather, he teaches concentration meditation at this stage. As a master that is, as someone who is able to activate the master function visvis an audience , he would need an impressive grasp of the complex correlations related to the ring periods; yet he does not require these, or have a place for them, within his own practice. What can he do, then? He applies the complex ring schema to the alchemical process as a whole, rather than to concrete meditative practices. By nding this ssure between discourse and practice, I have found a new site for exploration. What other kinds of alchemists lacked complex ring periods? Is this specic to sexual alchemists, for whom complexity may be focused more on the gathering of the pharmacon than on breathwork and intention? How many other alchemists who eschew complex ring in practice would still retain it in discourse? Can we nd historical, sociological, or morphological patterns within these variations in teachings and rhetoric? This is the way I believe we should study inner alchemy: we can begin with a paradigm, then with the paradigm in mind collect as many data points as possible, and look for patterns that will either conrm the paradigm or more likely suggest revisions to it. Comparison with the standard account.

Chens alchemical path resembles the

standard account of inner alchemy in many ways, of course. There are four stages to his path, which correspond in most aspects to the standard model of solo alchemy: The three treasures

The reactants

rening the self and tamping a base lianji zhuji

preparing ones essence, qi, and spirit

Main site of Caldron & reaction furnace n/a

lower dantian producing outer and inner pharmaca, then fusing upper and them to produce the great pharmacon dayao

lower dantian or holy fetus shengtai

rening qi into spirit middle middle and rening the holy fetus to produce a yang spirit lianqi huashen

dantian lower dantian rening spirit to cause it to return to the upper training the yangspirit n/a void lianshen huanxu

dantian rening essence into qi lianjing huaqi

Fig. 5.9, Four stages of solo alchemy, according to the standard account

The main divergence of Chens teachings from those of the standard account is 553

during stage 2: for him, the adept gathers the outer pharmacon from the partner, and combines it with his own inner pharmacon, whereas in the standard account, the outer pharmacon is rst produced from the adepts orbital circulation of his essence, and then further circulated to produce an additional, inner pharmacon. A second, related divergence is that, for Chen, orbital circulation on the superintendent and conception channels rendu ermai seems to be limited to an eightyminute period after the gathering of the partners outer pharmacon. Contrast this with the standard account, in which inneralchemical practice can be summed up as being mostly lesserorbital circulation, since most adepts spend their time doing orbital circulation at stages 1 and 2, without ever graduating to stages 3 or 4 where lesserorbital circulation is usually no longer applied. Whereas in the standard account most of the adepts time is spent doing nonformless youwei orbital circulation, in Chens teachings most of the adepts time is spent doing formless concentration meditation. Chen calls his practice a uniquely youwei dao, however; not because the adept is doing years of conscious youwei orbital circulationwork, but because it contains one or more moments of sexual i.e., youwei gathering. It seems that the entire breathcontrol complex is also under emphasized or absent from Chens practices. The relative underemphasis on lesser orbital circulation may be a very distinctive feature of Chens teachings. This discovery might be helpful for placing Chen on the inneralchemical map. If I can nd a similar underemphasis in some other alchemical text X, then I would investigate whether X and Chen could share a common liation of practice. This sort of work could help to conrm or rewrite the history of the traditions within inner alchemy. Chen also diverges from the standard account in that he does not use the concepts of the greater caldron and furnace during the second stage with the reactant circulating between lower and upper dantian and lesser caldron and furnace during the third stage with the reactant circulating between lower and middle dantian. For him, there is a progression from the lower to middle to upper dantian over the course of the entire alchemical path, but caldronfurnace dyads

554

within the body of the adept are just not important for him. His concept of greater orbital circulation da zhoutian is also, from the perspective of the standard account, underdeveloped. His teachings are ambiguous on some points that the standard account tries to dene more strictly. Circulation of elixirs between the ve viscera wuzang is also under emphasized in Chens practices, but this is a less distinctive omission. Whereas the ZhongL adepts and their heirs emphasized intravisceral circulation, or mutual irradiation of the viscera, SouthernLineage alchemy speaks of the numerology of the ve agents rather than the elixirs of the ve viscera see pages 336 39. All we can discern from Chens lack of viscerawork is that he stands closer to the Southern Lineage than the ZhongL tradition, which is what we would have expected anyway. The threeway exchange.

Chens concept of a threeway exchange between the

patron who provides the money, the female partner who provides the elixir material and the alchemical master who provides the teaching is a distinctive concept that I have never noted in any other sexualcultivation text. This is a three way economy of salvation, by which the alchemist, the patron, and possibly also the female partner s, can all move closer to liberation from the mortal condition. Is it a circular exchange, with patron o ering money to partner, partner o ering pharmacon to master, and master o ering teaching to patron? Or is it a more robust threeway exchange, in which each party o ers its goods to both of the other two parties, the patron o ering money to the adept as well as the female partner, the partner o ering their qi to the patron as well as the master, and the master o ering his teachings to the partner as well as the patron? I cannot say. Conceptual clusters.

One of the most appealing aspects of Chen Zhixus

thought is his ability to make conceptual connections across registers, traditions, and religions. This is something common throughout the eld of inner alchemy, but he may be better at this than are most alchemical authors. Rening the self lianji was one conceptual cluster I noted: Chen imbues lianji with moral, religious, and philosophical signicance, in addition to lianjis basic mesocosmic and physiological signicance. Diandao inversion is another rich conceptual complex, which I

555

explore on page 323 above. The diandao complex is found in Chens writing, but he does not really add much to it. His diandao emphasizes the inversion of male and female partners during intercourse, rather than heart and kidneys, as would be more common within inner alchemy. I also note the perplexing ambiguity of jigong amassing meritorious labor in Chens teachings, concluding that, for him, internal alchemical work and outer virtuous deeds are simply two aspects of the single concept of jigong. The idea of an internal connection between psychophysiological qi cultivation and spiritual or moral cultivation of merit or virtue is not unique to Chen Zhixu: we can also nd it in Menciuss concept of the oodlike qi, for example. Chen makes some truly surprising conceptual connections. He takes the perfected person in the Cantong qi line The perfected person plumbs cruises underwater in the abyss as a symbol combining meanings as disparate as 1 the male adepts sex organ, or 2 his mind during meditation see pages 48588 above ; or 3 the one yang yaoline cruising at the bottom of the trigram zhen see page 510 ; or nally, 4 the goal of becoming a perfected being.

556

Chapter 6, Chen Zhixus Legacy in the Ming and Qing Dynasties This chapter examines how Chen Zhixus writings and career were interpreted and used by later readers in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. There are two reasons why this study of later readers is an essential part of my overall study of Chen Zhixu. The rst reason is that Chens works played an important role in the development of later inneralchemical tradition. The second reason is that the interpretations of Chen by his readers, though later, can actually help us to understand his earlier works. The rst reason for studying the later tradition is of indirect interest for a study of Chen Zhixu himself, but the second reason is of direct interest to a study of Chen. First reason for studying MingQing traditions.

My research shows that Chen

Zhixus works were read and discussed by many later writers over the centuries, among both inner alchemists and a wider public. That Chen Zhixu was read widely is interesting enough; yet I will also argue that the later writers on alchemy who discuss Chen developed a divided discourse on sexual alchemy, and Chens works were a key ingredient for this discourse. Chens works gave the discussants material for discussion, but also thereby shaped the development of this discourse itself. A study of the later tradition is interesting, but not entirely germane to our understanding of Chens original context, which is the focus of this dissertation. Second reason.

Later readers made dierent readings of Chens texts, but

Chens texts themselves also had dierent eects upon later readers, as part of the same process. And Chens readers have an eect upon us, readers from even later in time and mostly outside the tradition. Unlike some Daoist texts which were unavailable to past generations of readers and have been newly rediscovered by contemporary scholars such as the texts excavated at Dunhuang or Mawangdui, Chinese readers never ceased reading Chen Zhixus writings. In a sense, Chens 557

writings have come down to us through these later readers, and our new readings of Chens texts ought to take them into account. In my study of Chen Zhixu, I have been drawing on various traditions of theory and interpretation. The horizon in which I am making this study is of course contemporary Englishlanguage academic praxis, and this horizon provides my hermeneutics and critical theories. On a deeper level, this horizon also determines in advance both what seems to me worth inquiring about and what will appear as an object of investigation,1 both constraining my study and making my study possible or inspiring me to study this sort of topic in the rst place. However, in interpreting esoteric works like Chen Zhixus writings, which hide the referents of their symbolic language, I have also found the Chinese contemporarytraditional scholarship of scholars such as Wang Mu , Ma Jiren , Hao Qin , or Li Yuanguo .2 These scholars are more or less removed from Western academic discourse, and stand within a tradition of alchemical hermeneutics and selfcultivation practice. While Lis discourse includes aspects of MarxLeninHegelianism and the modern Chinese ideology of science and progress, thus sharing some relation to Western discourse, the other three scholars betray no signicant links at all to Western discourse. Their qigong tradition looks backward through the Qing and Ming dynasties before the use of the term qigong, all the way back to Chen Zhixus time and before. They are heirs to the Qingdynasty exegetical works of Zhao Bichen , Liu Yiming , Qiu Zhaoao , and Zhu Yuanyu , and the Mingdynasty critical comments of Wang Yangming and Wang Shizhen , all discussed in the chapter below. The Chinese hermeneutical tradition almost without exception identies Chen Zhixu as a practitioner of yinyang shuangxiu both woman and man cultivating, or sexual alchemy. Without reading the Chinese contemporary traditional scholarship, I would have been less certain about the issue of Chens 1


2

In chapter 4 I have made extensive use of Wang Mu, Wuzhen pian qianjie; Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan; Hao Qin, Longhu dandao; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue.

558

sexual alchemy and many other issues. To be sure, the Chinese scholarship must always be taken with a grain of salt and not relied on overmuch, yet there is no denying its value to a reader from outside the tradition. I have gained much from this fusion of horizons.3 While contemporarytraditional Chinese scholarship does oer new or modern interpretations of alchemical writings, it also draws very much on Ming and Qingdynasty readers and practitioners opinions about and applications of alchemical teachings. Every interpreter of Chens writings in the Chinese tradition reads with one eye on Chens writings, and one eye on interpretations by prior interpreters. This is true of any commentarial tradition this must be true by denition, if it is to be a tradition at all, but it is especially appropriate when dealing with selfconcealing and polyvalent esoteric alchemical writings. Thus, prior readers and commentators have shaped Chens place in history. This is true not only for the history of qigong / inner alchemy produced and reproduced in traditional Chinese scholarship, but for the history of Chinese religions produced by any contemporary Western scholars who draw on the traditional Chinese scholarship as I say we must. The interpretations of Chens writings, as well as the fact that we nd Chens writings interesting at all, must be determined in part by past traditions of scholarship and practice. This chapter is, in eect, a study of the later Chinese tradition which has transmitted the texts of inner alchemy down to us and told us that they are worth reading. In this chapter I trace references to Chen or citations of his writings within later works.4 In addition to being cited in Ming and Qing works on Daoist inner alchemy, Chen also receives mention in imperial encyclopedias and private scholars literary collections. In the next two sections, I will provide a quantitative overview of the 3


4

This sort of research has become possible with the greater availability of searchable electronic texts, such as the searchable database of the Wenyuan Ge edition of the Siku quanshu . I have also used Daoist e texts downloaded from Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese websites such as Jindan dadao , Loujin ge , Xianxue wang , and Dandao .

559

dissemination and circulation of Chens works, and brief summaries of all the later references to Chen Zhixu that I have found. Taking all of these references as a whole, the most important theme we will see is the debate over sexual alchemy, and I discuss this at length in the third section of this chapter. The various participants in the debate worked out their positions, in part, by reading and commenting on Chens works, especially his commentaries to the Zhouyi cantong qi and Wuzhen pian . The most signicant contributions that I make in this chapter are made in section 3. Section 2 is background material for section 3. Section 1 is an essay in history and sociology of the book, and represents the textuality perspective on the study of inner alchemy which I discussed on page 6 above.

§1, Quantitative Overview How widely did Chens works circulate? We can attempt to answer this question by looking at three dierent sources of data: 1 later texts that mention or discuss Chen; 2 the printing history of Chens works; and 3 bibliographies that show who was collecting his works. In section 1 I provide a quantitative overview of the printing history and bibliographies in this section, and in section 2 I provide a qualitative discussion of citations of Chen in later texts. The most important point I wish to make in section 1 is that Chens texts were by no means simply hidden away in the Ming Daoist canon, and neither did they circulate only in underground lineages or cultic networks dicult to reconstruct, as is the case with many Daoist texts. Chens texts were relatively widely printed and circulated among the literati. I will also be able to use the data I have collected on printing and book collecting to draw more detailed conclusions. §1.1, The Printings of Chens Texts Figure 6.1 shows the number of printings of texts by Chen Zhixu in each century. In 560

each box, I have listed Chens texts as they were 1 printed as standalone editions, 2 included in larger collections of Daoist texts such as Zhengtong daozang or Jindan zhengli daquan , and 3 included in editions collecting several commentaries on a single Daoist classic. Figures 6.2 and 6.3 break down these latter two categories in more detail. I have not included data from the twentieth and twentyrst centuries. This data is drawn from my complete bibliography of editions see dissertation appendix 1. I found this data originally through a thorough review of all the current rarebook catalogues I could nd, mostly covering the libraries in Mainland China and Taiwan. century 14th

JDDY 1

1

15th

1

16th

3

Ming

DRJ

1

CTQ 1

1

1

1

2

1

1

2

2

3

1

1

2 2

18th

2

19th

1

1

1

Total

3 7 0 2

0

0

3

3

0

5

9

1

510

0

0

0

1

2

0

4

2

1

3

5

1

1

2

0

1

2227

22

7

1

1

1

2

1

10

4

1 1

2 0 8

4

4

15

3

914

7

1

0

1722

0

Total

Panhuo ge

1

1

2

2

unknown

DDJ

27

17th

Total

WZP

3

0

3

2

0

2

5156

Fig. 6.1, Number of editions of Chen Zhixus works, by century, and by type:5 Bold = standalone edition of one of Chens works. Italic = Fig. 6.2, a Chen edition within a larger collection of Daoist texts. Plain = Fig. 6.3, a Chen commentary within a commentary collection. Bottom line = total number of editions for each text.

century

JDDY

DRJ

CTQ

WZP

15th

C1, Zhengtong daozang

16th

C3, Jindan zhengli daquan

C20, Daoshu quanji

C6, Daofan zhengzong wujing sishu daquan

C16, Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu 17th

C14, Yihua yuanzong

18th

C4, Daoyan wuzhong

DDJ

Panhuo ge

5

JDDY is Jindan dayao A1 in dissertation appendix 1; DRJ is Duren jing zhujie A2; CTQ is Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu A3; WZP is Wuzhen pian sanzhu A4; DDJ is Daode jing zhuanyu A1e; Panhuo ge is A1f.

561

C7, Doga jikji dokyo kyng

C13, Siku quanshu

C17, Gujin tushu jicheng 19th

C2, Daozang jiyao

Jiyizi dingpi daoshu sizhong Subtotal

7

2

4

7

0

2

Fig. 6.2, Larger collections of Daoist works containing one or more works by Chen, by century. century

JDDY

DRJ

CTQ

Daode jing Bashiyi huatu shuo

17th

Jiang Yibiao, Zhouyi cantong qi jijie

Mao Jin, Jindai mishu

Qiu Zhaoao, Guwen Zhouyi Cantong qi jijie

Qiu Zhaoao, Wuzhen pian jizhu 19th unknown

DDJ

Wuqiubei zhai Laozi jicheng

Daodejing gujin ben kaozheng

Subtotal

Panhuo ge

16th

18th

WZP

n/a

0

3

1

3

n/a

Fig. 6.3, Collections of commentaries on a single classic, containing a commentary by Chen.6

According to the total number of editions the bottom line in gure 6.1 , Wuzhen pian sanzhu was the most widely distributed of all of Chens texts, followed by Cantong qi fenzhang zhu and Jindan dayao. The Duren jing commentary was the least widely distributed,7 though it seems to have been used either in manuscript or printed form sometime between 1336 and 1404 by scholars interested in the many astronomical quotations from Zhao Youqins text Gexiang contained therein.8 Chens works or collections containing them were printed more frequently in the Ming dynasty than in the Qingperhaps twice as frequently, or more. I was able to nd the place of publication for only about a dozen of the editions in my appendix. The places of publication, listed in order of frequency, are Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Korea. We may conclude that the majority of editions were published in south China, but some were published in 6

I list the two commentary collections by Qiu Zhaoao here but not in my bibliographical appendix because Qius works quotes Chens commentaries enough to receive mention here, but not enough to be considered as actual reprint editions of Chens works.

7

The Daode jing commentary and Panhuo ge would have been more wellread than the Duren jing commentary, as they were also contained within the Jindan dayao editions. 8

Volkov, Scientic Knowledge in Taoist Context.

562

north China and even Korea.9 Almost all of these editions were private publications, but at least one edition, Jindan zhengli daquan, was publicly printed. According to Gujin shuke , a sixteenth century work, Jindan zhengli daquan was printed by the Provincial Administration Commission Buzheng Si of Henan, and the Shu prefectural government Shufu in Sichuan.10 The mere count of editions of each work may not give an accurate picture, because some editions had larger print runs and circulated more widely than others. The Zhengtong daozang, for example, was locked away in a limited number of Daoist monasteries and temples, and probably was not available for many readers before its reprinting in the twentieth century. According to Chen Guofu, It can be said that, from the beginning of the Ming dynasty, no one was able to read the Daoist canon aside from scholars of the Qianlong and Jiaqing periods 17361820 who used the Daoist canons editions of works by classical philosophers to collate and prepare common editions, and Liu Shipei when he wrote Record of Reading the Daoist Canon.11 Because the Daoist canon was unavailable to most or all readers, Jindan dayao was usually read as found in Jindan zhengli daquan, Daoshu quanji , and to a lesser extent, Daozang jiyao . As for Chens Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian commentaries, these texts circulated more widely in privatelyprinted individual editions than in anthologies. §1.2, Analysis of Bibliographies The question of whether some printings circulated more widely than others can be addressed to a certain extent by examining traditional bibliographies from dierent centuries to see which ones list editions of Chens works. This will not show us whether any particular printing was widely circulated since the bibliographies rarely give this sort of detail, but will show us in general which texts were circulating more 9

A 1588 edition of Wuzhen pian sanzhu text A4.3 in dissertation appendix 1 has a preface by an o cial from Guanzhong Shaanxi. The mideighteenthcentury collection Doga jikji dokyo kyng was published in Korea. 10

Zhou Hongzu, Gujin shuke, 374, 384. Gujin shuke was composed sometime after 1540.

11

Chen Guofu, Daozang yanjiu lunwen ji, 365. Pre1920s scholars such as Liu Shipei 18841919, Chen Yingning 18801969, and Chen Yuan read the copy of the Ming canon at Baiyuan Guan in Beijing, but they could not have read much of itthey could only borrow sections of the canon during the annual ceremony of sunning the scriptures liangjing qihui , which probably would have lasted a week or two at longest; Li Yangzheng, Xinbian Beijing Baiyun Guan zhi, 51617.

563

in which centuries, and in which regions of the country. The bibliographies represented in gure 6.4 are mostly handlists from the libraries of private book collectors. Figure 6.4 also includes several references to Chens works or larger collections containing them in governmentsponsored bibliographies: Jindan zhengli daquan is listed in Zhejiang tongzhi of 1736;12 and Jindan dayao and Cantong qi fenzhang zhu are listed in Xu wenxian tongkao of 174713 and Siku quanshu zongmu . Chens works do not appear in the bibliographic essays yiwen zhi of the dynastic histories. century 14th 15th 16th 17th 18th Qing 19th 20th Total

A. Biblios examined 0 2 4 10 11 4 16 11 58

B. Biblios with a Daoist text n/a 0 4 7 8 4 9 9 41

C. Biblios with a text by Chen n/a n/a 4 3 5 0 2 3 17

Percentage of B. biblios w/a text by Chen n/a n/a 100 43 63 0 22 33 41

Fig. 6.4, Number of bibliographies listing at least one text by Chen or listing at least one larger collection containing a text by Chen.

Comparing gure 6.4 with gure 6.1 which lists the printing history of known editions, we can see that, according to both gures, Chens works were more popular in the sixteenth century than in any other century. Relatively few texts seem to have been printed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but many texts do show up in eighteenthcentury collectors booklists. Perhaps these were sixteenthcentury printings. The nineteenth century seems to have been a relative low point for both the printing and collecting of Chens texts, and perhaps for the reading of Daoist books in general. I was not able to examine all surviving bibliographies, so how representative a sample is this? Judging from the largest list of extant bibliographies,14 I have been able to examine about 50 percent of extant Ming dynasty works, about 30 percent of 12

Li Wei, Zhejiang tongzhi 245.19b 7:4058.

13

Xu wenxian tongkao 185.1 2:4269.

14

Zhonuo lidai shumu zonglu.

564

extant Qing dynasty works, and about 22 percent of extant Republican period works. There are no bibliographies from the fourteenth century in gure 6.4, because probably none exist. Which regions did these book collectors come from? Five came from Jiangsu, three from Zhejiang, and one each from Fujian, Guangdong, Henan, Hebei, Liaoning, and Shandong. This is similar to the regional breakdown for the places of publication mentioned on pages 56263 above: the majority of Chens readers lived in the south, but they could also be found in far ung places, such as Liaoning.15 century

JDDY

DRJ

CTQ

WZP

Zhengli

Daofan

14th 15th 16th

5

17th

1

18th

2

3 1 1

19th

3

1

1

1

20th Total

8

1

1

5

1

3

2

6

8

1

1

Fig. 6.5, Number of texts by Chen mentioned in a bibliography.

Figure 6.5 breaks down gure 6.4 by text the total for gure 6.5 is greater than the total for gure 6.4 because many bibliographies list multiple texts by Chen . We can see that Jindan dayao was most widely read in the sixteenth century. There were probably a number of printings of Jindan dayao from this period of which no copy has survived. The reason so few copies of Chens Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian commentaries show up before the eighteenth century is because many early booklists merely list Cantong qi or Wuzhen pian, without listing which edition this is, or whether it had a commentary, so we cannot know how many of these were Chens editions.

§2, Texts Mentioning Chen Zhixu, by Century 15

The booklist from Liaoning is Lianting shumu, by Cao Yin 16581712 , which lists a copy of Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4:2647 .

565

This section is a chronological list of all references to Chen Zhixu that I have found. The most important theme throughout these references is the debate about sexual alchemy, which I will discuss at length in section 3 of this chapter. About one third of the materials in section 2 will be discussed in section 3. These materials to be discussed later will be introduced here, but not be discussed at length. Other materials not reprised in the third section may be discussed in more detail in this section, as warranted. I thus hope to show the range of references to Chen Zhixu in section 2, then expand on the more important ones in section 3. Figure 6.6 below shows the number of references per century. A. Citations authors

B. Related to sexual alch.

C. B as of A

14th

2

2

100

15th

1

1

100

16th

9

4

44

17th

8

2

25

18th

12

4

25

19th

14

6

43

20th

5

1

20

century

Fig. 6.6, Number of citations of Chen Zhixu or his works, by century.16

§2.1, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries I have done a thorough search of texts from this period, and found only one author referring directly to Chen Zhixu. I have also found two other authors who I argue are referring indirectly to Chen. All three are Daoists: Chens contemporaries Dai Qizong and Zhao Yizhen, and the fortythird Celestial Master Zhang Yuchu, who lived slightly later. §2.1.1, Dai Qizong.

Dai Qizong . 1330s17 quotes Chen Zhixu at least

nine times in his Wuzhen pian commentary, DZ 141, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu 16

This is a count of authors, rather than texts, because some Daoist authors mention Chen Zhixu in multiple texts.

17

Byname Tongfu , stylename Master of Empty Mystery Kongxuanzi .

566

). Here Dai is reprinting Chens comments from DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu. DZ 141 pairs the commentaries zhu of Weng Baoguang " . 1173 with Dais own subcommentaries shu . Most of Chens commentaries reprinted in DZ 141 appear to be related to sexual alchemy, so we may presume Dai also advocates it. I will discuss this in more detail below in section 3 of this chapter. Dai signs his 1335 preface to DZ 141 with the placename Jiqing (, which was a Yuandynasty territory covering presentday Jiangning $ county, Jiangsu province, very close to presentday Nanjing. From the fact that Dai knew Chens work, and the date of Dais preface, we know that Chens Wuzhen pian sanzhu must have been printed in 1335 or before,18 i.e., before the appearance of Jindan dayao which probably existed in some form as a manuscript from 1331 on, but was not printed until 1336 . From Dais choronym we know that Wuzhen pian sanzhu had already circulated at least as far as Nanjing. §2.1.2, Zhao Yizhen.

The writings of Zhao Yizhen ' ?1382 19 include

several warnings against sexual practices.20 Schipper has written an article on Zhao Yizhen, based on Zhang Yuchus biography of Zhao in DZ 1311, Xianquan ji see below , as well as other sources. In the article Schipper tells us that Zhao Yizhen spent time in Nanchang.21 This is perhaps a decade or two after Chen Zhixus Jindan dayao and commentaries would have been circulating in that city. I argue that when we put Zhaos comments together, and compare them with similar criticisms by Zhang Yuchu, we will see that there is a good chance they are referring to Chen Zhixu. I will translate and interpret Zhaos comments in the third section of the chapter. 18

It is likely that Dai Qizong had a copy of the text that is DZ 142, rather than Chens Wuzhen pian commentary alone as an isolated text, because Dai also cites another commentator from DZ 142, Lu Ziye e.g., at DZ 141, 5.19b . 19

Byname Yuanyang , stylename Master of Original Yang Yuanyangzi , of Anfu % presentday Jian , Jiangxi province .

20

Zhaos extant works are DZ 568, Lingbao guikong jue ,+* and DZ 1071, Yuanyangzi fayu & nos. 89 in gure 6.7 , and the medical text DZ 1165, Xianchuan waike mifang . Schipper argues that Zhao also wrote the Qingwei material in the rst ftyseven juan of DZ 1220, Daofa huiyuan # !.

21

Schipper, Master Chao Ichen ' ?1382 and the Chingwei

567

School of Taoism, 729.

In the article, Schipper points out that Zhaos rst teacher Zeng Guikuan ' *4 transmitted the Qingwei tradition, that Zhao went on to study with nominally Quanzhen teachers, but that Zhao was most active as a Qingwei master, and his alchemical teachings had little relation to traditional Quanzhen teachings. A glance at the alchemical discourse in these texts identies them as closer to ZhongL 9 inner alchemy22 than to the Cantong qi and Wuzhen pianbased SouthernLineage alchemy of Chen Zhixu. Quanzhen Daoist alchemical practices included both ZhongLesque physiological practices,23 and the more formless and quietistic mental cultivation of Ma Danyang. Zhao Yizhen and Chen Zhixu are similar in that both men mingled other traditions with the more prestigious Quanzhen lineage, though many di erences between Zhao and Chen remain. §2.1.3, Zhang Yuchu.

The fortythird Celestial Master Zhang Yuchu "

1359 141024 repudiates the sexual alchemists who were active at the end of the Yuan dynasty. Throughout his career, Zhang received favor from the Ming throne, and the printing of his literary collection DZ 1311, Xianquan ji 1407 was supported by a Ming prince.25 In Xianquan ji and DZ 1232, Daomen shigui 1$ he criticizes sexual alchemists: I will discuss this below in section 3. Although he does not mention Chen Zhixu by name, I will argue that he is most likely referring to Chen or his circle. As the Celestial Master, Zhang Yuchu would have spent much of his time at Mt. Longhu 6, which was not far from Chens home. Chen was from Luling, Jiangxi, and also spent time in Hongzhou i.e., Nanchang or Yuzhang, about ninety miles from Mt. Longhu. Thus it seems that the Celestial Masters of Mt. Longhu were aware of Chens activities, although they were not able to curb them. §2.1.4, Other Daoist texts of the era.

These texts by Dai Qizong, Zhao Yizhen,

22

As studied by Farzeen BaldrianHussein in Procds secrets du joyau magique, for example.

23

E.g., DZ 244, Dadan zhizhi ; DZ 1156, Chongyang Zhenren jinguan yusuo jue ,

24

Byname Zirui :, stylename Qishan !.

25

<;%.

Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v., Zhang Yuchu ", 190. Zhangs other extant work is DZ 89, Yuanshi wuliang duren shangpin miaojing tongyi (+/&0. He also edited the sayings of Zhang Jixian "= 1092 1127 as DZ 1249, Sanshidai Tianshi Xujing Zhenjun yulu )2 35, and contributed prefaces to DZ 548, Taiji jilian neifa .#8 , and Wang Daoyuans DZ 1074, Huanzhen ji 7 no. 10 in gure 6.7.

568

and Zhang Yuchu are the only texts mentioning Chen Zhixu I found from the rst century and a half after Chens appearance on the scene. Why should Chen be mentioned by only three writers in this period, and yet by so many other writers in later centuries? I believe I have found so few Daoist texts mentioning Chen during this period because so few Daoist texts survive from this period which could be expected to mention Chen. Let us look at the Daoist literature available from this period. To search for Daoist texts, I used an appendix in Daozang tiyao for dating,26 and I considered every Daoist text datable to the period 13301500. Fiftyseven texts, such as ritual manuals, local hagiographies, or Daode jing commentaries, I decided would be unlikely to mention Chen Zhixu.27 Eighteen texts, such as essays or commentaries related to inner alchemy, I identied as possibilities: 1 1335

DZ 141

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

DZ 247 DZ 1144 DZ 1256 DZ 1258 DZ 1100 DZ 248 DZ 568 DZ 1071

14th c.? 14th c.? 14th c.? 14th c.? ca. 134167 1364? 1304? pre1382 post1382

10 1392

DZ 1074

11 12 13 14 15 16

DZ 1075 DZ 135 DZ 137 DZ 1076 DZ 1232 DZ 1311

ca. 1392 ca. 1392 ca. 1392 1401 ca. 1400? 1407 15th c.? 17 post1392

Weng Baoguang /F, Chen Daling 9If, and Dai Qizong [1 Wang Jichang Author unknown Xuanquanzi Xuanquanzi Peng Zhizhong :' Liu Zhiyuan O5 Zhao Yizhen L. Zhao Yizhen Wang Daoyuan H5 Wang Jie Huanzhen ji \.? g; preface by Zhang Yuchu Daoxuan pian HQ Wang Daoyuan Cui Gong ruyao jing zhujie 2 _`=G Wang Daoyuan Qingtian ge zhushi " J=d Wang Daoyuan Suiji yinghua lu YVZ X He Daoquan H Daomen shigui H!7 Zhang Yuchu 3 Xianquan ji +%? Zhang Yuchu Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu <>.,.Q=6 Huizhen ji B.? Ziran ji ;? Zhuzhen zhizhi yulu .$KX Zhuzhen neidan jiyao S. ?( Minghe yuyin MeU) Qizhen ji 4.? Lingbao guikong jue fb]8 Yuanyangzi fayu *>K

DZ 1257 Qunxian yaolu cuanji D(Kc?

Dong Jinchun ET

26

I used the appendix Xinbian Daozang fenlei mulu ARHâX, in Ren Jiyu, Daozang tiyao, 1255 1318, with caution. This appendix lists all Zhengtong daozang texts by category, generally in chronological order, though this ordering scheme is somewhat modied. I checked Daozang jiyao xinzeng daojing mulu H^W(APHCX in William Hung, Combined Indices to the Authors and Titles of Books in Two Coections of Taoist Literature, 3840. This is a list of Daozang jiyao texts not in the Zhengtong daozang, and so I am certain that I missed nothing important in Daozang jiyao. I did not consider the other Daoist canons, for which there are no shortcuts for dating texts. 27

I did examine a number of these texts. The ftyseven texts are: Scriptures Daojing HC: DZ 12, 89, 100, 126, 313, 398, 750, 760, 1440. Precepts and rituals jiel keyi #&N: DZ 194, 219, 222, 309, 541, 548, 585, 813, 981, 1166, 1220, 1413, 1480. Records jilu 0@: DZ 163, 306, 440, 447, 450, 451, 476, 602, 603, 605, 778, 959, 960, 961, 1304, 1462, 1463, 1465, 1468, 1469, 1470, 1472, 1484. Philosophers and experts zishu -: DZ 161, 162, 676, 687, 698, 704, 712, 720, 741, 742, 1164, 1165.

569

18 15th c.?

DZ 278 Qingwei danjue

Author unknown

Fig. 6.7, Texts that could have mentioned Chen Zhixu

I have found direct references to Chen Zhixu by Dai Qizong no. 1 , and indirect references by Zhao Yizhen no. 9 and Zhang Yuchu nos. 15 and 16 . Dai, Zhao, and Zhang were all inner alchemists living not far from Chen Zhixus region of activity. But what about the other texts? What can we learn from the fact that they do not mention Chen Zhixu? Four of the texts nos. 3 6 are collections of Quanzhen Daoist sayings and poetry. These Quanzhen Daoists probably never would have come into contact with Chen Zhixu, and three of them may even predate Chen Zhixus era. Two of the texts nos. 2, 7 are by Quanzhen authors who cite Zhang Boduan, and yet whose alchemical teachings resemble the teachings of the Southern Lineage more than those of the early Quanzhen patriarchs. The author of no. 7 was the disciple of the author of no. 2. These texts are undated though the cyclical year term mentioned in the preface to no. 7 may refer to 1364 or 1304 , so we cannot know whether the authors were ignorant of Chens activities or wrote before Chens time. Texts 8 and 9 are by Zhao Yizhen, and text 18 is a Qingwei alchemy text. I have argued that text 8 may refer indirectly to Chens teachings. Texts 9 and 18 teach Zhong L alchemy. It is not surprising that these texts do not cite Chen Zhixu, because they did not follow the same teachings, and in fact cite no other teachers at all. It is surprising, however, that the writings of Wang Daoyuan a.k.a. Wang Jie nos. 10 13 28 never mention Chen Zhixu. Wang came from Xiujiang , or present day Nanchang, Jiangxi province, and was probably living in 1392 this is the date of Zhang Yuchus preface for Wangs collection Huanzhen ji .29 Wang is said to have been a Quanzhen Daoist,30 but there is little evidence of this in Wangs 28

Several other commentaries by Wang Daoyuan DZ 100, 126, 760 are among the fty seven unlikely texts. There is also one more unlikely text by Wang in Daozang jiyao Huangdi yinfu jing zhujie . 29 It is also possible that Wang Daoyuan died before Zhang Yuchu ever read Huanzhen ji. Farzeen Baldrian Hussein believes that Wang was a contemporary of Chen Zhixu Schipper and Verellen, The Taoist Canon, 845 , and Catherine Despeux lists Wangs dates as . 1331 80 ibid., 1174 . I believe that Wang Daoyuan lived after Chen Zhixus time. 30

Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. Wang Daoyuan , 186.

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writings, which like Chens writings tend to cite Zhang Boduan more than Ma Danyang. Wang Daoyuan did not teach sexual alchemy: for him, the alchemical pharmaca are all to be gathered from within my body wushen . Wang Daoyuan was probably two or three decades younger than Chen Zhixu, lived in the same city, read the same scriptures and cited the same patriarchs, but never refers to Chen Zhixu, even though his friend Zhang Yuchu probably does. We can only guess why. Perhaps Wang was less strongly opposed to sexual alchemy than Zhang was, and so did not feel the need to criticize it in his essays. Or perhaps he regarded Chen as a negligible gure. The author of text 14 was a Quanzhen Daoist who came from Zhejiang and traveled to northern China. He does not cite any textual authorities, and seems removed from the world of Chen Zhixu. Text 17 is a collection of excerpts from other texts, including Wang Daoyuans Huanzhen ji, Quanzhen texts, and Southern Lineage texts. I cannot say why it does not mention Chen Zhixu. I have tried to explain why Daoist texts from the rst century and a half after Chen Zhixu should or should not have mentioned him, based on their genre, geography, and tradition. I have been able to account for almost all of the texts, except most notably for Wang Daoyuan. The second body of literature I should analyze is nonDaoist texts. Why did no references to Chen Zhixu from secular texts of the fourteenth and fteenth centuries turn up in my electronic search of the Siku quanshu? I can oer no fully condent answer, and only speculate that it is related to the history of the printing and circulation of Chens texts. The earliest extant editions of Chens texts are three commentaries from the 1480s.31 It seems that the editions available to Daoists such as Dai Qizong, Zhao Yizhen, Zhang Yuchu, and the editors of the Zhengtong daozang, were not available to a secular audience. Or perhaps there were more references to Chen in secular texts, but these are not included in the Siku quanshu, or are not extant. §2.2, Sixteenth Century 31

These are items A3.1, A4.2, and A4.5 in dissertation appendix 1.

571

§2.2.1, Wang Yangming.

Wang Yangming 14721529,32 one of the most important

thinkers in Chinese history, comments on Wuzhen pian sanzhu. In an essay 1508 and two poems 1514, Wang denounces Shangyangzi by name for the lewd commentary, as well as for general Daoist charlatanry. Yet this scorn for Chen Zhixu is not representative of Wangs attitude toward Daoism on the whole. As Liu Tsunyan has shown, throughout his life Wang was attracted to Daoist selfcultivation practices and writings, and the Daoist lifestyle. Even Wangs name Yangming is Daoist: he took it from the Yangming Grotto near Shaoxing Zhejiang province, where he undertook a curative Daoist meditation retreat in 1502.33 Liu writes that His earlier relationship to Taoist priests . . . was so close, and his knowledge of Taoist scriptures and treatises so profound, that it proved impossible for him to shake them o without injury to his whole system of thought.34 I will translate and analyze Wangs criticism of Chen Zhixu in section 3. Wang may have encountered Chens books in his native Zhejiang, or elsewhere, even Jiangxi where his wife came from. Wangs copy of Wuzhen pian sanzhu may have been printed in the 1480s. §2.2.2, Luo Qinshun.

Luo Qinshun 1465154735 makes the earliest

known reference to Chen Zhixus Cantong qi commentary, in his book Kunzhi ji , dated 1528. This book has been translated by Irene Bloom as Knowledge Painfuy Acquired. Luo is remembered as a defender of the views of the ChengZhu school of NeoConfucianism against the new teachings of Luos contemporary Wang Yangming. Although Luos home in Taihe county was about 120 miles southeast of Nanchang, Luo spent most of his o cial career in Nanjing,36 and this may have been where he picked up his Cantong qi commentaries. Chens Cantong qi commentary was published in or near Nanjing in 1484. Since Luos discussion of Chen does not touch 32

Personal name Shouren , byname , stylename Master of Yang Radiance Yangmingzi , from Yuyao in presentday Zhejiang province.

33

Liu Tsunyan, Wang Yangming and Taoism, 152.

34

Liu Tsunyan, Wang Yangming and Taoism, 162.

35

Byname Yunsheng , stylename Zhengan , from Taihe county presentday Jiangxi.

36

Bloom, Knowledge Painfuy Acquired, 24.

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on sexual alchemy, and I will not discuss Luo in section 3, I will discuss him in more detail here. In Kunzhi ji, Luo mentions Chens commentary within a larger discussion on Daoism. Luo discusses the teachings of spirits and transcendents shenxian zhi shuo before rejecting them as both metaphysically impossible and detrimental to society: Since ancient times there have been few men of intelligence who have not been attracted by theories about divine immortals shenxian zhi shuo . In my ignorance I also thought a lot about these things in my early years, and it was only later that I came to see through them. . . . If there were, in fact, something in the universe that was undying, it would mean that there would be no creation and transformation. If you truly understand this principle, there will certainly be no need to waste your mental eort on the question of immortality . But if your faith is not su cient, and you are impelled to try your luck against overwhelming odds, who will be to blame when the whole realm is brought to down ruin with you?37 Note that Luo nds it natural for men of intelligence certainly including Confucians to feel some attraction to Daoist thought, even though this is impractical and even harmful. Luo says that all elixir scriptures danjing ultimately derive from the Daode jing,38 yet he identies Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian as the core scriptures on transcendence: The mysterious essence of the school of immortality xianjia miaozhi

may be entirely contained in the Cantong qi, but one must read the Wuzhen pian . . . before attaining the stage of perfect understanding. The Wuzhen pian is fundamentally an elucidation of the practices of immortals.39 Daoist inner alchemists such as Chen Zhixu also identied these two texts as the most important transcendent scriptures. Luos category of the school of transcendents xianjia is probably more limited than our category of religious Daoism. Luos category includes Daoist thought and inneralchemical practice and perhaps Daoist selfcultivation in general, but Luo shows no interest in other forms 37

Bloom, Knowledge Painfuy Acquired, 16566. I have checked the original wording in Luo Qinshun, Kunzhi ji, 128 2.38b. 38

Bloom, Knowledge Painfuy Acquired, 162. Original wording in Luo Qinshun, Kunzhi ji, 128 2.38b.

39


573

of contemporary Daoism such as local cults, community rituals zhaijiao , thunder rites leifa , or the use of alchemical elixirs or talismans. It was inner alchemical thought and practice which were most attractive to Confucian elites.40 Luo thinks that the Cantong qis theories about the hexagrams were clever but lacked the slightest jot of usefulness. Therefore there came about the theory of a separate transmission outside the exoteric teachings.41 Yet Luo still respects Zhu Xis deep and real interest in the Cantong qi: Master Zhu edited and corrected this text . . . his feeling at the time was very deep.42 Luo read the available commentaries to the work, including Chen Zhixus commentary: The hidden meaning of the Cantong qi may be understood from the work of six commentators: Peng Xiao, Chen Xianwei, Chu Huagu, Yin Zhenren, Yu Yan, and Chen Zhixu. Yus annotation is the best, followed by the commentaries of the two Chens and Yin, whose interpretations are, however, somewhat obscure, probably because they regard this as an esoteric transmission. . . . There are also commentaries by two anonymous authors, one of whom speaks exclusively about inner alchemy . . . These are wide of the mark. Yu Yans . . . statements are on the whole lucid and yet reserved, which is why this is superior to other commentaries.43 Luo likes Chens commentary well enough for what it is, but says it is somewhat obscure. He admits there may be something profound about Daoist texts such as Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian, but rejects Chen Zhixus assumption that a secret teaching is encoded in these texts. Luo may not have been aware of Chens esoteric sexual teachings, and his reputation as an instigator of wantonness yin , or Luo likely would have included this among his criticisms of Daoism. §2.2.3, Taishang bashiyi hua tushuo .

This is an illustrated

version of the Huahu jing , collected together with prefaces by Ming Taizu r. 136898 and Chen Zhixu, and probably printed after 1524. This text has been studied by Yoshioka Yoshitoyo44 who owned it and Kubo Noritada.45 Yoshioka 40

See Liu Tsunyans work on this topic: The Penetration of Taoism into the Ming NeoConfucianist Elite, Taoist SelfCultivation in Ming Thought, Wang Yangming and Taoism.

41


42


43


44

Yoshioka, Dky to bukky, 1:18193.

574

argued that the text had been printed by a disciple of Chen Zhixu, around the time of the date of the preface by Ming Taizu 1374 , but Kubo argues that the text was printed by a lineal disciple of Zhao Yizhen sometime after 1524, perhaps by Li Desheng &? ? 1530 or one of his disciples.46 Kubo dates the text by an imperial title given to Shao Yuanjie 2 1459 1539 , an eminent Daoist from Mt. Longhu, so the editors of the text were probably active not far from Chens home.47 Bashiyi hua tushuo includes a Daode jing xu 463', by Chen Zhixu, which is probably the same as a text found in Jindan dayao and there called Daode jing xu 463.48 This is a preface to Chen Zhixus partial Daode jing commentary, which is contained within Jindan dayao. The inclusion of this material in a text in Zhao Yizhens tradition suggests that he and his lineal heirs read, valued, and transmitted some of Chens writings, probably including Jindan dayao. In Yuanyangzi fayu !0 5, Zhao Yizhen explicitly rejected a sexual interpretation of the elixir, but perhaps Zhao and his heirs accepted and valued other aspects of Chens teachings. §2.2.4, Lu Xixing.

Lu Xixing ) 1520 ca. 1601 49 cites Chen Zhixu in two

works,50 The two works, commentaries on the alchemical classics Cantong qi Zhouyi Cantong qi ceshu %-(, 1569 preface and Wuzhen pian Wuzhen pian xiaoxu "#8 , are included in his collection Fanghu waishi * .51 Like Chen, Lu taught sexual alchemy, and he cites Chens commentaries approvingly, though he does not mention Jindan dayao. I will translate and analyze this material in section 3 below. 45

Kubo, Rshi hachijichi ka to setsu ni tsuite: Chin Chikyo hon no sonzai o megutte; and idem, Rshi hachij ichi ka to setsu ni tsuite: sono shiry mondai o chshin to shite. 46

Kubo, Rshi hachijichi ka to setsu ni tsuite: Chin Chikyo hon no sonzai o megutte, 38.

47

Liu Tsun yan discusses Shao Yuanjie in Shao Yan chieh and Tao Chung wen, 168 70.

48

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 2.1a3 7b7.

49

Byname Changgeng , style names Submerged in Void Qianxu 7/ , External Secretary of Fanghu Fanghu Waishi * , and Buddhist Layman of Empty Skandhas Yunkong Jushi < , from Xinghua : in Yangzhou , present day Jiangsu province .

50

For Lus biography, see Liu Tsun yan, Lu Hsi hsing: A Confucian Scholar, Taoist Priest and Buddhist Devotee of the Sixteenth Century. 51

Zhouyi Cantong qi ceshu is reprinted in Zangwai daoshu, 5:255 86 and 6:519 67 two editions , and Wuzhen pian xiaoxu is reprinted in Zangwai daoshu, 5:318 37. Lus other extant works are: twelve texts in Fanghu waishi nine are commentaries, three are original works , a Zhuangzi commentary Nanhua fumo .$9 , and a Lankavat ra stra commentary Lengyan shuzhi 1> , in Dai Nihon zokuzky =;3, ser. 1, case 89, bk. 3 . Jindan jiuzheng pian + 8, one of Lus original writings in Fanghu waishi, has been translated in Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 149 53.

575

Later practitioners and historians of inner alchemy say that Lu Xixing founded a school of inner alchemy, the Eastern Lineage Dongpai . §2.2.5, Two Cantong qi commentaries.

Chen Zhixus Cantong qi commentary

was one of the editions available to Ming dynasty scholars who wanted to produce their own Cantong qi editions. The imperial critical bibliography Qinding siku quanshu zongmu tiyao * !"7 ) identies two scholars who used Chens edition to produce their own: Zhang Li % js 1568 and Zhu Changchun . ca. 16th c. .52 The Siku zongmu compilers note that Zhang Lis Zhouyi Cantong qi zhujie $ ,1 is based on Chens edition, with Chens commentary removed and replaced with commentaries selected from other commentators.53 Zhu Changchuns edition of Cantong qi, collected in HanWei congshu 498",54 was also merely a copy of Chen Zhixus edition, stripped of Chens commentary.55 We may infer that these editors valued Chens textual arrangement of Cantong qi, but did not approve of his sexual alchemical teachings, or perhaps his esoteric Daoist approach in general as Luo Qinshun put it . §2.2.6, Wang Shizhen.

Wang Shizhen 1526 90 56 severely denounces

Chen Zhixus sexual teachings as found in Wuzhen pian sanzhu. Wang was one of the most prominent literary gures of the Ming dynasty, and left voluminous collected writings. His Yanzhou sibu gao ; '6, second series xugao :6 , includes essays on the various Daoist and Buddhist texts he was reading, including Wuzhen pian sanzhu and Jindan dayao. In several of these essays we can see him weighing the orthodoxy of inner alchemical texts, querying to what extent their teachings could be 52

The other main alternatives to Chens textual arrangement of Cantong qi were Peng Xiaos edition DZ 1002, Zhouyi cantong qi fenzhang tongzhen yi $(� , and the so called old text guben edition. This old text edition was supposedly unearthed from a stone casket in Sichuan, but was probably actually forged by Du Yicheng 2 . ca. 1506 22 . It was printed in 1546 by the well known literatus Yang Shen /1488 1559 , and became quite popular. For a discussion of this forged edition, see Meng Naichang, Zhouyi Cantong qi kaobian, 59 62. 53

Ji Yun, Daojia lei cunmu zongmu, in Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 11b4 5.

54

HanWei congshu was a collection of thirty eight texts, compiled by Cheng Rong +3 . 1573 1616 , of Xinan . in present day Zhejiang province ; see Li Xueqin and L Wenyu, Siku da cidian, s.v. HanWei congshu 498", 2071. Siku da cidian does not list Cantong qi among the contents of the surviving version of HanWei congshu. 55

Ji Yun, Daojia lei cunmu zongmu, in Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 31a3 8.

56

Byname Yuanmen , style names Fengzhou 5 and Yanzhou Shanren ;, from Taicang present day Jiangsu province . Cf. Goodrich and Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography, 2:1399 405.

576

county

construed as sexual alchemy. Wang was a Buddhist layman, but also a devotee of the celebrated female Daoist guru Tanyangzi # Wang Daozhen ( , who had taught him to reject sexual alchemy. I will discuss this case at more length in section 3. Wang Shizhen spent some time in the northern capital presentday Beijing and Shandong, but spent most of his days in his native place of Taicang, located about twenty miles from Suzhou. Chens writings seem to have been as wellknown in Jiangsu as in Chens native Jiangxi, and we would expect them to be found in a cultural center like Suzhou. §2.2.7, Wang Qi.

Wang Qi . 15651614 ,57 in his Xu wenxian tongkao of

1586, includes entries on Chen Zhixu and Chens disciples and lineal masters. These entries add nothing not also found in Jindan dayao, whence Wang almost certainly gleaned this information. Xu wenxian tongkao58 was intended as a sequel to Ma Duanlins "' Wenxian tongkao * of 131924. Unlike Mas work, however, Wangs work contains very long sections on Daoism and Buddhism Xianfo kao , including subsections on religious history, terminology, hagiography, bibliography, and cult deities.59 Wang seems to be writing from a perspective sympathetic to Daoism listing Daoism before Buddhism , or even a Daoist insiders perspective listing the surnames and personal names of dozens of cult deities . Wang may have been more interested in Chens hagiography than his teachings, since his bibliography of religious Daoist works does not list any of Chens works. We may also infer that Wang was not a practitioner or admirer of sexual alchemy: one of the entries in his section on Daoist terminology is shenzhong fufu the husband and wife within ones own body , and his denition for dinglu !) caldron and furnace is body and mind shenxin .60 A sexual alchemists denitions for these terms would be quite di erent. Wangs choices of Daoist selfcultivation terms for 57

Byname Yuanhan %, stylename Hongzhou , from Shanghai. Cf. Goodrich and Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography, 2:135557.

58

Wangs work is not to be confused with a 1747 work of the same title, which also mentions Jindan dayao in its bibliographical section; see p. 564 above.

59

Daoist history: Lidai daojia zongji $ & j. 23940 ; Daoist terminology: Daoshu mingyi j. 767 ; Daoist hagiography: Daojia xingshi j. 24143 ; personal names of cult deities: Shizu kao: Fangwai 214.18a ; all Buddhist sections j. 24454 ; bibliography j. 179 .

60

Wang Qi, Xu wenxian tongkao 241.4b2, 8.

577

denition seem to have been drawn from the Huangting jing '), and possibly from alchemical writings in the ZhongL tradition. Wang spent almost his whole life in Songjiang Shanghai, which is in the vicinity of presentday Jiangsu province. §2.2.8, Peng Haogu.

Peng Haogu # js 158661 reprints Chens Duren jing

commentary and Panhuo ge in his Daoist anthology Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu *

internal prefaces 1597 1600.62 This anthology includes commentaries

to Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian, and in which Peng mentions Chen Zhixu. Peng also produced a separate reedition of DZ 142, Wuzhen pian sanzhu, entitled Wuzhen pian sizhu . $, and he appraises Chen in the preface to this work. Peng did not reject the sexual alchemy of Wuzhen pian sanzhu altogether, but preferred his own, dierent, approach. I will discuss Pengs alchemical teachings and views of Chen Zhixu below in section 3. Peng served as an ocial in Shanxi, Hebei, and Sichuan during the period 1591 93.63 Pengs hometown of Macheng, Hubei is about 100 miles north of Jiangxi, where Chens works were originally published, so it is more likely that Peng encountered Chens works in Macheng than in Shanxi, Hebei, or Sichuan. §2.2.9, Summary: sixteenth century.

Chens Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian

commentaries made more of an impact on these sixteenthcentury readers than his Jindan dayao did: the comments of seven of these nine readers are directed at these two commentaries. Two readers, Wang Yangming and Wang Shizhen, reacted violently to Chens sexual teachings. Both Wangs were interested in some aspects of Daoist practice, but were not professional Daoists; perhaps there is something about their partial selfidentication with Daoism that made them react so harshly to sexual alchemy I will address this again in section 3. Four readers, Luo Qinshun, 61

Personal name Fu , byname ? Bojian 7, stylenames Buddhist Layman from a Gully in the West Hills of Chuhuang Chuhuang Xiling Yihuo Jushi ('!1, and Master of Radiant Yang Xiyangzi +% , of Macheng " in presentday Hubei province. He seems to refer to himself as Fu in Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu, preface, 1a8 Zangwai daoshu, 6:1, so it must be his personal name.

62

Other known works by Peng include the collections Daoyan neiwai ji *& and Daoyan wuzhong *

cf. Zhang Zhizhe, Daojiao wenhua cidian, s.v. Daoyan neiwai ji and Daoyan wuzhong, 412 13, Wuzhen pian sizhu

A4.14 in dissertation appendix 1, and two texts listed in the Mingshi Yiyue 6, 96.2348a9; and Leibian zashuo 3/2-, 98.2450a1.

63

Wong Shiu Hon, Investigations into the Authenticity of the Chang SanFeng ChuanChi, 34, citing Lantai fajian lu 4 ,50, by He Chuguang js 1583, et al.

578

Zhu Changchun, Zhang Li, and Peng Haogu, had neutral responses to Chens commentaries. One reader, Lu Xixing, a Daoist, adopted Chens teachings as his own. Some of the readers were only interested in a few aspects of Chens writings: the editors of Bashiyi hua tushuo were interested only in his remarks on the Daode jing, Zhu Changchun and Zhang Li only in his textual arrangement of the Cantong qi, and Wang Qi only in Chen as a Daoist gure. These readers came from Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Hubei: from this evidence, we do not see Chens teachings spreading far from their places of publication in Jiangxi and Nanjing. Yet a look at sixteenthcentury booklists nds his works collected farther aeld in Henan,64 Hebei,65 and Jiangsu66 and printed in Henan and Sichuan.67

§2.3, Seventeenth Century §2.3.1, A gazetteer.

A Ming gazetteer, Qian ji +, produced around 1604 by Guo

Zizhang 15421618 , et al., records Chen Zhixu as an alchemist who traveled to Sitang in presentday Guizhou province , and made alchemical elixirs on the top of Mt. Wansheng

there. This entry has no information not found in other

sources, and mistakenly lists Chen as a Tangdynasty gure. I list this reference in the section on Chens biography and hagiography in chapter 2. §2.3.2, A medical text.

Zhang Jiebin $ 15631640 68 quotes Jindan dayao

three times in his 1624 medical text, Leijing -. The quotes are on the power of essence jing # and qi to nourish each other,69 and the heartminds rulership of the

64

Chaoshi Baowen Tang shumu, by Chao Biao . . Jiajing "! period, 152266 , lists Jindan dayao thrice and Jindan zhengli daquan once; ibid., 222, 225, 229.

65

Baichuan shuzhi, by Gao Ru ' . 1540 , lists Jindan dayao; ibid., 162.

66

Zhao Dingyu shumu, by Zhao Yongxian %& 153596 , lists Jindan dayao, as well as Fanghu waishi by Lu Xixing, Tanyang Dashi zhuan ( by Wang Shizhen, and Tanyang yiyan (* the words of Wang Daozhen ; Zhao Yongxian, Zhao Dingyu shumu, 57, 59.

67

Gujin shuke, by Zhou Hongzu js 1559 , lists Jindan zhengli daquan twice 374, 384 .

68

Bynames Jingyue and Huiqing , stylename Master Who Pervades and Makes All as One Tongyizi , from Shanyin in Shaoxing ), presentday Zhejiang province . 69

Zhang Jiebin, Leijing, j. 1; and fuyi ,, j. 3; quoting DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 3.1b56.

579

body as the sovereign of a country.70 The material in the latter quote from Jindan dayao is based on the Huangting jing. Leijing quotes many other Daoist texts as authorities. §2.3.3, A Daoist hagiography.

Lidai xianshi = by Wang Jianzhang ,

16451718 71 contains a tantalizing account of Chen Zhixus disappearance from the world of the living just before the end of the Yuan dynasty, as discussed on page 76 above. §2.3.4, A sexual alchemist.

Shangyang 2 i.e., Shangyangzi is cited once

and brie y in Jindan zhenchuan

4, a text on sexual alchemy. Jindan zhenchuan

was compiled by Sun Ruzhong b. 1575, . 1616 , together with two kindred spirits, Zhang Chonglie &% and Li Kan -.72 I discuss Jindan zhenchuan on pages 42427 above. §2.3.5, Cantong qi studies.

Jiang Yibiao ;) . 1614 73 reprints Chen Zhixus

Cantong qi commentary in toto in his Guwen Cantong qi jijie #36 preface dated 1614 , along with the commentaries of Peng Xiao .<, Chen Xianwei +@5, and Yu Yan A.74 Jiangs edition is in the spurious old text arrangement, with the commentaries inserted into this new textual layout. Jiangs Cantong qi edition was reprinted in the Siku quanshu. Jiang styles himself Fuyangzi, and claims to have received the alchemical teachings of a true teacher: I encountered an ultimate man, and undeservedly received his instructions on the elixir 079'* .75 Jiang appears to have been a Daoist layman, but was probably not a professional Daoist. I have discovered nothing else about him. Another collection reprinting Chens commentary is Jindai mishu 1!, 70

Zhang Jiebin, Leijing, j. 3, quoting DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 4.5a5 .

71

Byname Kentang $, stylename Ququzi "", Daoist stylenames Yushuzi :, Yushu Zhenren : , from Shaoxing (>, Zhejiang. 72

Jindan zhenchuan is in Zangwai daoshu, 11:86076 and 25:45970; translated in Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 15369. The citation of Shangyang occurs in Zhang Chonglies commentary, line 19a9 at Zangwai daoshu, 11:871; line 4b8 at Zangwai daoshu, 25:461; and Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 168.

73

Stylename Master of Returning Yang Fuyangzi /2 , from Yuyao in presentday Zhejiang province .

74

Peng Xiao d. 955 , DZ 1002, Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang tongzhenyi; Chen Xianwei S. Song , DZ 1007, Zhouyi cantong qi jie #6; Yu Yan S. Song and early Yuan , DZ 1005, Zhouyi Cantong qi fahui and DZ 1006, Zhouyi Cantong qi shiyi #?8. See the list of all extant Cantong qi commentaries on pages 65758 below.

75

Jiang Yibiao, Guwen Cantong qi jijie, rst preface, 2a.

580

compiled by Mao Jin 15991659. Mao is remembered for his private library the Jigu Ge of Changshu , Jiangsu province, and the various book series congshu " he published. Jindai mishu includes the same four Cantong qi commentaries as Jiang Yibiaos edition. Siku quanshu reprints these same four Cantong qi commentaries, together with those of Zhu Xi and Jiang Yibiao himself. The Siku quanshu editors must have chosen to reprint these four commentaries Peng, Chen, Chen, and Yu in the Siku quanshu due to the popularity of these commentaries in previous reprints such as Jiang Yibiaos and Mao Jins.76 Kwon Kkjung # 15851659, a Korean inner alchemist described as the great master of lateChson inner alchemy, is said to have drawn on Chen Zhixus teachings, presumably as found in Chens Cantong qi commentary. According to Jung Jaeseo, Kwon established a systematic neidan philosophy in his Chamdongkae juhae Commentary to the Cantong qi. It o ered a complete ontology, theory of human nature, system of alchemical pratice and doctrine of immortality.77 Although I have not seen Kwons Cantong qi commentary, I infer that it places Chens Cantong qi commentary in high regard, since Kwons inneralchemical teachings re ect the Cantong qi and the dual cultivation of nature and life as developed by Zhang Boduan and Chen Zhixu.78 Another text citing Chens Cantong qi commentary is Yitu mingbian of 1706, by Hu Wei 16331714, a scholar from the Han Learning Hanxue movement.79 Hu cites Chen Zhixus Cantong qi commentary four times. Hu often cites Yu Yan on the Cantong qi, and prefers Yus approach to an esoteric reading like Chens. Hu was a textual critic, not an alchemist: he wanted to prove or disprove the authenticity of ancient Yijing literature. §2.3.6, A Quanzhen Daoist author.

Wu Shouyang 15741640/44; or

76

The Siku quanshu editors were familiar with Mao Jins Cantong qi edition, mentioning it at Ji Yun, Daojia lei zongmu, in Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 30a89. 77

Jung, Daoism in Korea, 800. Here Jung also mentions another Korean Cantong qi commentary, Chamdong ko $, by S Myngng ! 171687, but there is no indication that Ss work mentions Chen Zhixu.

78

Jung, Daoism in Korea, 812.

79

Bynames Feiming % and Dongqiao , from Deqing in presentday Zhejiang province.

581

1550ca. 163580 cites Chen Zhixu in three of his texts, Neilian jindan xinfa " 1622, Xianfo hezong yulu &+ 1630?, and Tianxian zhengli zhilun ) 1639.81 Wu described himself as an eighthgeneration lineal holder in the Jing branch Jingzi Pai , of the Longmen - lineage of Quanzhen Daoism.82 As would be expected of a Quanzhen Daoist, Wu was critical of sexual cultivation, yet he still quotes Chens words at least six times in his writings. I will analyze one of these quotations in section 3 below, showing that Wu is actually doing a counterreading of Chens words, using them to criticize sexual alchemy. §2.3.7, Summary: seventeenth century.

In the seventeenth century, the Cantong

qi was a text of great interest to cosmological investigators, and Chen was considered one of the most important commentators on this classic. His Jindan dayao was considered an authoritative text, even among nonDaoists such as the medical writer Zhang Jiebin. Chen was also remembered hazily as a legendary local alchemist in Guizhou. Chens writings were being read as far away Korea, probably as reprinted in the 1591 collection Daoshu quanji. Yet aside from Kwon Kkjung and the Guizhou gazetteer, all of these other readers hailed from the same provinces as readers from the previous centuries: Jiangxi, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang. Of the three known printings of Chens works in this century, the places of publication of two are known: Zhejiang and Jiangsu.83 Of the three known booklists from this century listing Chens works, one was from Fujian,84 and two from Jiangsu.85 80

Byname Duanyang % , stylename Master Who Dashes into the Void Chongxuzi , from Jian in presentday Jiangxi province. 81

I found these citations through searches of electronic texts from the website Loujin Ge. Editions of Xianfo hezong yulu and Tianxian zhengli zhilun can be found in Daozang jiyao, Bi coll. these are also photoreproduced in Zangwai daoshu, vol. 5. I have found a reprint of Neilian jindan xinfa in WuLiu zhengzong, compiled by Wu Yijiang, 41254, and a text with a similar title Nei jindan xinfa in Daozang jinghua, ser. 4, no. 7 ser. 4, no. 3, in the hardcover printing. Wu Shouyangs other works are Jindan yaojue and Wu Zhenren dandao jiupian

$(. 82

Liu Tsunyan, Wu Shouyang: The Return to the Pure Essence, 186.

83

These are the editions by Jiang Yibiao and Mao Jin, each reprinting Chens Cantong qi commentary.

84

Xushi Hongyu Lou shumu, by Xu Bo 15921639, dated 1602, lists Jindan zhengli daquan; ibid., 354 listed under Chao Biao.

85

Qianqing Tang shumu, by Huang Yuji !#' 162991, dated ca. 164050, lists Jindan dayao and Cantong qi fenzhang zhu ibid., 439; and Yushan Qian Zunwang cangshu mulu huibian, by Qian Zeng * 16291701, lists Duren jing zhu, Cantong qi zhu, and Daofan zhengzong wujing sishu daquan ibid., 253, 254, 264.

582

§2.4, Eighteenth Century §2.4.1, Two literati sexualalchemist readers.

Chens Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian

commentaries and his Jindan dayao were admired and closely read by the two friends Tao Susi and Qiu Zhaoao, both of them sexual alchemists. Tao Susi <.: . 1700 11 86 printed an abbreviated version of Jindan dayao in his collection Daoyan wuzhong K

M.87 Daoyan wuzhong also contains Taos own Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian

commentaries Cantong qi maiwang 0&/5 and Wuzhen pian yuezhu +-Q($ , both of which cite Chens commentaries. Qiu Zhaoao [ js 1685, 1638 1717 88 is a central gure in my story of Chens legacy. Qiu took the famous Neo Confucian Huang Zongxi B!U 1610 95 as his master in 1667. He read Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian for the rst time in 1685, his rst year at court. While serving at court, he took part in the projects of editing the Da Qing yitong zhi 69 and Mingshi # , discussed Neo Confucian thought Lixue 8T, Learning of the Principle with his friends Li Guangdi and Zhang Yushu 2 , both of whom are mentioned below in this chapter , and also wrote commentaries to the Confucian Four Classics and the poems of Du Fu .89 He discussed sexual alchemy with the Kangxi emperor on the emperors birthdays in 1714, 1715, and 1717 soon before Qiu died . During a temporary return home on sick leave to Zhejiang in 1695, he and Tao Susi studied self cultivation together, probably under Master Sun Jiaoluan *4Z sexual alchemist and father of Sun Ruzhong .90 86 Original name Shiyu , style names Master Who Ever Retains Cuncunzi , Man of the Way Who Penetrates the Subtleties Tongwei Daoren ;DK , and Pure Minded Buddhist Layman Qingjingxin Jushi 67" , of the Wondrous Lotus Studio Miaolian Zhai SW , Guiji EP in present day Zhejiang province . 87

Reprinted in Zangwai daoshu, vol. 10.

88

Original name Congyu 3>, byname Cangzhu F', Daoist style name Master Who Knows a Bit Zhijizi % ? , style name late in life Zhangxi Laosou =G), of the Yong River , Yin O county present day Ningbo, Zhejiang province .

89

Sishu shuoyue ,N( and Du shi xiangzhu JI$. He was able to present the latter work to the Kangxi 1L Emperor for him to read. 90

This biographical information on Qiu Zhaoao comes from three sources: a biographical notice by Zhang Daochuan 2KC Wuxianzi + included in the Daozang jinghua edition of Wuzhen pian jizhu, ser. 6, no. 1, p. 58 ; Zhang Huizhi, Zhonuo lidai renming da cidian, 285; Tongchen, Qiu Zhaoao xingli lechao; and Tongchenzi Zhou Quanbin, Qiu Zhaoao Xiansheng shengping jianbian [ XR, in Zhijizi, CanWu jizhu. Zhou Quanbian has used a friends notes on Qiu Zhaoaos chronological autobiography zizhu nianpu AY as his main source. Sun Jiaoluan a.k.a. Yanxia Sanren HV@, 1505 1610 is Sun Ruzhongs father. Sun Ruzhong b. 1575, . 1616 ,

583

Qiu collected various commentaries to the Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian in his Guben Zhouyi Cantong qi jizhu

*43 170310 and Wuzhen pian jizhu $'< 43 1703,91 including Chens commentaries. In 1710, the year he printed these two works, he was serving in court as a Hanlin academician and Right Palace Attendant You Shilang " in the Ministry of Personnel Libu 0, rank 3a. Qiu praises Chens teachings in his prefaces to these works, and in a guest preface for Tao Susis Cantong qi commentary. I will discuss Tao and Qiu below in section 3. §2.4.2, Two Quanzhen Daoist readers.

Liu Yiming ; 1734182192 quotes

Chen Zhixu in no fewer than nine texts, most of them in his 1799 collection Daoshu shierzhong 9%:.93 Liu called himself an eleventhgeneration lineal heir of the Longmen lineage of Quanzhen Daoism, and preferred pure qingjing -@ alchemy to dualcultivation shuangxiu A# alchemy. Many of Lius writings are voluminous commentaries on alchemical classics, or other texts of alchemical interest even including the novel Xiyou ji 8). I will argue in section 3 that Liu was ambivalent about Chens teachings, respecting Chen as an authority from the past, and incorporating Chens teachings into his own system, though probably without practicing them personally. I can tell from the individual wording of Liu Yimings quotes from Chens works that Liu was reading Chens works as printed in Jindan zhengli daquan or Daoshu quanji, and not from the Zhengtong daozang. We have seen how both of these collections had national distribution Jindan zhengli daquan was printed in government oces or even international distribution Daoshu quanji was read by Korean alchemists. So Liu Yiming was able to become familiar with Chens teachings, even living far from southern China, and within the milieu of Quanzhen together with Zhang Chonglie and Li Kan, compiled Jindan zhenchuan. For a discussion of it, see pages 42427. 91 Guben Zhouyi Cantong qi jizhu and Wuzhen pian jizhu are reproduced in Daozang jinghua. Qiu also wrote at least two other Daoist works: Jindan tiliang ,+, and Huanglao canwu 5*$ cf. Daozang jinghua edition of Wuzhen pian jizhu, p. 58. 92

Stylenames Master Awakened to the Prime Wuyuanzi $, Master of Simplicity Supuzi (>, and RoughlyClothed Loafer Beihe Sanren .=1, from Quwo presentday Shanxi province and active in presentday Gansu province. Cf. Liu Ning, Liu Yiming xiudao sixiang yanjiu, 36.

93

Eight texts are in Daoshu shierzhong. These are: Cantong zhizhi * ; Jindan sibaizi jie 6; Tonuan wen /B ; Wugen shu jie 2&?6; Wuzhen zhizhi $' ; Xiuzhen biannan #'DC; Xiuzhen houbian #'D; and Xiuzhen jiuyao #'!. Another text, Baihui xiangzhu 7, I have seen only as an etext.

584

Daoism. Liu Huayang 1736?94 quotes Jindan dayao twice in his Huayang jinxian zhenglun

1790. Liu was a Chan Buddhist monk who was unable to

attain the wisdom he sought until he encountered Wu Shouyang and received his secret instructions.95 Later Daoists printed the works of Wu Shouyang and Liu Huayang together under the title WuLiu xianzong , and now consider them to have formed a school together, WuLiu Pai . Since Wu died in 1644 or 1640, Liu could not have physically encountered Wu, so Liu must have met him in a vision, or perhaps he considered Wu to be living on in the world as an immortal. The content of the Jindan dayao quotation in Lius work is negligible.96 It is not surprising that Liu should have been familiar with Chens writings, as they are quoted in Wus works, which Liu knew well. §2.4.3, Imperial publications.

The great imperial collectanea Gujin tushu jicheng

170626 prints dozens of Daoist texts in its section on the arts of stillness jinong , including Chens song Panhuo ge from Jindan dayao.97 Perhaps the editors of Gujin tushu jicheng selected this Song on Judging Delusions for inclusion because this song is so explicitly critical of all sorts of degenerate even coprophiliac selfcultivation practices that the editors felt Panhuo ge re ected an orthodox viewpoint.98 We may also note that Gujin tushu jicheng reprints a mutilated version of Wuzhen pian sanzhu, with only the commentary attributed to Xue Daoguang included, and the controversial commentaries by Lu Ziye and Chen Zhixu excised. The editors of Gujin tushu jicheng regarded Chen Zhixu as an authoritative Daoist, worthy of the attention of cultivated readers, but their selective reprinting of Panhuo ge and Wuzhen pian sanzhu amounts to a willful distortion or counterreading of Chens oeuvre. The general editors of Gujin tushu jicheng were Chen Menglei 16511741 and Jiang Tingxi 16691723. Chen hailed from presentday 94

From Hongdu i.e., Hongzhou , presentday Nanchang , Jiangxi province.

95

Liu Huayang, Huiming jing, preface, 1b1 in Zangwai daoshu, 5:876.

96

Liu Huayang, Jinxian zhenglun, 26b8, 47a4 in Zangwai daoshu, 5:931, 942.

97

Chen Menglei, Gujin tushu jicheng, j. 302.

98

I have translated this text on pages 2049 above.

585

Fujian province, and Jiang came from Changshu, in presentday Jiangsu province, but this probably would not have had any bearing on their familiarity with or views of these works by Chen Zhixu. Chen Menglei was also an associate of Li Guangdi.99 The imperiallysponsored rhymedictionary Yuding Peiwen yunfu ! 1711, under the chief editorship of Zhang Yushu 1642 1711, quotes Chens Cantong qi commentary twice. From their selection of passages for quotation, we can see that Zhang Yushu and his compilers regarded Chen as an authority on the Cantong qi, specically as an authority with esoteric knowledge. Recall that Zhang Yushu was an associate of the courtiercumsexualalchemist Qiu Zhaoao. There was a supplement to Peiwen yunfu, entitled Yunfu shiyi ! 1720, under the editorship of Zhang Tingyu 1672 1755,100 which quotes Jindan dayao twice. These quotes are brief and of negligible signicance.101 As a Grand Secretary, Zhang Tingyu was one of the highest o cials in the realm, and a member of the Yongzheng Emperors inner court. He was the chief compiler of the Mingshi 1739, but before working on this project, he also compiled another imperial rhymedictionary, Yuding pianzi leibian " 1728, which is of great signicance for my study of Chen Zhixus legacy.102 This dictionary quotes Chens works no less than 119 times, with almost all of these quotes coming from Jindan dayao. Many of these quotes show the editors interest in and approval of sexual alchemy. According to his choice of quotations, the editor or editors also seems to support Chen Zhixus outrageous contention that the Buddhist patriarchs of the past had all secretly practiced sexual alchemy. Recall that it was this notion that made Wang Shizhen particularly incensed. The editor quotes many Daoist sources, but Buddhist sources very rarely, and NeoConfucian sources not at all. I will discuss this in detail below in section 3. 99

Zhang Huizhi, Zhonuo lidai renming da cidian, 1389.

100

Bynames Hengchen and Yanzhai , from Tongcheng in presentday Anhui province, a Grand Secretary Da Xueshi and Grand Minister Shangshu of the highest rank 1a during the Yongzheng reign period 1722 35. Zhang left the literary collection Chuanjing tang ji . 101

In Zhang Yushu, Peiwen yunfu, 4:4478.3, 4482.2 both in j. 34.

102

This is according to Li Xueqin and L Wenyu, Siku da cidian, s.v. Pianzi leibian ", 2058 59. According to Qingshi gao, 47:4365b8 9, Wu Shiyu ? 1733 presented a Pianzi leibian in 1719. I trust the exhaustive entry in Siku da cidian more than this short and perplexing line in Qingshi gao.

586

Another imperiallysponsored dictionary, Yuding fenlei zijin I0j!g 1722 , quotes Chen Zhixu once,103 but briey and without signicance. Qinding siku quanshu zongmu tiyao, compiled between 1781 and 1789 under the chief editorship of Ji Yun @3 17241805 , has entries on Chen Zhixus Jindan dayao and Cantong qi commentary; the latter text is also reprinted in Siku quanshu. The entries on Jindan dayao and Zhuzhen yuanao jicheng dG YV" mildly criticize Chen for claiming that all Buddhist and Daoist teachings boil down to alchemy: This book of Chen Zhixus seems not to stray from Mr. Wei Boyangs original principles, but his attempt to drag together all books on Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Buddhism, and identify them as teachings on the golden elixir, cannot but be far fetched. Every form of scholarship has its origin and development. Not only are Buddhism and Daoism di erent paths, but the Daoist school itself may not be summed up within a single track. AU6 a9(7 ZeO$\=8J&_MX*_D H[C104 What Zhao Youqin says is also all in line with the principles of Wuzhen pian. His Xianfo tongyuan, with elaborate and wideranging citations, argues that entering the chamber to seek the elixir is something that all transcendents and buddhas

or, all Daoists and Buddhists have done. This idea is passed in the form of Chen Zhixus Jindan dayao, which illuminates the meaning of Xianfo tongyuan most clearly. However, as for saying that this is what the Buddhists mean when they speak of a separate transmission outside the teachings, not based in language, we do not know if this truly accords with the facts or not! bR1-?EGc#/&\ch`Qf&?$:, .W>PAU6 B/T2&\]^'>*kK )W !#95/4 +105 The compilers of Siku zongmu very sensibly object to Chen Zhixus claim that all Daoist and Buddhist masters have practiced his form of alchemy. In this, they agree with Wang Shizhen, but disagree with Zhang Tingyu in Pianzi leibian.106 R. Guy has written that the goal of the Taoist section of the catalog was to establish clearly, and in some cases distinguish between, the various philosophical impulses which were

103

He Zhuo, Yuding fenlei zijin, j. 61, s.v. liuwu .

104

Ji Yun, Daojia lei zongmu, in Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 27b36.

105

Ji Yun, Daojia lei zongmu, in Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 34b25.

106


587

called Taoist.107 The Siku zongmu compilers were exponents of the Han learning movement, and so they were interested in determining the authenticity of the Cantong qi in its various editions. They have nothing bad to say about Chens Cantong qi commentary, calling his annotations clear, open, and uent mingbai xianchang :1.108 This praise of Chens text is copied verbatim from Wang Qis Xu wenxian tongkao of 1586, which says little more about Chens text than this.109 In their entry on a Qing dynasty work, Gu Cantong qi jizhu #-, by Liu Wulong 28 js 1723, the compilers of Siku zongmu write that Liu ought not to have based his commentary solely on Yu Yans work, but should have drawn on the works of Peng Xiao and Chen Zhixu as well: As for Yu Yans Fahui, it truly is not as good as the commentaries by Peng Xiao and Chen Zhixu. Taking Yu Yans work alone as his basis, Lius discussion could not be accurate. ;*(0 '6%!+,75 <3110 The compilers of Siku zongmu say of Yu Yans DZ 1005, Zhouyi Cantong qi fahui # *(: Although he was not up to the level of Peng Xiao, Chen Xianwei, and Chen Zhixu in terms of specialized Daoist learning, he is very erudite in his use of materials. 9 '6%:.%!+,/"$4)

&111

Note the contrasting attitudes of Luo Qinshun112 and the compilers of the Siku zongmu. The compilers preferred Chen Zhixus work to Yu Yans for the reason that Chen had more Daoist esotericism than Yu Yan, while Luo preferred Yu Yans to Chens because Chen had too much Daoist esotericism. We must remember that not all nonDaoist literati shared Luo Qinshuns dismissive attitude toward Daoist works. The Siku zongmu compilers also criticize Li Guangdis . 18th c. 107

Guy, The Emperors Four Treasuries, 115.

108

Ji Yun, Daojia lei zongmu, in Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 31a3.

109

Xu wenxian tongkao 185.4269.

110

Ji Yun, Daojia lei cunmu zongmu, in Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 14a45.

111


112

See p. 574 above.

588

Cantong qi zhangju for following the spurious old text edition,113 and for saying that among the other editions, Zhu Changchuns edition found in HanWei congshu114 is closest to the original version of Cantong qi. After looking at Zhus edition, the compilers of Siku zongmu note that Zhus edition was simply a copy of Chen Zhixus edition stripped of Chens commentary, that Li Guangdi did not recognize this, and therefore that Li did not know what he was talking about.115 The Siku zongmu compilers betray their distinctively HanLearning approach here. They seem again to be defending Chens work against those who would dismiss it. §2.4.4, Other reference works.

In a commentary on the poems of Su Shi

10371101 from the turn of the eighteenth century, Zha Shenxing 1650 1728116 cites a line from Chens Cantong qi commentary in his note on a term appearing in one of Su Shis poems.117 Like Qiu Zhaoao, Zha was a disciple of Huang Zongxi. It is conceivable that Qiu could have introduced Zha to alchemical literature, or Zha may have encountered it the same way Qiu did, though he probably was not a practicing alchemist as Qiu was. In Guizhou tongzhi of 1741, Chen is listed in the section on Daoists and Buddhists of Sinan prefecture, in the same words as the entry in Qian ji of 1604.118 The chief editor of Guizhou tongzhi was E Ertai 16771745, an associate of Zhang Tingyu at court. §2.4.5, Summary: eighteenth century.

The most important nding from this

analysis of eighteenthcentury citations of Chen and his works is that there seems to have been active interest in Daoism, inner alchemy, and even sexual alchemy, among high o cials in the Kangxi and Yongzheng courts, probably with the approval of these emperors themselves. Qiu Zhaoao stands at the center of this web of linkages. 113

Ji Yun, Daojia lei cunmu zongmu, in Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 11ab.

114

See p. 576 above.

115


116

Zha Shenxing came from Haining in presentday Zhejiang. He was awarded a jinshi degree out of recognition for his poetry, but did not stay long at court. 117

Zha Shenxing, Su shi buzhu 39.11a78. The term is ziwu the zi and wu doublehours, approximately midnight and noon.

118

E Ertai, Guizhou tongzhi 32.13b5 p. 637.

589

Qiu was a lineal heir of Wang Yangming Wang YangmingHuang ZongxiQiu Zhaoao, though his attitude toward sexual alchemy was quite opposite to Wangs. At home in Guiji, Qiu knew Tao Susi. At court, Qiu knew Li Guangdi who compiled a Cantong qi commentary, and Zhang Yushu and Zha Shenxing who were aware of Chen Zhixus work but not active followers. Li Guangdi knew Chen Menglei, who selectively incorporated Chen Zhixus works into Gujin tushu jicheng unless it was the other editor Jiang Tingxi who did this, and Qiu may have known Chen Menglei too. The court ocial Zhang Tingyu seems to have been a partisan of Daoism and an avid reader of Jindan dayao. Zhang knew E Ertai who perhaps coincidentally listed Chen Zhixu in the gazetteer he edited. Many of these gures came from southern China, but I think that, in this case, interest in Chen Zhixus works spread through court channels rather than among retired scholars at home, as had been the case in previous centuries. Recall that it was at court that Qiu Zhaoao rst read Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian. The other tradition appearing in this section is the scattered Longmen Quanzhen Daoist lineage, represented here by Liu Yiming and Liu Huayang. Liu Yimings reading of Chens works was probably unrelated to geography: he must have found Chen in collections of universal distribution such as Jindan zhengli daquan or Daoshu quanji. But Liu Huayang came from a local Jiangxi tradition of Quanzhen Daoism. Analysis of publishing and booklists from this century reveals that most of the book publishing and collecting activity taking place in Zhejiang with three reprintings119 and one booklist120. The second most active site of book publication and collecting was the imperial court. It seems Chens works began to spread out of the southern region more during this century: his works were also reprinted in Korea,121 and listed in booklists from Shandong122 and Liaoning.123 119

Tao Susis Daoyan wuzhong reprints Jindan dayao; Qiu Zhaoaos Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian commentary collections reprint Chens commentaries. 120

Zhejiang tongzhi, by Li Wei , et al., dated 1736, mentions a reprint of Jindan zhengli daquan; ibid., 245.19b 7:4058.

121

Doga jikji dokyo kyng, which reprints Jindan dayao.

122

Jiaqu Tang shumu, by Lu Liao , dated 1730, lists Wuzhen pian sanzhu and Jindan zhengli daquan; ibid., 1938,

590

§2.5, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Most of the citations of Chen Zhixu and his works for this last period I found in Daoist etexts. I know of very few references from nonDaoist texts. For previous centuries, I found these references through a search of the Siku quanshu database, but this does not cover works written after 1776. §2.5.1, The Western Lineage of inner alchemy.

Li Xiyue 180656124

founder of the Western Lineage Xipai of inner alchemy, cites Chen Zhixu a halfdozen times in his Daoqiao tan , as well as brie y in two subcommentaries to commentaries by Liu Yiming.125 Ma Jiren points out that Li Xiyue established his Western Lineage in contradistinction to the Eastern Lineage of Lu Xixing 1520 ca. 1601, who lived two centuries before him. Ma says that although Li Xiyue set himself up in contradistinction to Lu Xixing, Lis practices were actually based on Lus. Like his practices, even Li Xiyues names Western Moon Xiyue , Harboring Void Hanxu , and Round Peak Yuanjiao are variations of Lu Xixings names Western Star Xixing , Submerged in Void Qianxu , and Square Jug Fanghu , a transcendent mountainisle.126 Sexual alchemy played an important role in the teachings of both authors. Zeng Chuanhui also notes that Li Xiyue regarded the sexual alchemist Sun Jiaoluan 15051610 as an ancestral patriarch.127 Only one of Lis quotations of Chen Zhixu is of interest; it is a re interpretation by Li of Chens words. Li is advocating a less physical form of sexual alchemy in which the man and woman do not remove their clothes, and touch in spirit only. Of more interest is a preface to Lis subcommentary Wugen shu ci zhujie , which compares Lis work to Chens Wuzhen pian sanzhu. I will discuss 1942. 123

Cao Yin, Lianting shumu, 2645, lists Wuzhen pian sanzhu.

124

Byname Hanxu , stylename Changyi Shanren , from Leshan in presentday Sichuan province.

125

Daodejing zhushi , and Wugen shu ci zhujie, photoreproduced in Daozang jinghua.

126

Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 109; Hao Qin, Longhu dandao, 137.

127

Zeng Chuanhui, Yuandai Cantong xue, 108. Because Tao Susi and Qiu Zhaoao studied under Sun Jiaoluan, Li Xiyue took Sun as his ancestral teacher, Zeng says that Sun Jiaoluans teachings were wellrespected and transmitted during the Qing dynasty; ibid., 113

591

this in section 3 below. Li Xiyues alchemical tradition is still being transmitted today, and two later writers in this tradition also quote Chen Zhixu. Wang Qihuo #8R . 190016 128 editor of Daotong dacheng D9 a major collection of Daoist texts printed in 1900 , cites Chen in three of his texts.129 Wangs disciple Xu Songyao 0E= also cites Chen Zhixu.130 According to Xu Songyao, Wang Qihuo was a secondgeneration disciple of Li Xiyue: Li Xiyue transmitted his teachings Wu Tiantie "U of Shaanxi among others , and Wu Tiantie was one of Wang Qihuos masters. These citations by Wang and Xu are not worth discussing in this chapter, except for one passage from Xus Tianle ji L>, in which he writes to a disciple, Now I am sending you a copy of Jindan dayao. You must read it until you are familiar with it, then enlighten yourself with it by reading it over thirty or fty times. Then you will know the meaning of my words. T5+ /6/VM71 N

*!$%

This passage shows that Chens works were considered essential reading within this tradition, and that Xu believed that his teachings echoed Chens words. These texts from the Western Lineage were put online in 2001 by one Chen Yuzhao ;@B b. ca. 1930 of Ningbo, Zhejiang province, presumably Xu Songyaos disciple. §2.5.2, Other sexual alchemists.

Fu Jinquan <+K 17651845 131 author of

more than a dozen commentaries and original works collected in his Jiyizi daoshu shiqi zhong QD2I, was one of Chen Zhixus most avid latterday followers. Fu has been called a Daoist of the Eastern Lineage of Lu Xixing,132 but I have seen no evidence to support this. Fu actually valued Chens teachings more highly than he did 128 Byname Dongting ),, stylenames Mountain Dweller Who Embodies the Real Tizhen Shanren W4 and External Secretary of Mystic Hiddenness Xuanyin Waishi S , from Xiuning G county, Anhui province. Cf. Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. Wang Qihuo #8R, 208. 129

These are Xingming yaozhi (&/, Liewei nzhen shige 4CH, and Tizhen shanren zhenjue yulu W4 4:JO preface 191516 .

130

Xu Songyao, stylenames Layman of Mystic Stillness Xuanjing Jushi P' and Haiyin Shanren 3 , from western Zhejiang. I have seen an etext version of his text Tianle ji on the Xianxue wang website. I do not have a printed edition of this text, so I cannot give page numbers below. 131

Byname Dingyun F?, stylename Jiyizi Q 17651845, or 17961850 , from Shancheng .- in Jinxi +A presentday Shancheng, District, Jinxi county, Jiangxi province ; see Xie Zhengqiang, Fu Jinquan neidan sixiang yanjiu.

132

Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. Fu Jinquan <+K, 217.

592

Lu Xixings. Fus anthology includes his subcommentaries on Chens Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian commentaries, plus another work by Fu including hundreds of quotations from Chens writings.133 In his subcommentaries on Chens commentaries, we see Fu interpreting Chens words in more openly sexual language. Fu also emphasizes Chens critiques of nonsexual alchemists, those who merely practice calming meditation. There is also a valuable preface to Fus Cantong qi subcommentary by one of Fus disciples which states the distinction between sexual alchemy and purecultivation qingxiu alchemy in unequivocal terms. Two other texts of unknown date but probably from the nineteenth century oering a sexualalchemical reading of Chen Zhixus writings are Xiyou zhenquan by Chen Shibin %,134 and a lateimperial edition of the classic Xingming guizhi . I have determined that Chen Shibins quotations ascribed to Chen Zhixu are unsubtle sexualalchemical fabrications, not the words of Chen Zhixu at all. Xingming guizhi is a seventeenthcentury text, probably rst printed in 1615, but later expanded. The early edition of Xingming guizhi was only about onequarter the length of the edition reproduced in Zangwai daoshu.135 None of the citations of Chen Zhixu in Xingming guizhi occur in that early portion of the text. The early version of the text appears not to have taught sexual alchemy, as one of the early prefaces actually criticizes sexual alchemy;136 yet blatantly sexual quotations from Jindan dayao can be found in the later sections of the text.137 The Xingming guizhi is an interesting case: we see the addition of sexualalchemical material to an early purecultivation text. This may have occurred in a time or place in the history of inner alchemy when sexual alchemy had become more popular than purecultivation alchemy. 133

Daoshu yiguan zhenji yijian lu

#" 1813.

134

A.k.a. Yunsheng , stylename Wuyizi , from Shanyin this may be in Shaoxing !, present day Zhejiang province. Xiyou zhenquan is an alchemical commentary on the Xiyou ji. I have an etext from the Loujin ge website, but no printed text. 135

In Zangwai daoshu, 9:50495. The early edition of Xingming guizhi has been translated and studied in Darga, Das alchemistische Buch von innerem Wesen und Lebensenergie: Xingming guizhi.

136

This is in the 1669 preface by You Tong $; Xingming guizhi, preface, 1b2, in Zangwai daoshu, 9:506.

137

E.g., Chens allegorical description of the personied Primal Qi DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 3.7b6, who rides a white tiger and loves to eat the turtle i.e., male organ with great passion & Xingming guizhi, in Zangwai daoshu, 9:558. This quotation, although verbatim, is not attributed to Jindan dayao in Xingming guizhi.

593

§2.5.3, Quanzhen critics.

I have found two voices from the Longmen lineage

of Quanzhen Daoism who do not approve of Chen Zhixus teachings. Chen Jiaoyou )% 182481138 in his history of Quanzhen Daoism, Changchun daojiao yuanliu 0%/ 1879, criticizes Chen for claiming to belong to a Quanzhen sublineage when he really belongs to the Southern Lineage Nanzong of inner alchemy; see page 80 above.139 Chen Jiaoyou also cites criticisms of Chen Zhixu from Wang Shizhen and Siku zongmu, and so in a sense revives a discourse of criticism of Chen Zhixu which had not been seen for centuries at least in the records I have found. Another author writing from a Longmenlineage perspective is Wang Mu before 1909?.140 Wang writes: As for Chen Zhixus system, it was yet another o shoot of Shi Tais disciples, advocating the union of the two lineages the Southern Lineage, and the Quanzhen lineage . He both advocated pure cultivation and spoke of yin and yang sexual cultivation , and was in truth a false pretender runtong -& of the Southern Lineage.141 Wang criticizes Chen Zhixu as being an aberration among Zhang Boduans heirs, but does not absolutely reject his approach to alchemy. §2.5.4, Other Daoist readers.

Chen Zhixu is praised in an 1822 preface to an

edition of Cantong qi: Of those who annotated this book, Shangyangzi was the best +.*.142 Chen is also quoted by Jiyangzi 4. late Qing? in Jindan miaojue (,143 and Zhao Bichen 251 1860after 1933 in Xingming

138

Name Minggui 3", Byname Youshan , stylename Master of Sulao Cave Sulao Dongzhu ,7, from Dongguan ', Guangdong province. In his middle age he entered the Quanzhen order at Mt. Luofu 6! in Guangdong.

139

Chen Jiaoyou, Changchun daojiao yuanliu, 2:16668.

140

Wang was the author of Wu zhenpian qianzhu and Neidan yangsheng gongfa zhiyao 1990, I have not seen this, and editor of Daojiao wupai danfa jingxuan, 5 vols., 1989. That he writes from an obviously Longmen perspective was pointed out to me by Wang Ka , Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. 141

Wang Mu, Wu zhenpian qianzhu, preface, 9.

142

Ma Yizhen #, Chongkan Guwen Cantong qi xu $ , reprinted in Cantong qi fenjie mijie Zangwai daoshu, 25:27.

143

Jindan miaojue is reproduced in Daozang jinghua. I have only seen the etext version, and not the printed version.

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fajue mingzhi .144 The contents of these quotes are negligible, but they tell us that Chens works were authoritative for later authorities. Zhao Bichen was one of the most important inner alchemical writers in recent times. Zhaos works have been translated and studied by Catherine Despeux and Lu Kuan Y Charles Luk .145 Accounts of Chens life and career are included in two undated Daoist works which are probably from recent times, Dacheng jieyao and Jingai Shan gu Meihua Guan zhi !$ . The Dacheng jieyao account is discussed in more detail on pages 77 78 above. The Dacheng jieyao hagiography develops Chens own account of his travels among ethnic minorities in present day Guizhou province into a story in which Chen is saved by the Consort of Heaven Tianfei from an attempted assassination by Lao & people.146 This odd story may represent an attempt by the author of Dacheng jieyao or his sources to link Chen Zhixu to the Mazu

cult of southeastern China. Chen is also quoted three times in Dacheng

jieyao, but all three of these quotes are sheer fabrications. One quote deals with fasting and abjuring strong avors, and one deals with Zhong L style physiological alchemy.147 This may represent an attempt by the author to lend Chens authority to his own practices and gods by placing them in the mouth of a hazily known Daoist master of the past. Jingai Shan gu Meihua Guan zhi includes Chen Zhixu in a Quanzhen Daoist lineage as a twenty rst generation heir of Ma Danyang.148 This seems to confuse 144

Zhao Bichen, Xingming fajue mingzhi 7.1b4 5, 7.10b4 8, 16.8b9 Zangwai daoshu, 26:52, 57, 123 . Zhao was originally from Changping county present day rural Beijing , and was active in Huaian present day Jiangsu province . 145

Lu Kuan Y has translated Xingming fajue mingzhi as Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality New York, 1970 , and Catherine Despeux has translated Zhaos Weisheng shenglixue mingzhi "# as Trait dalchimie et de physiologie taoste Paris, 1979 . 146

I have Dacheng jieyao in three printed editions, as well as one electronic le. Some say the text was compiled from the notes of Liu Huayang, but it is more likely that it is a Republican Period product; Jiangnan Ke, Zhongguo gudai qigong yaoji daodu. The Dongfang xiudao wenku edition includes prefaces from Daoists of Baiyun Guan $ in Beijing n.d. , Liaoning province 1929 , and Laoshan % in Shandong 1933 . This passage is on pages 157 58 of the Dongfang xiudao wenku edition. 147

Dacheng jieyao, Dongfang xiudao wenku ed., 161, 208. The third passage is on p. 221 .

148

I only have seen an online edition of this, and no printed version. See Jingai Shan gu Meihua Guan zhi in the bibliography. Mt. Jingai is in Wucheng , Huzhou , Zhejiang province.

595

Chen Zhixu with another person of similar name who belonged to the Longmen lineage in the late Ming or early Qing dynasty. This may be simple error, or error combined with an attempt to co opt Chens name and add luster to the lineage. Chen Zhixu is also briey mentioned in the 1893 novel Qizhen yinguo zhuan

3#< by Huang Yongliang ;). Huang, who may have been a Longmen Quanzhen Daoist,149 lists Chen Zhixu as the disciple of Xue Daoguang, and the master of Bai Yuchan.150 Huang seems to have mistaken Chen Zhixu for Chen Nan 6>, the fourth patriarch of the Southern Lineage. §2.5.5, Other nonDaoist citations.

A Qing gazetteer from Guizhou, Zunyi fuzhi

IB"!, produced in 1841 by Zheng Zhen E+ 1806 64 , et al., again records Chen Zhixu as an alchemist who traveled to Sitang, and made alchemical elixirs on the top of Mt. Wansheng there. This entry has no information not found in other sources. I list this reference in the section on Chens biography and hagiography in chapter 2. A Qing critique of geomancy, Fengshui quhuo -Q7, by Ding Ruipu PG . ca. 1850? 151 quotes Chen Zhixu once: Qingnang aoyu . . . also says: Turning turning upside down, in the twenty four mountains are pearls and treasures; following or advancing against the current, in the twenty four mountains are re pits. These are the words of Chen Zhixu of the Yuan dynasty, thus a reference to the self cultivation of the alchemists. (O=DMM. 2N:4 6,8D0/@5152 Ding says that Qingnang aoyu (O=D153 is quoting Chen Zhixu, but these are actually not Chens words. This tells us that Chen Zhixu was only hazily familiar to the nineteenth century Zhejiang literatus Ding Ruipu. §2.5.6, Summary: nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

During this last pre

149

In Qizhen yinguo zhuan, preface, 2a, Huangs name is given as Latter day Student of Longmen J'*F Huang Yongliang. 150

Qizhen yinguo zhuan 1.14b4 5, in Zangwai daoshu, 35:441; trans. Eva Wong, Seven Taoist Masters, 18.

151

Fengshui quhuo is included in Yuehe jingshe congchao %C&K9, a collectanea printed by Ding Ruipus son Ding Baoshu N1. Yuehe jingshe congchao was printed in 1880, probably by Ding Baoshu himself. The Dings were from Guian L present day Wuxing H, Zhejiang province . Li Xueqin and L Wenyu, Siku da cidian, s.v. Yuehe jingshe congchao %C&K9, 2092. 152

I found this quotation from Fengshui quhuo in an online posting, and have not seen a printed version of Fengshui quhuo. 153

Qingnang aoyu is a geomancy text ascribed to a Tang dynasty author, Yang Yunsong ?A$, but, as argued by Ding Ruipu, is probably a Ming or Qing dynasty product.

596

modern period we see Chen cited and studied within traditions of practice Li Xiyue and his heirs, Fu Jinquan, criticized by historians Chen Jiaoyou and Wang Mu, and appearing in odd corners and strange guises the gazetteers, Dacheng jieyao, Qizhen yinguo zhuan, and Ding Ruipu. The geographical distribution of his readership is still concentrated in the south, with three or four citations linked to Zhejiang, one or two to Guangzhou, and one each to Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Sichuan, and Guizhou. One citation may be linked to a northern province Anhui. Chens works were hardly reprinted during this period, excepting within the Zhengtong daozang and Daozang jiyao reprints, and so his works rarely showed up in booklists anymore.

§3, Tracing Themes in Chen Zhixus Legacy Having surveyed the the entire known range of Chens readership from the Yuan dynasty on in section 2 above, I will now develop two major aspects of Chens readership and legacy: sexual alchemy, and commentary on the alchemical classics Wuzhen pian and Cantong qi. I will develop these aspects by translating and analyzing important passages from more than a dozen of Chens later readers. Most of Chens readers took sexual alchemy as the most important theme in Chens teachings. From Chens time on, inner alchemists debated whether the elixir should be harvested through coition in dual cultivation, shuangxiu or whether it should be sought entirely within ones own person in pure cultivation, qingxiu. Throughout this section, I will argue that Chens works were central to this debate over sexual alchemy. Chens teachings were known to all, and advocates of both positions had to address his teachings, whether to declaim them, advance them, or merely acknowledge them. Chen Zhixu was known in later times more for his commentaries than for his Jindan dayao. When latterday alchemists used Chens teachings to formulate their own positions, they were primarily using Chens teachings as found in his Wuzhen pian and Cantong qi commentaries. Wuzhen pian and Cantong qi became the core scriptures 597

of inneralchemical tradition, and I will argue that this may have been due in part to Chens legacy. Below, I present and analyze the more important source passages from Chens readership, grouping them into ten subsections. I will begin with a passage written in 1841 by Yu Muchun ;qL,154 from a preface to a Cantong qi commentary by Fu Jinquan _8o. This passage contains many of the themes I will be developing throughout section 3, here presented in stark dichotomies: I am a junior ocial in the southeast. In my youth I admired the mystic fraternity, and enjoyed roving to Daoist monasteries, and associating with and paying respects to the Yellow Caps Daoists . They emphasize purity, and habitually practice seated meditation. That one must discard wife and children and enter the mountains, and that only then can one be free and untrammeled, is the Quanzhen teaching. It has been some years since I rst bowed before a teacher and received teachings. Yet as soon as I read an alchemical scripture, I become dizzy and confused, doubtful and uncertain, unable to decide how to proceed. We may say that the words of alchemical scriptures are completely about action, while the teachings of the Yellow Caps are completely about nonaction wuwei cC. Which one is right? How can there be proof of this? The Most High Lord Lao established this tradition of teaching, pronouncing the Scripture of Purity and Tranquility,155 and promulgating the laws of purity. It has lasted ten thousand years without falling into disuse: how could it be wrong? Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian are the patriarchs of alchemical scripture. Reading them is like drifting on a redoubled hyperborean sea, vast and misty, without shores. If you ask the various elder Daoists and wellread Confucians about these scriptures , they say the scriptures are completely incoherent, without certain interpretation. I have weighed the situation privately, and I believe that there must be one right answer. If the Quanzhen teaching tradition is right, then the alchemical scriptures can all be discarded. If the alchemical scriptures are right, then the teaching tradition is completely wrong. The two are just the black versus the white, the bitter versus the sweet, as di erent as ice and charcoal. It has been probably ten years now that this question has been smoldering in my heart. How would I be able to meet a noted worthy man who could clarify it for me? L4> q= 1`bi|Pxe
D 0Sf[n!JULA#.u ,&{ h=Iaj}Z2tTlhk- 'e<UkzcCQBQ :% y!U9mWXh$WX6gpNS :PGJhK{7E~McH3sr"i\ 154

Stylename Qianyangzi Od , of Macheng ^?, Hubei province. This is a preface for Dingpi Shangyangzi yuanzhu Cantong qi ]+d F5P@, Fu Jinquans subcommentary to Chen Zhixus commentary.

155

E.g., DZ 620, Taishang Laojun shuo chang qingjing miaojing "(mRWv*h; there are also many other editions.

598

tl~{`/Nf j>& FDu]Lv HT zy:Op\5a:g9/%(8:;158 This passage contains many of the themes I will explore throughout the rest of this chapter. Mu states that there are two main categories in the eld of inner alchemy. Mu calls these the ways of action youwei /F and nonaction wuwei `F , but other Daoists might call these two categories pure cultivation qingxiu YJ and dual cultivation shuangxiu |J . The eld of inner alchemy could conceivably be congured in many other ways, but this is the way the various Ming and Qing dynasty writers on alchemy chose to congure it. I will study the historical development of this conguration below. Mu identies the way of action with the two great summae of inner alchemy, Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian, and their commentaries. He identies the way of nonaction with Laozi and the Quanzhen monastic institution. Apparently, in Mus experience, Quanzhen Daoists practiced seated meditation but were not serious 156

Yu Muchun, in Dingpi Shangyangzi yuanzhu Cantong qi, preface, 1a2b4 Zangwai daoshu, 11:745 .

157

For Jindan zhenchuan >Nf True transmission of the golden elixir , by Sun Ruzhong 1615 , see Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 15369, and pp. 42427 above. Shijin shi Stone for testing gold is Fu Jinquans own work, known as Dingpi shijin shi \5j>&. 158

Yu Muchun, in Dingpi Shangyangzi yuanzhu Cantong qi, preface, 2a6b3 Zangwai daoshu, 11:746 .

599

practitioners of inner alchemy. This account of the way of nonaction in terms of Quanzhen practice is unique among the passages I study in this chapter, but the account of the way of action is typical: sexual alchemy was spoken in the idiom of Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian, and developed through the writing and study of commentaries on these classics. A corollary of this study of commentaries is that, for these men, throughout the chapter, alchemy is a textual tradition, and may be learned through books. These students of alchemy were all autodidacts, more or less. They credited their learning to the books they read more than to the handson instruction of a teacher. Some may even have learned little from human teachers. This is a signicant departure from Chen Zhixus teachings: for Chen, the student can learn nothing without oral instructions received personally from a teacher. Chen was afraid that his teachings would escape from the his control, or from the control of the class of handson masters like himself. By the Ming dynasty, this had occurred. Mu describes an absolute choice facing the bewildered student: of the two paths of action and nonaction, both paths cannot be correct, yet the student by himself cannot tell which path is the correct one. Mu is aided in his decision by Master Fu Jinquan, but the aid comes in the form of printed books rather than oral instructions. Mu learns that the correct choice is sexual alchemy, as exemplied in the works of Chen Zhixu. The idea of alchemical teachings being transmitted in the form of texts, rather than secret instructions, will be a recurring theme below. Chen Zhixus teachings play a part in the scene presented by Mus preface, in a number of ways. The form of inner alchemy which Mu chose as the correct one was a form based on Chen Zhixus teachings. The various themes we see in this passage a scenario with a beginning student, a conguration of the eld of inner alchemy, and a choice to be madeare also, in a sense, based on Chen Zhixus teachings. I do not mean that these themes were adapted directly from his books, but that Chens teachings were associated with these themes for most alchemists, whether they chose to follow Chens teachings or not. In the scenario with a beginning student, the student turns rst to the Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian, including Chens

600

authoritative commentaries to these works. In the conguration of the eld, Chens teachings exemplied one of the two categories of alchemy. In the choice to be made, Chens teachings are one of the main options from which the alchemist may select. Chen Zhixus teachings were one of the major elements used by alchemist actors in the Ming and Qing dynasties as they negotiated their traditions and created the history of inner alchemy as we know it. §3.1, Early Reactions The earliest references to Chen Zhixu are by Dai Qizong . ca. 133537 , Zhao Yizhen ?1382 , and Zhang Yuchu 13591410 . Dai refers to Chen by name; although Zhao and Zhang do not refer to Chen by name, I will argue that they were also referring to him. All of these references are to Chens Wuzhen pian commentary and perhaps also his Cantong qi commentary . §3.1.1, Dai Qizong.

Dai Qizong copies nine passages from Chen Zhixus

Wuzhen pian commentary into his own work, DZ 141, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu 1335 . In this work, Dai copies the original Wuzhen pian text and Weng Baoguangs . 1173 commentary, adding his own shu subcommentary after Wengs zhu . At nine points, Dai adds in Chens commentary on a Wuzhen pian passage, often verbatim and in toto. He also adds in Lu Ziyes commentary at least once. Dai must have owned a copy of DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu, the Wuzhen pian edition produced by Chen Zhixu and his patrondisciple Zhang Shihong . In another work DZ 143 , Dai discusses a Wuzhen pian commentary ascribed to Xue Daoguang159 that he has seen, arguing that this Xue commentary is actually the work of Weng Baoguang, and not by Xue.160 Here Dai must be speaking of the Xue Daoguang sections in DZ 142, Wuzhen pian sanzhu, though he does not mention it by name. Liu Tsunyan has argued convincingly that this Xue commentary within Wuzhen pian sanzhu may actually have been excerpted from a commentary by Xue, and is not necessarily being wrongly 159

Xue Daoguang or Xue Shi is the third patriarch of the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir.

160

In the section Jindan faxiang , in DZ 143, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen zhizhi xiangshuo sansheng miyao 19b 23b.

601

attributed to Weng Baoguang.161 Dais argument, that the Xue commentary is Wengs work, is reasonable, yet he may have been making this argument not simply out of disinterested scholarship, but because he wished his own DZ 141, Wuzhen pian zhushu to replace Chens DZ 142, Wuzhen pian sanzhu in the alchemical marketplace. Perhaps he meant to absorb the best points from Chens work the passages he copied , and correct a weakness of the work the Xue error . Dais readership in later times never came close to Chens readership in size however. In Dais alchemical marketplace, readers are willing to accept sexual alchemy. Dai is obviously advocating dual cultivation when he writes, for example, By this we know that the yin essence semen cannot be cultivated alone, but rather one must use it in dual cultivation.

162 Of the nine passages of Chens words copied from Wuzhen pian sanzhu, four passages openly refer to sexual alchemy, two passages may refer to it, and three passages do not refer to it.163 Two interesting features of Dais quotations are a passage including an anecdote by Chen Zhixu about his lineal master Zhang Ziqiong , and a long L Dongbin tale about a Buddhist monk whose spirit left his body in the form of a snake while he was dreaming.164 The moral of the L Dongbin tale is that mere zazen here said to involve breath control bixi , ingesting qi fuqi , and suppression of desire and ignorance is worthless as a form of selfcultivation. From these inclusions we can conclude that Dai agreed with Chens critique of formless zazen, and to Chens claims about his own immediate lineage. §3.1.2, Zhang Yuchu.

I have found a passage in Zhang Yuchus literary

collection DZ 1311, Xianquan ji 1407 that must be referring to Chen Zhixu. I discuss Zhang Yuchu before turning to Zhao Yizhen because they are both saying similar things, but Zhang o ers more detail. Reading Zhao after Zhang strengthens 161

Liu Tsunyan, Zhang Boduan yu Wuzhen pian, 797802.

162

DZ 141, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu 1.13b1014a1.

163

Open references: DZ 141, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu 1.10b113a3, 2.12a113a9, 5.2a810, 5.19b720b6; possible references: 3:17a10b7, 4.1b89; nonreferences: 6.15b717a8, 7.4b95a4, 8.16b617b8. 164

Within the quotations at DZ 141, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu 8.16b617b8 and 6.15b717a8, respectively. These are from DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4.21a1022b1 and 5.21a922b10, respectively.

602

my argument that both are referring to Chen Zhixu. The passage is from a short text reproduced within Xianquan ji entitled Preface to Compilation of Essentials on the Elixir Dan zuanyao xu J, . This would have been the preface to a now lost compilation of alchemical teachings. In the parts of the passage that I am reproducing here, Zhang begins by describing the origin of alchemy and arguing that inner alchemy and laboratory alchemy share the same essence: . . . The so called great elixir of metallous humor started out in Jinbi longhu jing165 and Taishang shishi ge.166 Then when Wei Boyang of the Han dynasty wrote Cantong qi based on Jinbi jing, he relied on the Changes to clarify the elixir . . . Now, we may say that in the tradition of the outer elixir or, outer alchemy, one gathers the best parts from the ve metals and eight stones, then cooks them to rene them, following the ring periods and yin tallies.167 This is no dierent from the ascending and descending, or advancing and retreating, of the dao of the inner elixir or, inner alchemy. Therefore, the inner and outer applications are one. . . . ) F%2 "%AG#< (?@I: %A<1'0 ! 168 E ;$% CB*.753HD -9/

>84+ = 169 Although we might not expect a Celestial Master like Zhang Yuchu to be a transmitter of inner alchemical teachings, his work Xianquan ji discusses the virtues of inner alchemy at more than one place. Because Zhang identies the Cantong qi as the origin of contemporary alchemical practice, I infer that Zhang must have been familiar with inner alchemical teachings of the Southern Lineage, that is, teachings in the tradition of Zhang Boduan and his Wuzhen pian. Other traditions of inner alchemy, including Quanzhen and Zhong L alchemy, did not accord Cantong qi pride of place. In DZ 1232, Daomen shigui >&6, a text oering rules for the Daoist life, 165

Sometimes Jinbi longhu jing %AG#< is regarded as a single text, and sometimes Longhu jing and Jinbi jing are treated as separate texts. These texts or text are often regarded as the inspirations for Wei Boyangs Cantong qi. However, before the Song dynasty, Longhu jing was an alternative title of Cantong qi, and Jinbi jing was a separate but related text; Pregadio, The Early History of the Zhouyi cantong qi, 170 71.

166

Not found.

167

Yinfu 75 refers to the period during the ring cycle when the alchemist uses a gentle ame and does not actively re the elixir. 168

DZ 1311, Xianquan ji 2.15a4 6.

169

DZ 1311, Xianquan ji 2.15b4 6.

603

Zhang gives a list of what he considers to be the major alchemical scriptures: Shibi ji ?', Longhu jing A4, Cantong qi (, Wuzhen pian #$>, Cuixu pian ;.>, Huanyuan pian B2>, Zhixuan pian >, Dadao ge 89, Cui Gong ruyao jing ) CD, Jindan sibai zi .170 Except for the rst two texts in the list, these texts were all produced or studied within the Southern Lineage. Zhang mentions the Qingwei *1 tradition betimes in his writings,171 but this cannot explain his interest in the SouthernLineage texts, because Qingwei inner alchemy was closer to ZhongLstyle inner alchemy neither of them emphasizes the Cantong qi. Zhangs alchemy involved the Cantong qi, and the writings produced by the Southern Lineage, and so I do not think it was Qingwei alchemy. The passage from Zhang continues: Thus, the alchemical furnaces and medical stoves among the named mountains and rivers have all left historical traces. As for those alchemists of the caliber of my ancestor the Celestial Master Zhang Daoling of the Han dynasty, Grand Scribe Xu Xun, and Old Man Ge Xuan the Transcendent, their transmission over the generations has been especially prominent. /EC,

-172

@7!%:"+ 6& 0

Zhangs mentioning of the traces of alchemical workshops in the mountains left by Zhang Daoling, Xu Xun +=, and Ge Xuan 6 would have been familiar to Chen Zhixu. The cults of Xu Xun and Ge Xuan were popular in Chens native region, and he mentions them often in Jindan dayao. These three gures, among others, are also part of Chens extended lineage in DZ 1070 see page 96 above . Ironically, Chen Zhixu himself was remembered for centuries in rural Guizhou as such a gure: a holy man of yore who had built an alchemical workshop in the wilderness, completed the elixir, and achieved transcendence, leaving behind an elixir platform dantai < on the top of Myriad Sages Mountain Wansheng Shan 35; see page 69 above . These correspondences between Zhang Yuchu and Chen Zhixu are due to the fact that the two men both came from a similar place and time, and a similar religious 170

DZ 1232, Daomen shigui 8b8 10.

171

E.g., at DZ 1311, Xianquan ji 1.19a1.

172

DZ 1311, Xianquan ji 2.15b8 10.

604

environment. The passage continues: Thus, all those traditions which dispense with both inner and outer alchemy are preposterous. In the latter days of the Yuan dynasty, some illbehaved and frivolous types were striving to outdo each other in promoting heterodox teachings, and practiced the art of gathering and battling. Their thieving practices were written up in book form, and these books made use of the words of worthy teachers of the past to give evidence of the truth of their mendacious enticements. Many rich merchants and members of the great families of the time followed these teachers, in order to extend their lifespans and give free rein to their passions, but this could only end in their losing their lives and meeting their end. As for the man who made the rst grave attendant gurine,173 how great would be the karmic retribution for this primal ignorance!174 At one time I wanted to combat and declaim them or him , and it pains me that I was not able to broaden my result . 4/. M17*LZ\ :-9&R6BY EKD ;>V $8^SJOIT P @ +[W G%( 3 ')"0.N] HO!2 QC, A= U#175 Zhang speaks of wayward alchemical teachers living in the latter period of the Yuan dynasty Yuan jijian *L, which is just when Chen and his disciples would have been active. Zhang speaks of privatelypublished books of sexual alchemy, books which cite the words of previous masters, twisting these words so as to make the masters seem to be promoting sexual alchemical teachings. I believe that Zhang is referring to Chen Zhixu here. The only sexual alchemical texts from the latter part of the Yuan that I know of are by Chen Zhixu and Dai Qizong, with the addition of DZ 1189, Yindan neipian FX ca. 1350, a brief text by Zhu Dongtian <5 from Mt. Longhu. Dai Qizongs Wuzhen pian zhushu and DZ 1189, Yindan neipian do not t Zhangs description, but Chens writings are conspicuous for citing past masters and classic texts as evidence for their teachings. Later critics of Chen such as Wang Shizhen would fault him for precisely this. Zhang speaks of the scions of rich and powerful families being attracted to these pernicious teachings. This would also describe Chens case: Chen enjoyed the support of Zhang Shihong ? and other 173

A pejorative idiom taken from Mencius, referring to the founder of some despicable practice.

174

Yeshi N] refers to the karmaproducing consciousness stirred by a sentient beings original and basic ignorance; Foguang da cidian, s.v. yeshi N], 55034. 175

DZ 1311, Xianquan ji 2.15b1016a5.

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ocials, young and old, both high and low in rank. Zhang Yuchu was probably not referring to false teachers from just anywhere in China, but to teachers active close to his home. One of Chen Zhixus main centers of activity was Hongzhou Nanchang , located about ninety miles west of Zhangs home at Mt. Longhu. It is conceivable, but highly unlikely, that Zhang is referring to some other teachers or teachers rather than Chen. Perhaps someone in Zhu Dongtians circle presumably at Mt. Longhu was also claiming that the sages of the past were sexual alchemists, but I doubt they could have made as much of an impression as Chen did. I nd it unlikely because these other teachers if they existed left no traces on the historical record, while Chens traces are manifold. Zhang Yuchu was born in 1359, about twentyve years after Chens works began circulating. When Zhang writes I wanted to combat and declaim them or him , if this means Zhang wanted to suppress active teachers, these would be Chens heirs either direct or indirect heirs, since Chen 12901343+ would likely have been deceased by this time. But I think that Zhang means he wanted to suppress Chens teachings circulating in textual form. Zhang especially condemns the originator of these teachings. Although Chen drew on earlier teachers of sexual alchemy such as Lu Ziye , Zhang is probably condemning Chen himself here: perhaps to punishment in the afterlife, as Wang Shizhen does. Finally, Zhang thinks that sexual alchemy was a form of practice unlike both inner alchemy and laboratory alchemy, but this is a misleading claim. Sexual alchemy is simply a version of inner alchemy in which the elixir is gathered through coition. After stage 2 of the alchemical process, stages 3 of internal ring and 4 of training the yang spirit may be identical within solo and sexual alchemy. §3.1.3, Zhao Yizhen.

At two places in his literary collection DZ 1071,

Yuanyangzi fayu , Zhao Yizhen criticizes sexual alchemists in terms similar to Zhang Yuchus: Some people study things which are not the real dao, and make preposterous interpretations of the alchemical scriptures. They cite the Changes as evidence: One yin and one yang: this is called the Dao. The Dao of qian becomes

606

male, and the Dao of kun 2 becomes female.176 They take the human male and female as the caldron and the furnace, emblematizing heaven and earth. They extract their human yin and yang as the pharmaca, and do not realize that originally there are no male or female emblems in the great Dao. The transcendent teachers relied upon emblems as analogies; presumably they were referring to the precosmic principle of correspondence, not to postcosmic form and subtance. There is an instruction that The visible cannot be used, and the usable cannot be seen.177 This is precisely the principle of the pharmacon of the inner elixir. 39f:0Y#oWm4 Q ViYHY% ,2Y%' ,U"?[n10QV?l57 Y T,UBFU?S9`>!];K:=+diN -9 9-l5&178 Do not study the broad and penetrating unyat of wildfox Chan,179 stirring up and eliminating sin and blessing, and aunting the trigger and blade kan style discourse. They are only drumming with their mouths so much that they could startle the deaf, and do not pay attention to the fact that in a later time they will be in the sea of suering. Do not study perverse teachers who mislead the worthy people of later times, preposterously identifying man and woman as qian and kun. They gather the other partners essence and blood as the ancestor of the elixir. But how could a swallow or a sparrow give birth to a sparrowhawk? Mf6jkZ8bGXÔgeI \rqspC@D Mf/Ba=c#,*2H1_(?EhR$)LJt180 These passages do not implicate Chen Zhixu directly, but I think they may be referring to him, or to a type of alchemist which he exemplied. I include the rst verse criticizing wildfox Chan here because we will see this theme again in Wang Yangmings polemic below. Both Zhao and Wang Yangming would lump together sexual alchemists and wildfox Chan teachers as being pernicious in similar ways. Zhaos statement that there are teachers who make preposterous interpretations of the alchemical scriptures #oW could conceivably refer to masters who quote scriptures such as Cantong qi or Wuzhen pian in their everyday discourse, but it may also refer to masters who wrote sexualalchemical commentaries of such scriptures, 176

These two sayings come from Yijing, Xici zhuan, 1.5.1, 1.1.4; Rutt, The Book of Changes Zhouyi, 411, 409.

177

This is a paraphrase from Wuzhen pian, Wul, yishou < A section a.k.a. Wuyan, yishou . A; cf. Wang Mu, Wuzhen pian qianjie, 133; or DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 5.1a3 6.

178

DZ 1071, Yuanyangzi fayu 1.2b9 3a5.

179

Chan teachings which appear to be true but are not Foguang da cidian, s.v. Yehu Chan P6j, 4818 perhaps like a wild fox spirit taking on human form.

180

DZ 1071, Yuanyangzi fayu 2.1b9 2a2.

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and Chen s commentaries were the most wellknown. My contention that Zhao is referring to Chen Zhixu also gains strength when combined with my analysis of Zhang Yuchu s writings above. Zhao s critique of sexual alchemy is premised on the principle that the sacred forces invoked in inner alchemy should not be confused with bodily uids or indeed any material substance. As we have seen, Chen Zhixu agrees with this: the female partner s pharmacon of yang metal is gathered during coitus, but it is merely coincidental with corporeal activity, rather than being completely identied with bodily uids, as critics claimed. Actually, on pages 48385 above, I argue that, while separable in theory, the female partner s intangible metal qi and tangible water are inseparable in practice. The qi is signaled by and coincident with uid. Thus, someone criticizing Chen s alchemy because it involves substances would be making a valid point. §3.1.4, Conclusions.

In this period the fourteenth and early fteenth

centuries, sexual alchemy had not yet gained legitimacy outside certain circles. It was not part of the alchemical mainstream, and Zhang Yuchu and Zhao Yizhen did not have to take it seriously. The range of Zhang s references to inneralchemical practices, texts, and traditions covers both the Southern Lineage and Quanzhen traditions: he refers both to Southern Lineage classics such as Wuzhen pian, Cuixu pian, and Huanyuan pian, and to Quanzhen practices such as chujia leaving the householder s life181 or zuohuan undertaking a meditation retreat within a hut.182 This re ects a place and time in the history of Daoism when elements of Southern Lineage and Quanzhen traditions were being combined by dierent actors in dierent ways. Zhao Yizhen s Qingwei inner alchemy was ZhongLstyle inner alchemy, a form of alchemy eclipsed in the Ming dynasty by SouthernLineagestyle alchemy such as Chen Zhixu s. Sexual alchemy was not yet something Zhang Yuchu or Zhao Yizhen were forced to take seriously, as later solo cultivators would be forced 181

DZ 1232, Daomen shigui 14b13. The notion of chujia was not associated only with Quanzhen Daoists, but with other types of ordained Daoist; Chen Zhixu says that his disciple Ming Suchan had chujia ed. See p. 109 above, and DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 12.1a9b3.

182

DZ 1232, Daomen shigui 7a3. The founder of Quanzhen Daoism, Wang Chongyang, achieved enlightenment while dwelling in his grave of the living dead man huosiren mu for the better part of two years, a self designed rite of passage. Ma Danyang institutionalized a hundredday huandu retreat for Quanzhen Daoists. The practice continued until at least the eighteenth century; Goossaert, La cration du taosme moderne, 172 219.

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to. In this chapter I argue that, when people analyzed the eld of inner alchemy, they viewed it rst in terms of two broad categories: sexual alchemy, and pure cultivation. In DZ 1232, Daomen shigui, we already see Zhang employing these two categories: The scripture says: Gentlemen who study the dao take purity as their foundation, and view all perverse daos like they are viewing enemies. They distance themselves from the various forms of love and lust like avoiding stinking lth. They eliminate the roots of suering and anxiety, sever the attachments of fondness and love. Therefore, after leaving the householders life, one distances oneself from passions and cuts o love, gives up the inappropriate and inclines to the real. ! (" * '" 0$'%+. ,)&/ -183 The scripture Zhang is quoting here, a Songdynasty Lingbao scripture DZ 18,184 contrasts qingjing * directly with xiedao ". The path of perversity xiedao is associated with concupiscence, stinking lth, Buddhistlike dukha, and loving attachment. Zhang goes a step beyond the classical Lingbao scripture by applying qingjing to the detached Daoist monastic life, and xiedao to the emotionally embroiled life of the householder. Although Zhang is not directly applying the term xiedao " to sexual alchemy in this passage, he would not hesitate to do so on page 605 above, Zhang calls sexual alchemical teachings xieshuo #. Zhang would say that a practitioner of sexual alchemy, like a householder, involves himself or herself in lust and in lth. Chen Zhixu would disagree that sexual alchemy must involve lust: as we have seen in chapter 5, the male sexual alchemist must pay particular attention to curbing his enthusiasm when with the partner. Also note that in this quotation from DZ 18, we see how the directlyopposed categories of qingjing and xiedao may have been used in other contexts in the Song dynasty before being applied to the categories of pure cultivation and dual cultivation in inner alchemy. §3.2, Polemics by Two LayDaoist Literati 183

DZ 1232, Daomen shigui 14b15.

184

DZ 18, Taishang xuhuang tianzun sishijiu zhang jing 7a67. John Lagerwey argues that it is a Songdynasty text; Schipper and Verellen, The Taoist Canon, 952.

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§3.2.1, Wang Yangming.

Wang Yangming 14721529 and Wang Shizhen 152690

denounce Chen Zhixu in the strongest terms. I will examine the substance of their remarks, and attempt to explain their vitriol. Both men practiced Daoist meditation, and Wang Shizhen also followed a BuddhoDaoist teacher, Tanyangzi. Wang Shizhen may have been trying to avoid being damned by his peers for association with bad Daoism, and the same may hold for Wang Yangming. First I will translate and analyze a pair of Wang Yangmings poems entitled Two poems written about Wuzhen pian in reply to Zhang, Minister for Ceremonials #"%:.(', written in 1514 while Wang was working as an o cial in Nanjing.185 The rst poem reads: The Chapters on Awakening to the Truth are chapters which mistake the truth,186 and the Three Commentaries to the Wuzhen pian are the annotations of a single hand. The authorities are bent on personal prot, and cannot bear to kill these demonic enticers. Thus, they allow false teachers to vie in transmitting confusion and wantonness. One can hardly avoid blaming Zhang Pingshu as the originator; yet who would slander Xue Zixian as having caused the rst misfortune? I will speak to you directly with a single word: Start from the beginning by having a look at wild fox Chan. "%:8%: 5 +C2$1 &A0 ,4@( 3;7?/< 96* )=-> 187 Wang Yangming avers that the three commentaries in DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu were all written by a single person, i.e., Chen Zhixu.188 While Wang is strongly opposed to Chens teachings, he is less negative, perhaps ambivalent, about the Wuzhen pian itself. Zhang Boduans original work commits the sin of providing Chen with the material to develop his perversions, yet Wang would not blame Zhang Boduan or his lineal heir Xue Daoguang for Chens results. In this poem there are several echoes of themes we have encountered in the 185

Wangs post was Chief Minister of the Court of State Ceremonial Honglu si qing B!, rank 4a.

186

Note the pun: wuzhen "% ironically leads to wuzhen 8%.

187

Wang Yangming, Wang Yangming quanji, 1:744, for both poems.

188

This charge that Chen Zhixu composed all three commentaries is baseless. There are actually plenty of contradictions between the three commentaries, and it would be hard to imagine a single author aiming for this eect.

610

passages by Zhang Yuchu and Zhao Bichen above. Like Zhang Yuchu, Wang Yangming sighs that these wicked teachings have not been eradicated through government action. He even speaks of the teachers as being demonic yaomo =, thus not even human beings. And like Zhang, Wang speaks of such teachers vying with each other to spread their teachings, implying that such teachers were numerous. Like Zhao Yizhen, Wang compares the teachers of sexual alchemy to teachers of wildfox Chan. These are two kinds of false teachers, who claim to be transmitting the true teachings of the patriarchs, but who have distorted these teachings. By applying the category of wildfox Chan to Chen Zhixu, Wang again implies that Chen is not fully human. The second poem reads: Mistaking the truth is not equivalent to the Chapters on Awakening to the Truth: Pingshu Zhang Boduan already spoke of this back in his time. It is only because people of this generation have too many a ectionate attachments, and furthermore they set o karmic causes and conditions by following their passions and desires. How could you ever discuss dreams in front of an idiot? Within the topic of true nature, it would be even more hard to speak of the mysterious.189 I would ask the Daoists to look with a di erent eye, and try to see what sort of a thing blue Heaven is.190 3#!#6/"

>-()5&7 ;%+82#<4 '1:*0 Zhang Yuchu blamed the popularity of sexual alchemy on peoples lust aiyu .5 and loving attachment qinai 9.. Wang Yangming echoes this, but in more Buddhist terms. Wang wishes that these Daoists would occupy themselves more protably with with NeoConfucian topics, investigating the moral nature and its source in Heaven rather than their Daoist mysteries xuan . Wangs Coected Works also contain a longer prose passage discussing Chen Zhixus teachings. This is a letter entitled Reply to a person asking about spirits and transcendents ,'$ , written in 1508. I translate the letter below, slightly abbreviated: 189

That is, it would be hard to nd something more darkly mysterious and unknowable than true nature itself.

190

Wang would rather that Daoists study the moral nature, and its source, Heaven.

611

Wuchen year, i.e., 1508. You have asked me whether spirits and transcendents exist or not, and also asked about their aairs. You have asked me thrice without receiving a reply. It is not that I do not wish to reply, but that I have nothing to reply, thats all. . . . Wang then describes his physical debilities at the age of thirty something. He contrasts himself with the sages: In ancient times, there were ultimate men, who puried their virtue and crystallized the Dao, harmonizing with yin and yang, adjusting themselves to the four seasons, departing from the world and distancing themselves from the vulgar, amassing their essence and making their spirits whole. They roved between heaven and earth, seeing and hearing things beyond the distant reaches of the eight directions. As for Guangchengzis 1500 year lifespan without debility, or Li Boyangs lasting through the Shang and Zhou dynasties, then crossing the Hangu Pass to the west these things also happened. If this were true but I said it never happened, I would suspect myself of hoodwinking you. Now, taking the Dao as ones substance in breathing out or in, in movement or stillness, rening ones bones to the end, one possesses the qi, in its pure form from when the qi was rst received. It is likely that this is something accomplished by Heaven, not something a human can compel by force. As for latter day feats such as uprooting the entire household and ascending to Heaven,191 causing transformation by alchemical projection dianhua ,192 or casting oneself into and arrogating the body of another person touduo

,193 these are just bizarre weirdness and odd shockers. These are thus the secret skills and dishonest tricks which Yin Wenzi called illusions, and kyamuni called heresies waidao . If I said that they do exist, I would again suspect myself of hoodwinking you. Now, language cannot capture what is in the hazy realm between existence and non existence. If you keep it for a long time it will become clear to you; if you cultivate it deeply, you will attain it yourself. But if you have not arrived at spiritual attainment and yet you make forced analogies, you will not necessarily gain others assent. One may say that we Confucians also possess a dao of spirits and transcendents: Yanzi died at the age of thirty two, and he is still present even today. Can you believe this? One may say that latter day types like Shangyangzi are gentlemen of skills from beyond the normal realm fangwai . We cannot regard these skills as dao. As for types like Bodhidharma and Huineng, they are almost close enough, but not yet easy to speak of. If you wish to hear their teachings, you must rst retire and dwell in the mountains and forests for thirty years, to make your ears and eyes whole, concentrate the intention in your heart, and let your 191

Xu Xun is supposed to have achieved this miracle; his story was the most well known, but not the only such story. 192

That is, casting a bit of catalyst onto a piece of material and achieving an instant transformation.

193

Touduo is short for toutai duoshe . This sort of magical feat is described near the end of Chen Zhixus commentary to Wuzhen pian. It was also mentioned in fairytales: this is how Li Tieguai one of the Eight Immortals came to have the body of a crippled beggar. See pp. 52829 above. Eskildsen, Emergency Death Meditations for Internal Alchemists is the best reference on this topic.

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breast be blown clean of even one mote of dust; only after this can you discuss spirits and transcendents . At present we are still far from the dao of transcendents, and there is no blame in my inappropriate words. 5W !.Az±YXGDn0E 1AG ¯µ¡^f²f2|/*½p¸§9 H" :Â 3x®?CDRJ¶_- IrZU8£AxtD¹(¦fSq]Lº©¡w Ã§Mf\}aBu"d?n 0xs*e=y i¼ Q¥À¿c`»t ~@O&d¹$Á)¹ 3¡lxt¹(A8¦fS#AnT«0k <Dh³DF6GDo864!ªK´8FA. ¡¾D[G6Vo+s*vª' 3O60,w¡x¢·°{qm SD6gT VŸ¬j>9E7 %NÄÄ ¤Ds0,TB/.¡b;T194 Wang does not feel qualied to discuss transcendenthood, since he himself has no such attainment. He accepts myths about sages of the past such as Guangchengzi and Li Boyang i.e., Laozi, who belong to Confucian as well as Daoist lore, but doubts that the heterodox phantasms of latterday Daoists such as Shangyangzi belong in the same category. Chan masters are comparable to these heterodox Daoists, though not as bad. Wang contrasts his own debility at a relatively young age with the perfect health and immortality of the transcendents, but also proposes a sort of Confucian immortality. Yan Hui is an example of a Confucian immortal. Yan mentions his own age, and also mentions Yans age when he died, so Wang is implicitly comparing himself with Yan, suggesting he could be a Confucian immortal too. We see Wang as a Confucian partisan competing with Daoism. Note that Wang singles out Chen Zhixu for special mention. In Wangs eyes, Chen Zhixu is a negative exemplar of contemporary Daoism in general. Wang reacted strongly to Wuzhen pian sanzhu. We cannot know if Wangs knowledge of Chen was limited to this work, or if Wang knew of other writings by Chen, or lore about Chen. Also note that Wang does not discuss Daoism in terms of the two ocial categories of Celestial Master Daoism and Quanzhen Daoism. The Celestial 194

Wang Yangming, Wang Yangming quanji, 1:8056. In yu Dao wei ti ©¡wÃ, I read yu © as meaning jiang or ba P.

613

Masters were recognized by emperors in the Yuan and Ming dynasties; the Quanzhen institution did not gain o cial recognition in the Ming, but it had been extremely powerful for some time during the Yuan. Does Wang not mention Celestial Master or Quanzhen Daoism here because he would not mention them in the same breath with a charlatan alchemist like Shangyangzi? This cannot be the reason, since he does mention the o ciallyvenerated Chan patriarchs Bodhidharma and Huineng in the same breath with Shangyangzi. I would argue that the teachings of Chen Zhixu made more of an impression on Wang Yangming than the teachings or activities of Celestial Master Daoism and Quanzhen Daoism did. Actually, Wang does not mention these traditions even once in his collected works.195 If we wrote the history of Daoism in this period based solely on dynastic histories and court records, the Celestial Masters and Quanzhen Daoists would receive much mention, and Chen Zhixu none at all. But, from the case of Wang Yangming, we can see that the Daoism of Chen Zhixu was clearly well known and discussed within literati society, sometimes more so than o cially recognized Daoism. The history of Daoism cannot be studied through o cial records alone. §3.2.2, Wang Shizhen.

Wang Shizhen was a major literary gure, ranked as the

most prominent representative of the classicist school in the Ming dynasty.196 In addition to honoring the Confucian teachings and sages, he was also a practicing Daoist and Buddhist. Among his nearly ve hundred juan of collected writings are many dozen reading essays. These are brief, informal pieces written in reaction to books Wang had read, reecting his thoughts just at the time he nished his reading.197 The essays are arranged by category including a Daoism category, and seem to be arranged in chronological order within these categories, so one can use this order to trace the evolution of Wangs thinking. Many of these reading essays are 195

An electronic search of the fourjuan Wang Yangming quanji nds no references to Celestial Master or Quanzhen Daoism.

196

Goodrich and Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1399. This classicist school is called the Gu Wenci Yundong . 197

Wangs collected works were published as Yanzhou Shanren sibu gao 174 j. and Yanzhou Shanren xugao 207 j.. Yanzhou Shanren dushu hou 8 j. reprints selected reading essays.

614

on classics, literature, or biographies, but there are also, by my count, fortyseven essays on Daoist books, and twenty essays on Buddhist books. Six of the essays on Daoist books mention Chen Zhixu. The rst of these six essays is on Wuzhen pian sanzhu, a text which seems to have aected Wang Shizhen very strongly. In the subsequent ve essays, we see Wang comparing other inneralchemical writings to Wuzhen pian sanzhu, testing each new text to see if it is as pernicious as Sanzhu. The rich rst essay, Written after reading the Three Commentaries to Wuzhen pian 647P +/, is worth translating at length. I interrupt my translation twice for analysis. Zhang Pingshu, styled Ziyang, wrote the poems and songs of Wuzhen in order to reveal and clarify the secret instructions of the golden elixir. Their contents are recursive and concealed. Although not easy to plumb, the texts general instructions are contained between two poles, namely, seeking within the body, and seeking outside the body. The meaning of the teaching of seeking outside the body is the same as what the Lankavat ra stra says in the section about the ten transcendents: Solidify oneself ceaselessly through intercourse.198 I dare not testify that this does not exist, but this is such a vile act, so dangerous in its mechanism, so base in its character, and its eect is so di cult to achieve. @B;%47IK?*- 8 A9VW)S=#

0JL! ,! ,!N(GYH' TD:&3E#"12#R1#. 1$#51X199 Wang Shizhen proposes a clean division of inneralchemical approaches into two categories: alchemy which seeks the pharmaca for the elixir within the body, and alchemy which seeks the pharmaca outside the body. These correspond to the two categories of pure cultivation and dual cultivation. I doubt this is the rst time in history that the eld of inner alchemy was explicitly congured in this way, but it is the rst time we have seen it done by an author referring to Chen Zhixu. It has remained the dominant way of looking at inner alchemy down to the present day. I think that in Wang Shizhens time and place, sexual alchemy had already become a major alternative within inneralchemical tradition, and Wang could not easily dismiss it as a marginal commotion as Zhang Yuchu did or demonize it as 198

This comes from T 945, Dafoding rulai miyin xiudeng liaoyi zhu pusa wanxing shou lengyan jing, 19:145c11: :&O 3FUCM. I have not found this quoted in any Daoist text.

199

Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou Shanren xugao 158.18b819a3 57:724849.

615

Wang Yangming did , but had to refute it point by point. In this passage, Wang Shizhens reasons for rejecting sexual alchemy are that it is vulgar, debased, ine ective, and dangerous perhaps because of the danger of overindulgence, which could be fatal . Wangs essay on Wuzhen pian sanzhu continues: The commentaries of both Xue and Lu seem to o er a mixture of clarity and obscurity. However, when it comes to that of Chen Zhixu, styled Shangyangzi, nothing is held back! Whats more, the wild, unrestrained, and absurd import of his words extinguishes the Dao of Heaven, and injures the rules of men. But his especially heinous crime is to sully the words of the sages. We may say this is not allowed by the kings laws, and would be repaid with a spirited lashing in hell. ;* @,A'!=. )"-+:?> &918#<0 4/(2 37 $5 6%200 Wang accuses Chen Zhixu of crimes against Heaven and humanity, without o ering any details of these crimes. I think that what he really has in mind is Chens blasphemy against Daoist and Buddhist scriptures and classics, which he discusses in detail below. Note also that Wang Shizhen consigns Chen Zhixu to Hell: I doubt Wang is speaking facetiously. Wangs essay on Wuzhen pian sanzhu continues: He says: Perfect yin and perfect yang are solidly existing things. Of the same kind refers to a sentient being. That which is void and empty is the emerging horizon of qi at the age of sixteen.201 His primary meaning is this: possessing qi but without substance, the two things form each other, and a single object is produced therefrom. The single thing refers to the perfect one qi congealing into a single pearl like a kernel of millet. Now, as for quoting the Scripture of Salvation, which says The Heavenly Worthy of Primal Commencement suspended a single precious pearl, as big as a kernel of broomcorn millet, in the middle of empty darkness,202 this is the rst instance of his sullying the sages words. He also says: Following the ow produces a person; going against the ow produces a transcendent or a buddha.203 As for becoming a transcendent, could 200

Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou Shanren xugao 158.19a37 57:7249 .

201

In Wuzhen pian sanzhu these sentences are attributed to Xue Daoguang, not Chen Zhixu; DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 1.5b106a1. Whoever it was that rst composed these words Xue or Weng Baoguang , it was not Chen.

202

For a translation of this episode from DZ 87, Yuanshi wuliang duren shangpin miaojing sizhu, see Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 408.

203

This is a paraphrase, not a verbatim quote. Cf., e.g., DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu, preface, 5a23.

616

this also be called becoming a buddha? Produced from this idea, he goes so far as to speak of kyamunis asceticism in the Himalayas, or Bodhidharmas facing the wall on Mt. Song for nine years, as this thing.204 Therefore, these two sages would have rst gathered the elixir from a woman, and afterward performed this trick with it. Now, there is no need to discuss the case of the Buddha. When Bodhidharma achieved the Dao he was already a centenarian. He said There is a vessel of the dharma in the middle kingdom whom I can transmit the dharma to, and therefore faced the wall in order to reveal his mechanism, and rst gained the second patriarch. How can he now speak of Bodhidharma as a sexual alchemist? This is the second instance of his sullying the sages words. The Buddhist stras say: Like dew, and like lightning. This means that all dharmas of purposeful action youwei /H are illusory, as well as swift and ungraspable. To use this Buddhist quotation now as testimony that his sexual practice is swift and easily controlledwhat an error this is!205 A golden body eight spans in height206this is kyamunis transformation body. To cite this now as a metaphor for the sixteen ounces i.e., the age of sixteenwhere does he get this from? He also says: Mazu had never cultivated the great pharmacon, and sought buddhahood through lifeless zazen: because of this came Huairangs trigger of polishing the brick.207 Therefore, Nanyue Huairang seduced Mazu into becoming a wanton! This is the third instance of his sullying the sages words. The pearl that the dragon child played with at the assembly at Vulture Peak was a perfect and precious mani pearl. But to cite this as the lead from a woman would be to say that the naga princess committed wantonness with the World Honored One in the central marketplace in full view of the multitudes!208 This is the fourth instance of his sullying the sages words. In sum, the crime of Xue Daoguang was in the practicing, and the crime of Chen Zhixu was in his words. Daoguangs betrayal of his teachers and Zhixus slandering the Buddha measure up to the same thing. But Daoguang achieved something, and Zhixu achieved nothing. Alack, that Zhang Ziyangs instructions should have been more obscure the clearer they were, allowing some people in the world to use Awakening to the Truth to mistake the truththese people are the three commentators. :b2/APUP[)i/R?Z2WA B< N /2Wd9AJ7 ?&T=h AP NeH ] O0:$.X3E _;k jO+]1* @% :C`8 \DH QDH!H5 H! Y"2h5'02-3K4V,agLf^,I0? XDG ` A(S>2F60lM5#ca 204

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 4.16b2; and 4.27b4, 5.6b9. The references to Bodhidharmas facing the wall 4.27b4, 5.6b9 are attributed to Xue Daoguang rather than Chen Zhixu. 205


206

Found only in Jindan dayao, and not in Wuzhen pian sanzhu; DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao 3.3a6 7 also cf. 16.2a2.

207

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 1.19a8 9.

208

This refers to a passage beginning at DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu 2.10b10.

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I`x5214H&pPX$,6D` ] Ê$|yBKw> 9u0-0{ 4SH "f&N$B%f6G<:7J?W ? $hA:EC _])e6R;=9 Q4lLMI_]6ScIBKw> s [\([6 $SzQFdcF!i BKw>'Vx.v/86Unv/>x.TYU n}9Bj l6x.4Ùnk`q#mo3r 6ra@4$Z\S~\IL 209 Wang Shizhen has understood the practices being advocated in Wuzhen pian sanzhu, has decoded some of the language of the text, and has identied how Chen Zhixu plays fast and loose with Daoist and Buddhist symbols. However Wang does not appreciate the way in which alchemical language works on dierent levels. When Chen says the pharmacon is received from the woman during coitus, and also says the Buddha received the mani pearl from the Naga Princess, Chen may, or may not, be saying that the Buddha actually received the mani pearl from the Naga Princess during coitus. Similarly, Chen is probably not saying that the precious pearl suspended in the void by Yuanshi Tianzun is simply gross sexual uids. Chen is saying that these things belong to the same category, that embraces both physiological and spiritual registers. I think that, in some cases, Chen is trying to eect a oneway correspondence between a myth and a practice. Chen wants to the sacred aura of the traditional Lingbao Daoist myth to rub o on his specic practices the secondary salvic eect of emulating the gods, but without necessarily attempting to infuse the sacred myths and symbols with his own physiological practices. Wang Shizhen, on his part, refuses any such symbolic contact between pure myths and base practices. Often, Chen does seem unambiguously to impute sexual practices to the gods or patriarchs, including kyamuni, Bodhidharma, Huairang, and Mazu. In an essay entitled Bai Ziqings Chapters Pointing out the Mystery +mbO *, Wang Shizhen ranges the works of Zhang Boduan, Chen Nan gt, and Bai Yuchan on one side, against Chen Zhixu and unnamed others on the other side: Bai Yuchan, the Perfected, styled Ziqing, took Chen Niwan as his teacher. Niwans dao was also received from Xue Zixian. The three grades of transcendenthood and three stages in rening the elixir in Ziqings work Discourse on Discriminating Fallacies are all found within ones own body, and do not depend on the neighbor to the west. . . . 209

Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou Shanren xugao 158.19a7 20a7 57:7249 51.

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For the untrammeled ease and gaiety of the poetry, no one is better than Bai Ziqing. Overall, the miscellanies of Zhang Ziyang and Chen Niwan all approach the perfect. The others are no better than Chen Shangyang and his ilk, put together through relying on and copying the originals. Although they are wide ranging and erudite in their discimination, in truth the quality theoretical material therein is scanty. f[%S $O4^>>n'Y<fy2-f[;g` x ]dl*L7.3V /{mq}h c0ao<%f[Xfi^>LBS6"Eoîz 5N-*}_-ps\210 Chen Zhixus work made such a strong impression on Wang that he uses Chen as a negative standard by which to judge all other alchemists, and in every aspect. Here we see Wang Shizhens polarization of inner alchemists into two classes of good purecultivators and bad dualcultivators applied to the category of literary aesthetics. In an essay entitled Written after reading Four Hundred Words on the Golden Elixir C!,)H, Wang absolves Zhang Boduan from any suspicion of teaching sexual alchemy: . . . Yet, I still suspected Zhang Boduan of teachings related to the jade maiden, southern garden, hand upholding the olives, dragon and tiger meeting and battling, storm in the grotto chamber, or teachings touching on inquiring at the neighbors.. . . Afterward, I knew he had absolutely nothing of the socalled west neighbor teaching, and the instructions of Wuzhen pian can also be guided back to practices contained within a single body. . . . How could Ziyang have misled the world by means of Xues commentary, when his instructions were to pick out the secret within ones own body in order to save and correct the world? . . . b8r6 $FkI~A&|K:jDu9 +R< W{@bH?6ea; /{u-PSwJ ' Q- 3Ufi=t-J13TZ# M211 In an essay entitled Written after reading Instructions for rening the elixir of golden treasure, of the secret writ of blue orescence, from the golden case in the

210

Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou Shanren xugao 158.20a3b8 57:725152 . For shi , I translate miscellanies. Hanyu da zidian s.v. o ers miscellaneous and numerous pin za, shu duo Gv( . This is the best sense I could make of this sentence. 211

Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou Shanren xugao 158.21a57, 21b56, 22a12 57:725355 .

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Jade Clarity Heaven212 3$R%;0$O? , Wang proposes a theory about the further development of Zhang Boduans writings after his passing: I recently looked at this book again, in which it is said that Zhang Ziyang memorialized the Emperor on High, and wrote these charts and discourses. Its Discussion on Illusory Elixirs forcefully exposes the fallacy of practices relying on the other i.e., the partner, and brings alchemy back to ones own body. Its theories are quite orthodox, and applications are quite close to the mark, but cannot avoid containing traces of having been tidied up. We may say that latter day Daoists were incensed at the erroneous commentaries to Wuzhen pian of Xue, Chen, and their ilk, and tried to correct this by writing in Ziyangs name. #8@.L2:>"& (<CH = FP ,N4GG#19Q*AD)JB! M7IE-/:>213 Whether or not the Qinghua miwen was composed as Wang suggests, his ideathat the history of inner alchemy after Zhangs time involved struggles between pure cultivators and dualcultivators over the meanings of Zhangs teachingsis correct. In his reading essay on Jindan dayao, Written after reading Chen Shangyangs Great essentials of the golden elixir .7 >$ +), Wang admits that Chen is very wellread, and Jindan dayao has much merit, but underscores his previous outrage at Chens habit of nding sexual alchemy in the teachings of the sages and patriarchs: Chen Shangyang, named Zhixu, was a man of the Yuan dynasty. As for Daoist books, he read almost all of them. Although he was not able to achieve a docile renement in his style, yet his book is still grand and unrestrained, erudite in judgment, and forms a school of thought unto itself. His discussion of essence, qi, and spirit is incisive and moving, justied with citations from dharmatalks. His

sections on Marvelous Application of the Golden Elixir and the Pharmacon also have gleanable contents. But as for what he says about the crescentmoon furnace in the section on the Caldron and Vessel, that the pharmacon must be gathered from within the body of the woman,214 then thats absurd. The one thing 212

The full title of this text ought to end in 5 jue or fa. The text appears in Zhengtong daozang DZ 240 , as well as Daozang jiyao in ' coll., ce 1 , and Zangwai daoshu three editions, at 6:13658, 9:30014, and 9:36972 . It is ascribed to Zhang Boduan, but some say it was actually composed under Zhangs name by the Mingdynasty Daoist Li Puye K6; Ren Jiyu, Daozang tiyao, 171. 213

Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou Shanren xugao 158.22a8b2 57:725556 .

214

Wang Shizhens sentence is not clearly written, so I have interpolated more words than usual. I dont think he means to say that the crescentmoon furnace itself must be gathered from the womans body, because this would be a misunderstanding which no careful reader would make. He ought to mean that, according to the teaching regarding the crescentmoon furnace, it i.e., the pure yang pharmacon must be drawn from the crescentmoon furnace i.e., the womans body . The crescentmoon furnace can also refer to the kidneys, yet I suspect that the

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I nd odd is his preposterous citation of Confucians and Buddhists, impudently sullying the sages words. I feel that, if he did not ameliorate his guilt, it would alter his fateaccount with the Good Star.215 I have spoken of this in detail in my review of Wuzhen pian. . . . T b<%F` mGIY\78Nco)$a j~W'Gr2vqJMZ{9r]O >:. #$+=),pzU7}RVDk2X$Eg)K 5G l^bw *^x b Q218 In this allegory, Bai Yuchans text is personied as a Remonstrating O cial subordinate to Zhang Boduans text, with the duty of keeping Zhang Boduans teachings honest, and preventing them from straying toward sexual alchemy. Bai Yuchans text is also a sort of sheri , with the duty of bringing Wuzhen pian sanzhu to justice. Why did Wang Shizhen have such a continuing negative view of Chen Zhixus teachings? I think we can nd direct reasons for his attitude by examining his biography, specically, Wangs relationship with his own teacher. Some of Wangs letters give us a precious glimpse at the lifeworld of a Mingdynasty literati inner alchemist. Wang Shizhen received his Daoist learning from social contacts, his own sexual meaning of the term came rst. See pp. 28788 above. 215

The Good Star Shanxing _C is the Wood Star Muxing C or Year Star Suixing fC , i.e., Jupiter. In popular belief, o ending the Great Year Taisui f Star related to or equivalent to Jupiter is disastrous, even perilous; Hou Chinglang, The Chinese Belief in Baleful Stars. 216

Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou Shanren xugao 159.13a8b4 57:728384 .

217

Sibai

218

Wang Shizhen, Yanzhou Shanren xugao 159.14a79 57:7285 .

Q is an alternative term for sikou

P minister of justice Hanyu da cidian, s.v. sibai

621

Q .

reading of Daoist texts, and from his teacher, Wang Daozhen 5 1558 80 , a.k.a. Tanyangzi 1) Mistress of Densely Clouded Yang .219 Tanyangzi was the daughter of Wang Shizhens friend and colleague Wang Xijue 23 1534 1611 , who like Wang Shizhen was a native of Taicang , near Suzhou. Tanyangzis career began at age sixteen, when her anc died just before they were to be wed, and she chose to become a chaste and virtuous widow. She received her own private quarters in her family home, and began a religious career. Her religious life involved visitations from female transcendents, ecstatic travel, and fasting. Her teachings included elements from both Buddhism and Daoism. She had many disciples, including Wang Shizhen and her own father. She is said to have chosen her own time of death, then preached a sermon before an audience of thousands before ascending as a transcendent. Wang Shizhen became Tanyangzis formal disciple, taking refuge and undergoing a great transformation guiyi dahua

,220 probably in 1576, when he was dismissed from oce and returned home to Taicang. He would have followed her teachings until she died in 1580, yet he continued to follow her teachings after her apotheosis, as we see from a letter written to Tanyangzi beyond the grave: Now it is exactly three years since the time of your, my transcendent mistresss transformation (7 &-.221 Tanyangzis own religious life involved distancing herself from the family household, celibacy, and fasting, and she seems to have enjoined the same on Wang, as he writes in a letter to a friend: I have already forsaken my household, but am not able to distance myself from it. . . . I have been celibate these past three years. In the evening I drink a little ale. I have given up strong avors222 and meat. In this way my body and spirit have gradually become more attached to one another. #!/'+0* $",%4

.6

219

This biographical information comes from the entry on Wang Daozhen in Goodrich and Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1425 27. Also see Waltner, Learning from a Woman: Ming Literati Responses to Tanyangzi; idem, Tan yang tzu and Wang Shih chen: Visionary and Bureaucrat in the Late Ming..

220 Wang Shizhen, Letter sent up to Great Mistress Tanyang 1), in Yanzhou Shanren xugao 173.1a8 58:7885 . 221

Wang Shizhen, Letter sent up to Great Mistress Tanyang, in Yanzhou Shanren xugao 173.2a2 58:7887 .

222

Hun , refers specically to the ve xin : garlic, onions, ginger, Chinese chives, and leeks. These were foods that could not be oered to the buddhas, and were also forbidden from the Buddhist diet because they were thought to excite the passions. Foguang da cidian, s.v. hunjiu ,", 5592; Kieschnick, The Eminent Monk, 24.

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!223 Wang learned some selfcultivation practices from Tanyangzi, but not enough, so he tried to teach himself more by reading inneralchemical texts and experimenting with meditation. In the posthumous epistle to Tanyangzi, Wang tells her: Despite the key completely revealed by my transcendent mistresss subtle instructions, your disciple is still tormented, and sighs all the more. In the interval I have stolen a glimpse at a thing or two in the book Jindan zhengli daquan, and I reckon that this dao does not depend on seeking the pharmaca beyond ones own body. But I have not gured out where xuan and pin, or lead and mercury, are to be located. Also, I dont know what is true earth and what is re timing. In the interval I have practiced quiet sitting while I await your? time of coming, but I have gradually approached a state of stubborn emptiness,224 pervasive and without location. If, for a few moments, I am not feeling scattered and disorderly, then I am sinking into a daze. Because I am keeping watch at your shrine, I have not been able to go far away into the deep mountains. . . . Z&^ U 8:JDX$7+G R3Q2EHN FL5[/) <_ ?SB225 Wang was quite uncertain about inner alchemy, both in its details and in its broad outline. He may have rejected sexual alchemy so strongly because it clashed so fundamentally with the way of purity advocated by his teacher, which included abstention from social contact, sex, meat, and strong avors. Another reason Wang may have spoken so forcefully against sexual alchemy is that he intended his reading essays to be read by others. Wangs relationship with Tanyangzi was a matter of suspicion. After her death, Wang wrote a hagiography which was printed and widely circulated. Wangs piece received severe criticism. In 1581 . . . , a supervising o cial, and . . . , a censor, simultaneously impeached Wang Xijue and Wang Shizhen for heresy. Fortunately for the two Wang s, a fellow townsman . . . , then minister of Rites, helped to smooth the matter over.226 223

Wang Shizhen, Reply to Kong Yan and Wang Sun in Nanyang I6K0;, in Yanzhou Shanren xugao 172.17b45 58:7870 .

224

This is a pejorative term commonly used by Daoists for any Buddhist emptiness which is too empty.

225

Wang Shizhen, Letter sent up to Great Mistress Tanyang, in Yanzhou Shanren xugao 173.1a9b4 58:788586 .

226

Goodrich and Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1427.

623

Wang may have condemned sexual alchemy in his reading essays so that anyone who read them would not accuse him of at least this crime. To accuse a rival of debauchery was a common strategy: Wang used it himself against Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng 152582 , in retaliation for the impeachment. Later writers did accuse Wang of interest in carnal matters, however: his name was later attached to the sensual classic novel Jinping mei , though scholars nowadays do not think he wrote it. For Wang Yangming and Wang Shizhen alike, sexual alchemywhich both writers associated rst and foremost with Chen Zhixus teachings in Wuzhen pian sanzhuwas totally illegitimate, unthinkable as a personal option. Why were the two Wangs so critical? They were both literati who practiced Daoism quite seriously, but never left the life of a responsible householder. I think they were even more critical than would be a hypothetical orthodox Confucian who despised, but did not care much about, Daoism. Wang Shizhen may have felt the need to distance himself personally from bad Daoism in the eyes of others, and the same may hold true for Wang Yangming. Wang Shizhen also criticized Chen Zhixu as a blasphemer against Buddhist sages. Of course, Chen Zhixu did not intend blasphemy against Buddhism. Chen had great respect for many aspects of Buddhism, and tried to coopt them into his own system without demoting the status of Buddhism at all. Both men would have rejected sexual alchemy as dirty or injurious to the social order just as Zhang Yuchu before them, but we cannot explain this simply as the natural reaction of any Confucian or literatus, because below we will encounter plenty of nominallyConfucian literati who did not react this way. Yet there may be something about Wang Yangmings Confucian partisanship which contributed to his reaction. In my discussion of Zhu Yuanyu and Dong Dening on pages 63842 below, I develop this idea of practicing Daoists who criticize sexual alchemy as being partisan Confucians. §3.3, Lu Xixing: Adopting and Extending Chens Dao Sexual alchemy was unthinkable as a personal option for a literati cultivator like

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Wang Yangming or Wang Shizhen, but it became a legitimate option for later literati like Qiu Zhaoao or Zhang Tingyu. I will argue that the writings of Lu Xixing ! 1520ca. 1601 were the pivot around which attitudes rotated, and Lu Xixings teachings are based on Chen Zhixus. To show that Lu Xixings teachings were highly popular within the eld of inner alchemy will require examining passages from other alchemists after Lus time, which I will do below in my discussions of Tao Susi, Qiu Zhaoao, and Li Xiyue. Here I will show that Lu Xixings teachings were based on Chen Zhixus. As I show below in my chapter appendix, Chen Zhixu was the rst exegete in history to compose commentaries to both Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian, and thus helped these two texts to become the kings of alchemical scripture. Signicantly, Lu Xixing was the second exegete in history to compose commentaries to both scriptures.227 He seems to have taken these two texts as the most important scriptures in the alchemical tradition. In Jindan jiuzheng pian, he writes: From an early age I sought to understand this dao; however, because of my own dullness and lack of talent, I was not able to fathom its principles. Turning to the Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian, I found the path thorny and progress impossible. + (#-4%/* 0' &5.,)32 228 Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian were the works Lu turned to rst, sometime before 1547, but was not able to comprehend. Two decades later, he felt condent enough to write commentaries on these works. And in both of these commentaries, Lus teachings are explicitly based on Chens. The earliest Cantong qi commentary postdating Chens is Lu Xixings Zhouyi Cantong qi ceshu $. In his preface dated 1569, Lu writes that, after comparing the commentaries of Peng Xiao, Chen Xianwei, Yu Yan, and Chen Zhixu, he found Chen superior to the others though too verbose, and based his own commentary on Chens: I once read the books of the various experts, Zhenyi Peng Xiao "1 , Baoyi 227

I must add that Lu Xixing wrote at least nine other commentaries, most of these on works Chen Zhixu did not study, so Lus range was by no means coextensive with Chens.

228

Lu Xixing, preface to Jindan jiuzheng pian, in Fanghu waishi 8.14a45 Zangwai daoshu, 5:368; translation from Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 149.

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Chen Xianwei Ye , and Yuwu Yu Yan : . In dividing up their commentaries and interleaving them with the scripture, they each have their relative gains and losses. I sought their understanding xinling u, and gained my own understanding through experiencing the truth with my spirit. Now, as for the principle in Cantong qi upon which to base ones words in a commentary , only Shangyang is close. His learning is especially profound, and his discussion especially erudite. If beginning students were to read Chens commentary abruptly, they would be unable to avoid growing weary of its excess and throwing it aside, or becoming pained with its diculty and stopping. I may say that in the past I myself regarded this as a defect. . . . The central principle of my commentary is Shangyangs, while the words are my own. I call it a subcommentary which plumbs the depths ceshu `X. bnPyBK1)Fah%^q&+.u MgS-$7;Td9H.}QVWzcZ8} r(m#&v@&s'>37J,.0$; d .; !`X229 So according to Lus own words, his teachings in Cantong qi ceshu are fundamentally based on Chens. Lus second Cantong qi commentary, Zhouyi Cantong qi kouyi /4P < i, from 1573, does not mention Chen Zhixu, however. A more rigorous account of how Lus teachings are based on Chens, whether in Cantong qi ceshu or in Lus other works, would require a systematic study of Lus thought. I cannot oer such a study in this chapter. Lus inneralchemical learning may have been gained entirely through reading and personal inspiration, rather than through the oral instructions of a master. In the passage above, Lu says that he sought the understanding of other commentators , and gained his own understanding through experiencing the truth with his spirit. In Jindan jiuzheng pian, Lu claims to have received his teachings from L Dongbin: In the year 1547 of the Jiajing reign of the Ming dynasty, I chanced to meet Master L Dongbin at his hut in Shandong. He encouraged me to stay and treated me most graciously. He oered ne black millet wine and exhorted me with words of wisdom. . . . For twenty years I failed to live up to my teachers kindness. . . . Just as I was feeling that time was running out, I was visited by Master in a dream and determined to change my ways. olO"x|tSk5L*2GUNRI_?{ w-"]j[ACD6E =\fDCp

229

Lu Xixing, Zhouyi Cantong qi ceshu, preface, 1b3 6, 9 Zangwai daoshu, 5:255. In translating hu you yilou %^q as they each have their relative gains and losses, I take yi ^ as a loan character for ji ~, to gather or collect; cf. Hanyu da cidian, s.v. yi ^.

626

230

Lu Xixings rst meeting with Master L must have been in a spiritwriting session, or possibly in a dream visitation like the second case. Lu Xixing did receive teachings from L Dongbin through the planchette. But I think that Lu Xixing learned his inner alchemy through reading. Lus alchemy is a fundamentally textual tradition. Lu Xixing tells us that his Cantong qi commentary is based on Chens, but this is more clearly true in the case of Lus Wuzhen pian commentary, Wuzhen pian xiaoxu ), which takes the form of a subcommentary on DZ 142, Wuzhen pian sanzhu by Chen, et al. In his preface to Wuzhen pian xiaoxu, Lu explains the form of the work: Wuzhen pian is the work of Ziyang the Perfected. The three worthies i.e., Xue Daoguang, Lu Ziye, and Chen Zhixu have annotated it in detail, but their sections are vast as the sea, and the reader takes this as a defect. I have understood their intent, and written this in the form of small prefaces placed at the head of each section. )#%+$ ()",-! '&*)231 I have scanned this work, and found twentynine sections with Lus appraisals of either Chens commentary alone or the three commentators together. Lu assents to the views of Chen sometimes also including Xue and/or Lu about 65 percent of the time, and prefers the view of either Xue, Lu, or none of the three about 35 percent of the time. Lus teachings are thus partially based on Chens, yet Lu is reading Chen critically. §3.3.1, Conclusions.

Wang Shizhen was the rst reader in our survey to

congure the eld of inner alchemy into the two categories of pure cultivation

searching within the body, shenzhong qiuzhe and dual cultivation

searching outside the body, shenwai qiuzhe . Lu Xixing, Wangs contemporary, also thematized the eld of inner alchemy this way from the beginning. As a neophyte, Lu turned to Yu Yans commentary on Cantong qi: As rst explained to me by Master Yu Yan, these works taught the tao of purity and nonaction. All practice external to ones own body was condemned as 230

Lu Xixing, preface to Jindan jiuzheng pian, in Fanghu waishi 8.14a8 9, b1 3 Zangwai daoshu, 5:368; translation from Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 149. 231

Lu Xixing, Wuzhen pian xiaoxu 1a3 Zangwai daoshu, 5:320.

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heterodox . . . Steadfastly maintaining this view he could not be shaken. . . . At that point in my studies, I could not help being skeptical. "-$ 3! )*," . # "% 2& ',1232 Early on in his studies, he identied Yu Yan as the exemplar of the purity and nonaction qingjing wuwei )*," school of thought. Many teachers espoused pure cultivation, and few espoused dual cultivation: It can be found in the other. . . . Those who believe it can be found in others are rare lit., only one or two while skeptics are many. + 1 233 Who are these one or two sexual alchemists? Chen Zhixu and Lu Ziye certainly; perhaps others, or perhaps they are the only ones. With Lu Xixing we see the eld of inner alchemy dened in terms of Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian, and congured into the two categories of pure cultivation exemplied by Yu Yan and involving purity and nonaction, and dual cultivation exemplied by Chen Zhixu. This will be the way the eld of inner alchemy will be viewed by most later alchemists, especially Chen Zhixus readers.234

§3.4, Literati Alchemists of the KangxiYongzhen Period There were a number of court ocials in the Kangxi (0 16621722 and Yongzheng / 172335 periods who read Chen Zhixus works or otherwise mentioned him. As I show on page 590 above, Qiu Zhaoao 4 . 16381713, stands at the center of a web of linkages: he knew Tao Susi, Li Guangdi, Zhang Yushu, Zha Shenxing, and maybe Chen Menglei. Two other ocials who mention Chen Zhixu are Zhang Tingyu and E Ertai. Actually, the Kangxi emperor himself was quite interested in Cantong qi learning: he wrote two commentaries to this classic in Manchu. A number 232

Lu Xixing, preface to Jindan jiuzheng pian, in Fanghu waishi 8.14a56, 8 Zangwai daoshu, 5:368; translation from Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 149.

233

Lu Xixing, preface to Jindan jiuzheng pian, in Fanghu waishi 8.14a34 Zangwai daoshu, 5:368; translation from Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 149. 234 After writing this, I found Zeng Chuanhuis book, Yuandai Cantong xue, which takes the commentaries of Yu Yan and Chen Zhixu as the two main representatives Cantong qi learning in the Yuan dynasty. Later alchemists, such as Lu Xixing, took Yu Yan and Chen Zhixu as two opposing exemplars, not just of Cantong qi learning, but of alchemy.

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of high ocials in the Qing wrote Cantong qi commentaries. In addition to Qiu Zhaoao and Li Guangdi, Zeng Chuanhui mentions Liu Wulong 16901742 , Li Shixu 17731824 , Qing Yuanchang 18461900 , Guo Songtao . 1875 .235 I will discuss the works of three of these guresQiu Zhaoao, Tao Susi, and Zhang Tingyuin more detail. These three men were all sexual alchemists. Qiu and Tao were friends, but I cannot nd any direct link these two and Zhang Tingyu. They could have met at court, though: Zhang received his jinshi degree and began his court career in 1700, and Qiu was active there o and on, perhaps until the year of his death in 1717. In any event, the three men had a common interest in Chens works, which Qiu and Zhang must both have encountered while serving at court. §3.4.1, Tao Susi and Qiu Zhaoao.

Tao Susi and Qiu Zhaoao were friends and

fellow selfcultivators in Guiji , perhaps even students of the same master Sun Jiaoluan . Both Tao and Qiu produced their own commentaries on Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian. Taos commentaries were published together with three other works in his collection Daoyan wuzhong preface of 1700 . Qiu wrote a guest preface for Taos two books, in which he praises Taos work. Qius own works, produced several years later in 17034, include linebyline commentaries selected from the works of seventeen previous exegetes in the case of Cantong qi or nine in the case of Wuzhen pian . Tao Susi . 170011 obviously valued Chen Zhixus teachings, since his collection Daoyan wuzhong reproduces Chens Jindan dayao in an abridged form. Explicit appraisals of Chens works may be found in several of Taos prefaces. In a preface to Cantong qi maiwang preface of 1700 Tao writes: There are very many people who have written commentaries on the Cantong qi. For accuracy and detail of appraisals and discussion, or clarity and propriety of his collation and corrections, nothing can compare to Yu Yans Fahui. Yet Yu is ignorant of the great pharmacon of the golden elixir. In all cases his teachings return to purity, and beyond this he denounces all else as marginal traditions. He knows little, yet is overcondent. As for correcting those who have been misled by Yu Yans teaching , this is not a shallow matter . Ever since Shangyang let the secret leak at rst, and Qianxu Lu Xixing expounded in detail 235


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afterward, there has been deep and solid attainment. These two commentaries transmitted together are like massive lamps in a dark chamber, or precious rafts for an treacherous ford. Aside from these, Li Huiqing Li Wenzhu also has many enlightening aspects. . . . vY#D?K%~Q;i&BrqP-B >@bd(LJOA >+G a+

xI9Ct~9Fclv3z[o{EUH s(0_M 'r;j236 Qius appraisal of Chens Cantong qi commentary in his Guben Zhouyi Cantong qi jizhu 5:Y#Dyv preface of 1704 is much the same: Of the selections, records, and commentaries by the various experts which are circulating in the world, such as those of Zhenyi Peng Xiao and Baoyi Chen Xianwei, each reveals and claries in its own way, but most have omissions and abbreviations. Quanyangzis Yu Yan exegesis makes Cantong qi out to be pure; this is biased toward internalism. Only Shangyangzi testies to and illuminates alchemical methods, uniquely revealing the true instructions. Yet his citations are excessive and untrimmed. Lu Qianxu Xixing applies the alchemical instructions, adjusting them uently, having received a personal transmission from Patriarch L Dongbin. Now, I cite the commentaries from each exegete, with the largest number coming from Lu. Peng Yihuo Peng Haogu has mixed in laboratory alchemy, and Li Huiqing speaks of two sets of qian and kun: neither of them has achieved pure simplicity. N^v},?&R8'r;-%7hf*!x }. bdW9Z] x ;=R-)1um trqkgè\/Sz$<]mn%p w0_M24XV6LT237 Tao and Qiu describe two approaches to the Cantong qi: the pure cultivation approach as dened by Yu Yan, and the dual cultivation approach as dened by Chen Zhixu, and Lu Xixing. For Lu Xixing, the two approaches were also dened by Yu Yan and Chen Zhixu, and now for Tao and Qiu, Lu Xixing joins Chen as an exemplar of the dual cultivation approach. Even though Tao praises Chens Cantong qi commentary in his prefaces, I could nd no citations of Chens commentary within the body of Taos work. Qiu reproduces Chens line commentaries twenty six times, by my count. Qiu quotes Lu Xixing and Tao Susi most frequently, and Yu Yan and Zhu Xi almost never. 236

Tao Susi, Cantong qi maiwang, Zayi | 2b5 9 Zangwai daoshu, 10:4 . The translation As for correcting those who have been misled by Yu Yans teaching, this is not a shallow matter for a is my best guess. 237

Qiu Zhaoao, Guben Zhouyi Cantong qi jizhu lieyan ershi tiao "2 ` 13a5 10, in Guben Zhouyi Cantong qi jizhu, p. 25 Qigongyangsheng congshu ed. .

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Tao also praises Chen Zhixus Wuzhen pian commentary, though he seems to value Lu Xixings work even more highly: As for the Wuzhen pian , aside from the three commentaries by Weng Baoguang , Lu Ziye , and Chen Zhixu , each has its relative aws and excellences, but only Lu Xixings is pure and mellow. DE;FON T&XYHO+>?b)238 Qiu praises Chens commentary without noticeably praising Lu Xixings: The two commentaries by Lu Ziye and Chen Guanwu frequently match the original meaning of Wuzhen pian . Chens interpretation of rening the self training uniquely claries this point , but as for the ring tallies for advancing and withdrawing, it seems he has not given detailed exposition of the method of using metal and water in alternation. O MNe,3T$#DE%N[Wc&R7(6U GLQ\:B8239 Tao does not quote Chen in his Cantong qi commentary, but he does quote Chen extensively in his Wuzhen pian yuezhu DE`@T, eighteen times by my count. In looking at Taos reading of Chen, I found that at three points Tao deletes phrases by Chen which are critical of Buddhist practice, or of ordained Buddhists and Daoists,240 perhaps because Tao, unlike Chen, is not competing with such rivals.241 Qiu also quotes Chen extensively, fortysix times by my count. In the preface to Wuzhen pian yuezhu, Tao also praises Chens Jindan dayao as a sort of commentary to Wuzhen pian: Dai Qizong took Wengs commentary and added his own discursive commentary, with many ne ideas. Besides this, the commentaries of the various gentlemen Lu Ziye and Chen Shangyang the two perfected, Lu Qianxu Lu Xixing , Li Huiqing, Zhen Jiuying, and Qiu Zhaoaoeach have ideas which illuminate Wuzhen pian like the sun and stars. Shangyangzis Jindan dayao expounds the dao of the golden elixir especially uently, and can serve as feathers and wings for Wuzhen pian. Peng Haogu mixes in the earth prime, and has not achieved pure simplicity, so I do not draw on him. d!05FT(K-Z^$'O MN VEO_S/ IC]=9PaT"&R7DE%1 V 238 239

Tao Susi, Cantong Wuzhen zhu zixu *. 1b89, from Daoyan wuzhong Zangwai daoshu, 10:1 .

Qiu Zhaoao, Wuzhen pian jizhu lieyan ershi tiao 6, no. 1, p. 27 .

2 J 14a12, in Wuzhen pian jizhu Daozang jinghua, ser.

240

Tao Susi, Wuzhen pian yuezhu, j. 2b 4 , 24a; 3.3a; 3.3b Zangwai daoshu, 10:113,115 .

241

I discuss Chens competion with these rivals on pages 16973.

631

/ 5 :d/RS' &= #+)242

^9<Gc_

Tao seems to value Chen Zhixu and Lu Xixing most highly among his sources. Tao does identify himself as an heir of Chens, but less directly than Lu Xixing did. Sexual alchemy had become a broader tradition by Taos time. Whereas Lu knew of only one or two previous masters teaching dual cultivation, for Tao there were more known teachers in this tradition: Li Huiqing, Zhen Jiuying, Taos comrade Qiu Zhaoao, and most notably Lu Xixing himself. I argue that it is Lu Xixing who opened up and popularized this tradition of sexual alchemy, and Lus teachings were based on Chen Zhixus. Qiu identies himself as a direct heir of Chens, more clearly than Tao does. Qiu especially prizes the teachings of Wuzhen pian sanzhu. He even hints at a textual lineage of sorts extending from Cantong qi to Wuzhen pian, to Wuzhen pian sanzhu, and thence to himself: Generally, those things which Cantong qi hides and does not reveal are all promulgated and leaked out within Wuzhen pians verse stanzas and song lyrics. Because the great dao of the golden elixir achieves such an exposition, Zhang Boduan is truly Yunyas Wei Boyangs lineal heir, or a meritorious vassal of Guiji Wei Boyangs home region . The old commentaries if the three experts Xue, Lu, and Chen Zhixu are all able to discuss the original meanings. Here I make a point of excising their excess verbosity, and lling in their omissions, highlighting their overall structure, in order to achieve their comprehensive understanding, and cause the oral instructions and mindtomind transmission be clear before the eyes of the reader . A`!e.302,PFTK/ RBHd-QL *%NY"aJ 86>@Z1?;$(][W(b CX(UV!4(NE7 DM\I Here Qiu is presenting his Wuzhen pian jizhu as an edited version of Wuzhen pian sanzhu, when it is actually a selection of line commentaries by nine previous exegetes, plus Qius own. This is evidence of the high prestige of Wuzhen pian sanzhu at this point in the history of the tradition: even though Qius work is not really a reedition of Chens work, he prefers to present it as such, so as to make it appear more authentic and prestigious to readers who knew of and respected Chens name. How 242

Tao Susi, Wuzhen pian yuezhu, Zayi cO 1a6b1 Zangwai daoshu, 10:72.

243

Qiu Zhaoao, Wuzhen pian jizhu, preface, 12a8b1 Daozang jinghua, ser. 6, no. 1, pp. 2324.

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dierent the case is here than it was for Wang Yangming and Wang Shizhen, a couple of centuries before. Also note the textuality of Qius alchemy: Qiu aims to translate the oral instructions inherent in Wuzhen pian sanzhu into clear writing in his Wuzhen pian jizhu. This is in marked contrast to Chen Zhixus repeated assertions that books can supplement but not replace the oral transmission of a master. §3.4.2, Chens teachings in imperial editions.

As discussed in section 2 above,

Chen Zhixus works were cited, quoted, or excerpted in seven Qing imperial compilations. Chens works are briey listed or cited in Xu wenxian tongkao #" 1586, Yuding Peiwen yunfu

1711, Yunfu shiyi

1720, and

Yuding Fenlei zijin ! 1722. Not much can be learnt from these citations, beyond the fact that Chens works were known to the editors of these works usually highranking o cials, and were not rejected as being completely heterodox. Three other imperial compilations deal with Chen more extensively. One compilation grudgingly accepts Chens work: Gujin tushu jicheng 1706 appears to accept Chen when he is being critical of heterodoxy and reject him when he is teaching sexual alchemy. Another compilation goes a step further toward accepting his work: Qinding siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 1781 89, prefers Chens work on the Cantong qi which includes sexual teachings to the more orthodox approach of Yu Yan. A third compilation Yuding pianzi leibian ! 1728, wholeheartedly accepts Chens teachings, including sexual alchemy. Zhang Tingyu 16721755 is listed as the chief compiler of Pianzi leibian. It is not recorded whether he had other compilers working with him who had input into the nal shape of the work, though I suspect that this is the case.244 I found Jindan dayao quoted 119 times in this work. From the wording, I can tell that the edition used for these quotations was not the Zhengtong daozang edition of Jindan dayao; it was probably the Jindan zhengli daquan edition. The great majority of Pianzi leibian passages quoted from Jindan dayao are without obvious signicance. There are a number of quotations which are open to a 244

To my knowledge, Buddhist texts are only cited in Pianzi leibian from j. 97 onward perhaps a proBuddhist editor began working on the project here, and Chen Zhixu is not cited in j. 173240 perhaps a proChen Zhixu editor ceased working on the project here.

633

sexual reading, as well as some with an obviously sexual referent, such as the following ve separate quotations: Only when metal crystals arise in the Xuanwu palace does the perfected qi ascend from below Capitoline Mountain. ,7 .AU=);9 245 From time without beginning, the valley spirit has erected the heavenly root. The superior sages, when forced to name them, call these the xuan and pin gates. &/246 When the winds on the river of love have stilled, look to the other shore. Only then will you see the single mani pearl. E-4N'S2%LQ:247 Ingesting lthy and nasty things, i.e., milk and excreta,248 they have a look at the partners two cheeks to see if they are already ushed. Then they wait until the woman and man have united, and swallow the others essence or blood to form the base of the elixir. 6R@ (VI2*PB3!#0$1F

J O249

The celestial pass is in the hand, and the terrestrial axis forms in the heart. The Perfected dives into the abyss, and the sword ies to the grotto of the moon. TD";M?K5G250 I have also identied several Jindan dayao quotes in Pianzi leibian which support Chen Zhixus subversive interpretation of the practices of kyamuni Buddha. Here are two of them: The single precious pearl was originally produced within the womb of the mussel, then nurtured and guarded beneath the chin of the black dragon. The World 245

Zhang Tingyu, Pianzi leibian 57.9a s.v. 7 ; quoting DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 5.12b3 4. Xuanwu is the tutelary beast of the north, where water generates metal. Here, the palace refers to the female sex organ, and the mountain refers to the male. The female partners pharmacon of metal or gold appears in the palace, is drawn through the male adepts sex organ, and ascends from there up his spine.

246

Zhang Tingyu, Pianzi leibian 40.21b s.v. &<; quoting DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 10.1b9. The xuan and pin gates are the male and female sex organs; see pp. 395 96 above.

247

Zhang Tingyu, Pianzi leibian 82.11b s.v. Q; quoting Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 2.26b8 9

missing from DZ 1067. Only if the male adept can curb his lust will he be successful in gathering the outer pharmacon. 248

Alternatively, mammary excretions.

249

Zhang Tingyu, Pianzi leibian 111.6a s.v. *P; quoting DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 9.4b2 3. The context in Jindan dayao is a critique of such practices, but in Pianzi leibian this excerpt becomes ambiguous.

250

Zhang Tingyu, Pianzi leibian 111.6a s.v. K5; quoting Jindan dayao, Jindan zhengli daquan ed., 3.9a7 8 missing from DZ 1067. Perfected and the sword would refer to the male sex organs, abyss and the grotto to the female.

634

Honored One kyamuni Buddha attained it, and called it mani. The Heavenly Worthy of Primordial Commencement, Yuanshi Tianzun attained it, and called it millet sized. T6Q,>*82LV*XON?;F? ;FC251 Therefore kyamuni cultivated sam dhi and sat in dhy na in order to x lead by means of earth, and x mercury by means of lead, unmoving in body and mind. This is called cultivating Chan dhy na and entering sam dhi. What they call Chan nowadays is all glass bottle Chan. If you walk, you will knock it and it will smash; if you sit, you will drop it and it will smash. In this generation, only body with skin leaking Chan252 will not snap when pulled or burst when bitten. If one is able to take part in leaking skin Chan, then the lead and mercury will injaculate of themselves. /U4("P'GG'$G$SH& 9/4P ()MP+05K= P! D" AD<I PZ R. 73:;I P-GJ$ 1#%253 Here Pianzi leibian assents to Chens co optation of Chan as being a form of alchemy, and even to Chens contention that kyamuni practiced sexual alchemy i.e., cultivating a pearl which was extracted from a shellsh by a dragon . Considering Wang Shizhens outrage at exactly this sort of discourse, it is surprising to nd them repeated in an imperially sponsored book. Indeed, many of the choices made by the compilers of Pianzi leibian are surprising. By my count, they quote at least two dozen Daoists texts, yet they quote only a handful of Buddhist texts, and not a single Neo Confucian work. The lack of Neo Confucian material is astonishing. What was going on in the court of the Yongzheng emperor? The compilers choice of Daoist texts to quote is also unusual. Many of the Daoist texts quoted are alchemical texts, as well as some classic works such as Huangting jing heavily quoted , Laozi zhongjing E, and Yunji qiqian BYW. Yet much is missing: no Quanzhen or Celestial Master texts are quoted, and even the

251

Zhang Tingyu, Pianzi leibian 76.1b s.v. T6 ; quoting DZ 1068, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao tu 4b12.

252

This is a Buddhist epithet for the human body, imperfect and impermanent, but in Chan discourse it means the free and laissezfaire use of heuristic triggers; Foguang da cidian, s.v. Pike Louzi Chan @I P, 2107.

253

Zhang Tingyu, Pianzi leibian 160 s.v. = ; quoting DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 1.10a38.

635

mighty Daode jing only appears twice, and only within quotes from Jindan dayao.254 Among the quotes from Jindan dayao, what is missing? Chens constant harping on the need to nd a perfected teacher is ignored by the Pianzi leibian compilers, as is the ultimate aim informing Chens Daoist practice: to become a transcendent. I suspect that the compilers of Pianzi leibian who were so interested in sexual alchemy were pursuing it for reasons of health, or even pleasure, rather than for salvation, as Chen Zhixu did. §3.4.3, Conclusions.

We may conclude that Chens works Jindan dayao, Cantong

qi fenzhang zhu, and Wuzhen pian sanzhu had become wellknown among readers by this time, and were regarded as authoritative, even at court. Some readers among court o cials were alchemists such as Qiu Zhaoao, but the times were such that even nonalchemists accepted the authority of Chens works to a greater or lesser extent. I argue that these changes only came about after the appearance and spread of Lu Xixings teachings. Lu popularized this tradition of sexual alchemy in the idiom of Chens works. None of these men were professional Daoists. Even Tao Susi and Qiu Zhaoao were no more professionally Daoist than Wang Yangming and Wang Shizhen were. In reading Tao Susis abridged version of Jindan dayao, one may note that he resisted referring to previous alchemical masters as patriarchs zushi .255 This suggests that Tao did not accept Chens Daoist lineage for himself or his readership. Qiu Zhaoao takes a slightly di erent position on Daoist lineage. In his preface to Wuzhen pian jizhu, Qiu takes several pages to discuss the two lineages the Southern Lineage from Zhang Boduan to Bai Yuchan, and the Quanzhen Northern Lineage,256 but his emphasis is still on the texts the masters wrote, and he never mentions secret mind tomind transmission, which for Chen Zhixu would be an important aspect of 254

Zhang Tingyu, Pianzi leibian 129.10a s.v. , and 157.3b s.v. ; quoting DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 10.12b9 and 10.5a9. The second quotation states that chanting the Daode jing is worthless if one lacks the proper esoteric understanding of the text. 255

In the Shangyao chapter equivalent to j. 3 4 in DZ 1067, Tao Susi alters Danyang Zushi to Danyang Zu twice; Chunyang Zushi to Chunyang Weng once; and L Zushi to L Zu once.

256

Qiu Zhaoao, Wuzhen pian jizhu lieyan ershi tiao, 21a 22a, in Wuzhen pian jizhu Daozang jinghua, ser. 6, no. 1, pp. 41 43.

636

lineage. Whereas Tao Susi rejected Daoist selfidentication, Qiu Zhaoao comes closer to it. Yet Qius Daoist lineage would be a completely textual lineage. §3.5, Dissenting Views §3.5.1, Laboratory alchemy: Peng Haogu.

Peng Haogu was an o cial who published

several collections of inneralchemical and other Daoist texts. Peng adopts a more ambivalent attitude toward Chen Zhixus teachings. For Peng, the main teaching of Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian is ingestion fushi (0, i.e., waidan , laboratory alchemy rather than dual cultivation or pure cultivation. In his 1599 prefaces to Guwen Cantong qi xuanjie 9,G, Peng writes: Those who discuss mystic cultivation nowadays follow thousands of crooked paths and side tracks. Roughly speaking, these hundreds of experts can be summed up in terms of three teachings. These are: purity, yinyang, and ingestion. Q1) 35O @C(0-257 If you look at the book Cantong qi , it is basically talking about the spirit elixir, but Mr. Chen Shangyang annotates it as yinyang cultivation , and Yu Quanyang Yu Yan annotates it as pure cultivation . Neither of them gets the meaning of Sir Wei Boyang , both interpreting him crookedly. R'6%8 $C?B.@CC*B.=>/ :P E$ . G)258 Cantong qi takes ingestion as its main teaching . Only in the middle chapter do Wei Boyangs words express both HuangLao and outeralchemical teachings . !6(0.;M%D#I A259 Peng Haogu prefers an outeralchemical interpretation of the classics to the two other interpretations, yet he does not entirely reject dualcultivation either. In his 1599 preface to Wuzhen pian sizhu 47MB, a reedition of Wuzhen pian sanzhu adding Pengs own commentary, Peng writes: When Ziyang Zhang Boduan wrote Wuzhen pian , he took ingestion as his main teaching . 257

Peng Haogu, Guwen Cantong qi xuanjie, preface, in Daoyan wai, 53a34 Zangwai daoshu, 6:234.

258

Peng Haogu, Guwen Cantong qi xuanjie, preface, in Daoyan wai, 56a57 Zangwai daoshu, 6:236.

259

Peng Haogu, Xuanjie fanli G&, in Daoyan wai, 58a24 Zangwai daoshu, 6:237. Peng Haogu is identied by other commentators as an advocate of taking earth as prime diyuan , or laboratory alchemy. I do not know what the dierence between ingestion and outer alchemy was for Peng.

637

;? )/1 A L >H/1 A '7 D 45E%. I45'7@ #E'=3

8%.'N - 9261 I believe that the Wuzhen pian of the three transcendents is not the Wuzhen pian of Zhang Ziyang, yet how could their approach not also exist? I have already annotated the Longhu jing and Cantong qi . Because I recalled that Wuzhen pian is something practiced by all the people of this generation, I could not slight it. , /1);? /1&" :*+CM( 2K/1,0$6 G:262 Although Peng Haogu prefers to read Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian as primarily teaching laboratory alchemy, neither is he able to reject the sexual alchemical reading. The sexualalchemical reading of the classics was so prevalent in Pengs time, that he was forced to admit it as a legitimate approach. For Peng Haogu as for so many others, Chen Zhixu exemplies the dual cultivation approach, and Yu Yan exemplies the purecultivation approach. Lu Xixing had said that many alchemists practiced pure cultivation, while very few practiced dual cultivation. Yet it seems that by Peng Haogus time, the dual cultivation approach was prevalent, perhaps even dominant. Peng received his jinshi degree in 1586, so he was probably about thirty years younger than Lu Xixing. It is hard to know whether this contrast is due to the rhetoric of the two writers or the dierent circles they frequented, or whether dualcultivation alchemy actually did have a sudden increase in popularity between the times of Lu Xixing and Peng Haogu. §3.5.2, Ignoring Chen Zhixu: Zhu Yuanyu and Dong Dening.

Zhu Yuanyu

260

Peng Haogu, Wuzhen pian buzhu xu /1JB> 1b82a1, in Wuzhen pian sizhu Peking University edition, A4.14 in dissertation appendix 1.

261

Peng Haogu, Wuzhen pian buzhu xu 1b26, in Wuzhen pian sizhu Peking University edition.

262

Peng Haogu, Wuzhen pian buzhu xu 3a24, in Wuzhen pian sizhu Peking University edition.

638

. 1669 263 and Dong Dening DLH . 1788 264 both wrote commentaries to Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian which never mention Chen Zhixu.265 I discuss Zhu and Dong here because this neglect of Chen Zhixu could only be willful. I have argued above that Chen Zhixus Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian commentaries were widely accepted as authoritative statements on these two classics from the time of Lu Xixing on. The two most important commentaries on the Cantong qi for Daoists at least were by Chen and Yu Yan, with Chen exemplifying the dualcultivation reading and Yu the purecultivation interpretation. Chen was, if anything, even more dominant in the eld of Wuzhen pian hermeneutics. As can be seen in my analysis of the tradition of Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian commentary in the chapter appendix, by neglecting to mention Chen Zhixu, Zhu Yuanyu and Dong Dening are major exceptions to the mainstream of this tradition after Chens time. Why did Zhu and Dong neglect Chens teachings? Because they both rejected sexual alchemy. In his preface to Wuzhen pian chanyou, Zhu Yuanyu writes: In recent generations, marginal teachers have produced outrageous interpretations of Wuzhen pian, and deluded latterday students. The lowest have even devolved into teachings on furnace res or sexual partners, while the highest do not go beyond merely cultivating the one thing in solitude. &4'I=7J+S%/-V"19%GT0 $266 Dong Dening says almost the same thing in his preface to Cantong qi zhengyi, Dong Dening writes: There have been several dozen latterday interpreters of this book. Aside from

those espousing perverse and false doctrines, which we will not speak of for the moment, there are some who interpret Cantong qi in terms of inneralchemical learning, and some who interpret it in terms of the techniques of the furnace res. +=E5%MR18: K 263

BQ,. S%

Stylename CloudyYang Man of the Way Yunyang Daoren @>F .

264

Stylename Master of Primal Yang Yuanzhenzi 6 , from Guiji AO in presentday Zhejiang province . Zhu signed his prefaces at the Tower of Collecting Yang Jiyang Lou ?> N , at the Mountain Dwelling of the Four Peaks Sifeng Shanju 2 ! .

265

Zhu wrote Cantong qi chanyou ;(U* and Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian chanyou <>636PU* preface of 1669 , and Dong wrote Zhouyi cantong qi zhengyi #;(C and Wuzhen pian zhengyi 36PC both have prefaces of 1788 . 266

Zhu Yuanyu, Cantong qi chanyou, preface, 1b89 Daozang jiyao, Kui ) coll., 3 .

639

),I6&267 The only known laboratoryalchemical reading of Wuzhen pian is by Peng Haogu, and of course Chens Wuzhen pian sanzhu was the most famous sexualalchemical reading. Dong indicts Chen Zhixu implicitly in his preface to Wuzhen pian zhengyi: How could Zhang Boduan imagine that people afterward would give outrageous interpretations of Wuzhen pian? Perverse doctrines are running amok. Their willful absurdity has reached the point of the Xue commentary that is being transmitted in this generation, which on the whole is falsely ascribed to Xue Daoguang . Thus, several dozen commentators after Xue , rather than being enlightened are benighted by Xues gloss of the Wuzhen pian phrase seek the companion. Things would truly be better o if there were no commentaries at all! J<( 3/0C9@E H-;G9& F+21*9&A .?+%4>89,=268 In saying that the Xue commentary has been falsely ascribed to Xue Daoguang, Dong Dening echoes Wang Yangmings charge that Chen Zhixu forged all three commentaries in Wuzhen pian sanzhu.269 And by claiming that so many commentators followed the Xue commentary into error, Dong is acknowledging the dominant position of Chens teachings in the tradition of Wuzhen pian exegesis. But he does not accept Chens position, or even deign to mention Chen by name. Dong Dening is a partisan of Confucianism, and Zhu Yuanyu may be also. Dong argues in both his prefaces that the traditions of Ru D as represented by the Master Fuzi , Mencius, Zhu Xi, Lu Xiangshan 7: , et al. and Dao as represented by Laozi were originally a single tradition, and only became falsely divided after the Han dynasty. Dong aims in his work to repair this division. Zhu may also signal a Confucian interpretive stance by using the phrase By exhausting principle and human nature, one arrives at the mandate.270 A more thorough reading of their commentaries might provide a better understanding of the place of Confucian elements in their thought, but I am not able to oer that in this 267

Dong Dening, Cantong qi zhengyi, preface, 2a1112 in Daozang jinghua lu.

268

Dong Dening, Wuzhen pian zhengyi, preface, 2a45 in Daozang jinghua lu.

269

One might argue that Dong is echoing Dai Qizongs contention that the Xue commentary is actually Weng Baoguangs work, yet Dongs polemical tone suggests he is following Wang Yangming instead of Dai. Dai would not call the Xue commentary a false wei 2 work.

270

Zhu Yuanyu, Cantong qi chanyou, preface, 1a7 Daozang jiyao, Kui ' coll., 3. The phrase Qiongli jinxing, yi zhiyu ming B5?#$" comes from the rst section of Shuo gua @! in the Yijing.

640

chapter.271 When I call Zhu and Dong Confucian, I have a view in mind more complex than this term may suggest. Despite what some scholars have assumed,272 most Daoists throughout history accepted many aspects of Confuciuss teachings and the tradition which developed around Confucius. Chen Zhixu and other Daoists of his time accepted on principle the unity of the Three Teachings sanjiao heyi , though Chen was an imperialistinclusivist rather than a true syncretist see page 31 above. Chens approach, as we might expect, was to try to turn Confucius and Mencius into secret alchemists see pages 54548 above. Most of the alchemists I have studied in this chapter were even more Confucian than Chen may have been, because they participated in the culture of the exams, served in o ce, and did not become ordained as Daoists. Lu Xixing is an unusual case: he was ordained as a Daoist, and yet still referred to himself as a ru , or classicallytrained scholar.273 Yet although all the authors on both sides of the debate about sexual alchemy adopted aspects of broader Confucianism, there seems to be something di erent about Wang Yangming, Zhu Yuanyu, and Dong Dening a conuence of their anti heterodoxy and Confucian selfidentication. They would consider their rejection of sexual alchemy and their Confucian selfidentication to be linked. Yet look at Wang Shizhen, who rejected Chens teachings because they were base, but also because Chen slandered the Buddha. Wang Shizhen is not a Confucian partisan as the other three are. While Zhang Yuchu would have espoused Confucianism, he seems to criticize teachers of sexual alchemy for injuring public morality without putting this in Confucian terms. Sexual alchemy was declaimed as misconceived, dirty, and contrary to proper social behavior, but this was not always a specically Confucian reaction, although for Wang Yangming, Zhu Yuanyu, and Dong Dening it seems to have been. 271

Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. Zhu Yuanyu , 208, identies Zhu as a Quanzhen Daoist. From his prefaces, Dong Dening seems identify himself with the Southern Lineage but not with Quanzhen Dao. 272

Sivin, On the Word Taoist as a Source of Perplexity, 31618, argues against the sloppy intellectual habit of viewing Daoist and Confucian as two monolithic ideal types with nothing in common between them. Sivins main target is Joseph Needham.

273

Liu Tsunyan, Lu Hsihsing: A Confucian Scholar, Taoist Priest and Buddhist Devotee of the Sixteenth Century, 185.

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This Confucian partisanship seems to entail rejection of sexual alchemy for Zhu and Dong, but it does not entail rejection of Daoist lineage. While being a Confucian partisan, Dong also seems to identify with the standard Southern Lineage Nanzong of inner alchemy: We may say, regarding books on selfcultivation, that with the making of Cantong qi, students rst knew the source of the great dao. Then Wuzhen pian appeared, and gentlemen with intention rst understood the secrets of inner cultivation. Thereafter, the Perfected Shi Tais Huanyuan pian DZ 1091 , the Perfected Xue Daoguangs Fuming pian DZ 1088 , Old Man Li Niwans Cuixi pian DZ 1090 , Old Man Bai Yuchans Ziqing ji,274 and Xiao Zixus Dacheng ji DZ 263, j. 913 appeared in succession. As for books on selfcultivation, there is nothing that can be added to these. ;)=+/&> "% 98*,< #=-7', A8<@, 1!<$.: 4<C.306?34 6 (D)B +2 Dong Dening personally identies with the Southern Lineage of inner alchemy. Yet note that he does not attempt to trace the lineage past the sixth patriarch Xiao Tingzhi ? . 1260 down to himself, as Qiu Zhaoao does with his quasilineage of Wuzhen pian commentary. Also note that, as was the case for Qiu, for Dong this is a textual lineage. Each of these patriarchs is identied with a signature text, rather than with some other element, such as a myth, form of charisma, or secret teaching. Dong identies himself as a Confucian, and as a Daoist though probably not a professional Daoist. He opposes Daoist abuses such as Chen Zhixus teachings on Confucian grounds, but by no means does his Confucianism entail a fundamental opposition to Daoism. The model whereby partisans from each of the Three Teachings oppose the other two Teachings on principle only applies very rarely in the history of Chinese religions, and would be totally inapplicable to the gures studied in this chapter. §3.5.3, Counterreadings, 1: Wu Shouyang.

Wu Shouyang 5 15741640/44;

or 1550ca. 1635 was a Longmen Quanzhen Daoist monk, so we would expect him to reject sexual alchemy. Wu was disappointed with the according to him sexual 274

This must refer to Bai Yuchans Zhixuan pian, in DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu, j. 18. Dong Dening compiled an edition of this text, entitling it Ziqing zhixuan ji. 275

Dong Dening, Cantong qi zhengyi 60b1061a1.

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obsession of most of the selfcultivators in his day. After receiving a transmission from his rst teacher Cao Huayang around 1593, he searched for other teachers, to further his learning. He found the Quanzhen teachers only knew bedchamber arts and gathering and battling yun caizhan &, which they taught for pay. Chan monks spent their energies teaching the technique of guided rebirth see pages 52829 above, which was far removed from the emptiness philosophy of true Buddhism. And the Daoist lay practitioners devoted themselves to auriction, the forgery of gold. Daoist and Buddhist lay practitioners alike studied the arts of extended and pleasurable lovemaking.276 It would be very interesting to know what sort of sexual cultivation the Quanzhen monks were practicing at this time, and to compare it with the ve ideal types I have surveyed in chapter 5, section 2. We can learn little from Wu Shouyangs brief and stereotyped description. Through searches of Wus etexts, I have found passages in which Wu quotes Chen Zhixu. Wu is using two of these quotations to argue against sexual alchemy. For example, Wu Shouyang quotes a sentence of Chens: Unable to distance oneself from greed, anger, love, and desire, how could one consider extending the longevity of this body? #

( ! 277

Then Wu uses this quotation to make his own point that sexual alchemy is useless: The lustful essence from coitus is already doubly impure. The substance of the body cannot be transformed. "'%)278 This is a counterreading of Chens teachings by Wu Shouyang. Chen would not agree with Wu that sexual alchemy is soteriologically useless, inherently unable to produce positive e ects. I argue that Wu Shouyang knows very well what Chen is teaching, but rather than rejecting Chens teachings, Wu chooses to subvert their true import by drawing from Chens teachings only what suits his own. This is probably because Chens teachings held an unavoidable authority for Wu and his 276

Liu Tsunyan, Wu Shouyang: The Return to the Pure Essence, 197; and Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 535. Both quote Zhilun qiyou $, in Wu Shouyangs Tianxian zhengli zhilun. 277

Wu Shouyang, Xianfo hezong yulu 1b34 Daozang jiyao, Bi coll., 1; Zangwai daoshu, 5:639.

278

Wu Shouyang, Xianfo hezong yulu 1b1 Daozang jiyao, Bi coll., 1; Zangwai daoshu, 5:639.

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audience. §3.5.4, Counterreadings, 2: Liu Yiming.

Liu Yiming G + 17341821 also

makes counterreadings of Chens oeuvre. There is a passage in Lius work Tonuan wen !2> 2D 0IM0)

A =: !(4/:J,H@1$5EB>

!# ?;> B>!F !."8282 Liu is teaching the importance of humility, presenting his lesson in Buddhist terms: one ought to avoid xating on and objectifying the self. Liu was a Quanzhen monk, and this lesson would be familiar to monastics the world over, although Liu has put it in specically Buddhist terms here. Note how Liu quotes one representative authority from each of the Three Teachings to support his point: the Yijing and Confucius represent Confucianism, the Diamond stra represents Buddhism, and Chen Zhixu represents Daoism. In this passage, Liu has elevated Chen to canonical status within Daoism, and implicitly placed him on the same plane as Confucius. The phrase Liu is quoting from Chen is actually the words of Ma Danyang, a Quanzhen patriarch. It is surprising that Liu Yiming, although a Quanzhen Daoist, would prefer to cite Chen Zhixu as the authority for a particular phrase rather than Ma Danyang, 279

This is from the beginning of hexagram no. 52, gen .

280

Found in T 235, Jingang bore boluomi jing, 8:750b16, and other texts.

281

This is a paraphrase of Ji suo buyu, wu shi yu ren ';0) , Lunyu, HY 12.2, 15.24.

282

Liu Yiming, Tonuan wen 1.23a8b4 Zangwai daoshu, 8:221 .

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a patriarch from a branch of his own lineage.283 This is signicant. It tells us both that Chen Zhixu was highly respected at this point in Daoist history, and that Liu Yiming had a view of his own Quanzhen lineage which diers from Quanzhen views at earlier or later points in the history of that tradition.284 The sentence Swiftly overturn the mountain of self and other in its Jindan dayao context carries a meaning very dierent from Liu Yimings. Chen is using this saying to emphasize the corporeality of sexual alchemy. kyamuni said or, the kyas, the Buddhists, say: Between qian and kun, within the cosmos, there is a single treasure hidden in the mountain of physical form.285 He also said: I possess a single thing which upholds heaven above and earth below. Does everyone still recognize it?286 The Changes says: That which is above form we call Dao; and also says: Man and woman mingle their essence, and the myriad things are produced through transformation.287 Cultivation within the Three Teachings is inseparable from physical objects with form. Thus Old Man Ma Danyang said: Swiftly overturn the mountain of self and other, and burst open the cavity of dragon and tiger. O:*+@ N8$# .4 4G KMF-$!/ID (BEC. <7"L$.3A9>&

%,62;J0'?288 There can be little doubt about Chen Zhixus referents here. The mountain and cavity are objects with form xingwu $., so mountain would refer to the male sexual organ, and cavity to the female organ. In Chens text, this passage accompanies a picture, which is symbolically suggestive in similar ways. Like Liu Yiming after him, Chen Zhixu is quoting representatives of the Three Teachings to support his point. He quotes Chan gnomic verses attributing them to Shi shi O, which may mean Buddhist here, the canonicalConfucian Yijing, and the 283

Liu Yimings Longmen lineage was founded by Qiu Chuji 1=H, rather than Ma Danyang, but Longmen Quanzhen Daoists still revered Ma nearly as much as Qiu.

284 Chen Jiaoyous critique of Chen Zhixu in Changchun daojiao yuanliu, 2:166 68 is an example of a later Quanzhen view that is quite dierent. 285

The locus classicus for this sentence is T 1857, Baozang lun, 45:145b23 34, but this variant wording probably comes from T 2003, Biyan lu, 48:193c23 24.

286

This is a variant of a saying attributed to Dongshan Liangjie 5)P 807 69 in T 2076, Jingde chuandeng lu, 51:322b2. 287

These two sayings come from Yijing, Xici zhuan, 1.12.4, 2.5.13; Rutt, The Book of Changes Zhouyi, 419, 426.

288

DZ 1068, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao tu 7a3 7.

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Quanzhen patriarch Ma Danyang. As we might expect, the meaning of the sentence in the original context of Ma Danyangs Discourse Records is unrelated to its meaning for Chen Zhixu: The Master Ma Danyang often wrote a pair of linked verses in large characters. He said to a Daoist companion: Swiftly overturn the mountain of self and other, and burst open the cavity of dragon and tiger. Based on this, I asked: I dare to ask, once you know about the mountain of self and other, where is the cavity of dragon and tiger? The Master replied with a smile: I dare not tell you the mechanism of heaven lightly. Examine the worthies carefully, and see if you will achieve enlightenment on the matter or not! "($ 5/-* !'41,.& 4+&"%3+0 )) 2# #289 For Ma Danyang, the mountain of self and other is the obstacle of self/other view, and the cavity of dragon and tiger is something to be discovered for oneself, as part of ones own being, through examining worthies i.e., k anlike cases from past masters and presumably also through introspection and mental cultivation of the inherent nature xing . In tracing the history of this simple sentence, we see a threestage process of counterreading. Ma Danyangs words are recorded, then Chen Zhixu twists the meaning of Ma Danyangs words, then Li Yiming twists the meaning of Chen Zhixus words. Liu brings Chens words back relatively close to Mas original meaning. Liu is talking about monkly humility, and Ma is talking about mental cultivation, so Lius point is not exactly the same as Mas, but the two teachings are broadly related. Yet in an important sense, Liu is not bringing the meaning of the sentence back to Mas meaning, because Liu prefers to regard the sentence as Chens words. The original Quanzhen teaching makes its return through the medium of Chens teachings, and is changed by them. Between the time of Mas career twelfth century and Liu Yimings eighteenth stands Chen Zhixus career fourteenth , and the subsequent ascendancy of Chens teachings and works in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Liu Yimings Quanzhen Daoism has been strongly tinted by Chen Zhixus sexual alchemy, while basically retaining its original color. This can be seen in the 289

DZ 1057, Danyang zhenren yulu 3a10b3.

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following passage from Xiuzhen biannan
The questioner asks: Since wealth is not wealth like gold and silver, then why did . . . Shangyangzi say: The poor man frets over having no wealth, and the man with wealth frets over having no companion . . . ? What does this mean?

Liu Yiming answers: Herein is a secret mechanism that you cannot know if you are not a teacher. You should not hazard a guess. Now, there are two daos for cultivating perfection. The rst is that of higher virtue, the work of making ones body whole by means of a dao. The second is that of lower virtue, the work of extending ones lifeendowment by means of techniques. For the man of higher virtue, his pure yang has not been broken. In making his body whole by means of a dao, he does not use wealth in practicing the work of nonaction. He can immediately complete his inherent nature, and when his nature is complete, his lifeendowment will also be complete. For the man of lower virtue, his precosmic yang is already lost, and he is like a poor man without wealth. He must borrow resources from anothers house. He extends his lifeendowment by practicing the dao of action. Only then can he complete his lifeendowment. When his lifeendowment is complete, then he may begin cultivating his inherent nature. ED954RD(MUJ3GKD$DGK 6% (NL%TA5>21F8H
-- &0.<+290 Liu Yiming, although ostensibly a celibate Quanzhen monastic, has room in his system for both purecultivation and dualcultivation approaches. Pure cultivation is the ideal, but only one who has not lost ones primal yang contained in semen or menses may choose this route. Those whose bodies are depleted ought to begin by gathering the pharmacon for the elixir from a partner through sexual alchemy, before moving to mental cultivation cultivation of the inherent nature, lianxing O0 . Chen Zhixu has a place in Lius system, but Chens sexual alchemy would be considered a lessthanideal approach. This is basically the view of modernday Chinese experts on alchemy.291 The Quanzhen Daoist Wu Shouyang did not include sexual alchemy in his teachings, but Liu Yiming, living 150 years later, does. I argue that we can see an evolution in the eld of inner alchemy here: sexual alchemy has become more 290

Liu Yiming, Xiuzhen biannan 16b19 Zangwai daoshu, 8:477 .

291

Many modern experts would say that sexual cultivation is appropriate is for middleaged and old men, whose bodies have lost almost all of their primal qi; young, healthy men or boys would have no need for it, and should not take the risk of trying it; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 522.

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authoritative and acceptable in the interval between Wu Shouyang and Liu Yiming. Liu Yimings sexual alchemy was not derived merely from Chen Zhixu, however. Unlike the other alchemists I have studied in this chapter, Liu Yiming had at least two sources for his sexualalchemical teachings: the tradition that developed around Chen Zhixu, and another, separate tradition traced to Zhang Sanfeng K. In this passage, Lius teaching on pure vs. dual cultivation is related to the quote from Chen Zhixu, and not to a quote from Zhang Sanfeng. §3.5.5, Counterreadings, 3: Li Xiyue.

Li Xiyue 40" 180656 was a sexual

alchemist, but his sexual alchemy may have emphasized a spiritual coition between the man and woman, in which they do not disrobe or even physically touch.292 Lis text Daoqiao tan U]Y quotes Chen Zhixu at least six times. One of these quotes is what I term a counterreading: Xuan and Pin, Root and Foundation&/HJ Gentlemen who cultivate the mystic, whether they are working on the greater or lesser elixir, all ought to nurture the valley spirit in stillness, and establish their root. The valley spirit is a term for the precosmic void numinosity, my own primal nature. Where is it to be nurtured? Xuan and pin are yet therein. Shangyangzi said: Xuan and pin are two things. If these two things did not exist, how then could the myriad things exist? We may presume that xuan is heaven, and pin is earth. This already appears in the rst hexagram of the Changes. We can know that the one aperture of xuan and pin is actually the source of birth after birth, and transformation after transformation. Can one who enters the dao not seek this source of generation and transformation? G&PZ3:\[7I(8H%7IA* Q_ W2F95$@ &/]VD''SUA$N.'SB293 For Chen Zhixu, xuan and pin have multiple referents: heaven and earth, qian and kun, but also the male and female sexual organs. There is no doubt that the referents of xuan and pin in the original Jindan dayao passage quoted by Li Xiyue are the sexual organs: The Perfected Ziyang said: If you would have the valley spirit live long and not 292

This was taught by the the Qingdynasty gure Fangnei Sanren !O; Li Yuanguo, Daojiao qigong yangsheng xue, 415. As we have seen on pages 421 and 424 above, however, the phrase shenjiao ti bujiao I)^) can also mean although one is having intercourse, one is not engaged mentally.

293

Li Xiyue, Daoqiao tan 20b921a3 Zangwai daoshu, 26:61819.

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die, you must rely on xuan and pin to establish the root and foundation. Ye Wenshus commentary reads: Take the xuan and pin as the single cavity of turbid unity between the two kidneys. Wumingzis Weng Baoguang inscription reads: Wrong! Ye has no idea that xuan and pin are two things. If these two things did not exist, how then could the myriad things exist? Therefore the two elixirs, outer and inner, are attained through this. The sages make a secret of them, calling them the crescentmoon furnace and the caldron of the suspended fetus. =A419&6+"BI#28E(?#. '>@;<JH%3*# ) 0
) C),- :!$9D5F7LK/ G294 For Li Xiyue, the cultivation of xuan and pin involves a sam dhilike meditation, while for Chen Zhixu, xuanpin cultivation is sexual alchemy. Li would know very well what Chen is talking about in this passage, yet he willfully ignores what Chen is saying, and applies Chens words to his own teachings. Li is coopting Chens authority for his own version of alchemy through a counterreading of Chens writing. §3.5.6, Dissenters: Conclusions.

Paul Ricoeur says that

writing renders the text autonomous with respect to the intention of the author. What the text signies no longer coincides with what the author meant. . . . An essential characteristic of a literary work . . . is that it transcends its own psycho sociological conditions of production and thereby opens itself to an unlimited number of readings, themselves situated in di erent sociocultural conditions.295 All texts escape from the hands of their authors and take on new forms in the eyes of other readers. This is radically true for texts in this particular Chinese hermeneutical tradition. In this tradition, later interpreters feel no compunction in ripping fragments of earlier canonical texts out of their original context, stripping o the fragments original meanings while shining up their canonical authority, then investing them with new import undreamed of by the original authors. Texts also help to create and maintain a measure of continuity in the sociocultural conditions of their reception. The cultural material in the text perpetuates certain social institutions or conditions, and certain types of practices, readings, and readers. But these institutions, practices, or readers are not unitary or univocal. Often, several quite di erent audiences may be reading the same text in di erent ways. While 294


295

Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, 139.

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readings within each audience may be relatively consistent, there may be a large contrast in readings between audiences. For example, there is a signicant hermeneutical contrast between Chen Zhixu and his sources, or between Chens later readers and Chen as their source. This radical Chinese hermeneutics is not unique to inner alchemy, or even to Daoism: it may also found in Chan Buddhist k an practice, for instance. This radical hermeneutics becomes possible in an esoteric tradition. In esoteric traditions, the meaning of any public or written teaching is subordinated to private teachings which are possessed by masters, given out sparingly to worthy students, and not disclosed

or impossible to disclose in writing. These traditions also emphasize that the secret teachings are surprising, unguessable to the uninitiated. And for some of these esoteric teachers, the boundaries of the esoteric tradition expand to include all other traditions: for Chen Zhixu, Mencius and kyamuni become alchemists like himself. Thus, the meaning of any text at all will depend ultimately on the whim of the master, with whom all interpretive authority resides, and there are few obstacles to the sort of counter readings analyzed in this section.

§4, Conclusion We may draw a general historical narrative from the data collected and materials translated above, as well as more than a dozen recurring themes. I will summarize what we have learned in this chapter, from these two perspectives. §4.1, Historical narrative In the beginning, Chen Zhixus teachings were marginal, far from the mainstream. Chen attracted some followers, but by and large his teachings were not seen as a serious alternative by many self cultivators or readers. As we have seen in chapters 2 and 3, in his own lifetime, Chen attracted the respect and support of a number of students, yet also suered ridicule in the city marketplace as well as the spiritual 650

marketplace. The same attitudes can be seen in comments by Zhao Yizhen in the fourteenth century, Zhang Yuchu in the early fteenth, and Wang Yangming in the early sixteenth. One alchemical writer, Dai Qizong, accepted his teachings, and Chen may have left a shortterm legacy of disciples and wealthy followers remaining into Zhang Yuchus day, but for most other Daoists or interested readers, Chens teachings were not something to be taken seriously. In the sixteenth century, Wang Yangming dismissed Chens teachings in Wuzhen pian sanzhu as debased and dangerous, and Luo Qinshun dismissed his teachings in Cantong qi fenzhang zhu as merely feckless, yet we see Chens teachings gaining in authority. Wang Shizhen rejected them strongly, but he still had to work his way through a number of alchemical books, writing essays on them, before he could be sure that Chens teachings were truly wrong. Whereas Zhang Yuchu, Zhao Yizhen, or Wang Yangming could dismiss Chens teachings with a few lines of stereotypes and moral commonplaces, Wang Shizhen had to refute them point by point. Is this evidence that Chens teachings had become somewhat more authoritative by Wang Shizhens time? I believe that it is. Lu Xixing, active in the same century, nds the true teachings in Chens works, but says that Chen was one of only a few who oered such teachings. Yet by the end of the century, Peng Haogu feels he must reprint Wuzhen pian sanzhu because it is so popular among the people of his generation, even though he doubts the truth of the teachings. Can we see a change in the popularity of Chens teachings between the time of Lu Xixing and Peng Haogu? I argue that Lu Xixing stands as Chens successor, being the second man in history after Chen Zhixu to publish commentaries on both Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian,296 and thus Lu is partially responsible for the growing interest in Chens teachings. In the seventeenth century, aside from Wu Shouyang, most of Chens readers were readers of his Cantong qi commentary, such as Jiang Yibiao, Kwon Kkjung, Mao Jin, and Hu Wei, most of whom admired his work. Wu Shouyang only mentions Chen 296

The third man in history to do so was Zhang Li js 1568, and the fourth was Peng Haogu. I do not know if Zhangs works are extant. Zhang Li was probably not a follower of Chens teachings, since Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao says Zhang used Chens Cantong qi edition without acknowledgement.

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six times, but I think this is further evidence of Chens importance in inner alchemical circles. Like Peng Haogu, Wu rejects sexual alchemy, yet must nd a way to acknowledge Chen Zhixu as a respected authority from the past. There was a breakthrough for sexual alchemists around the year 1700. Our evidence for this is the writings of Tao Susi and Qiu Zhaoao, and books produced at court, such as Zhang Tingyus rhymedictionary. With his contacts at court and later at home in Guiji, Qiu himself may have been a catalyst for this moment of glory, or he may simply be reecting activity among other men who left no records of it. For these men, the two most important sexualalchemical teachers from the past were Chen Zhixu and Lu Xixing. Writing toward the end of the eighteenth century is Liu Yiming, one of the greatest Daoist exegetes in history, who includes the sexual alchemy of Chen Zhixu and Zhang Sanfeng within his system of thought and practice. To Liu Yiming, sexual alchemy may have been indispensible to some self cultivators, even though he would not have practiced it himself. In the nineteenth century, Chens works had gone out of print and were less well known. Li Xiyue remembers Chen as a great master of the past, and must make room for Chens name, if not for the substance of his teachings, within his own writings. Li Xiyue secretly respected Lu Xixing, and may respect Chen Zhixu only because Lu Xixing did. Li Xiyue himself seems to have preferred the teachings of Zhang Sanfeng, around whose name an alternative tradition of sexual alchemy grew. Chen Zhixus only known true heir in the nineteenth century was Fu Jinquan. Analyzing the geographical range of Chens works, we see that, while he was read outside the region of Jiangxi, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang297 by some readers such as Liu Yiming in Shanxi, or the Korean Cantong qi exegetes, his base remained in the southern region from rst to last. This is despite the fact that his works were reprinted or quoted in books with national circulation, such as Jindan zhengli daquan or Pianzi leibian. The popularity of Chens works was not limited to this southern region in theory, but we can say that this is what happened in practice. Why? 297

According to G. William Skinners model of Chinese macroregions, these provinces do not constitute a single entity. Jiangxi is in the Gan Yangzi region, Jiangsu is in the Lower Yangzi region, and Zhejiang is in the Southeast Coast region; Skinner, The Structure of Chinese History.

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Probably because proper sociocultural or religious contexts for the ourishing of his teachings were less likely to exist in other areas of China. This may be because other forms of practice or morality occupied his spiritual marketplace there such as Quanzhen Daoism, or because the same class of curious literati readers could not be found. This is a case in which the realities of social context constrains the spread or popularity of a text. This is similar to the way that social context can constrain interpretation of a text. A text is open to widely varying interpretations in theory, but often in practice the interpretations of a text do not vary radically, because the text circulates only within networks or contexts which do not di er radically from the context of the author. Sharing contexts, the author and later readers largely share readings of the text. Unusual readings still do occur, such as the counterreadings I have identied in this chapter, but these are readily identied as anomalies, and interesting for that. §4.2, Themes At the head of section 3, I introduced a passage from an 1841 preface by Yu Muchun, a disciple of Fu Jinquan. This passage adumbrated many of the themes that appear in the material throughout this chapter. I argue that these themes constituted an alchemical textual tradition, with Chen Zhixu in the center, followed by Lu Xixing. In Yu Muchuns preface we nd the scenario of a beginning student who is perplexed by alchemical teachings, and knows not where to turn. This same scenario appears in Lu Xixings preface to Jindan jiuzheng pian. • The student sees the eld of inner alchemy divided into two categories equivalent to pure cultivation and dual cultivation. Wang Shizhen is the rst writer among those studied in this chapter to articulate this division, and this division is echoed by most readers after Wang. Most of these readers agree that Chen Zhixu is an exemplar of the dualcultivation category. From Zhang Yuchus quotation of a Lingbao scripture, we see that these two categories originate in earlier Daoism. • In Yu Muchuns preface, the student believes that alchemical tradition is

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epitomized by the two classics Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian together. Chen Zhixu was the rst man to write commentaries to both texts, identifying them as central to this form of alchemy, and he was followed in this by many others. • In Yu Muchuns preface, alchemy is primarily a textual tradition rather than an oral tradition. I have pointed out this same theme in the writing of Wang Shizhen, Lu Xixing, Qiu Zhaoao, and Dong Dening. • In Yu Muchuns preface, pure cultivation is exemplied by the Quanzhen institution. The other writers studied in this chapter see themselves as in a debate with pure cultivation, but do not identify this with Quanzhen Daoism. Quanzhen Daoism had its periods of ascendancy and nadir over the ve centuries between Chen and Yu Muchun. In Chens time, the Quanzhen Daoist lineage was very prestigious, so Chen created his own lineal connetion to the Quanzhen Daoism. Yet in Liu Yimings time, by contrast, Liu must stoop to accomodate to Chens teachings, rather than viceversa. • From Yu Muchuns preface, we cannot be sure whether Yu is a professional Daoist or not, and the same goes for many of the writers studied in this chapter. I will also mention other recurring themes from the material that are not found in Yu Muchuns preface. Two Daoist themes are 1 textual lineages, and 2 Zhang Sanfeng. Qiu Zhaoao and Zhu Dening identify with textbased alchemical lineages, rather than lineages based on the charisma of masters. This is a notion which did not occur to Chen Zhixu himself. The mysterious gure of Zhang Sanfeng represents a separate tradition of sexual alchemy which coexisted with Chens tradition from the time of Lu Xixing. Lu Xixing rejects the teachings associated with Zhang Sanfeng, Qiu Zhaoao acknowledges them,298 Liu Yiming and Li Xiyue prefer them, and Fu Jinquan also transmits them. The attitudes of these writers toward Zhang Sanfeng may chart a rise to prominence of a tradition based on Zhang, perhaps even at the expense of the tradition based on Chen and Lu. There are also a number of themes recurring in the texts which are 298 If anything remains inexplicit, you can gain understanding by savoring Sanfeng the Perfecteds Jieyao pian, and Sun Ruzhongs Jindan zhenchuan ; Qiu Zhaoao, Wuzhen pian jizhu lieyan ershi tiao 15a46, in Wuzhen pian jizhu Daozang jinghua, ser. 6, no. 1, p. 29. Both of these texts are translated in Wile, Art of the Bedchamber.

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judgmental or critical of Chen Zhixu. One major theme is Chens Cantong qi commentary. Several of the readers Lu Xixing, Jiang Yibiao, Mao Jin, Peng Haogu, and the Siku zongmu compilers include Chens commentary as one of a set of four standard commentaries together with the work of Peng Xiao, Chen Xianwei, and Yu Yan. Some readers Luo Qinshun and the Siku zongmu compilers set up a dichotomy between Chens commentary and Yu Yans, with the two representing dualcultivation and purecultivation approaches, respectively. Luo Qinshun and the Siku zongmu compilers disagree over the legitimacy of Chens assumption that Cantong qi is an esoteric text, with Luo rejecting this approach and the Siku zongmu compilers preferring it. Some literati readers Zhang Yushu and Zhang Tingyu value Chens esotericism. Others criticize Chens belief that other Daoist and Buddhist teachers were teaching inner alchemy Zhang Yuchu, Wang Shizhen, and the Siku zongmu compilers. Finally, we can see what I would call traditions of polemic against Chen. The polemics of Zhang Yuchu and Wang Yangming wishfully threaten Chen with government action, even summary execution. Zhao Bichen and Wang Yangming together compare sexual alchemists with teachers of wildfox Chan. Criticism of wildfox Chan may have been a theme in the early Ming, but it is never mentioned again in the later sources studied in this chapter. Thankfully, this sort of dehumanizing and prejudiced rhetoric was not a continuing theme in the Ming and Qing, at least for Chen Zhixu. This sort of rhetoric is reminiscent of the stereotypical polemics against Mingdynasty popular Buddhist groups as studied by ter Haar.299 Government ocials persecuted these groups as White Lotus rebels who committed wanton lewdness in midnight gatherings, and worshiped devils, when usually none of this was true. Although this sort of harsh polemic against Chens teachings did not continue after the Ming, Chen Jiaoyou as a Quanzhen critic in the nineteenth century does repeat the critiqes of Wang Shizhen and the Siku zongmu compilers. Yet Chen Jiaoyou merely criticizes Chen Zhixu for inferior teachings and false claims about lineage, 299

Ter Haar, The White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History.

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rather than casting him into the abyss as the early critics had done.

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Appendix to Chapter 6, Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian Commentary Of all the alchemical waidan and neidan works produced throughout Chinese history, Cantong qi and Wuzhen pian were the two works which received the most commentaries. Chen Zhixu was the rst exegete to write commentaries to both classics, and Lu Xixing was the second. Chen and Lus works both contributed to the continuing preeminence of these two texts in the later tradition. Commentators on Cantong qi Commentators predating Chen Zhixu Tang dynasty: 1. Ca. 700, unknown author, Zhouyi Cantong qi zhu ! DZ 1004. 2. Ca. 700, unknown author, Zhouyi Cantong qi DZ 999. 3. Tang period, unknown author, Jinbi wuxiang lei Cantong qi )0 DZ 904. FiveDynasties period: 4. 947, Peng Xiao +, Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang tongzhen yi # DZ 1002 and Zhouyi Cantong qi dingqi ge mingjian tu %*' /& DZ 1003. Northern Song dynasty: 5. Ca. 111117, Lu Tianji -3, Cantong qi wuxiang lei miyao 0 DZ 905. 6. Late N. Song or early S. Song, Chu Huagu . , Zhouyi Cantong qi DZ 1008. Southern Song dynasty: 7. 119798, Zhu Xi ,, Zhouyi Cantong qi kaoyi DZ 1001 8. After 1210, unknown author, Zhouyi Cantong qi zhu ! DZ 1000 9. 1234, Chen Xianwei 2", Zhouyi Cantong qi jie $ DZ 1007. Yuan dynasty: 10. Ca. 1284, Yu Yan 4, Zhouyi Cantong qi fahui DZ 1005 and Zhouyi Cantong qi shiyi 1( DZ 1006. Chen Zhixu 11. Ca. 1335, Chen Zhixu, Zhouyi cantong qi fenzhang zhu in Daozang jiyao, etc. Commentators postdating Chen Zhixu 15th century: None. 16th century: 12. 1569 and 1573, Lu Xixing , Zhouyi Cantong qi ceshu in Zangwai daoshu and Zhouyi Cantong qi kouyi # in Zangwai daoshu. • Lus rst commentary mentions Chens commentary.

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13. 1582, Wang Wenlu O, Zhouyi Cantong qi shule #%;-?> in Zangwai daoshu . • Mentions no other commentaries at all. 14. 1599, Peng Haogu I, Guwen Cantong qi xuanjie ;-S in Zangwai daoshu . • Mentions Chens commentary. 17th century: 15. 16th17th c., Yuan Renlin : (, Guwen Zhouyi Cantong qi zhu #%;-) in Baibu congshu jicheng . • Cites only Confucian texts. 16. 1614, Jiang Yibiao XB, Zhouyi Cantong qi jijie #%;-MS in Congshu jicheng . • Reproduces Chens commentary in toto. 17. 1669, Zhu Yuanyu ", Cantong qi chanyou ;-]0 in Daozang jiyao . • Does not mention Chen by name; may be critical of his work. 18th century: 18. 1701, Tao Susi E8A, Cantong qi maiwang ;-9= in Zangwai daoshu, 10:165 . • Mentions Chens commentary. 19. 1710, Qiu Zhaoao b, Guben Zhouyi Cantong qi jizhu #%;-M) in Daozang jinghua . • Cites Chens commentary extensively. 20. 1788, Dong Dening RWT, Zhouyi cantong qi zhengyi #%;-Q in Daozang jinghua lu . • Does not mention Chen by name; may be critical of his work. 21. 1799, Liu Yiming V', Cantong zhizhi ;*1 in Zangwai daoshu . • Mentions Chens commentary. 19th century: 22. 1841, Fu Jinquan G+U, Dingpi Shangyangzi yuanzhu Cantong qi FL4);- in Zangwai daoshu . • Reproduces Chens commentary in toto. 23. 1870s, L Huilian JC, Zhouyi Cantong qi fenjie mijie ;- P7S in Zangwai daoshu . • Cites Chens commentary.

There are also at least fourteen other Cantong qi commentaries that are still extant but which I have not seen. These are all rare books that have not been reproduced in modern collections.300 There are also at least two dozen commentaries which are not extant.301 Of the twelve Cantong qi commentators postdating Chen whose commentaries I have seen, eight or twothirds mention Chens commentary. Four of these eight commentators who mention Chen are known to have been committed Daoists Lu Xixing, Zhu Yuanyu, Liu Yiming, and probably Fu Jinquan . The other four men practiced Daoism, but their connections with Daoist institutions are not 300

Extant works by the following commentators are listed in Meng and Meng, Wangu danjing wang, 41517: 1 Xu Wei 5K ca. 156773 ; 2 Wang Jiuling ` 1591 ; 3 Zhang Wenlong < Z and Zhu Changchun ,2 ca. 1612? ; 4 Jiang Zhongzhen /6 ca. 1650? ; 5 Li Guangdi ca. 1700? ; 6 Yaoqu Laoren H_ and? Xu Naichang 5& 1718 ; 7 Liu Wulong VZ 1735 ; 8 Wang Fu !@ ca. 1750? ; 9 Ji Dakui 3. ca. 1820? ; 10 Li Shixu Y ca. 1820? ; 11 Guo Songdao DN\ ca. 184050? ; and 12 Yuan Chang :a 1892 . Extant works by 13 Kwon Kkjung ^ 1639 and 14 S Myngung 5$[ ca. 1780? are mentioned in Jung, Daoism in Korea, 800, 8089. 301 Pregadio, The Early History of the Zhouyi cantong qi, 149.

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clear. Three of these eight commentators draw heavily on Chens commentary Jiang Yibiao, Qiu Zhaoao, and Fu Jinquan, while the other six mention it without giving it special attention. Of the four commentators who do not mention Chen, one mentions no other commentators Wang Wenlu, one is a staunch Confucian who cites no Daoist texts Yuan Renlin, one is a ConfuciancumDaoist who rejects sexual alchemy Dong Dening, and one is a Quanzhen Daoist who also rejects sexual alchemy Zhu Yuanyu. The conclusion we may draw from these statistics is that, while most commentators read Chens commentary and found value in it, few accepted it as o ering the nal word on the Cantong qi. Only Fu Jinquan, and editors of reprints such as Guwen cantong qi C11 in dissertation appendix 1, would accept Chens as the best commentary on the Cantong qi. Commentators on Wuzhen pian Commentators predating Chen Zhixu 12th century: 1. 1161, Ye Shibiao , in Xiuzhen shishu: Wuzhen pian &, DZ 263, j. 2630. 2. 1173 and dates unknown, Weng Baoguang , in Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu &, DZ 141; in Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen zhizhi xiangshuo sansheng miyao

$ , DZ 143; and Wuzhen pian zhushi &*, DZ 145. 3. After 1161, Xue Daoguang (!,302 in Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu &, DZ 142. 13th century: 4. 1204, Yuan Gongfu %, in Xiuzhen shishu: Wuzhen pian &, DZ 263, j. 2630. 5. 1227, Xia Yuanding ", Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian jiangyi &), DZ 146. 14th century: 6. 13th14th c.? Lu Shu #, in Ziyang zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu &, DZ 142. Chen Zhixu 7. Ca. 1335, Chen Zhixu, in Ziyang zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu &, DZ 142. Commentators postdating Chen Zhixu 14th century: 8. 1335 and 1337, Dai Qizong ' , in Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu &, DZ 141; and in Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen zhizhi xiangshuo sansheng miyao $ , DZ 143. 15th century: None. 302 Dai Qizong and many commentators thereafter argue that the oldest of the Three Commentaries is by Weng Baoguang rather than Xue Daoguang, but Liu Tsunyan undermines Dais arguments, and argues that there could have been a commentary by Xue circulating at that time, from which these annotations could have come; Liu Tsunyan, Zhang Boduan yu Wuzhen pian, 797802.

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16th century: 9. Ca. 157080, Lu Xixing .#, Wuzhen pian xiaoxu &(@ ZWDS 5:31837. • Discusses Chens commentary in detail. 10. Ca. 15971600, Peng Haogu 2 , Wuzhen pian &(@ ZWDS 6:31953; and Wuzhen pian sizhu &(@ 4 rare book, A4.14. • Mentions Chens commentary; reprints Chens commentary in toto. 17th century: 11. Ca. 1669, Zhu Yuanyu , Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian chanyou 35(&(@F! in Daozang jiyao, Kui coll.. • Does not mention Chen by name; may be critical of his work. 18th century: 12. 1703, Qiu Zhaoao G, Wuzhen pian jizhu &(@64 in Daozang jinghua. • Cites Chens commentary extensively. 13. 1711, Tao Susi /)-, Wuzhen pian yuezhu &(@% in Zangwai daoshu, 10:66124. • Cites Chens commentary extensively. 14. 1788, Dong Dening 9?;, Wuzhen pian zhengyi &(@7 in Daozang jinghua lu. • Does not mention Chen by name; may be critical of his work. 15. 1799, Liu Yiming >, Wuzhen zhizhi &(" ZWDS, 8:327402. • Mentions Chens commentary. 19th century: 16. Ca. 1841, Fu Jinquan 1=, Dingpi Sanzhu Wuzhen pian 0&(@ ZWDS, 11:790859. • Reprints Chens commentary in toto, with extensive discussion.

There are also at least two other Wuzhen pian commentaries that are still extant but which I have not seen.303 There are at least four commentaries which may still be extant as rare books,304 and no doubt many other lost commentaries. I have not made an inventory of lost works. Of the eight Wuzhen pian commentators postdating Chen whose commentaries I have seen, six or threequarters mention Chens commentary. The only two who do not are Zhu Yuanyu and Dong Dening, who reject sexual alchemy. Chens Wuzhen pian commentary was even more popular among later readers than his Cantong qi commentary.

303

Danting Wuzhen pian &(@, by Lu Danting E, MS copied by Fu Shan 1 160784, in Daozang jinghua; and Jishi quanshu Wuzhen zhinan B'&(", by Wang Qixian +A 16221722 and Wang Qisheng +8, in Jishi quanshu a rare book.

304 Two cited in Qiu Zhaoaos Wuzhen pian jizhu are Wuzhen pian zhizhu &(@4, by Li Wenzhu C . 15731616; and Wuzhen pian yizhu &(@D4, by Zhen Shu <, . 162844. Two others mentioned in Ma Jiren, Daojiao yu liandan, 111, are Wuzhen pian zhujie &(@4:, by Zhang Li * js 1568; and Wuzhen pian &(@, by Ji Dakui $ . ca. 1820?.

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Chapter 7, Conclusion Here I will revisit two schemas from the introduction that have also reappeared at times throughout the dissertation. Then I will list some issues that ought to be addressed in future study on Chen Zhixu or study of inner alchemy in general, and focus on one issue in particular: Where do we place Chen Zhixu on the map?1 Seven perspectives in the study of inner alchemy.

In chapter 1, §1, I argued that

a complete, critical study of any inneralchemical text ought to consider that text from at least seven di erent perspectives. These are the 1 philological, 2 exegetical, 3 historical, 4 structural/institutional, 5 discursive, 6 textuality, and 7 selfreective perspectives. Now I will show where I have applied each of these perspectives in the other chapters of the dissertation. The scholar of alchemy must rst establish his or her texts or other materials: this is 1 the philological perspective. In my study of Chen Zhixu I have applied this perspective mainly in dissertation appendices 12 below, as well as in my critical edition of Jindan dayao which is too long to include in the dissertation . In appendix 1, A Comprehensive Bibliography of Works by Chen Zhixu and Zhao Youqin, I list and annotate every known rare book or reprint edition of Chens works. In appendix 2, Text Criticism of Jindan dayao, an extended discussion of four important editions of Jindan dayao, I defend my selection of the Zhengtong daozang edition as a base text, but also argue for the authenticity of additional material found in other editions but not in the Zhengtong daozang edition; adding this material makes the critical edition 20 percent larger than the Zhengtong daozang edition. It is important to establish the authenticity of this additional material because many points in my analysis of Chens career in chapter 2 or teachings in chapter 5 depend on it. After establishing his or her materials, the scholar must understand the specialized language of the material in its own terms, and translate it into an 1

The wording of this question has been left intentionally vague for the moment.

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accessible modern idiom: this is 2 the exegetical perspective. Chapters 4 and 5 are devoted to this work. In chapter 4, What is Inner Alchemy?, I have tried my best to do justice both to the concerns of modern readers and to the concerns of the alchemical writers themselves. Modern readers may be more interested in topics such as the body which are familiar and amenable to crosscultural comparison, while alchemists are often more interested in the intricacies of cosmology, such as the patterns of trihexagrams in Zhouyi Cantong qi, or the dynamic interplay of the ve agents. I have covered topics of both types. Throughout the dissertation I have attempted to make inneralchemical texts meaningful for scholars of religion. Usually this involves transcending Chen Zhixus own horizon, and translating the material of Chens texts into terms that are meaningful for modern scholars but which he would not recognize himself e.g., approaching the material from structural/institutional or discursive perspectives , or setting Chens material against the backdrop of a broader sweep of history than he had access to. Yet I have also tried to represent alchemical teachings in terms that Chen and other alchemists themselves would recognize. Some examples of points I have made that alchemists might recognize are my • preliminary comparison of the fourstage standard account of the inner alchemical path with other forms of the alchemical path pages 299311 , • analysis of the unions of ves and threes pages 33543 , • argument that innerorbital circulation plays a restricted role in Chens practice pages 49395, 554 , and • critique of Chens abstract use of ring schemata 50417 . The student of any religion must be uent both in academic discourse and in the discourses of the texts or persons he or she is studying, and ideally should be able to conceive and defend meaningful arguments in both idioms. Placing the alchemical text in 3 diachronic historical context, the scholar may illuminate its links to other texts, ideas, persons, groups, and events from before or after its time. I have done this in chapter 2 the biographical chapter , chapter 6 on the afterlife of Chens texts and teachings , and to a lesser extent in chapter 4 e.g., section 7, A Historical Outline of InnerAlchemical Literature and chapter 5 e.g., section 2.2. The History of Sexual Cultivation . 662

Placing the text in 45 synchronic social context, and applying insights from sociology, anthropology, and other forms of social thought or the human sciences, the scholar may study the 5 discourses and other cultural elements of alchemy, and analyze how alchemists uses and understandings of discourses and other elements are shaped and mediated by 4 structures or institutions. Chapter 3 is devoted to this work, using the social thought of Pierre Bourdieu to develop a conict theory of Chen Zhixu. Whenever possible, in chapter 3 I have linked my synchronic claims to historical data about Chen Zhixus career and social environment from chapter 2. I also discuss institutions or structures to a lesser extent in chapter 4 section 2, The Social Contexts of Inner Alchemy , and chapter 5 section 3.1.2, Outer preparation: nding mates and funds. . In addition to my systematic approach to the study of discourse in chapter 3, I include critical discourse analysis in all of my chapters, such as in my discussions of Chen Zhixus esoteric hermeneutics, that is, his strategy of extension or stealing the lightning.2 I have scattered my discussions of Chen Zhixus use of Chan Buddhist elements throughout the dissertation, and studied Chen Zhixus applications of Buddhist and NeoConfucian discourse to alchemy in chapter 5 section 4, Chens Adaptations of His Alchemical Dao . Placing the text in the context of 6 material textuality, the scholar may study how the production and reception of alchemical knowledge is allowed or constrained by the media of printed, handwritten, or oral texts, each with their own eects. The scholar may also study the text as writing, which escapes from or transcends its site of production in ways dierent from speech. While I address this issue briey in chapter 4 section 2.1.1.1 on the masterdisciple relationship in inner alchemy , it is in chapter 6 on the afterlife of Chens teachings that I develop this approach. In section 1 of chapter 6 I study the history of the printing and distribution of Chens texts, and in sections 2 and 3 I study the history of the reception of Chens texts and teachings 2

Extension is my term for a strategy in which the teacher takes up a religious truth that would already have been accepted by his audience then attempts to stretch its truthvalue to encompass his own teachings. The audience would see these teachings as aberrant unless the teacher can convince the audience that the truthvalue of the noncontroversial religious truth applies to them too. The similar concept of stealing the lightning comes from Urban, Elitism and Esotericism, 1.

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by later readers. Having studied Chens misreadings of earlier Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian traditions throughout chapters 25, in sections 3.5.3 through 3.5.5 of chapter 6 I study the counterreadings of Chens teachings by later solo alchemists. In chapter 6 I also note that some Ming and Qingdynasty alchemists hold a view about the foundation of alchemical learning that di ers signicantly from Chens view: whereas for Chen the student cannot achieve true alchemical understanding without oral instructions received personally from a teacher, for these later alchemists, alchemy is a textual tradition, and can be learned through books.3 This 5 discursive change may be due to di erences between the 4 institutional backgrounds of Chen Zhixu and the MingQing alchemists, but it is certainly also due to changes in the 6 textuality of alchemical learning between Chens time and the MingQing period. According to the 7 selfreective perspective, the scholar must always interrogate his or her own prejudices, and may also change them in light of what he or she learns through research. I have addressed this issue to some extent in chapter 4, where I adopt a received standard account of inner alchemy as my initial paradigm, but aim to revise the prejudices of this received account through the survey of inneralchemical traditions in the chapter. I have also addressed this issue in the introduction to chapter 6,4 where I talk about Chinese contemporary traditional scholarship on inner alchemy, and the value of this scholarship as e ective history wirkungsgeschichte . An outline of Chens religious market.

In chapter 1, I o er an outline of Chen

Zhixus religious market, in the form of six questions. While I have not used this outline explicitly to structure the dissertation, most of the points in the outline are addressed in the chapters above, so here I will recall the points I make in the chapters and relate them to the religiousmarket outline from chapter 1. This may also serve as an index to many of the points that are repeated throughout the dissertation. I defend the religiousmarket approach to the study of Chen Zhixu in chapter 3. 3

See pp. 600, 62627, 633, 63637, 642, 654.

4

See pp. 55759.

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1 What is Chen Zhixu selling? Chen is selling salvation, and harmony with the sacred. The rst of these two religious goods involves departing from the state of common, mortal humanity this departure may be envisaged as a form of life, or death, or lifeafterdeath5 to become a transcendent in the heavens or united with the Dao.6 The second religious good, harmony with the sacred, involves touching the sacred in this life. What I call secondary salvic e ects are examples of this.7 Chen is also selling a unique religious worldview. In chapters 4 and 5 I discuss the elements of this worldview such as cosmology,8 anthropology,9 theory of transcendenthood,10 myth,11 theology of various types of spirits or deities,12 metaphysics,13 ethics,14 theory and uses of scripture,15 ritual,16 social institutions such as the masterdisciple relationship,17 and way of life.18 Finally, Chen is selling specic alchemical teachings, of course, which I discuss in chapter 5. 2 To whom is Chen selling? He is selling to laymen Confucians, literati, and

5

In one passage, Chen remains cagey about the question of whether apotheosis necessarily involves the death of the body; see pp. 52728. 6

See pp. 32428 chap. 4, §§4.174.20, and 52632 chap. 4, §§3.4.53.4.7.

7

Also see pp. 66768 below. A more careful development of these two categories of salvation and harmony with the sacred might compare the former with J. Z. Smiths category of utopian religion and the latter with his category of locative religion; cf. Smith, The Wobbling Pivot, 1012.

8

See pp. 25468 chap. 4, §3.2, 26872 chap. 4, §3.3, 32843 chap. 4, §5, 48892 chap. 5, §3.2.2.6, 49293 chap. 5, §3.2.2.7, and chap. 5, passim. 9

See pp. 24754 chap. 4, §3.1, 283328 chap. 4, §4, and 431532 chap. 5, §3 passim.

10

See pp. 24546 chap. 4, §2.2, 32426 chap. 4, §4.19, 32628 chap. 4, §4.20, and 518532 chap. 5, §3.4.

11

See pp. 3334, 240, 24849, 257, 322, 33032, 43839, and 49293.

12

See pp. 25254 chap. 4, §3.1.3, and 52326 chap. 5, §3.4.4.

13

I discuss metaphysics aside from cosmology on pp. 27277 chap. 4, §3.4, and chaps. 45, passim.

14

While Chen often discusses topics related to ethics in his writings, I only mention ethics incidentally at pp. 379, 39899, 44345, 51922 chap. 5, §3.4.2, 46566 chap. 5, §3.1.2.7, and 54548 chap. 5, §4.2. 15

While Chen often discusses topics related to scripture in his writings, I do not devote any sections specically to this topic, only addressing it in my discussions of esoteric hermeneutics. See, in particular, pp. 27980 chap. 4, §3.5.3.

16

I translate a ritual written by Chen on pp. 13760 chap. 2, app. 3, and discuss this material on pp. 99102 chap. 2, §7.4.3.

17

See pp. 23839 chap. 4, §2.1.1.1.

18

See pp. 44146 chap. 5, §3.1.1.

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o cials,19 religious seekers who are willing to follow Daoist, Buddhist, or other kinds of teachers,20 Daoist monastics,21 and perhaps even to Buddhist monastics.22 3 What needs is Chen meeting? These include the needs for avoiding death and dissolution,23 for rebirth and renewal, participation in sacred anthropocosmic creation and transformation zaohua ,24 feeling special or elect,25 prestige,26 agency or controlling ones destiny, transference of the disciples unconscious a ect onto a master, cognitive solutions to philosophical issues,27 and probably also the need to manage ones sexuality and emotions. 4 How does Chen market and sell his teachings? He does this by establishing and managing his mastership and authority; chapter 3 is devoted to this topic. In chapters 3 and 5 I argue that Chen has three goals of a achieving recognition and authority as a master, or managing his mastership; b spreading his teachings in the religious eld; and c attaining personal salvation. I call this dynamic a threeway feedback loop of propagation, authority, and salvation. These three goals are complementary: for example, the authority Chen gains will help him attract a support network and audience base of patrons, disciples, or readers. This support 19

Such as Tian Qi #1 in chap. 2, app. 2, pp. 13536; also see pp. 6770, Zhao Boyong #3, Zhao Renqing #4, Zhou Yunzhong #5, Wang Shunmin #6; also see pp. 11520, 197, Zhang Xingchu #7, Xia Yanwen #8, Zhang Shihong #9; also see pp. 11520, Yu Shunshen #14; also p. 127, Xu Renshou #15; also p. 126, Ouyang Yutian #19, Zhou Caochuang #20, Zhenxi #21, Tao Tangzuo #22, Han Guoyi #24, and Dingyangzi #25.

20

Such as Deng Yanghao #2; also see chap. 2, §8.1.2, pp. 10915; chap. 5, §3.0, pp. 43140, Li Tianlai #10, Wang Xiangweng #16; also see pp. 54344, and Zhang Yanwen #23.

21

Such as Ming Suchan #11; also see chap. 2, §8.1.1, pp. 1059, Che Kezhao #12; also see pp. 11617, 12425, Luo Xizhu #13; also see chap. 2, §8.2.3, pp. 12025, Pan Taichu #17; also p. 116, and Ouyang Yuyuan #18; also see pp. 44, 11516.

22 I suggest pp. 17273 but do not have direct evidence that Chen Zhixu was hoping that his teachings would be received by Buddhist monastics. It is possible that he did have this hope, but it is also possible that his Buddhistic discourses and arguments were addressed only to lay seekers, or lay Buddhists who followed monastics. 23

See pp. 322 chap. 4, §4.14 and 323 chap. 4, §4.15.

24

See pp. 32122 chap. 4, §4.13.

25

See pp. 101, 197.

26

See p. 120.

27

For example, Chen Zhixu discusses astronomy in DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie and in Zhouyi cantong qi fenzhang zhu. We may assume that Chen discusses astronomy for cognitive or scientic reasons as well as for religious reasons. This material is studied in Volkov, Scientic Knowledge in Taoist Context, but not in the dissertation. Volkov argues that Chen Zhixu must have been well versed in contemporary astronomy, and that mathematical and astronomical was, at least partly, transmitted through Taoist networks and was not conned exclusively to state institutions; ibid., 540.

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network in turn will help him nance his personal quest for salvation. In addition to this, his teaching activities within his network, and his successes in spreading his teachings to new audiences, will generate karmic merit for him, which will further contribute to his salvation.28 Chen also markets and sells his teachings by establishing correspondences to other known truths a strategy I term extension, or stealing the lightning,29 or through the esoteric assumption that truth is secret,30 or through an esoteric strategy of managing secrecy and display,31 or by making violent misreadings,32 or by ex cathedra pronouncements and speech acts which I include within the list of secondary salvic e ects below. 5 How does salvation work for Chen? There are two forms of salvation in Chens teachings: primary salvation, and secondary salvic e ects. Primary salvation is salvation as we often understand the term, that is, escape or rescue from the mortal realm and assumption into heaven. In addition to salvation through alchemical selfcultivation, Chen also alludes to other forms of primary salvation, such as salvation through amassing karmic merit,33 or through intercession by spirits and deities.34 Yet in addition to salvation in the usual sense, I also identify secondary salvic e ects throughout Chens writing and practice. I think of secondary salvic e ects primarily in terms of Mircea Eliades hermeneutic of the sacred. I call them secondary because they are subtle, only semiconscious to the adept, and usually found together with a more selfconscious and commonsense forms of salvation.

28

See pp. 16162; also, pp. 72, 84, 104, 12425, 129, 24546, and 44852 chap. 5, §3.1.2.1.

29

See p. 663n2 above; also pp. 57, 8485, 115, 164, 16869, 178, 39697 chap. 5, §1.9.3, 53345 chap. 5, §4.1, and 54548 chap. 5, §4.2.

30

See pp. 2526 chap. 1, §4.2, 164, 1689, 172, and 27980 chap. 4, §3.5.3.

31

See pp. 2526, 164, 1689, 174, and 28182 chap. 4, §3.6.2.

32

See pp. 16378 chap. 3, §1, 39697 chap. 5, §1.9.3, 53345 chap. 5, §4.1, 54548 chap. 5, §4.2, and 64249 chap. 6, §§3.5.33.5.5.

33

See pp. 47, 7071, 162n1, and 51922 chap. 5, §3.4.2.

34

See pp. 3637, 8586n159, 99102 chap. 2, §7.4.3, and 13760 chap. 2, app. 3.

667

Secondary salvic eects are produced through achieving gnosis itself,35 recreating the cosmogonic state in text or discourse,36 reenacting the actions or lives of heroes or sages,37 repeating the actions of the gods,38 emphasizing correspondence of microcosm to macrocosm,39 participating in cosmic creation,40 cosmizing the body,41 and through a whole array of speechact eects enactments or performance eects, such as performing salvation, enlightenment, wisdom, and status as one of the elect,42 performing the receiving of blessings from deities,43 or performing cosmogony itself.44 6 Why does Chen sell his teachings, and what does he receive in payment or exchange? He markets his teachings for nancial gain,45 from a sense of duty,46 to save others,47 because like all people he craves prestige, in order to manage his mastership, and ultimately for his own salvation. Issues for future study.

This study of Chen Zhixu has suggested to me many

issues for future study; some of these I plan to address in my own future work, and some I can only hope will be addressed by others. It seems to me that the most pressing issue is 1 the need for more studies of individual inneralchemical texts and teachers. After enough such studies have been done, scholars may begin to compare the dierent texts or teachers in their details, addressing the kinds of questions that I ask in the conclusion to chapter 5: 35

See pp. 33, 101.

36

See pp. 43539 chap. 5, §3.0.2.

37

See pp. 3435, 65, 434.

38

See pp. 122 where Chen likens the sexual alchemist and his partner to the cult deities Xu Xun and Chenmu, 463, and 493.

39

See chaps. 45, passim.

40

See pp. 32122 chap. 4, §4.13.

41

See pp. 3536, 38991, and 49293 chap. 5, §3.2.2.7.

42

See pp. 36, 101.

43

See pp. 99102 chap. 2, §7.4.3 and 13760 chap. 2, app. 3.

44

See pp. 43539 chap. 5, §3.0.2 and 49293 chap. 5, §3.2.2.7.

45

See pp. 44852 chap. 5, §3.1.2.1.

46

See pp. 7071, 104.

47

See pp. 162n1, 197, 468, 51922 chap. 5, §3.4.2, and 531.

668

By nding this ssure between discourse and practice in Chen Zhixus teachings on ring periods, huohou , I have found a new site for exploration. What other kinds of alchemists lacked complex ring periods? Is this specic to sexual alchemists, for whom complexity may be focused more on the gathering of the pharmacon than on breathwork and intention? How many other alchemists who eschew complex ring in practice would still retain it in discourse? Can we nd historical, sociological, or morphological patterns within these variations in teachings and rhetoric? This is the way I believe we should study inner alchemy: we can begin with a paradigm, then with the paradigm in mind collect as many data points as possible, and look for patterns that will either conrm the paradigm or more likely suggest revisions to it.48 The morphological study of inneralchemical teachings may also suggest revisions to our understanding of historical links between traditions: The relative underemphasis on lesserorbital circulation may be a very distinctive feature of Chens teachings. This discovery might be helpful for placing Chen on the inneralchemical map. If I can nd a similar underemphasis in some other alchemical text X, then I would investigate whether X and Chen could share a common liation of practice.49 Just as comparative linguistics can o er data about historical links between ancient peoples that supplements data from documentary or archaeological records, a comparativemorphological study of the details of inneralchemical teachings could help to conrm or rewrite the history of the di erent strands of tradition within inner alchemy.50 This sort of study could also contribute new tools for the dicult work of distinguishing solo inner alchemy from sexual alchemy, or laboratory alchemy, or astroalchemy, or philosophical alchemy. Other pressing issues for the study of inner alchemy are the need for historical and sociological research on the 2 sociocultural environment in which inner alchemists lived and worked, and on 3 Chinese sexual life including sexual macrobiotics and selfcultivation, and social institutions such as marriage, concubinage, servitude, and prostitution as a background for sexual alchemy. I believe that much of this information would be available in secondary sources

48

From p. 553 above.

49

From p. 554 above.

50

Similarly, the morphological study of music used in Daoist ritual can supplement documentary or oral records of the history of Daoist ritual traditions.

669

already, but it has not been applied to the study of inner alchemy.51 A promising topic rather than a pressing issue is 4 the comparative study of esoteric traditions that are based on master disciple relations: traditions such as Daoism or Chan Buddhism in many cases, Chinese alchemy, European alchemy, tantra, kabbalah, susm, early gnosticism, or Western esotericism, or even more distant cases such as Chinese medicine52 or secret teachings in Japanese religion and ne arts.53 It might be helpful to think of most of these traditions as disciplines of salvation54 to distinguish them analytically from public religions. I believe that it would be rare to ever to nd such a tradition divorced from public religion, however. For example, my Outline of Chens Religious Market above is the outline for a description of Chen Zhixus dao as a religion. Studies comparing inner alchemy with other master disciple based esoteric disciplines of salvation may provide some random new insights into inner alchemy or into the other traditions being compared with alchemy, but the hope would be to discover general phenomena rather than just serendipitous conjunctions here or there. For the comparative study of esotericism, the work of Hugh Urban is an excellent model,55 but I do not know of any similar contributions toward the comparative study of specically masterdisciple based traditions. Where do we place Chen Zhixu on the map?

A theme running through the

dissertation is the question of where Chen Zhixu ought to be placed on the map. 51 Skar, Golden Elixir Alchemy is a contribution to the historical study of the socio cultural environment of inner alchemy, but we lack comparable work from sociological or anthropological perspectives. 52

Hsu, The Transmission of Chinese Medicine.

53

Scheid and Mark Teeuwen, The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion; Jordan and Weston, Copying the Master and Stealing His Secrets: Talent and Training in Japanese Painting. 54

The concept comes from de la Valle Poussin, Indian Disciplines of Salvation, 1 8. De la Valle Poussin contrasts religions with disciplines of salvation in India in the time of the Buddha. One feature of the disciplines is that they are not concerned with mundane ends at all. . . . The Indian ascetic . . . has to save himself, to liberate himself from transmigration. . . . There must be a Path to deliverance from rebirth and death. This Path must be a certain knowledge or esoteric wisdom, or a certain sacrice, or a certain asceticism, or a certain ecstatic meditation. . . . Various Indian institutions may not agree concerning deliverance and the path to deliverance, but they all pursue deliverance. The right name for them seems to be disciplines of salvation or paths to deliverance. Applying de la Valle Poussins categories to Chen Zhixus dao, we would nd in Chens dao aspects of both social religion and discipline of salvation. 55

E.g., Urban, Elitism and Esotericism: Strategies of Secrecy and Power in South Indian Tantra and French Freemasonry.

670

Where ought we to locate him within the various daos, or religions, or traditions, spheres, arrays of discourse or practice, such as Daoism, e.g., Quanzhen Daoism, or the Southern Lineage, Buddhism, especially Chan Buddhism, southern cults to Xu Xun, Ge Xuan, or Zhang Daoling throughout Jiangxi,56 or to the Perfected Lords of the Floating Hill at Mt. Huagai,57 or to Zhang Daoqing at Mt. Jiugong,58 NeoConfucianism, Cantongqi or Wuzhenpian learning, inner alchemy, sexual alchemy, and so on? Chen says that he is a guide on the royal road to salvation; this road passes through the hearts of a true traditions, so he claims to stand at the center of all true traditions, though the ignorant may say that he belongs to a marginal tradition pangmen . In chapter 6, I have argued that many later readers came to see Chen as central to the traditions of Cantongqi and Wuzhenpian learning, sexual alchemy, and perhaps also inner alchemy; in chapter 3, I have argued that Chen stood at the margins of all the other traditions in the list above. Another question suggested by the problem of locating Chen on the map is the question What is the map? How ought we to dene these daos, religions, traditions, spheres, or arrays, within which, or in relation to which, we propose to locate Chen? In chapters 1 and 4, I discuss my general approach to denitions in the study of religion: a comparative, polythetic approach informed by prototype theory and drawn from the work of Benson Saler.59 My simple answer to the question of how to dene these traditions would be to apply this approach. As for the question What is the map?, that is, How are we situate these various traditions in relation 56

See p. 50.

57

See p. 50.

58

See pp. 105, 117, and 12224.

59

See pp. 2122 chap. 1, §3.3, and 21213.

671

to one another?, I can only suggest Bourdieus concept of a total space of capital containing the eld of power or the eld of religion within it as a model for thinking about this question.60 It would probably be impossible to nd a single quality like capital by which to dene the various traditions, though. An even more basic question would be Where do maps come from? What are we doing when we dene these traditions and place them within a larger sphere? What were they doing in premodern China when they made their own denitions? Clearly, for Chen Zhixu, dening traditions, placing them on the map for Chen this would be a map of ultimate truth, the dao of the golden elixir , and locating himself with respect to the traditions and the map, was a crucial and deeply contentious a air. What were the processes underlying this denitional struggle? A full answer to the question Where do we place Chen Zhixu on the map?, in addition to the basic tasks of dening Daoism, Chan Buddhism, and all of the other traditions,61 and of locating Chen Zhixu somewhere in relation to them,62 we ought also to investigate the internal dynamics by which groups di erentiate themselves on some levels and establish strategic identications on others.63 This would be what Catherine Bell has called a thirdstage approach. In a review article on the use of the category of popular religion in the contemporary study of Chinese religion, Bell sums up scholarship on the study of Chinese popular religion since the 1950s in terms of what she calls rst, second, and thirdstage approaches. Firststage approaches assume a dichotomy between a great and a little tradition in Chinese society, and see the religiosities of elites and peasants as mutually 60

See p. 198, g. 3.3.

61

Instead of developing a formal denition, one could also sketch out a denition, or indicate the denitional process, while leaving the boundaries exible. This is what Benson Saler does, and what I do. Saler writes, The power of religion as an analytical category . . . depends on its instrumental value in facilitating the formulation of interesting statements about human beings Conceptualizing Religion, 68 , rather than in producing a nal denition of religion or of a particular religion. 62

Chen focuses almost exclusively on selfcultivation; sometimes he treats selfcultivation as the primary category, which includes various forms of practice that we would distinguish as Daoist or Buddhist. Within the category of selfcultivation, he may ally himself more closely to a true form of Buddhism than to a false form of Daoism, or he may not speak of these forms of selfcultivation as Buddhist or Daoist at all. In studying Chinese religions, the emphasis should not always be put on religions, but instead it may often be better put upon traditions, practices, discourses, or repertoires, which may cut across the boundaries of various religions. See p. 21 above. 63

Bell, Religion and Chinese Culture: Toward an Assessment of Popular Religion, 45.

672

autonomous. Secondstage approaches often structuralist argue that elite and folk religiosities share a common framework, and take this underlying social framework as their subject of interest. Thirdstage approaches do not assume that elite and folk are stable terms, and do not assume a stable structure uniting them, instead studying how both cultural categories and social organization are generated, maintained, or contested through symbolic activity,64 especially through ritual or public performance. We might call the thirdstage approach the study of the production of di erence and unity. We could apply Bells ideas about the categories of elite and folk in the study of popular religion to the question of boundaries or relations between daos and traditions in the study of inner alchemy, or Chinese religion in general. According to this approach, we would look at how actors and groups within the religious arena of premodern China generated, maintained, or contested denitions of and relationships between these daos and traditions. We would attend to how actors or groups produce maps of the religious arena based on their own memberships in or relations to various traditions, teachings, or daos. Yet we would also attend to how traditions, teachings, or daos are themselves produced or reproduced through this denitional or mapmaking activity. Bourdieus account of the act of naming in everyday social life describes a similar process: By structuring the perception which social agents have of the social world, the act of naming helps to establish the structure of this world . . . There is no social agent who does not aspire, . . . to have the power to name and to create the world through naming: gossip, slander, lies, insults, commendations, criticisms, arguments and praises are all daily and petty manifestations of the solemn and collective acts of naming . . . which are performed by generally recognized authorities.65 Bourdieu is talking about the process by which social reality is produced, reproduced, managed, contested, or transformed by its participants through their acts of naming, with their speech acts having more or less e ect depending on the symbolic capital they can mobilize to support their speech acts. Sometimes mapmaking activity is e ective, and sometimes it is not, depending on the amounts of capital that agents 64

Bell, Religion and Chinese Culture: Toward an Assessment of Popular Religion, 39.

65

Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 105. Also quoted on p. 30 above.

673

can bring to the arena of contestation. In chapter 3 I have argued that Chen Zhixu was probably able to convince his audience to accept his map of religious truth in only some of his facetoface encounters, or only some of his reading audience, so during his career his mapmaking was only e ective on a small scale, and he remained a marginal gure. Yet in chapter 6 I have argued that, by the time of Lu Xixing 1520ca. 1601, Chens teachings and those of other teachers had been used e ectively to remap the eld of inner alchemy, dividing it between solo and sexual approaches, so Chen had become a gure central to alchemists denition of the eld of inner alchemy. This dissertation is a similar attempt to use Chens teachings to redraw the eld of inner alchemy, even if only a little. Chen would be unlikely to approve of my secularized reading of his dao; on the other hand, we cannot approve of Chens use of minor bondmaids for sexual cultivation. So Chens discourse and our own are to a certain degree talking past one another; but this is, perhaps, how people usually use culture.

674

Appendix 1, A Comprehensive Bibliography of Editions of Works by Chen Zhixu and Zhao Youqin

A. Primary Texts by Chen Zhixu

A1. Jindan dayao . 1st ed. MS?, 1331 ?; 2nd ed. printed with prefaces by Ming Suchan

and Ouyang Tianshu , 1336; 3rd ed. printed, 1343 or thereafter. Also entitled: Shangyangzi Jindan dayao . Collected in: C1, Zhengtong daozang. 16 juan. DZ 1067, HY 1059. C2, Chongkan Daozang jiyao. 3 ce . C3, Jindan zhengli daquan. 10 juan. C4, Daoyan wuzhong. 1 juan. C5, Daozang jinghua. 2+ juan.1 C6, Daofan zhengzong wujing sishu daquan. C7, Doga jikji dokyo kyng. C8, Zhonghua daozang, 27:52094. C9, Zhonuo qigong jingdian. Standalone copies: 1

Chen Chongsu and Chen Zhixu, Guizhong zhinan Jindan dayao, photoreproduces the same edition as Daozang jinghua.

675

A1.1. Jindan dayao. 10 juan. 8 ce in 2 han. Ming edition. Held by Shandong Provincial Museum.2 A1.2. Jindan dayao. Edition printed in Ningfu 3.3 Not extant? A1.3. Jindan dayao. Online electronic edition, input and collated by SIVINL and Baixue, based on Zhengtong daozang and Daoshu quanji eds. SIVINL)*1 ">1:1

,8!7'.

A1a. Xiulian xuzhi 9-. Collected as a separate text in: C1, Zhengtong daozang. 1 juan. DZ 1077, HY 1069. C8, Zhonghua daozang, 27:60814. Forms part of the text of Jindan dayao itself in: All editions of Jindan dayao.

A1b. Shangyangzi Jindan dayao tu + 2. Collected as a separate text in: C1, Zhengtong daozang. 1 juan. DZ 1068, HY 1060. C8, Zhonghua daozang, 27:59599. Forms part of the text of Jindan dayao itself in: 2

Zhonuo guji shanben shumu, zibu, 6:88a. A former librarian claimed that this is a Yuan edition from the second Zhiyuan reign period 133541 . I have examined this edition personally, and found a Ming dynasty colophon: printed at the behest of Tao Zhongfu of old YellowRed Cli , Grand Master for Proper Consultation, Governor Assisting in Administration, and Eminent Gentleman of Divine Empyrean, Assisting Administration of the Regulations, and Holding Harmony Within < 0 #6;5/$. %(4=&. According to Hucker, Governor Assisting in Administration 0 was a Mingdynasty merit title. From examining the paper of this book, I cannot tell if the printing is Ming, or later. This edition is at least one step away from the original edition, yet it is a unique edition, and very valuable for analyzing textual divergences. 3

Mentioned in Chao Biao and Xu Bo, Chaoshi Baowen Tang shumu, 225. This bibliography is from the Jiajing reign period, ca. 152266.

676

C2, Chongkan Daozang jiyao ed. of Jindan dayao, 3.26a39a. C3, Jindan zhengli daquan ed. of Jindan dayao, 8.1a13b. A1.1, Shandong edition of Jindan dayao.

A1c. Shangyangzi Jindan dayao liexian zhi . Collected as a separate text in: C1, Zhengtong daozang. 1 juan. DZ 1069, HY 1061. C8, Zhonghua daozang, 27:6003. Forms part of the text of Jindan dayao itself in: C2, Chongkan Daozang jiyao ed. of Jindan dayao, 3.40a49a. C3, Jindan zhengli daquan ed. of Jindan dayao, 8.23a32a.

A1d. Shangyangzi Jindan dayao xianpai . Collected as a separate text in: C1, Zhengtong daozang. 1 juan. DZ 1070, HY 1062. C8, Zhonghua daozang, 27:6047. Forms part of the text of Jindan dayao itself in: C2, Chongkan Daozang jiyao ed. of Jindan dayao, 3.50a59a. C3, Jindan zhengli daquan ed. of Jindan dayao, 8.13b23a.

A1e. Daode jing zhuanyu . Collected as a separate text in: A1e.1. Daode jing gujin ben kaozheng . Photoreproduced in C5, Daozang jinghua, ser. 13, vol. 2. 677

A1e.2. Wuqiubei Zhai Laozi jicheng chubian & %. 2 juan. In han 6, ce 3. Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1965. This Taipei printing is a photoreproduction of an 1809 Hanjian Zhai woodblock ed. $

'&. Forms part of the text of Jindan dayao itself in: C1, Zhengtong daozang ed. of Jindan dayao, 10.1a13a. C2, Chongkan Daozang jiyao ed. of Jindan dayao, 1.76a88b. C3, Jindan zhengli daquan ed. of Jindan dayao, 5.11b24a. C8, Zhonghua daozang, 27:55962. A1.1, Shandong edition of Jindan dayao.

A1f. Panhuo ge

.

Also entitled: Shangyangzi panhuo ge

.

Collected as a separate text in:4 C16, Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu, Daoyan nei section, juan 3. Photoreproduction of this ed. in C21, Zangwai daoshu, 6:200. C17, Gujin tushu jicheng. C18, Qunxian zhuyu jicheng. Forms part of the text of Jindan dayao itself in: C1, Zhengtong daozang ed. of Jindan dayao, 9.3a6a. C2, Chongkan Daozang jiyao ed. of Jindan dayao, 1.68b70b. C3, Jindan zhengli daquan ed. of Jindan dayao, 5.4b6a.

4

Also mentioned as a separate text in postface bayao to Daoyuan jingwei ge ! , by Liu Mingrui # , dated 1889 " . Chens name given as (. Cf. Zhu Yueli, Daojing zonglun, 318.

678

C8, Zhonghua daozang, 27:55557. A1.1, Shandong edition of Jindan dayao.

A1g, Yu Jiugong Biyangzi Che Langu . Also entitled: Yu Jiugong Shan Biyangzi Che Langu . Yu Biyangzi . Yu Che Langu shu . Collected as a separate text unrelated to Jindan dayao in: C19, Jiugong Shan zhi, 8.9b13a4. Forms part of the text of Jindan dayao itself in: C1, Zhengtong daozang ed. of Jindan dayao, 11.8a12b. C2, Chongkan Daozang jiyao ed. of Jindan dayao, 2.6a9a. C3, Jindan zhengli daquan ed. of Jindan dayao, 6.7a10b. C8, Zhonghua daozang, 27:56567. A1.1, Shandong edition of Jindan dayao.

A1h, Jiaotai An shuo shi Che Kezhao . Collected as a separate text unrelated to Jindan dayao in: C19, Jiugong Shan zhi, 8.6b7a. Forms part of the text of Jindan dayao itself in: C2, Chongkan Daozang jiyao ed. of Jindan dayao, 2.28b29a. C3, Jindan zhengli daquan ed. of Jindan dayao, 6.32b33a. A1.1, Shandong edition of Jindan dayao. 679

A1i, Jiaotai An ji . Also entitled: Jiugong Shan Jiaotai An ji . Collected as a separate text unrelated to Jindan dayao in: C19, Jiugong Shan zhi, 8.7ab. Forms part of the text of Jindan dayao itself in: C2, Chongkan Daozang jiyao ed. of Jindan dayao, 2.29ab. C3, Jindan zhengli daquan ed. of Jindan dayao, 6.33ab. A1.1, Shandong edition of Jindan dayao.

A1j, Yu Luo Dongyun shu . Collected as a separate text unrelated to Jindan dayao in: C19, Jiugong Shan zhi, 8.7b9b. Forms part of the text of Jindan dayao itself in: C2, Chongkan Daozang jiyao ed. of Jindan dayao, 2.29b31b. C3, Jindan zhengli daquan ed. of Jindan dayao, 6.33b35b. A1.1, Shandong edition of Jindan dayao.

A2. Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie . 1336 preface by Chen Zhixu. Also entitled: Duren jing, Chen Zhixu jiezhu . Reedition: 680

A2a. Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing. 2 juan. With portions of Chen Zhixus commentary as selected by Peng Haogu % in C16, Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu, Daoyan nei section, juan 1. Photoreproduced in C21, Zangwai daoshu, 6:2555. Collected in: C1, Zhengtong daozang. 3 juan. DZ 91, HY 91. C8, Zhonghua daozang, 3:61555. C16, Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu. Standalone copy, entitled: A2.1. Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing, 3 juan.; Yuanshi wuliang duren shangpin miaojing, 3 juan. 1504 ed. from woodblocks cut by Wang Taiyuan . Held by National Library of China !!,/ i.e., ,, Shanghai Library.5

A3. Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu

".

Also entitled: Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhujie Cantong qi fenzhang zhu

"&*.

".

Cantong qi jingwen fenjie jie Zhouyi Cantong qi zhujie Zhouyi Cantong qi zhu

) (*. &*. &.

Reeditions: A3a. Dingpi Shangyangzi yuanzhu cantong qi #'

. 3 juan. In

Jiyizi dingpi daoshu sizhong 0#+ -, edited by Fu Jinquan $ . 17651845, styled Jiyizi 0, of Jinxi 1, Zhejiang. 5

Zhonuo guji shanben shumu, zibu, 6:85b.

681

Photoreproduced in C21, Zangwai daoshu, 11:74489. Another photoreproduced edition standalone by Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi, Taipei, 1978. A3b. Cantong qi jingwen fenjie jie

)'(.

A3c. Cantong qi jianzhu fenjie jie

)'(.

A3d. Cantong qi san xianglei

,.

All collected in: C11, Guwen cantong qi. 3 juan. These three redactions A3bd are composed of selections from Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu. Together they contain about 70 percent of the text of Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, with almost no changes. Collected in: C2, Chongkan Daozang jiyao. 3 juan. C3, Jindan zhengli daquan. 3 juan. This edition is photoreproduced in C21, Zangwai daoshu, 9:22071. C8, Zhonghua daozang, 16:20246. C12, Sanzhu wuzhen pian. 3 juan. C13, Siku quanshu. 3 juan. Guwen Cantong qi jijie

%(. Jiang Yibiao +!, comp.

Jindai mishu $. Mao Jin , comp. Xinqin Wuzhen pian sanzhu &-*#. 3 juan. See A4. Zhouyi cantong qi guzhu jicheng

% 1990.

Standalone copies: A3.1. Zhouyi Cantong qi zhujie. 3 juan. 1484 ed. from woodblocks cut by Xu Yonghe of the Jinling Print Shop " .

682

Held by Shanghai Library.6 A3.2. Yifu chongkan Zhouyi Cantong qi zhujie "&. 3 juan. 1552 ed. from woodblocks cut at Yifu )( . Held by National Library of China *.7 A3.3. Zhouyi Cantong qi zhu. 3 juan. Ming woodblock ed. . Held by National Library of China *.8 A3.4. Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhujie. 3 juan. 1842 ed. from woodblocks cut at the Hall Where Books Are WellTreated '

.

With handwritten comments and punctuation by Guo Songtao . Qing dyn. $-,. Held by Hunan Normal University Library.9

A4. Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu !#+". After 1331. Also entitled: Wuzhen pian sanzhu. Reedition: A4a. Dingpi sanzhu Wuzhen pian +. 2 juan. In Jiyizi dingpi daoshu sizhong, edited by Fu Jinquan. Photoreproduced in C21, Zangwai daoshu, 11:790859. Also in Daozang jinghua, ser. 6., no. 1. A4a.1. Sizhu Wuzhen pian "+. 3 juan. A reedition of Dingpi sanzhu Wuzhen pian, unrelated to A4.14 below. Collated and printed by Saoye Shanfang .%, 20th c.? Photoreproduced in C5, Daozang jinghua, ser. 6, no. 1. Collected in:

6

Zhonuo guji shanben shumu, zibu, 6:82a.

7


8


9


683

A1, Zhengtong daozang. 5 juan. DZ 142, HY 142. C2, Chongkan Daozang jiyao. Kui coll. * 2. C8, Zhonghua daozang, 19:40054. C12, Sanzhu wuzhen pian. 3 juan. C14, Yihua yuanzong. 3 juan. Standalone copies: A4.1. Xinqin Wuzhen pian sanzhu +8!#2'. 3 juan in 4 ce. Printed by Mr. Luo of the Forest of Books . Ming dyn. "6 . Held by National Central Library of Taiwan.10 A4.2. Wuzhen pian sanzhu. 3 juan. 1483 ed. from woodblocks cut by Wang Zhongcheng et al. 1&. Held by Shanghai Library.11 A4.3. Wuzhen pian sanzhu also called Wuzhen pian jizhu?. 3 juan. 1588 woodblock ed. ,4. Originally part the collection Qunxian yulu -/5. Preface by Liu Qian 03, Administrator of the Left of the Administrators O ce, presented for the rank of Grand Master for Governance () from Guanzhong 7 presentday Shaanxi. Held by Peking University Library.12 A4.4. Wuzhen pian sanzhu. 3 juan. Ming ed. from woodblocks cut by Chen Changqing %. Held by Shanghai Library.13 A4.5. Wuzhen pian sanzhu. 3 juan. Ming ed. ca. 1484?see A3.1 above from woodblocks cut at the Xu Family Print Shop at Jinling $ . Held by National Library of China ..14 10

Guojia tushuguan shanben shuzhi chugao, zibu, 3:288.

11


12

Zhonuo guji shanben shumu, zibu, 6:89b. I add information gained from consulting this copy.

13


14


684

"

A4.6. Wuzhen pian sanzhu. 3 juan. Ming woodblock ed. . Held by Shanghai Library; Lda City Library, Ningxia Province.15 A4.7. Wuzhen pian sanzhu. 3 juan. Ming woodblock ed. Held by Hangzhou City Library.16 A4.8. Wuzhen pian sanzhu. 3 juan. Ming woodblock ed. Held by Library of the Henan Institute of Chinese Medicine.17 A4.9. Wuzhen pian sanzhu. 3 juan. Ming woodblock ed. Held by Peoples University Library.18 A4.10. Wuzhen pian sanzhu. 3 juan. Late Ming ed. from woodblocks cut at the Chengzhi Storied Building in Guangling Jiangsu . Held by City of Beijing Bureau of Antiquities.19 A4.11. Wuzhen pian sanzhu. 6 ce, 1 han . Mingdyn. printing. Held by University of California at Berkeley Library. A4.12. Xinke Wuzhen pian sanzhu

. 3 juan. Woodblock ed. from

the Wanli reign period 15731620 ! . Held by Fudan University Library.20 A4.13. Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu. 5 juan. Ming MS ed. . Held by Tianyi Ge, Hangzhou.21 A4.14. Wuzhen pian sizhu

. 2 juan. 1599 woodblock ed. !

. The fourth commentary is by Peng Haogu , who also supplies a preface dated 1599. Printed by Wu Wenlong " of Xinan Men unknown. Held by Peking University Library, Gest Library 15


16


17


18


19


20


21


685

at Princeton University.22

A5. Wuzhen pian kanwei ji (. 3 juan. Printing errors corrected $ by Chen Zhixu and Xue Daoguang ,! .23 May be similar to A4. Not extant?

A6. Daode jing xu !'

. Included in a woodblock ed. of Taishang bashiyi hua tushuo

"%,24 rst printed sometime after 1524 by the ThreePrimes Workshop and? the Scriptureworkshop of the UnitedinVirtue Studio '

. May be related to sections in Jindan dayao entitled Daode jing xu !

also entitled Daodejing zonglun !'

+) or Daode jing zhuanyu !'

/# also entitled Daode jing zhuanyu jie 0.25 Held by Yoshioka Yoshitoyo . .

A7. Xianfo tongyuan xu . Chen Zhixus preface to this work by Zhao Youqin. Collected in: Juan 8 of C15, Zhuzhen xuanao jicheng.

A8. Huolong jue *. This is a brief lateimperial text on laboratory alchemy; it is not by Chen Zhixu. 22 Zhonuo guji shanben shumu, zibu, 6:90a; Ch Wanli, A Catalogue of the Chinese Rare Books in the Gest Coection, 396. I add information gained by consulting the Peking University copy. 23

Recorded in two Qingdynasty critical bibliographies Luo Weiguo and Hu Ping, Guji banben tiji suoyin, 692.

24

This edition of the Taishang bashiyi hua tushuo is referred to by Yoshioka Yoshitoyo as the Hangzhou ed. Yoshioka, Dky to bukky, 1:18193. Yoshioka thinks that this edition of Bashiyi huatu was edited by Chen Zhixu himself, and printed around the time of its 1374 preface by Ming Taizu , but Kubo Noritada casts strong doubt on this conclusion. Kubo thinks that this edition of Bashiyi huatu was edited by an heir of Zhao Yizhen & d. 1382, sometime after 1524 Kubo, Rshi hachijichi ka to setsu ni tsuite, 38. 25

In his preface to DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie see A2, 4a8, Chen Zhixu says that he wrote a commentary to the Daode jing. Because in the same sentence he also mentions writing Jindan dayao, it seems that his Daode jing commentary was a separate work, not a section of Jindan dayao.

686

Collected in: C5, Daozang jinghua, ser. 11, no. 2.

A9. Yuou shuo .26 This text seems not to have been part of the Jindan dayao, and not to be extant.

A10. Jingang jing zhu . Mentioned in the preface to DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie see A2, 4a8. Not extant.

B. Primary Texts by Zhao Youqin

B1. Xianfo tongyuan . 10 juan originally 81 juan.27 Preface of 1337 to the rst printed edition 10 juan ed.. Also entitled: Xianfo tongyuan lun . Xianfo dongyuan .28 Collected in: Juan 8 of C15, Zhuzhen xuanao jicheng. 1 juan. C6, Daofan zhengzong wujing sishu daquan. Standalone ed. 26

Mentioned in postface to Daoyuan jingwei ge, by Liu Mingrui. Chens name given as . Cf. Zhu Yueli, Daojing zonglun, 318.

27

Chen Zhixu, preface to Xianfo tongyuan, by Zho Youqin, in Daoshu quanji Zhongguo shudian ed., 460.

28

Kong Linghong, Song Ming daojiao sixiang yanjiu, 274n3, probably an error.

687

B1.1. Yuandu zhenren xianfo tongyuan wen

% 1 ce. 1834 MS

ed. by Mr. Li of Osmanthus Pavilion in Dehua, Fujian Province . Preface by Man of the Way Luo Jingxu #!, dated 1834. Held by Peking University Library.29

B2. Gexiang xinshu . 1324 or before. 5 juan.30 Also entitled: Yuanben Gexiang xinshu . First entitled Gexiang . Reedition: B2a. Chongxiu Gexiang xinshu . Reedition collected in: C13, Siku quanshu. 2 juan. B2a.1. Jinhua congshu ". Reedited by Wang Wei &. Collected in: C13, Siku quanshu. 5 juan.

B3. Jindan nanwen $.31 6 zhang . Mentioned in many biographical accounts of Zhao Youqin, but not extant.

B4. Daode jing commentary. Mentioned by Chen Zhixu DZ 1067, 2.3b1, but not 29

Beijing daxue tushuguan cang guji shanben shumu, 360. I add information gained by consulting this copy.

30

See Volkov, Scientic Knowledge in Taoist Context for a discussion of the textual history of Gexiang xinshu. Volkov shows that the extant editions of Gexiang xinshu are actually heirs of a nowlost recompiled edition ca. 13361404 which was based in part on the quotations of Zhaos work in Chen Zhixus DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie A2 and possibly also Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu A3. 31

Kong Linghong, SongMing daojiao sixiang yanjiu, 274n3, has $, probably an error.

688

extant.

B5. Mengtian lu .32 Not extant?

B6. Jindan zhenli .33 Not extant? This may be a reference to C3, Jindan zhengli daquan , which is sometimes wrongly attributed to Zhaos editorship.34

B7. Tuibu licheng .35 Not extant?

B8. Sanjiao yiyuan .36 Not extant?

C. Collectanea Containing the Primary Texts

C1. Zhengtong daozang . Woodblocks cut in 1444, some recut in 1598.37 Includes: A1, Shangyangzi jindan dayao. 16 juan. DZ 1067. A1a, Xiulian xuzhi. 1 juan. DZ 1077.

32

Huang Yuji, Qianqing Tang shumu, 439; Kong Linghong, SongMing daojiao sixiang yanjiu, 274n3.

33

Kong Linghong, SongMing daojiao sixiang yanjiu, 274n3. The source of Kongs attributions may be Siku quanshu tiyao. 34

See, e.g., Huang Yuji, Qianqing Tang shumu, 439.

35

Kong Linghong, SongMing daojiao sixiang yanjiu, 274n3.

36

Kong Linghong, SongMing daojiao sixiang yanjiu, 274n3.

37

Van der Loon, Taoist Books in the Libraries of the Sung Period, 58.

689

A1b, Shangyangzi jindan dayao tu. 1 juan. DZ 1068. A1c, Shangyangzi jindan dayao liexian zhi. 1 juan. DZ 1069. A1d, Shangyangzi jindan dayao xianpai. 1 juan. DZ 1070. A2, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie, 3 juan. DZ 91. A4, Wuzhen pian sanzhu. 5 juan. DZ 142.

C2. Chongkan Daozang jiyao )$. 4th ed.,38 compiled in 1906 at the Hermitage of the Two Transcendents Erxian An , Qingyang Gong , Chengdu, by He Longxiang &+, Peng Hanran #, and Yan Yonghe % . The rst ed. was compiled by Peng Dingqiu 16451719, and the second ed. by Jiang Yupu "

17551819 sometime between 1796 and 1819.39

Includes: A1, Jindan dayao. 3 ce. A3, Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu. 3 juan. A4, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu.

C3. Jindan zhengli daquan . Compiled by Songyue Zhuren ', a.k.a. Zhu Mushen ,40 or by another account, by Hanchanzi of Purple Aurora Mountain (*!$.41 Latest internal preface by Qian

38

Hu Fuchen, Zhonghua daojiao da cidian, s.v. Daozang jiyao )$, 230; and Zhu Yueli, Daojing zonglun, 32728. The texts in the original compilation of Daozang jiyao were all drawn from the Daozang Zhengtong Daozang, likely also including Wanli xu Daozang. Thus the two works by Chen probably would have been in this original compilation, though they might have been dierent editions of Chens works than the Daozang editions, as we see in the Chongkan Daozang jiyao, the 1906 version of Daozang jiyao. 39

Qing Xitai, et al., Zhonuo daojiao shi, 4:45465; Esposito, Daoism in the Qing 16441911, 63435.

40


41


690

Daohua +&", dated 1442.42 Includes: A1, Jindan dayao. 10 juan. B3, Zhouyi cantong qi fenzhang zhu. 3 juan.43 This edition is photoreproduced in C21, Zangwai daoshu, 9:23071. C15, Zhuzhen xuanao jicheng, 9 juan, which contains B1, Xianfo tongyuan juan 8. Editions: C3.1. 1538 Zhou Fan woodblock ed. ('- . 42 juan, 24 ce, 4 han. Held by National Central Library of Taiwan, Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing, Fudan University Library, Huadong Normal University Library, Tianjin City Library, National Library of China ). Reproduced in C21, Zangwai daoshu, vol. 9. Reproduced in Siku quanshu cunmu congshu ,, ser. 3 Zibu

, vol. 260 Jinan: QiLu shushe, 1997.

C3.2. Ming woodblock ed. . 42 juan. Held by Imperial Palace Musuem Taipei, Institute of Natural Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shaanxi Chinese Medicine Research Institute, Suzhou City Library. Several Daoshu quanji editions see C20 below.

C4. Daoyan wuzhong &*. Composed by Tao Susi ! . 18th c. of Guiji $

42

Zhou Fans preface found in both 1538 and Ming editions says that he received this collection in twentyfour volumes ben from a friend, then printed it himself in 1538. We cannot know how much earlier than 1538 the collection was compiled. Skar, Golden Elixir Alchemy, 205, suggests that the text was in fact compiled soon after 1442, as a Daoist answer to the NeoConfucian Xingli daquan of 1417, though this is unproven.

43

A 1 juan commentary to the Jindan sibai zi a text attributed to Zhang Boduan is appended to this Cantong qi commentary #%; the author of the Jindan sibai zi commentary is not known, and there is no special reason to link the commentary to Chen Zhixu.

691

F. Preface dated 1718 -?.44 Edition printed during the Kangxi reign period by the Hall of Remnant Scriptures /-?L<+.45 Includes: A1, Jindan dayao. 1 juan. Editions: Daoyan wuzhong is listed in Zhonuo congshu zonglu, but not found in any library catalogue. Photoreproduced in C21, Zangwai daoshu, vol. 10.

C5. Daozang jinghua =PB7. Compiled by Xiao Tianshi K 190986. Taipei: Ziyou chubanshe, 195679. Includes: A1, Jindan dayao. 2+ juan. In ser. 8, no. 3, 181320.46

44

Zhu Yueli, Daojing zonglun, 332, lists three editions: a 1700 selfengraved edition from Wondrous Lotus Studio -?IO, the Hall of Remnant Scriptures edition see above, and an 1800 punctuated reprint from Oceanus Hall >DR+$*N. Zhu gives an alternate title, Daoyan neiwai wuzhong milu = A(M, which sounds much like Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu, an unrelated work. 45

Zhonuo congshu zonglu, 1:817.

46

The title page of the edition of Jindan dayao reproduced in Daozang jinghua says a secret book, essential reading for cultivating perfection xiuzhen bidu miben %&S'. Was Xiuzhen bidu miben then the title of a collection this text was taken from, or just a subtitle added to Jindan dayao? The recto pagemargins of the text say photoreproduced at the Mountain Villa of the Azure Parasol Tree @ .1C, and the verso margins say distributed by the Studio for Seeking the Ancients O6. These were Shanghai publishing institutions active in the early twentieth century. In postfaces attached to the text, mentions of the year wuwu p. 306, which occurred in 1918, and the jiayin day, three days after Double Yang 99 ,$9" p. 308, which occurred in 1920, suggest a date of 1920 or later. The postfaces are signed by Ranchanzi 5Q of Cishui : in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. There is a preface to the text by Tao Susi 3)0 of Guiji ;F dated 1718 -?. The preface says that Tao has compiled Jindan dayao together with another unrelated text, Xuanfu lun, by Lu Qianxu 2E8 Lu Xixing 2#, 15201601. According to the list of contents of Daoyan wuzhong cf. Zhonuo congshu zonglu, 1:817, Jindan dayao is the fth text in the collection, and the fourth text is Jindan jiuzheng pian xuanfu lun !4GHJ 1 j., by Lu Xixing. This suggests that the edition of Jindan dayao in Daozang jinghua is a later recension of the Daoyan wuzhong edition. Comparison of wording of the Daoyan wuzhong and Daozang Jinghua editions conrms this. The Daoyan wuzhong edition of Jindan dayao, reproduced in Zangwai daoshu, 10:12549, is in one juan, while the same material in the later Biwu shanzhuang recension has been divided into two juan plus two other appendices of material from other works Huiming jing and Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu.

692

A1e, Daode jing zhuanyu Daode jing gujin ben kaozheng ed. . 1 juan. In ser. 13, no. 2. A4a.1, Sizhu Wuzhen pian. 3 juan. In ser. 6, no. 1. A8, Huolong jue. In ser. 11, no. 2.

C6. Daofan zhengzong wujing sishu daquan . 28 juan. MidMing printing.47 Includes: A1, Jindan dayao miaoyong . 10 juan. A3, Cantong qi zhujie. 3 juan. A4, Wuzhen pian sanzhu. 3 juan. B1, Xianfo tongyuan. Held by Imperial Palace Musuem Taipei ; Gest Library, Princeton University incomplete copy of 14 juan. .

C7. Doga jikji dokyo kyng . Compiled in Korea by Shin Donbok 16921779 . Material drawn from Daoshu quanji C20 below and other sources.48 Includes: A1, Jindan dayao. Editions: Edition with typed Chinese characters, in National Central Library, Korea.

C8. Zhonghua daozang . Zhang Jiyu , gen. ed. 48 vols. Beijing: Huaxia 47

Taiwan gongcang shanben shumu shuming suoyin, 2:1349. Ch Wanli, Catalogue of Chinese Rare Books in the Gest Coection, 399. 48

Jung Jaeseo, Daoism in Korea, 8056.

693

chubanshe, 2004. All texts based on Zhengtong daozang eds. alone, excepting A3, Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu, which is based on the Daozang jiyao ed., with Zangwai daoshus Jindan zhengli daquan ed. used for collation. Includes: A1, Jindan dayao. 16 juan. 27:52094. A1a, Xiulian xuzhi. 1 juan. 27:60814. A1b, Shangyangzi jindan dayao tu. 1 juan. 27:59599. A1c, Shangyangzi jindan dayao liexian zhi. 1 juan. 27:6003. A1d, Shangyangzi jindan dayao xianpai. 1 juan. 27:6047. A2, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie, 3 juan. DZ 91. 3:61565. A3, Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu. 3 juan. 16:20246. A4, Wuzhen pian sanzhu. 5 juan. DZ 142. 19:40054.

C9. Zhonuo qigong jingdian . Wu Guangrong , gen. ed. 11 vols. Beijing: Renmin tiyu chubanshe, 1990. Text of Jindan dayao based on Chongkan daozang jiyao ed. alone. Includes: A1, Jindan dayao.

C10. Jindan jicheng . Dongfang xiudao wenku , 3. Xu Zhaoren , gen. ed. Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 1988. Text of Jindan dayao based on Shanzhuang ed. alone. Includes: A1, Jindan dayao.

694

C11. Guwen cantong qi . Compiled ( by Yang Shen !

, with preface

dated 1546. Woodblock edition by the Prefect of Daming Prefecture presentday Hebei , Yao Ruxun , from East of the Yangtze River present day Anhui . Ming dyn..49 Also entitled: Cantong qi jingwen fenjie jie #"$.50 Includes: A3b, Cantong qi jingwen fenjie jie. 3 juan. A3c, Cantong qi jianzhu fenjie jie. 3 juan. A3d, Cantong qi san xianglei. 2 juan. Edition held by: Peking University Library entitled Cantong qi jingwen fenjie jie; Shanghai Library; Library of the Imperial Palace Musuem Beijing.

C12. Sanzhu wuzhen pian '. With handwritten comments and punctuation by Fu Jinquan &). 1876 recarved woodblock edition by the Alpine Studio of Purple Excellence % .51 Includes: A3, Zhouyi Cantong qi. 3 juan. I.e., Zhouyi cantong qi fenzhang zhu. A4, Wuzhen pian. 3 juan. I.e., Wuzhen pian sanzhu. Edition held by: This Sanzhu wuzhen pian collection is listed in Zhonuo congshu guanglu, but 49

Yang Haiqing and Chen Zhanghuang, Zhonuo congshu guanglu, 66869. I add information gained from consulting the Peking University Library copy.

50


51

Yang Haiqing and Chen Zhanghuang, Zhonuo congshu guanglu, 669.

695

not found in any library catalogue.

C13. Qinding Siku quanshu

. Wenyuan Ge & ed., 1776. Reprinted as

Siku quanshu zhenben . Includes: A3, Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu. 3 juan. B2, Chongxiu Gexiang xinshu. 2 juan.

C14. Yihua yuanzong . Edited by Gao Shiming . Ming dyn. . Preface dated 1624. Includes: A4, Wuzhen pian sanzhu. 3 juan. Editions: 1624 ed. with 50 juan in 24 ce.52 Held by National Central Library Taiwan . 1624 ed., supplemented and repaired in 1642 %# , with 53 texts and 60 juan in 24 ce and 4 han.53 Held by Chinese Academy of Sciences.

C15. Zhuzhen xuanao jicheng ( "!. 9 juan. Edited by Zhu Zaiwei $ . Ming dyn. .54 Also said to have been edited and printed by Hanchanzi )' .55 Also entitled: 52


53

Zhonuo kexueyuan tushuguan cang zhongwen guji shanben shumu, 347.

54

Li Xueqin and L Wenyu, Siku da cidian, s.v. Zhuzhen xuanao jicheng ( "!, 2321; Guojia tushuguan shanben shuzhi chugao, zibu, 3:298. 55

Luo Weiguo and Hu Ping, Guji banben tiji suoyin, 53.

696

Zhuzhen yuanao jicheng )#!. 10 juan.56 Includes: B1, Xianfo tongyuan. 1 juan. Collected in: C3, Jindan zhengli daquan in C20, Daoshu quanji.

C16. Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu % . 6 juan. Edited by Peng Haogu, from a ravine in Xiling ,

. 1599.

Includes: A1f, Panhuo ge. 1 juan. Photoreproduced in C21, Zangwai daoshu, 6:200. A2, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing, Chen Zhixu jiezhu. 2 juan. Photoreproduced in C21, Zangwai daoshu, 6:2455. Editions: C16.1. Mingdyn. woodblock ed. from the Hall of Brocadeofwritings + .57 C16.2. Wanlireignperiod ed. engraved by Wu Mianxue * and collated by Huang Zhicai of Xinan, styled Liangfu $"- .58 Held by National Central Library Taiwan, HarvardYenching Library. Photoreproduced in Zangwai daoshu, 6:1371.

C17. Gujin tushu jicheng '!. 1706. Edited by Chen Menglei (& 1651 1741. 56

Luo Weiguo and Hu Ping, Guji banben tiji suoyin, 53; Guoli zhongyang tushuguan shanben shumu, 84042.

57

Yang Haiqing and Chen Zhanghuang, Zhonuo congshu guanglu, 66566.

58

Guojia tushuguan shanben shuzhi chugao, zibu, 3:293; Zhonuo guji shanben shumu, zibu, 6:93a.

697

Includes:59 A1f, Panhuo ge.

C18. Qunxian zhuyu jicheng . Includes: A1f, Panhuo ge. Collected in: C20, Daoshu quanji.

C19. Jiugong Shan zhi . Compiled by Fu Xieding in 1878, perhaps based on previous editions by Wang Jiaofeng . 156773, and of ca. 1644 62 and 173696. Printed in Hubei Province in 1882. Includes: A1g, Yu Jiugong Biyangzi Che Langu. A1h, Jiaotai An shuo shi Che Kezhao. A1i, Jiaotai An ji. A1j, Yu Luo Dongyun shu.

C20. Daoshu quanji . Compiled by Yan Hezhou . Includes: C3, Jindan zhengli daquan which includes A1, Jindan dayao; C3, Zhouyi cantong qi fenzhang zhu; and C15, Zhuzhen xuanao jicheng which

59 Chen Jiaoyou, Changchun daojiao yuanliu, 168, says that the Daojiao jinggong bu of Gujin tushu jicheng reprints Wuzhen pian sanzhu in toto, but this is an abbreviated reprint: it includes only the Wuzhen pian text and the commentary ascribed to Xue Daoguang, without the other two commentaries by Lu Ziye and Chen Zhixu.

698

includes B1, Xianfo tongyuan. C18, Qunxian zhuyu jicheng $

which includes A1f, Panhuo ge.

Editions: C20.1. Ming ed. .60 Incomplete copy of 6 texts and 12 juan.61 Held by Hunan Provincial Library. C20.2. 1591 ed. printed by Mr. Yan of Jinling #+ - . One copy with 87 juan in 26 ce, one copy with 82 juan in 24 ce.62 Complete work should be 94 juan.63 Held by National Central Library Taiwan, Nanjing Library ???. C20.3. Early Qing ed. supplemented and printed by Zhou Zaiyan *% . 95 juan in 40 ce.64 Held by National Central Library Taiwan. C20.4. 1591 ed. repaired by Zhou Zaiyan in 1682 #+ ( . 94 juan.65 Held by Shandong Provincial Musuem, HarvardYenching Library Rare Book T 1921 3582. C20.5. 1591 ed. supplemented and repaired at Songxiu Tang "% . 83 juan in 24 ce.66 Held by National Central Library Taiwan. C20.6. Ming woodblock ed. supplemented and repaired at the Hall of Great Works in Jinling during the Kangxi reign period 16621723 (

60

Zhu Yueli, Daojing zonglun, 333, lists two earlier editions of Daoshu quanji: a 1538 edition by Zhou Fan '&

. , and a 1540 edition from Tang Jiyuns Hall for Amassing the Superb, of the Forest of Books in Jinling '& )!, . Could the undated Ming edition be one of these? I suspect that Zhu is simply wrong here. No library catalogue lists these editions, and 1538 Zhou Fan ed. ought to refer to Jindan zhengli daquan, which is part of Daoshu quanji, rather than to Daoshu quanji itself. 61

Chang Shuzhi and Li Longru, Hunan sheng guji shanben shumu, 296.

62

Zhonuo congshu zonglu, 1:817; Guoli zhongyang tushuguan shanben shumu, 844.

63

Zhonuo guji shanben shumu, zibu, 6:77ab.

64

Guojia tushuguan shanben shuzhi chugao, zibu, 3:302; Guoli zhongyang tushuguan shanben shumu, 846.

65


66


699

. Incomplete copy with 12 texts in 12 ce.67 Held by Peking University Library. C20.7. 80 juan ed. mentioned by Geng Wenguang . Qingdyn..68 C20.8. Daoshu quanji. Photoreproduced ed. Beijing: Zhongguo shudian, 1990. Held by: widely available. C20.9. Daoshu quanji 1591 ed. printed by Mr. Yan of Jinling, copy from Nanjing Library. Reproduced in Xuxiu siku quanshu , vol. 1295 Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 199599. Held by: widely available.

C21. Zangwai daoshu . Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 199294. Includes: Photoreproduction of C3, 1538 Zhou Fan Jindan zhengli daquan ed. of A1, Jindan dayao. 10 juan.69 9:1131. Photoreproduction of C4, Daoyan wuzhong ed. of A1, Jindan dayao. 1 juan.70 10:12549. Photoreproduction of C16, Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu ed. of A1f, Panhuo ge. 1 juan. 6:2002. Photoreproduction of C16, Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu ed. of A2, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing. 2 juan. 6:2455. 67

Beijing daxue tushuguan cang guji shanben shumu, 352. Only twelve texts remain in this edition, including Jindan dayao Jindan zhengli daquan ed. and Zhouyi cantong qi fenzhang zhu. 68

Geng Wenguang, Wanjuan Jinghua Lou cangshu ji, 911.

69

Close examination conrms that the copy reproduced in Zangwai daoshu is indeed the 1538 Zhou Fan woodblock ed. of Jindan zhengli daquan .

70

The Zangwai daoshu editors do not explain which editions are being reproduced, or their provenance. Yet we may conclude that the edition reproduced in Zangwai daoshu is the Daoyan wuzhong ed. In the list of contents of Daoyan wuzhong in Zhonuo congshu zonglu, 1:817, the rst text listed is Zhouyi cantong qi maiwang 3 j., the second text listed is Wuzhen pian yuezhu 3 j., and the fth is Jindan dayao 1 j.. The rst three texts in Zangwai daoshu, vol. 10, are Zhouyi cantong qi maiwang 3 j., Wuzhen pian yuezhu 3 j., and Jindan dayao 1 j.. Therefore, we may conclude that the editors of Zangwai daoshu selectively reproduced these three texts from Daoyan wuzhong, and did not reproduce the other two texts in Daoyan wuzhong.

700

Photoreproduction of C3, 1538 Zhou Fan Jindan zhengli daquan ed. of A3, Zhouyi cantong qi fenzhang zhu. 3 juan. 9:22071. Photoreproduction of Jiyizi dingpi daoshu sizhong ed. of A3a, Dingpi Shangyangzi yuanzhu cantong qi. 3 juan. 11:74489. Photoreproduction of Jiyizi dingpi daoshu sizhong ed. of A4a, Dingpi sanzhu Wuzhen pian. 2 juan. 11:790859.

701

Appendix 2, Text Criticism of Jindan dayao §1, The Various Editions of Jindan dayao Our knowledge of Chen Zhixu and his disciples is based largely on Chens writings, although a few additional biographical facts and legends can also be found in local histories and other late sources. Because our knowledge of Chen is based on his writings, we must ascertain the reliability of the texts of his writings in their surviving editions before we use these texts to develop a portrait of Chen or analyze his teachings. Sorting out the editions of Chens writings turns out to be a complicated matter. Chens main text, Jindan dayao , exists in eight known premodern fulllength editions, as well as multiple shorter excerpts. In addition to Jindan dayao, each of Chens three other extant textshis commentaries on Duren jing , Zhouyi cantong qi , and Wuzhen pian also exist in multiple versions. This is a testament to the interest taken in Chen Zhixus writings by later Daoists and other readers, and thus of the signicance of Chens oeuvre in the history of Daoism. The text of Jindan dayao varies considerably across these editions, in a number of ways. The titles of juan chapters and other sections vary from one edition to another; and within a single edition, the heading as listed in the table of contents and as printed in the text may also vary. The wording varies across the editions to the extent that any random passage of text the length of a rectoverso page will often have about ten variations in wording. The placement of sections within a juan can vary between editions. Most signicantly, no two editions include exactly the same sections. I argue below that every surviving edition except one has deleted sections from the fullest, original edition of Jindan dayao. Until we have undertaken a critical inventory and comparison of editions, the authenticity of about 20 percent of the 702

text in its fullest version will be open to question. An exhaustive list of editions and copies of the works of Chen Zhixu and his master Zhao Youqin can be found in appendix 1 to the dissertation. In this appendix 2, I will discuss each of the editions of Chens major text, Jindan dayao. I list four early premodern editions of Jindan dayao, four less important premodern editions, and three modern typeset editions. The four premodern editions are all important for my study, because all four of them are necessary for preparing a full critical edition of the text, and proving the authenticity of all of its sections. I have prepared a critical edition of Jindan dayao, but do not include it as part of the dissertation, because this would swell the dissertation by hundreds of pages. §1.1, Extant Editions of Jindan dayao §1.1.1, Daozang edition. The

edition of Jindan dayao most wellknown to scholars of

Daoism today is found in Zhengtong daozang .1 The woodblocks for Zhengtong daozang were cut in 1444,2 but the Zhengtong daozang was not widely available to readers before the 1920s, when it was rst photoreproduced in Shanghai.3 Before this reprint, the Zhengtong daozang was held by only several dozen Daoist monasteries. So the Daozang edition may not have been much used by premodern readers. §1.1.2, Zhengli edition.

In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the edition of Jindan

dayao most widely known to readers was the edition in the sixteenthcentury Ming dynasty collections Jindan zhengli daquan and Daoshu quanji .4 Jindan zhengli daquan circulated both as an independent compilation and as part of 1

DZ 1067, HY 1059, han 73638 of the Hanfen Lou edition.

2

The original woodblocks for the Zhengtong daozang were cut in 1444, but some blocks may have been recut at various later times when reprints were made, such as in 1598 van der Loon, Taoist Books in the Libraries of the Sung Period, 58. There is nothing to suggest that the blocks for any of Chens works in the Zhengtong daozang were recut after 1444, however. 3

The Hanfen Lou printing house in Shanghai photoreproduced and printed the Zhengtong daozang between 1923 and 1926. Later editions of the Zhengtong daozang by Yiwen Yinshuguan of Taipei in 1977, Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi of Taipei in 1977, Ch bun Shuppansha of Kyoto in 1986, and a consortium of three Mainland publishers in 1988, are all direct reproductions of the Hanfen Lou edition.

4

Jindan zhengli daquan was probably rst printed in 1538 although its latest internal preface was dated 1442, and Daoshu quanji was probably rst printed in 1591. Daoshu quanji was a larger book of 94 or 95 juan, incorporating Jindan zhengli daquan and other texts, fortysix individual works in all. The 1538 Zhou Fan woodblock edition of Jindan dayao from Jindan zhengli daquan is photoreproduced in Zangwai daoshu, volume 9.

703

the larger Daoshu quanji. Ten copies of Jindan zhengli daquan and eight copies of Daoshu quanji can be found among the libraries of Taiwan and Mainland China, which suggests that these collections were relatively widely available.5 I have determined that the Daoshu quanji edition of Jindan dayao is identical to the Zhengli edition of Jindan dayao, therefore I have not bothered to use Daoshu quanji for purposes of collating Jindan dayao. §1.1.3, Jiyao edition.

Jindan dayao is contained in Chongkan daozang jiyao

, a Daoist collection recompiled in 1906, reprinted in 1985, and widely available in photoreproduced editions.6 Chongkan daozang jiyao of 1906 is the fourth edition of Daozang jiyao.7 The rst edition was compiled sometime between 1796 and 1820. Because all the texts in this rst edition were taken from the Ming Daoist Canon i.e., from Zhengtong daozang plus Wanli xu daozang , it was called Daozang jiyao, or Coected Essentials of the Daoist Canon. In the second and third editions of unknown date, ninetysix texts from outside the Ming Daoist Canon were added, and in the fourth edition of 1906, a further eighteen texts were added. Because the rst edition of Daozang jiyao was essentially just an abridgement of Zhengtong daozang, and both of these collections contain Jindan dayao, one would assume that the edition of Jindan dayao in Chongkan daozang jiyao is simply a copy of the edition in Zhengtong daozang, but this is not the case! The edition of Jindan dayao in Chongkan daozang jiyao comes from a completely di erent liation. Because earlier editions of Daozang jiyao are not available for reference,8 we cannot know in which edition the di erent liation of Jindan dayao was introduced into Daozang jiyao. 5

If one examines the Taiwanese and Mainland union catalogues of rare books such as Taiwan gongcang shanben shumu shuming suoyin or Zhonuo guji shanben shumu, one will see that eight or ten surviving copies of a work is a relatively large amount, suggesting that the original amount of copies produced was also large. Actually, Chens commentaries to the Zhouyi cantong qi and Wuzhen pian were much more widely read than his Jindan dayao ever was. 6

Editions by Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi and Jilin chubanshe are direct reproductions of the 1985 reprint by Erxian An . Erxian An was once a separate temple, but is now a court within Qingyang Gong in Chengdu. The 1985 Erxian An reprint uses the original 1906 woodblocks, though a few woodblocks had to be repaired; Ren Jiyu, Chongyin Daozang jiyao xu. Jindan dayao is ce 13 of the Ang collection in the Erxian An reprint, and 16:69757086 in the Xinwengfeng reprint.

7

Zhu Yueli, Daojing zonglun, 32728; Esposito, Daoism in the Qing 16441911, 63435.

8

Earlier editions of Daozang jiyao are not mentioned in any library catalogue of rare books, although it is likely that a set exists in Chengdu, either in the provincial library, university library, or Qingyang Gong. The printers at Erxian An must have used it to cut the woodblocks for the fourth edition in 1906.

704

§1.1.4, Shandong edition. The

fourth important edition of Jindan dayao is

represented by a single copy in the Shandong Provincial Museum , in Jinan . This edition has not been reproduced or included in any collection. I personally examined the Museums copy in June, 2004, and ascertained that it is printed from Mingdynasty woodblocks, as I will discuss below. The four early editions above are sucient to produce a critical edition of Jindan dayao, but I will also introduce the remaining four premodern editions and three modern editions. §1.1.5, Wuzhong edition.

Daoyan wuzhong is a short collection of ve

Daoist texts, with a preface dated 1718. Daoyan wuzhong is listed in bibliographical works, but not found in any library catalogue that I have seen. However, the editors of Zangwai daoshu did have access to a copy of this work, and there is a photoreproduction of the Wuzhong edition of Jindan dayao in Zangwai daoshu.9 The Wuzhong edition is highly abbreviated, containing only three juan of the original ten juan Jindan dayao, which would amount to 25 percent of the text, if these three juan in the Wuzhong edition were unabridged. But the material in the Wuzhong edition is further abridged, with about 30 percent of the words and sentences cut from the text. So the Wuzhong edition contains about 18 percent of the material found in the most complete edition of Jindan dayao. I have noted some patterns to the Wuzhong redactors choice of material to abridge, which I mention in footnote 255 on page 636 above. §1.1.6, Shanzhuang edition. This

edition is reproduced in Daozang jinghua, a

104volume series of extracanonical Daoist texts published in postWar Taiwan.10 The edition in Daozang jinghua is actually a photoreproduction of an earlier photoreproduction. The earlier photoreproduction was produced circa 1920 by the Shanghai publishing institutions Biwu Shanzhuang Mountain Villa of the Azure Parasol Tree and Qiugu Zhai Studio for Seeking the Ancients. The Shanghai publishers do not name the original source of their reproduction or if they 9

Zangwai daoshu, 10:12549.

10

In Daozang jinghua, ser. 8, no. 3.

705

did, this has been deleted from the Daozang jinghua reproduction . The Shanzhuang edition includes a preface by Tao Susi dated 1718, suggesting that this is a reproduction from a copy of Daoyan wuzhong. Comparison of the Shanzhuang and Wuzhong editions reveals that the Shanzhuang edition is indeed based on the Wuzhong edition, but with many further emendations. The Shanzhuang edition is valuable for the study of later uses of Jindan dayao, but of no value for studying Chen Zhixus original work. §1.1.7, Daofan edition. An

abbreviated edition of Jindan dayao is found in the

midMing collection Daofan zhengzong wujing sishu daquan . Not much is known about this collection. According to an account of the copy held by Princeton University, the Jindan dayao edition is entitled Jindan dayao miaoyong .11 Miaoyong is the title of juan 3 of the original edition, but the Jindan dayao miaoyong text in the Daofan edition contains juan 3 through 8, and 10. Daofan zhengzong wujing sishu daquan seems to have been devoted largely or even exclusively to the works of Chen Zhixu and his master Zhao Youqin.12 I argue below that the Daofan edition of Jindan dayao is derived from the Zhengli edition in Daoshu quanji, which would make it irrelevant to my study of Chen Zhixus original work. §1.1.8, Doga edition. The

Korean Daoist collection Doga jikji dokyo kyng

is mentioned in the article on Daoism in Korea in Daoism Handbook.13 The Doga edition of Jindan dayao is probably also derived from the Zhengli edition in Daoshu quanji see below in the section on text criticism . §1.1.9, Four modern editions. The

daozang

latest edition of the Daoist Canon, Zhonghua

, published in 2004, contains typeset and punctuated editions of

all of Chens works. The edition of Jindan dayao in Zhonghua daozang is based solely on the Zhengtong daozang edition.14 In 1988, a typeset and punctuated edition of Jindan 11

Ch Wanli, Catalogue of Chinese Rare Books in the Gest Coection, 399.

12

The Princeton copy contains only four books: Jindan dayao miaoyong, Cantong qi zhujie , and Wuzhen pian sanzhu by Chen Zhixu, and Xianfo tongyuan by Zhao Youqin. Ch says that this copy is incomplete, but it is not clear whether he means that the front matter or individual pages are missing, or that whole texts may be missing; Ch Wanli, Catalogue of Chinese Rare Books in the Gest Coection, 399.

13


14

Zhonghua daozang, 27:52094.

706

dayao was published in the series Dongfang xiudao wenku !. This edition is based solely on the Shanzhuang edition from Daozang jinghua. The 1990 series Zhonuo qigong jingdian

also contains a typeset and punctuated

edition of Jindan dayao, based solely on the Jiyao edition.15 The punctuation makes these editions valuable for reference. An electronic version of Jindan dayao can be found online. It is based on the Zhengli and Daozang editions. As a critical edition it leaves much to be desired, but because it is searchable, it is of inestimable value for anyone analyzing the contents of Jindan dayao. An electronic version of the Zhonghua daozang edition may also be available in the future. §1.2, The Dating of the UrText I argue that Chen Zhixu rst wrote Jindan dayao in 1331, with further expanded editions in 1336, and 1343 or later. The text includes a section entitled Preface to the Daode jing, which has a colophon dated 1331: Respectfully prefaced on the third day after the MidAutumn Festival of the xinwei year of the Zhishun reign period = Sept. 21, 1331 by the Master of Highest Yang of the Purple Empyrean, Chen Zhixu, known as Guanwu. "$ #16 The date of this colophon does not by itself prove that the entire text was published in this year it could be the date of the short piece on the Daode jing only and not the whole of Jindan dayao, but this year of publication may be inferred from other statements. In the preface to his Duren jing commentary, Chen writes that he composed commentaries to the Daode jing and Jingang jing, and wrote Jindan dayao: Because I had the fortune to meet teachers and perfected beings, they bestowed me with the secrets of the ringsigns of the great recycled elixir of metallous humor. I wanted to make the people of this generation completely familiar with this dao. Therefore I wrote commentaries on the Daode jing and Jingang jing, and expounded Jindan dayao. 15

Zhonuo qigong jingdian, JinYuan juan , 2:1147.

16

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao 2.7b67. This is in juan 2 in the Ming Daozang edition, which corresponds to juan 1 in the Zhengli and Jiyao editions.

707

04/#% 7& $216.).3 -- 17 This suggests that Chen saw the composition of the Daode jing commentary and Jindan dayao as part of a single e ort, perhaps not widely separated from each other in years. Better evidence for dating the composition of Jindan dayao to 1331 is supplied by two other passages. Chen received his alchemical transmission from his master Zhao Youqin in 1329. Chen writes in his hagiography of Zhao Youqin: In the autumn of the jisi year 1329, while lodging in Hengyang Hunan Province, Zhao gave the complete transmission of the wondrous dao of the golden elixir to Shangyangzi i.e., Chen himself. '5* .#* 18 Elsewhere, Chen writes that he produced Jindan dayao two years after Zhaos transmission of 1329: I wandered through the human realm, enjoying the karmic benet of the merit amassed by my ancestors, and the pity and blessing of Heaven and Earth. At the age of forty, I undeservedly received the correct dao from my teacher Zhao Youqin. After this I furthermore encountered the Old Teacher from Mt. Qingcheng, who personally transmitted the goldenelixir principles of the one precosmic qi and the kan moon and li sun, and the secrets of timing the re by subtracting or adding fuelhe bestowed all his teachings without reserve. Now, ever since I respectfully received the teachings, I have been trembling with alarm day and night for fear that I should not live up to my vows to my teachers, and betray my own aspirationsmy aspirations to liberate myself as much as possible from all of the shallow learning, spiritual delements, and creaturely ignorance19 of my past, and have a long existence changwei as a man of leisure between Heaven and Earth. But as for lling my sack with elixir material, I knew not how to proceed wangcuo " . For two years I visited companions and sought friends, with the intention of jiang ! bringing together my a air. Then I did not dare keep the teachings a secret: I burned incense and made my report to Heaven, informed the holy teachers, the Seven Perfected, and the Five Patriarchs,20 and thereupon, 17

DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie, preface, 4a68.

18

DZ 1069, Shangyangzi jindan dayao liexian zhi 8b5. This is in an appendix to Jindan dayao in the Daozang, but part of juan 8 in the Zhengli and Jiyao editions. 19

This is Buddhist terminology: spiritual delements are fannao ,( Skt. klea and creaturely ignorance is yeshi +8 Skt. karmajtilakaa . Karmajtilakaa refers to the basic ignorance possessed by sentient beings which either contributes to the round of conditioned arising according to classical Buddhist teachings , or directly stimulates the basic mind benxin ; Foguang da cidian, s.v. yeshi +8, 55034. 20

Holy teachers probably refers to Chens personal lineage. Seven Perfected could refer to seven masters in

708

drawing upon the various elixir scriptures of the ranks of transcendents, wrote this Jindan dayao. Ho'cU9n&GkS r(#2P] f DgAC+Pu$R1?);`~!NV[] m{Zv86iQpyJ:_YZBaK xhwFb@E&rMq ,E3>\7z Xd/4=Yt.5jVlL0^"}PTU %|-*?I21 The key information in this passage is that, after receiving a transmission from Zhao Youqin, Chen met the Qingcheng Master, then spent two years visiting companions before nally setting himself to compose Jindan dayao.22 I argue that these two years were two years after meeting Zhao Youqin, rather than two years after meeting the Qingcheng Master, with an unknown amount of time between meeting Zhao Youqin and the Qingcheng Master if in fact Chen ever did meet a Qingcheng master .23 This would date the composition of the rst version of Jindan dayao to 1331. I am skeptical that Chen ever met a Qingcheng Master at all; at least if he did, he met this master aer composing his rst version of Jindan dayao, despite what the passage just cited is saying. My argument for the composition of Jindan dayao in 1331 requires presenting and arguing for a full picture of Chen Zhixus career, which I have done above in chapter 1. So, I argue that Chen Zhixu nished a rst version of Jindan dayao in 1331. Yet the text begins with two prefaces by Chens disciples Ming Suchan
the Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir, or to seven masters in the Northern Lineage i.e., Quanzhen Daoism . The same goes for Five Patriarchsboth Southern and Northern Lineages had their sets. Because the lineage presented by his hagiography DZ 1069, Shangyangzi jindan dayao liexian zhi, originally in Jindan dayao, j. 8 includes ve Quanzhen patriarchs, seven Quanzhen masters, and then his own line, when he says Seven Perfected and Five Patriarchs here, Chen is probably referring only to Quanzhen gures. 21


22

On pages 44648 chap. 5, §3.1.2 above, I argue that these companions would be both male patrons and female partners. 23

On pages 6365 chap. 2, §4.2.1 above, I argue that Chen may never have met such a person.

709

the Crimson Palace of the Purple Empyrean, within the Squarejug Heaven.24 " 0.$*4+#,%) .25 Ouyang Tianshu was a Daoist residing at Mt. Lu 5 in presentday Jiangxi. His preface is dated 1336: Lineal disciple Ouyang Tianshu of Mt. Lu bows his head and writes this preface in the twelfth lunar month of the yihai year,26 the rst year of the Zhiyuan reign period between Jan. 15 and Feb. 12, 1336. 8/(7-&5 * 1,6!.27 So it appears that a version of Jindan dayao was produced in the winter of 1336, in Jiangxi. Perhaps Chen was already planning this publication by the summer of 1335, when Ming Suchans preface was written, but publication did not take place until the winter of 1336. Chens publication e ort may have received nancial support from a wealthy patron, as was the case with the publication of his commentary on the Wuzhen pian DZ 142 . Chens Wuzhen pian commentary includes a preface by Chens disciple Zhang Shihong ', who was a highranking o cial, claims responsibility for the text, and must have subsidized its publication. This account I am o eringof a rst edition of the text rst produced in 1331, followed by a second edition in 1336is supported by two other passages, in which Chen speaks of traveling about for three or four years, carrying Jindan dayao and seeking worthy disciples. The rst passage is from Chens epistle to his disciple Pan Taichu 2. From the moment I was able to encounter an Ultimate Man or Men, and receive transmission of the great dao under oath, I immediately planned to complete my a airs of selfcultivation. But because my merit and karmic conditions28 were not yet established, therefore yongshi I searched through the various transcendent scriptures, seeking out the unusual and plucking the best passages, and compiled these as Jindan dayao. After the book was completed, no matter where I was staying, whenever I passed by a wellknown mountain or any of the various walled towns, wherever I 24

This is a building at Mt. Jiugong: the Pavilion of the Jug Heaven Hutian zhi Ting ) ; Fu Xieding, Jiugong Shan zhi 9.13a9 7:235 .

25

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao, preface, 1a10b1.

26

Shyu & means twelfth lunar month, danmeng 8/ means yi , and dayuanxian (7 means hai ; Hanyu da cidian, s.v. shuyue &, danmeng 8/, dayuanxian (7.

27

DZ 1067, Shangyangzi jindan dayao, preface, 5a57.

28

Gong yuan 3 could also be translated e orts and fortune.

710

was at I made friends. I lowered my head and my heart stooped my dignity to enlighten and guide the people of the times, and entice them to enter this dao. For the past three or four years, those seeking my teachings have been many, yet in the end I have not met anyone who used great force to put forth sincere e orts. p,n-hZl1[q^C9+|!%#L5~jg ?su/(GMT(JKW]4o&~I8 /|0O cwa*l ':5FUUV`. . . . Then I composed Jindan dayao in ten juan. After the book was completed, I furthermore worried that if people of the times did not receive oral transmission, how could they enlighten themselves by simply using the book ! Thereupon I stumbled about in a rush,30 carrying my book under my arm. I stooped myself to seek others disciples . Whenever there was a person who could be beckoned or grabbed, I always bent my head and stooped over bending down to their level , with words of praise and warnings to repent, hoping they would enter upon this dao. Sometimes people would berate me, and I would hide and forbear it for a time. Gaining by chance the appreciation zhi E of one or two men, I would then bring upon myself the slander of a thousand or ten thousand. /GM =T(JyHYer),Qm#T A5_)DSF\0OP7{Ra*lB k}@,2X;E1:i31 In the rst passage, Chen speaks of completing Jindan dayao, traveling about, and making contact with other seekers for three or four years. This suggests that this passage was composed in around 1334 or 1335, and could have been included in an edition of 1336. In the second passage, he speaks of traveling about, carrying his book, to seek disciples. He writes, After the book was completed, I furthermore worried that if people of the times did not receive oral transmission, how could they enlighten themselves?, which suggests that the rst edition of the book was not a solitary manuscript copy kept by Chen and unknown to other readers, but was passing through the hands of readers out in the world, readers to whom Chen wished to o er oral instruction to complement the written text of Jindan dayao. 29


30

Qiejue must be a variant of jiejue t, for which Hanyu dacidian has fN.3x with the appearance of tumbling and falling while walking with hurried steps; Hanyu dacidian s.v. jiejue t. 31


711

Yet there are yet other epistles which contain dates as late as 1341 the xinsi year of the Zhizheng reign period 32 or 1343 the guiwei year of the Zhizheng reign period 33. The latest internal date in Jindan dayao is 1343. If all of these letters were actually written by Chen Zhixu and I will argue below that they were, then the most complete early edition of Jindan dayao was produced in 1343 or later, most likely still during Chens lifetime. I argue that this would be a third edition of the urtext of Jindan dayao. The rst edition was produced in 1331, the second in 1336, and the third after 1343. §1.3, The Filiations of the Jindan dayao Editions In this section I will argue for a scheme dividing the eight premodern editions of Jindan dayao into four liations, represented in the following chart:

Filiation 1

Ur-text

Filiation 2

Filiation 3

Filiation 4

Fig. 1, Filiations of Jindan dayao.

The distance of the various editions from the urtext represent evolutionary distance, i.e., the amount of editing of the recension, rather than distance in time. The dates of the editions are as follows. Arguments concerning liation and dating will follow. Urtext.

First edition: authors preface of 1331. Second edition: disciples preface of 1336. Third edition: latest date mentioned internally is 1343. Filiation 1. 32 33

Jindan dayao, Zhengli ed., 6.36b7 not in DZ 1067 ed.. Jindan dayao, Zhengli ed., 6.55a9 not in DZ 1067 ed..

712

Daozang edition: cut and printed in 1444 or 1445. Shandong edition: cut in Ming dynasty. Filiation 2.

Zhengli edition: preface of 1538. Jiyao edition: First edition: compiled before 1820. Second and third editions: published between 1820 and 1906. Fourth edition: cut in 1906, repaired and reprinted in 1985. Filiation 3.

Daofan edition: cut and printed in midMing dynasty? Or post1591? Doga edition: compiled in the decades before 1780? Filiation 4.

Wuzhong edition: preface of 1718. Shanzhuang edition: cut late in the Qing dynasty? Reprinted ca. 1920. In comparing editions, identifying liations, and preparing a critical edition of Chen Zhixus text, I have set for myself three points of analysis, and three tasks. The rst point of analysis is the wording of individual passages and sentences. There are endless variations between editions in the wording of individual sentences, but this rarely changes the overall import of the passages in question. The value of comparing editions at this level of detail lies not in establishing the urtexts wording of individual sentences, but rather in comparing the wording of the same sentence in dierent editions, in order to see which editions are more similar to each other, and separate out the editions into dierent liations. The second point of analysis is the inclusion and exclusion of whole sections of text in dierent editions. No two extant editions of Jindan dayao contain exactly the same sections. In order to analyze Chen Zhixus teachings, we must know which materials we should be analyzing, which materials are authentic. It is of vital importance to establish which sections belong to the urtext, and which are later additions I will argue below that all of the sections belong to the urtext, and none are later additions. The necessity of establishing which sections belong to the urtext is the most important reason for comparing extant editions and preparing a critical edition at all. The third point of analysis is the variations in how the textual material is divided into sections within the dierent editions, the variant sequences of the sections, and the variant titles of the sections.

713

In preparing a critical edition, I also have three tasks. The rst task is to choose a base text from among the extant editions. The base text would ideally both be the earliest edition, and an edition readily available in a reprint collection of Daoist materials. Then I compare the base text against each of the other editions, and analyze the variations to see which variant is more likely to be closer to the ur text. When there is a variant wording or passage in one of the other editions that seems to be the work of a later editor, or when I cannot tell whether the variant in the base text or the variant in another edition seems earlier, I simply mark the variation with a footnotethis is the second task. When the variant in one of the other editions is more likely to be closer to the urtext, I change the basetext reading in the critical edition, and mark this with a footnotethis is the third task. The main point of this text critical work is to identify which materials represent Chen Zhixus original teachingsbasically, to say whether the Daozang edition is the best base text, and whether the sections of material found in the other three early editions but not in the Daozang edition ought to be added back into the Daozang edition. §1.4, Choosing the Daozang Edition as the Base Text Because the Daozang edition is the most familiar and readily available edition, we would hope that it would be the most appropriate base text. I have chosen the Daozang edition as base text because it is the most familiar edition, and because there are indications that the wording in the Daozang edition is closer to the urtext. The Shandong edition is not available for scholars, and I was not allowed to copy it, so it cannot be used as base text. So the choice is between the Daozang, Zhengli, and Jiyao editions. In comparing editions, there are three points of comparison: wording, sections included, and section sequence and titles. In terms of sections included, section sequence, and section titles, the Daozang edition is out of step with the other three editions, and I will argue that we should not follow the Daozang edition on these points. However, I argue that the wording in the Daozang edition is relatively

714

closer to the urtext, though not always. Because the Daozangedition material that I am calling relatively early material constitutes about 80 percent of the most complete version of Jindan dayao, and the sections not in the Daozang edition constitute only 20 percent, I take the Daozang edition as base text. §1.5, Establishing Filiations 1 and 2 I am calling the Daozang and Shandong editions liation 1, and the Zhengli and Jiyao editions liation 2. The Zhengli and Jiyao editions share the same wording most of the time, making them much closer to one another than to any other edition. The same holds true for the Daozang and Shandong editions, although I have not been able to compare these two editions to the same extent. To use the analogy of a family tree, the Daozang and Shandong editions would be siblings in one family of editions, the Zhengli and Jiyao editions would be siblings in another family, and the two sets of siblings would be related to each other as cousins, descended from earlier, lost ancestral editions. Lets take for example the rst two double pages of juan 2 i.e., the rst two pages of juan 2 according to the Daozang edition. Comparing the four early editions the Daozang, Shandong, Zhengli, and Jiyao editions, we nd twenty points of variance in this twopage passage. I do not address dierences in textual divisions or section headings here. • Twelve variants that support a division into Daozang/Shandong and Zhengli/Jiyao liations.

The character lian occurs thrice in this passage in the Daozang edition. Both the Zhengli and Jiyao editions use the variant lian here, while the Shandong edition uses lian . The character xie occurs ve times in this passage in the Daozang edition; the Zhengli and Jiyao editions use the variant xie , while the Shandong edition uses xie . Of the fourteen occurrences of the character qi in the Daozang edition, in two cases the Zhengli and Jiyao editions use the variant qi , while the Daozang and Shandong editions use qi . At one point, the Zhengli and Jiyao editions lack ruo where the Daozang and Shandong editions have . At one point, both Zhengli and Jiyao editions have ben instead of mu in 715

, which is clearly an error. The Daozang and Shandong editions have mu . • Two variants where the Daozang edition stands alone, and the Shandong edition is closer to the Jiyao/Zhengli liation.

At two points, the Shandong edition shares a variant with the Zhengli and Jiyao editionsusing zang # instead zang ", and zao instead of zao . • Six variants found in only one of the editions.

At one point, the Zhengli edition alone adds wei !!. At two points, the Jiyao edition alone replaces wei with the variant wei . At one point the Jiyao edition alone replaces wei with qi in . At two points, the Shandong edition contains phrases not found in other editions: adding , and printing ! instead of . One might have expected comparing character variants like this a trivial exercise, but it is clearly helpful here for demonstrating the existence of two dierent liations, a Daozang/Shandong liation, and a Zhengli/Jiyao liation. Having done a great amount of such comparison, I can vouch that this is a representative sample. Having established this division into two liations, I must also note that Shandong edition does resemble the Zhengli/Jiyao liation more than the Daozang edition a minority of the time. I will argue below that combining the Shandong and Zhengli editions gives us the best picture of the urtext of Jindan dayao, yet the Daozang edition may still be our base text. We could never rely on Shandong and Zhengli editions alone to produce a critical edition: idiosyncratic errors exist in each of the four editions, so all must be consulted while making a critical edition. §1.6, Which Extant Edition Is Earliest? Which of the four editions is relatively close to the urtext of Jindan dayao? First let me justify why I ought to pose this question at all. Some critics would say that in past generations of scholarship, the search for pure origins has had pernicious eects on our understandings of tradition or culture. Yet I insist that, in order to study the teachings of Chen Zhixu, it is necessary to read his words as he wrote them, i.e., to get as close to the urtext as possible. This is not to say that later alterations to the

716

text should always be seen as corruptions of a pure original text. Often these alterations are simple corruptions, or absentminded improvements by a later copyist which simplify or standardize the wording of a passage. But sometimes these alterations appear to be meaningful emendations, expressing the teachings of later editors. Such meaningful later alterations can be material for a diachronic study of inner alchemy I have briey mentioned examples of this in section 3.4.3 of chapter 6 above . If we want to know the teachings of Chen Zhixu himself, we should try to ascertain the wording and form of his original texts. If we want to know how Chen Zhixus teachings were understood by later tradition, we should pay attention to emendations to his texts by later editors, and pay attention to which passages in his texts were quoted in later compilations. These are two di erent subjects of study Chen Zhixus original teachings, and these teachings as appropriated by later teachers which ought to be distinguished clearly in a historical study such as this dissertation. I will argue that, of the three early editions accessible to scholars the Daozang, Zhengli, and Jiyao editions , the wording of the Daozang is evolutionarily speaking, relatively earliest. The wording in the Shandong edition is probably later than that of the Daozang edition, but the Shandong edition is not accessible. The wording of the Zhengli and Jiyao editions are evolutionarily later than the Daozang edition, but it is not clear whether the Zhengli edition is earlier than the Jiyao edition, or vice versa. §1.7, The Wording of the Daozang Edition and Zhengli/Jiyao Filiation Which of the four editions is earliest, i.e., relatively closest to the urtext of Jindan dayao? I argue that the wording of the Daozang edition is closer to the urtext than is the wording of the Zhengli/Jiyao liation. The Daozang edition is from the earliest extant printed copy, printed on woodblocks cut earlier than the woodblocks of any other edition, but this does not prove that the Daozang edition is the closest to the urtext, because other editions appearing later in time may actually come from

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earlier or more evolutionarily primitive liations, i.e., lineages of texts into which fewer changes have been introduced. A quick comparison of the sectional divisions in the sixteenjuan Daozang edition with the description of the tenjuan original edition reveals that the Daozang edition has already been altered quite a lot, and in this respect is further from the urtext than the Mingdynasty Shandong and Zhengli editions, which retain the original tenjuan structure. For many variants, the Daozang edition and Zhengli/Jiyao liation o er equally possible readingsin most cases, there is no telling which variant is closer to the original version. Yet in some cases there are indications that the variant in the Daozang edition is closer to the original. Most telling are cases in which the reading in the Zhengli/ Jiyao recension has been improved over the Daozang/original recension. The following six examples are cases in which it appears that an original, more di cult reading has been improved upon. Many more such cases could be drawn from my critical edition of Jindan dayao. • Where the Daozang and Shandong editions have

34 Wishing to lift up a nger in order to see the moon, or opening up a buvessel to understand Heaventhis is also an aid, . . . the Zhengli edition has zhibiao sign or mark instead of biaozhi lift up a nger . Zhibiao is a more familiar compound,35 but biaozhi is probably the original wording. I have also found the compound biaozhi in a Chan etext.36 I argue that the original version of Jindan dayao had the odd locution biaozhi , which was improved by a later editor in the Zhengli/ Jiyao recension, who replaced it with the familiar compound zhibiao . I argue that the more di cult reading in the Daozang/ Shandong recension is evidence that this recension is closer to the original version of the text. 34

DZ 1067 ed., preface, 3b23; Zhengli ed., preface, 2b103a1. The Jiyao ed. omits this section with the two disciples prefaces. 35

Cf. Hanyu da cidian, s.v. biao .

36

Cf. T 2016, Zongjing lu , 48:918b1.

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• Where the Daozang edition has !-)%3,8

37

I enjoy the karmic benet of the merit amassed by my ancestors, and Heaven and Earth have pitied and blessed me . . . instead of bijin 8

, the Zhengli edition has jiejin

and the Jiyao edition has aijin

. Bijin 8

is a known compound, meaning bestow out of pity.38 It seems to

be a rare compound, however. I argue that the editors of the Zhengli and Jiyao recensions did not recognize this compound, and ignorantly replaced the character. • Where the Daozang edition has .#/ 6 +9' $*39 In the Huangting neijing * jing it is written: . . . the perfected persons lead you by the hand as you climb the mountain, where you make a blood oath using liquid elixir. Now you can proclaim that you possess golden writs and phosphors i.e., corporeal spirits of jade, . . . the Zhengli and Jiyao editions have yujian 4 instead of yujing *. This makes the phrase more parallel, producing a more regular rhyme scheme shan / dan // jian / xuan, but it alters the original Huangting neijing jing quotation, which has jing *, not jian 4. I argue that a later editor in the Zhengli/Jiyao recension improved this passage with checking the original text of the Huangting neijing jing. • Where the Daozang edition has $ "720&1(40 I wrote this book, calling it Jindan dayao, in order to make amends for my past regrets, and produce a wisdom eye for future people, . . . the Zhengli and Jiyao editions have shuang huiyan 51( a pair of wisdom eyes instead of zhi huiyan &1( a single wisdom eye. A pair of wisdom eyes is an error: the wisdom eye ought to be a single third eye in the forehead, not a pair of marvelous eyes. The Daozang edition preserves the original meaning, while the Zhengli/Jiyao recension loses the meaning 37

DZ 1067 ed., 1.2b67; Zhengli ed., 1.2a10; Jiyao ed. 1.2a89. Variant in Shandong edition not seen.

38

Cf. Hanyu da cidian, s.v. bi 8.

39

DZ 1067 ed., 1.7b57; Zhengli ed., 1.6b1; Jiyao ed., 1.5b910. Variant in Shandong edition not seen.

40

DZ 1067 ed., 1.11a56; Zhengli ed., 1.9a78; Jiyao ed., 1.8a89. Variant in Shandong edition not seen.

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by improving it. In this case, the critical edition must also use the Zhengli/Jiyao recension to correct the Daozang recension: the Daozang edition has xu * continue instead of shu + make amends; xu would make no sense! • Where the Daozang edition has '! "& % # ) ( $' 41 As for the way in which the Dao creates things, it gives birth to qi of things by causing its qi to pervade. Furthermore, it nurtures Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things by means of endowing them with qi. There is nothing which gives birth to itself, unproduced by qi. Now, what I mean by qi is actually not the inhalations and exhalations of Heaven and Earth, or that which comes and goes in the nose and mouth. If you want to know the name of this qi, you must complete the inner and outer dao . . . the Zhengli and Jiyao editions have '! "& % # ) ($' As for the way in which the Dao creates things, it gives birth to qi by causing Qi to pervade. Furthermore, it nurtures Qi by endowing with qi . Among Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things, there is nothing which gives birth to itself, unproduced by Qi . Now, what I mean by Qi is actually not the inhalations and exhalations of Heaven and Earth, or that which comes and goes in the nose and mouth. If you want to know the name of this Qi , you must complete the inner and outer dao . . . The Zhengli/Jiyao recension changes qi

to Qi four times, adds Qi once, and

appears to change the punctuation. Although the two character forms

and are

often assumed to be interchangeable, I have noted that in some inner alchemical texts, has the distinct meaning of yuanqi

, or cosmic qi, within the body or

the macrocosm. In the passage above, it clearly means the sacred qi produced through alchemical practice, not profane qiasvapor. It is far more likely that the Zhengli/Jiyao recension has selectively emended of qi

to Qi in order to add new meaning to the passage than that the Daozang

recension has blindly converted Qi to qi

. This is more evidence that the

Daozang recension is earlier. 41

DZ 1067 ed., 2.1b92a2; Zhengli ed., 1.12a710; Jiyao ed., 1.10b57. Variant in Shandong edition not seen.

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• In the passage . . . habitual use of stick blows and shouts, as many things 42 as there are grains of sand in the Ganges River, etc. . The buddhadharma is always like this: youve seen your inherent nature and become awakened, you peer at it day and night, with great impetus and great application . . . where the Daozang recension has . . . as many things as there are grains of sand in the Ganges River, etc. . The buddhadharma is always like this . . . the Zhengli/Jiyao recension has . . . grains of sand in the Ganges River. The innumerable buddhadharmas are always like this . . .43 I doubt the Zhengli/Jiyao recension contains the original wording. To maintain parallelism, Henghe sha or Henghe sha wuliang ought to be a fourcharacter phrase like Henghe shaliang . Elsewhere the Daozang edition does have a similar phrase, .44 I argue that the above six comparisons of variations between the wording of the Daozang edition and the Zhengli/Jiyao recension strongly suggest that there has been more active editorial intervention in the Zhengli/Jiyao recension than in the Daozang edition in these cases. We may further assume that this is the case throughout these editions, and not just in these specic passages. There are many hundreds of variations between these two recensions which are harder to judge; in these many cases, we must follow one edition on principle. Based on the six cases discussed above, I take the Daozang edition as base text for my study of Jindan dayao, and prefer the reading of the Daozang edition in most individual cases. The Daozang edition is corrupt in that it does not include many sections of text, as I will argue below, but there are also many cases in which the variant in the 42

These things numbering as many as the grains of sand in the Ganges are usually kalpas, worldsystems, or buddhas. Thus the idiom is used equally to refer to great expanses of space or of time. 43

DZ 1067 ed., 2.3b89; Zhengli ed., 1.13b810; Jiyao ed., 1.12a23. Variant in Shandong edition not seen.

44

DZ 1067 ed., 2.7b108a1. The Zhengli 1.17a5 and Jiyao 1.14b10 editions have Huanhe in Henan Province instead of Henghe . Variant in Shandong edition not seen.

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Zhengli/Jiyao recension is preferable to the variant in the Daozang edition. I will list four examples of this below. • Where the Daozang edition has )- I say, among the things, Heaven and human beings are the most numinous . . . the Zhengli edition has ) #-45 I say, now, among the myriad things, human beings are the most numinous . . . Among the myriad things, human beings are the most numinous is a very common aphorism, rst appearing in the Book of Documents Shujing

$ . The wording in the

Daozang edition must be garbled. • Where the Daozang edition has %",'46 A sage never speaks vacuouslyeach syllable is an iron man . . . the Zhengli/Jiyao recension has tie luohan ,*' iron arhat , a common idiom in Chan Buddhist texts, instead of tiehan ,' iron man , which would be an unfamiliar term. The character luo * has dropped out in the Daozang recension, and this must be corrected using the Zhengli/Jiyao recension. • Where the Zhengli and Jiyao editions have (& !+ (47

That which is more numerous than the grains of sand in the Ganges Riverthis is called Dao. The Ganges River is a western border. On this river, for forty li,48 the sand is as ne as our. This is an analogy for a large number . . .

identifying part of the passage as an interlinear note, the Daozang edition does not use smaller characters for the note, making it look like part of the regular text. We must correct the Daozangedition base text using the Zhengli/Jiyao recension. There are several other variants in this passage. The Daozang edition has xi zhi jie , but I prefer xifang jie as in the Zhengli/Jiyao recension. The 45

DZ 1067 ed., preface, 4b1; Zhengli ed., preface, 3b56; not in Jiyao ed.; Shandong edition not seen.

46

DZ 1067 ed., 2.4a34; Zhengli ed., 1.14a3; Jiyao ed., 1.12a6.; Shandong edition not seen.

47

DZ 1067 ed., 2.7b108a2; Zhengli ed., 1.17a56; Jiyao ed., 1.14b10.; Shandong edition not seen.

48

Alternatively, this river is forty li in length.

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Zhengli/Jiyao recension has Huanhe , but I prefer Henghe as in the Daozang edition. The Zhengli/Jiyao recension has ci shu zhi duozhe , but I prefer bi shu zhi duozhe as in the Daozang edition. • The Zhengli/Jiyao recension has 49 Now, as for spirits, they are said to be marvelously present in the myriad things;50 they are generated from the physical form.51 In the Zhengli/Jiyao recension there is a paragraph break here. The Daozang edition has tian instead of fu , but this must be an error. Fu marks the paragraph break: there are three such paragraph breaks in this chapter, one each for Essence jing , Pneuma qi , and Spirit shen . The Daozang edition has lost these three paragraph breaks, and here the copyist or editor has misunderstood the marker fu. The base text must follow the Zhengli/Jiyao recension. The Shandong edition also agrees with the Zhengli/Jiyao recension. In the above four cases, I have adjudged the variant in the Daozang edition to be an error, and have preferred the variant in the Zhengli/Jiyao recension. If the Daozang edition is wrong nearly as often as the Zhengli/Jiyao recension, how can I argue that the Daozang edition is closer to the urtext of Jindan dayao? Of course, in the case of most variants, neither recension is obviously wrong or right. The dierence is that, in the four cases above, the Daozang edition contains an error by a copyist or an unwitting editor, while in the six cases discussed previously, we see the active hand of an editor at work in the Zhengli/Jiyao recension. Thus, in the multitude of other cases when we cannot tell which variant is closer to the urtext simply by looking, we may assume that a rationallooking editorial change could occur more easily than a rationallooking scribal error. Thus, it is more likely that the rationallooking Zhengli/ Jiyao variant comes from an editorial alteration than that the Daozang variant comes from an error. Thus, the Zhengli/Jiyao recension contains more alterations than the Daozang recension, and we may choose the latter as base text, and prefer the variants 49

DZ 1067 ed., 4.4a8; Zhengli ed., 2.9a9; Jiyao ed., 1.25b5; Shandong edition checked, page number not noted.

50

This echoes the line in part 2 of the Shuogua appendix to the Yijing; Rutt, The Book of Changes Zhouyi, 446. 51

This echoes shen yi xing sheng , in DZ 13, Gaoshang Yuhuang xinyin jing 1a9.

723

in the latter when we cannot otherwise judge between the variants. Although we prefer the wording of the Daozang edition in most cases, this edition is also missing large chunks of material. I will argue below that this material is genuine, and should be added to the base text, drawing on the Zhengli and Jiyao editions. I will argue that the organization of the Daozang edition is a later change as well. §1.8, Comparing the Shandong Edition with the Daozang Edition Although I only closely examined a limited sample of the Shandong edition, I saw enough material to be able to locate the Shandong edition in the liation chart see above. §1.8.1, Dating the Shandong edition.

First, I can prove the date of the text.

Although the Shandong Provincial Museum dates the text to the second Zhiyuan reign period 133540,52 I found proof that the woodblocks for the Shandong edition were cut during the Ming dynasty. There is a colophon at the very end of the text: Printed at the behest of Tao Zhongfu53 of the Red Cli of old Huang zhou , Grand Master for Proper Consultation,54 Governor Assisting in Administration,55 and Eminent Gentleman of the Hall for the Preservation of Harmony,56 the Divine Empyrean, and Assisting the Administration of the Regulations.

, "'*$! #- This colophon proves that the book is a Mingdynasty edition. The title Governor 52

This date was assigned by a former Shandong librarian, Wang Xiantang + 18961960, who rescued the Shandong provincial collection during World War II. Wangs biography can be found in Wang Shaoceng and Sha Jiasun, Shandong cangshu jia shi, 33540. 53

I could not nd this name in Zang Lihe, Zhonuo gujin renming da cidian. From an online search, it appears that a Chu Huang Tao Zhongfu # composed a book on divination entited Liuren shenke jin koujue %. The Huang in this citation, and the Guhuang in the colophon above, must both refer to Huangzhou in presentday Hubei a.k.a. Chu . There is indeed a Red Cli at Huangzhou. This Red Cli is likely also the red wall immortalized in Su Shis 10371101 two fupoems entitled Chibi fu (&. 54 Hucker, A Dictionary of Ocial Titles in Imperial China, #417. Zhengyi Dafu , was a prestige title used from the Sui to the Ming dynasties. In the Yuan and Ming dynasties, it was used for rank 3a zheng sanpin . 55

Hucker, A Dictionary of Ocial Titles in Imperial China, #7528. Zizhi Yin " was a merit title awarded to favored rank 3a o cials in the Ming dynasty.

56

Baohe ! here almost certainly refers to the Baohe Dian , a unit of the Institute of Academicians Xueshi Yuan ), staed with rank 3a o cials Hucker, A Dictionary of Ocial Titles in Imperial China, #4478.

724

Assisting in Administration Zizhi Yin only existed during the Ming dynasty. I have not been able to determine the equivalent merit title for rank 3a during the Yuan dynasty, but according to Hucker, the Yuan merit title would likely have borne the sux wei Commandant .57 This colophon would not have been repeated in reeditions of a text, so it refers to the copy in hand, not an older copy that the printers were working from. I could not date the edition to any specic period within the Ming dynasty. The characters were printed clearly, so the copy was printed on blocks that were not worn down: the printing was probably not much later than the engraving of the blocks. The paper was not yellowed, so it would be reasonable to date the printing and engraving to the late Ming rather than to the early Ming. The Shandong edition is made up of eight volumes ce in two cases han . There is a possibility that ce 14 in han 1 are from a di erent printing than ce 58 in han 2. The two factors that suggest this are: the table of contents in ce 1 does not match the contents of han 2, and Chen Zhixus list of personal titles as printed at the head of each of ce 58 is slightly di erent from Chen Zhixus titles as printed in ce 14 an extra choronym, Jinluo , is added . Because the colophon is in han 2 ce 8 , there is a possibility that han 2 is a Mingdynasty printing, but han 1 is not. But I suspect that the two han were originally produced as a setthey look identical in every other respect. The table of contents is faulty in many ways, so the fact that it does not match han 2 proves nothing. And the engraving job contains other inconsistencies, such as the variation of character sizes within a single page, so it is not unlikely that the engravers simply began to engrave Chen Zhixus name di erently while engraving ce 58. §1.8.2, The Shandong edition is later than the Daozang edition.

The Daozang

edition is from an earlier printed copy than the Shandong edition, but this alone does not prove that the Daozang edition is closer to the urtext. There is evidence, however, that the Shandong edition is evolutionarily later in some passages than the other three editions. In the limited section of the Shandong edition that I was able to analyze in detailthe rst disciples preface by Ming Suchan , plus juan 2 57

Hucker, A Dictionary of Ocial Titles in Imperial China, 67.

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equivalent to juan 34 in the Daozang editionI noted thirteen variations unique to the Shandong edition. Two of these cases seem to be copyists errors, and one case is a variant character. The other ten cases all involve phrases or isolated characters found only in the Shandong edition. There are two explanations for these variations found only in the Shandong edition: either they are editorial interpolations to the Shandong edition, or all three of the other editions deleted the same passages which would be extremely unlikely. The Shandong and Daozang editions make up a single liationthere is no doubt of that. In the limited section of the Shandong edition that I was able to scrutinize, regarding variants in wording, the Shandong and Daozang editions concur for almost two hundred of the variants, while the Shandong edition and Zhengli/ Jiyao recension concur for fewer than two dozen of the variants. Because the Shandong edition is slightly closer to the Zhengli/Jiyao recension than the Daozang edition is, the Daozang, Zhengli, and Jiyao editions could not have dropped the same passages due to having a common ancestral edition. Nor would they have randomly dropped the same passages. The answer must be that these passages were interpolated into the Shandong edition. I would argue that the Shandong edition is therefore probably evolutionarily later than the Daozang edition throughout, and not just at these isolated points. §1.8.3, Sections missing from the Daozang edition ought to be replaced.

The

Shandong and Daozang editions belong to the same liationI established this based on their many similarities in wording. Yet many sections found in the Shandong edition, as well as other editions, are not found in the Daozang edition. The Daozang edition is probably the earliest edition, both temporally and evolutionarily. So, we must answer the following question: has the Daozang edition deleted these sections, or were these sections interpolated in the later editions? My answer is that the Daozang edition has deleted these sections. In gure 2 below, the sections missing from the Daozang edition are represented by the thicker line:

726

Intermediary edition A

Ur-text

Intermediary edition B

Filiation 2

Filiation 1

Fig. 2, Major liations 1 and 2

First, let me establish that these hypothetical intermediary editions must have existed. There must have been an intermediary edition A preceding the Daozang and Shandong editions, because these two editions are close enough to have come from the same parent edition, yet each one contains a number of its own variants, meaning that neither edition derives directly from the other. The Shandong edition is like the Daozang edition, not because it is a direct descendent of the Daozang edition, but because they are both recensions based on a common source, Intermediary Edition A. I will say the same for the Zhengli and Jiyao editions when I discuss them more briey below. Because the missing sections are found on both sides of the divide between Filiation 1 and Filiation 2, the missing sections must have existed in both Intermediary Editions A and B. It is extremely unlikely that the missing sections existed in Intermediary Edition B, but not Intermediary Edition A, and that the editor of the Shandong edition copied them over from the Zhengli edition, or some other text in Filiation 2. If the editor of the Shandong edition used the Zhengli edition for one section, he would have used the Zhengli edition for all sections. But he did not use the Zhengli edition, so he must have used Intermediary Edition A, and Intermediary Edition A must have contained the missing sections. Therefore, the sections are as genuine as anything else in the text. Actually, I have not found anything spurious in any of the editions as long as a sentence, nothing longer than isolated characters and phrases. Therefore, the critical edition must add these sections back in. I must also address the possibility that the Daozang edition is related to Chen Zhixus second edition of 1335, and the sections not found in the Daozang edition or its appendices are from a third edition of 1343 or later. This would be suggested by

727

the intriguing fact that all of the mentions of dates after 1335 within any version of the text occur in sections not found in the Daozang edition. But if my argument above stands, the Daozang edition could not possibly be Chen Zhixus second edition of 1335because of the similarities in wording between the Shandong and Daozang editions, the split into Filiations 1 and 2 occurred before the Shandong and Daozang editions were published. Also, the Daozang edition could not be an exact copy of any of Chen Zhixus original editions anyway, because the odd textual organization of the Daozang edition sixteen juan, with some material moved from within the text to form the appendices DZ 106870 is quite di erent from the textual organization described within the text itself ten juan, including the material found in DZ 106870 as juan 8 . §1.9, Of the Zhengli and Jiyao Editions, Which Is Earlier? Of the Zhengli and Jiyao editions, which is closer to the urtext? Does one derive from the other? The Zhengli edition is from an earlier woodblock 1538 than the Jiyao edition rst published ca. 1800, fourth edition of 1906 , but this does not answer the question, since the Jiyao edition could easily have come from an earlier recension. The two editions sometimes have individual idiosyncratic wordings, diverging from one other and from the mainstream wording shared by every edition, yet both texts have roughly the same number of such divergences. Recall my analysis on page 716 above of the variations within a twopage section: at one point the Zhengli edition contained an extra character not found in the Jiyao edition. Also recall my discussion on page 719 above of three editions variants on the compound bijin . In my critical edition I have found almost twenty such cases per juan proving that both Zhengli and Jiyao editions are redactions of a common source edition, Intermediary Edition B, and that neither one of the two editions derives from the other. The Zhengli edition is truer to the urtext in some structural ways, preserving a tenjuan structure, and including two sections missing from the Jiyao edition. The wording of the Zhengli edition may be truer to the urtext slightly more frequently than the Jiyao edition, but the Jiyao edition is also truer often enough that both

728

editions are of value in preparing a critical edition, and ought to be checked against each other. §1.10, Filiation 3: Daofan and Doga Editions The editions of Jindan dayao in the midMing Daoist collection Daofan zhengzong wujing sishu daquan and the eighteenthcentury Korean Daoist collection Doga jikji dokyo kyng probably derive from the Zhengli edition. I have not been able to examine either of these editions, but I can infer their liation from descriptions of them in secondary sources. The identity of the texts collected in Daofan zhengzong wujing sishu daquan suggest that this collection is based on the Daoshu quanji collection. In addition to three texts by Chen Zhixu, the Daofan collection also contains the text Xianfo tongyuan , by Zhao Youqin. Xianfo tongyuan was widely available only as part of the Daoshu quanji collection. The Daoshu quanji collection also contained the Zhengli edition of Jindan dayao. Therefore I infer that the edition of Jindan dayao collected in the Daofan zhengzong wujing sishu daquan collection was also the Zhengli edition as found in Daoshu quanji. In his article on Daoism in Korea in Daoism Handbook,58 Jung Jaeseo states that the Doga jikji dokyo kyng collection is based on texts from Daoshu quanji. Therefore the edition of Jindan dayao in Doga jikji dokyo kyng must be the same edition found in Daoshu quanji, i.e., the Zhengli edition. As I mentioned on page 704 above, I consider the independent Zhengli edition and the Daoshu quanjis Zhengli edition to be identical. §1.11, Filiation 4: Wuzhong and Shanzhuang Editions The Wuzhong edition is a muchedited and abbreviated redaction of the Zhengli/Jiyao liation. As I mentioned on page 705 above, it contains about 18 percent of the material in the most complete version of Jindan dayao. I have analyzed juan 2 of the Wuzhong edition in detail, and determined that the Wuzhong edition is slightly closer 58


729

to the Jiyao edition than to the Zhengli edition. Within juan 2 of the Wuzhong edition, I found eight cases in which a character variant is found only in the Wuzhong and Jiyao editions. I found no cases in which a character variant is found only in the Wuzhong and Zhengli editions, or Wuzhong and Daozang editions. The Shanzhuang edition from Daozang jinghua reproduces the abbreviated Wuzhong edition, with many further emendations of its own. Whereas the Wuzhong edition added almost fty new emendations to juan 2, the Shanzhuang edition includes most of these, and adds almost 150 further emendations of its own, evidence of a hyperactive editorial hand.

§2, The Contents of the Various Editions of Jindan dayao §2.1, The General Organization of Jindan dayao: Chapter Titles Jindan dayao originally had ten chapters juan , each divided into multiple sections zhang . In his original preface, Chen Zhixu discusses and explains the tenjuan structure of Jindan dayao:59 The Master of Highest Yang says: Therefore, Jindan dayao has ten juan: The rst juan, Void and Nonexistence, has three sections to symbolize the three powers sancai .60 The second juan, The Highest Pharmaca, has one section to embody the dharmabody. The third juan, Marvelous Application, has nine sections, to actualize the nine recyclings. The fourth juan, What One Ought to Know, has seven sections to verify by producing the seven returns. The fth juan, Accumulating E ort, has poems and songs, to distinguish the perverse from the correct. The sixth juan, Accumulating Practice, has prefatory discourses, to cause non existence to mark itself with emblems. The seventh juan, Initiating Perfection, has questions and answers, to touch 59

DZ 1067 ed., 1.11a8b6; Zhengli ed., 1.9a10b6; deleted from Jiyao edition; Shandong edition not seen.

60

The sancai are Heaven, Earth, and humanity.

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and attract the many sentient beings. The eighth juan, Cultivating Perfection, has charts and emblems: showing them can o er conrmation. The ninth juan, Overleaping the Bounds, has imitations of the ancientsthe highest vehicle. The tenth juan, Transcending the Ancestors, measures out the ancients, to help the reader manifest inherent enlightenment and become a buddha.

I2"13+4+EA ?F + T?W.( +%?US+J/? V0+QLN)+>#&P*ADF +B9
4. What One Ought to Know Xuzhi 4! : about dierent stages in the process. 5. Accumulating Eort Jigong @ : exhortatory poems and Daode jing commentary. 6. Accumulating Practice Leixing - : epistles to disciples. 7. Initiating Perfection Fazhen 0) : essays on various topics. 8. Cultivating Perfection Xiuzhen .) : charts and visual aids. 9. Overleaping the Bounds Yuege 1( : Chan Buddhist discourses. 10. Transcending the Ancestors Chaozong 2 : more Chan Buddhist discourses. While there the sequence of chapter titles has a logical order stages of progress in alchemical cultivation , it is more dicult to discern a logic to the sequence of actual chaptercontents. One notable thing is that the nal two chapters are devoted to Chan Buddhist topics. I think that this is signicantI think that, to this extent, the structure of Jindan dayao is modeled on the structure of the inneralchemical classic Wuzhen pian. Fukui Fumimasa has noted that Wuzhen pian originally contained a nal section on Chan Buddhist teachings, but that this section was lost from all editions of Wuzhen pian in the Zhengtong daozang except for the edition within DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu.61 Fukui notes that Zhang Boduan +; states in his original preface to Wuzhen pian that he added the Buddhist material as an afterthought, so that his book would have more discussion of cultivating ones inherent nature xing to complement its lengthy discussion of cultivating ones life endowment ming . When I had already nished gathering the chapters, I felt that I had merely discussed nurturing the lifeendowment and stabilizing the physical form therein, and my discussion of original, perfect awareness was lacking to a certain extent. Thereupon I reviewed Buddhist books and lamp histories, including stories about patriarchs who achieved enlightenment upon hearing the striking of bamboo. I have shaped this into thirtytwo stanzas of song, poetry, and miscellaneous discourse, and now I append this to the end of the scrolls. <3$#D,=>/ 6)D 8E' 5?A *%B&" :97C 61

Fukui, Goshin hen no k sei ni tuite, 32. Fukui thinks that later Daoist editors deleted the Chan section at the end of Wuzhen pian in order to suppress the Buddhist aspect of Zhang Boduans teachings. This may be true, but many of Zhang Boduans heirs, Chen Zhixu included, loved Buddhism as much as Zhang Boduan did, if not more.

732

62 Daoists have often said that Daoist teachings emphasize lifeendowment ming, i.e., body , while Buddhist teachings emphasize inherent nature xing, i.e., mind . The structure of Chen Zhixus work, with Chan Buddhist teachings at the end, may be modeled on the structure of Wuzhen pian. Furthermore, the structure of both works reects a common doctrinal structure of xian ming, hou xing one cultivates ming rst, and xing afterward . Contemporary Chinese scholars often point out that Zhang Boduan taught xian ming hou xing, and use this to distinguish Zhangs heirs in the Southern Lineage Jindan Nanzong from the Northern Lineage Jindan Beizong , i.e., Quanzhen Daoism , which teaches xian xing hou ming.63 I have discussed this in section 3.4.2 of chapter 4. §2.3, The Organization of Jindan dayao in the Dierent Editions The four early editions of Jindan dayao di er greatly in the way they are divided into chapters and sections. The Daozang edition is divided into sixteen juan, the Zhengli and Shandong editions are divided into ten juan, and the Jiyao edition is not divided into juan at all.64 The Zhengtong daozang furthermore contains three additional texts related to Jindan dayao: DZ 1068, Shangyangzi jindan dayao tu, DZ 1069 Shangyangzi jindan dayao liexian zhi, and DZ 1070 Shangyangzi jindan dayao xianpai. These texts originally belonged in juan 8 in the original version of Jindan dayao, but have been extracted and made into appendices to the Daozang edition. They can be found in juan 8 in the other three early editions.65 As we saw on pages 73031 above, the original version of Jindan dayao had ten chapters, and juan 8 originally included charts, so we can say that the structure of the Daozang edition with sixteen juan plus appendices is the work of a later editor as is threece structure of the Jiyao edition . In my critical edition, I usually prefer the wording of the Daozang edition, but prefer the tenjuan structure of the Zhengli and Shandong editions. 62

DZ 142, Ziyang zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu, preface, 11b812a2.

63

Cf., for example, Ren Jiyu, Zhonuo daojiao shi, 1st ed., 511, 54647.

64

I cite the Daozang and Zhengli editions by juan and page number, but the Jiyao edition by volume ce and page number. 65

Or the equivalent location in ce 3 of the Jiyao edition.

733

§2.4, The Segments Missing from the Daozang Edition What is missing from DZ 1067, the Daozang edition of Jindan dayao? I have identied ten segments of missing material. Most of these segments are lacking in the Daozang edition alone, though the Jiyao and Shandong editions also lack sections, and only the Zhengli edition is complete. It is important to determine why these segments are missing from the Daozang edition. It is important to determine if these omissions were due to purposeful editorial censoring of passages related to sexual alchemy, for example, or due to careless copying. I will argue that the majority of missing segments were omitted due to careless copying. These missing segments are of three types: 1 passages omitted from within sections, 2 whole sections omitted, and 3 whole sections moved out of the main text and made into separate appendices. I argue that the omission of eight of these eleven segments happened inadvertently while the Daozang edition was being prepared: whole pages were lost from whatever source edition the editor, copyist, or engraver was copying from.66 The other three missing segments cannot be explained this way. §2.4.1, Missing segment 1.

This is a segment from juan 3, beginning at 5.11a1 in

the Daozang edition.67 According to my calculation based on the Zhengli and Jiyao editions, the missing Daozang passage would have been 899 characters in length. My hypothesis is that these 899 characters should be equivalent to a whole number of pages. How can we know how many pages in length in the lost source edition this 899character missing passage would be? We can only speculate how many characters there were per line, and how many lines per page, in the lost source edition. Here is a chart comparing the four early editions:

66

The omissions could conceivably have rst occurred in an immediate parent text of the Daozang edition, standing between Intermediate Edition A and the Daozang edition, but this need not concern us.

67

In juan 3 according to the original tenjuan structure of Jindan dayao. This is in juan 5 in the sixteenjuan Daozang edition.

734

Daozang edition

17 graphs per line

5 lines per recto or verso68

Zhengli edition

21 graphs per line

10 lines per recto or verso

Jiyao edition

24 graphs per line


Shandong edition

20 graphs per line


It is my hypothesis that there were twenty characters per line in the lost source edition that the Daozang edition was copied from. I make this hypothesis based on my counts of missing characters in this and other omitted segments: choosing twenty characters per line, like the Shandong edition, yields a good result, and is as good a choice as any. If the lost source edition had twenty characters per line, 899 characters would amount to almost exactly69 fortyve missing lines. If there were ve lines per page, this would be exactly nine pages; if there were ten lines per page, this would be four and a half pages. It is easy to imagine nine pages dropping out somewhere, but not easy to imagine four and a half pages dropping out. To explain the omission of this segment 1, we would have to assume ve lines per page in the lost source edition, but because I would have expected ten lines per page, I am only partly convinced myself. Fortunately, my argument works in the other cases: the other missing segments are multiples of ten lines in length, not ve like this one. §2.4.2, Missing segments 24.

The next three missing segments are actually

one segment which I divide into three: 2 the end of the section Marvelous Application of FireTiming Huohou miaoyong zhang diliu ; 3 the whole of the section Marvelous Application of Reverting the Elixir Huandan miaoyong zhang diqi ; and 4 the beginning of the section Marvelous Application of TopsyTurvy ness Diandao miaoyong zhang diba . The whole missing segment begins at 6.6b9 in the Daozang edition. It certainly looks like a careless copyists error: the Daozang edition splices two halfsentences together very awkwardly. Where the Zhengli and Jiyao editions have 68

All modern photoreproductions of the Zhengtong daozang have ten lines per recto or verso page, but this is a change made by the printers of the Hanfen Lou edition. If you look at a photograph of a copy from the original set, you will see that each recto or verso page has only ve lines. 69

899 / 20 = 44.95. There is some leeway in charactercounts, so 44.95 45. Some woodblock books do not have a perfect number of characters per line: the Shandong edition, for example, has twenty characters on most lines, but twentyone on some lines.

735

4 @E-;?HH.K 4 G1FB70

A+ #82

. . . ca. 1500character passage in between . . . M3,.9 :(76:/! =5!@"> CJ '<0(D$,71 the Daozang edition has 4 LE-;?HH.K 4 @">CJ '<0(D$ In the Daozang edition, 4

5!

=5 has become the oddlynamed 4

5. This strongly suggests an unintentional lacuna. If the omission of this segment was due to missing pages in a hypothetical source edition, then both the beginning and the end of the omission ought to occur at the end of a page in that lost source edition. My calculations are not so helpful in conrming that this lacuna occurred due to lost pages: the lacuna would begin on the 372nd line 37.2 pages: missing a multiple of ten by two lines and the lacuna would be seventytwo lines in length 7.2 pages: again missing by two lines. §2.4.3, Missing segments 56.

The sections Five A airs of the Golden

Elixir Jindan wushi - & and To Dingyangzi Yu Dingyangzi I*=, which would occur after 9.12a2 in the Daozang edition, together come to ninetyeight lines, about ten pages in the hypothetical source edition. It could be due to lost pages. §2.4.4, Missing segment 7.

The section To Guyangzi, Zhou Yuzhong Yu

Guyangzi, Zhou Yunzhong I%=), which would occur after 12.10b5 in the Daozang edition, is 971 characters plus one title line, almost exactly ve pages in the hypothetical source edition. It could also be due to lost pages. §2.4.5, Missing segment 8.

This is the most signicant omission in the Daozang

edition, the omission of the nal thirteen epistolary essays by Chen Zhixu to his disciples. According to my calculations, this section would be exactly seventyve pages in length in the hypothetical source edition. Yet seventyve pages would probably not all have t within a single booklet ce: this would be long enough for three or four booklets. So my pagecounting method does not prove anything for 70

Zhengli ed., 3.18b2; Jiyao ed., 1.45a9.

71

Zhengli ed., 3.22a10; Jiyao ed., 1.48b7.

736

such a long passage. I have argued above that this most important section must have existed in the parent edition of the Daozang edition. §2.4.6, Missing segment 9.

This segment, which would begin at 13.2a4 in the

Daozang edition, is 399 characters in length, almost exactly two pages in the hypothetical source edition. It could also be due to lost pages. §2.4.7, Missing segment 10.

This is the material moved from juan 8 in the

original version of Jindan dayao to form the appendices DZ 1068, Shangyangzi jindan dayao tu, DZ 1069 Shangyangzi jindan dayao liexian zhi, and DZ 1070 Shangyangzi jindan dayao xianpai. The editor of the Daozang edition clearly rearranged the material, but I cannot discover any special explanation for this editorial choice, except that this material is dierent from the rest of Jindan dayao, which otherwise consists of discourses, not charts or ritual records. §2.4.8, Missing segment 11.

This is a short sevenandahalf line section

entitled Rite for Celebrating the Birthdays of the Two Transcendents Zhong and L ZhongL erxian qingdan yi , which would begin at DZ 1070, Shangyangzi jindan dayao xianpai, 3a. I cannot explain why this section was dropped, except that the Daozang editor might have thought it redundant. It rehearses the biographies of Zhongli Quan and L Dongbin, which are found also in more detail in DZ 1069 Shangyangzi jindan dayao liexian zhi. I have translated this section on page 143 above. §2.4.9, Conclusions regarding missing segments.

My hypothesis about missing

pages from a lost source edition with twenty characters per line and ve or ten lines per page could not be denitively proven, but it is still suggestive. Of the eleven missing segments, segments 5, 6, 7, and 9 seem to have been omitted due to lost pages. My calculations regarding segments 14 were inconclusive, but these omissions could possibly still be due to lost pages, if there were some factor making my calculations slightly o. Segments 23 are clearly an inadvertent lacuna, not a case of intentional censoring. Segment 10 seems to have been rearranged for thematic reasons. I cannot say why segments 9 and 11 are missing. Segment 9, the epistolary essays, is the most important missing passage. I have proven above that it ought to

737

exist in the Daozang recension, but I have not been able to explain its absence here. §2.5, Discrepancies in the Other Editions I have argued that the Daozang edition is more distant from the original edition in structure, though closer to it in wording. Each of the other editions depart structurally from the hypothetical original edition as well. Here I must mention a few of the more obvious omissions and distortions, which are relevant when comparing these various editions. The Zhengli and Shandong editions contain tables of contents, which often depart from the texts themselves. In dozens of cases, in both Zhengli and Shandong editions, the title as listed in the table of contents is di erent in wording than the title as found in the text. It seems that the person who prepared the table of contents was not the same person who edited the text, and may not even have read the text. In a few cases, the Zhengli and Shandong tables of contents contain the exact same errors in wording, such as the section Caiyao miaoyong zhang in the table of contents ought to be Caiqu , or the section Huanfan miaoyong zhang in the table of contents ought to be Huandan . This suggests either that there was some direct crossover between the two editions, or that the same errors were perpetuated in liations 1 and 2 from the common ancestor and editor of the Daozang edition deleted this table of contents . The Shandong edition has further discrepancies: in the table of contents, some sections found in the text are not listed in the table of contents;72 and some sections not found in the text are still listed in the table of contents.73 These may be further examples of a sloppy table of contents, or may be evidence that the second bookbox han of the Shandong edition came from a di erent edition.74 Juan 5 and 8 seem to have been unstable, with greater structural variation over the four early editions. The sequence of sections in juan 5 varies between the four editions, and much of juan 5 is missing from the Daozang edition. The title of 72

The section Yu Nanyangzi Deng Yanghao , and all of the subsections in juan 8.

73

The sections ZhongL erxian qingdan yi and Xianpai yuanliu .

74

See page 725 above.

738

juan 8, which according to internal evidence ought to be Cultivating Perfection Xiuzhen ,75 varies between the four editions. The Shandong edition lacks the section on hagiography Xianpai yuanliu in juan 8, and has moved the section on lineage Xianpai to the head of the text. Also recall that juan 8 has been turned into three appendices in the Daozang edition. I can point out that these two juan were structurally unstable, but cannot speculate why.

75

See page 731 above.

739

Bibliography of Works Cited A1.1. Works in the Ming Daoist Canon DZ 13, Gaoshang Yuhuang xinyin jing 1' K. 1 juan. S. Song dyn. 11271279? DZ 18, Taishang xuhuang tianzun sishijiu zhang jing C' >=K. 1 juan. PostTangdynasty? DZ 19, Taishang shengxuan xiaozai huming miaojing -aK. 1 juan. Tang dynasty 618907. DZ 31, Huangdi yinfu jing G$<8K. 1 juan. 8th c.? DZ 32, Hunyuan yangfu jing 5F8K. 1 juan. Tang or Song dynasties? DZ 87, Yuanshi wuliang duren shangpin miaojing sizhu @E%#KD. Compiled by Chen Jingyuan ;? 102494. 4 juan. 1067. DZ 89, Yuanshi wuliang duren shangpin miaojing tongyi @E%#K:L. Commentary by Zhang Yuchu 3! 13611410. 4 juan. Before 1410. DZ 90, Yuanshi wuliang duren shangpin miao jing neiyi @E%#KL. Commentary by Xiao Yingsou XY*. 5 juan. 1226. DZ 91, Taishang dongxuan lingbao wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie &b_ @E%#K N. Commentary by Chen Zhixu ;)C 12901343+. 3 juan. 1336. Found in multiple collections: see A2 in dissertation appendix 1. DZ 103, Yuqing wuji zongzhen wenchang dadong xianjing zhu 4@J[. & K. By Wei Qi VA . 1309. 10 juan. 1309. DZ 109, Huangdi yinfu jing jiangyi G$<8K\L. Commentary by Xia Yuanding + Q byname Xia Zongyu +(, . 1227. 4 juan. 1227. DZ 135, Cui Gong ruyao jing zhujie 2 ]^DN. Ascribed to Cui Xifan IT . 940. Commentary by Wang Daoyuan O6 Wang Jie c, . 1392, or 133180. Ca. 1392 or 133180. DZ 137, Qingtian ge zhushi " RD`. By Qiu Chuji 9W 11481227. Commentary by Wang Daoyuan O6 Wang Jie c, . 1392 or 133180. 1 juan. Ca. 1392 or 133180. DZ 141, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu BF.,.UD7. Original by Zhang Boduan 3S 984/871082/84, or 10761155. Commentary by Weng Baoguang /M . 1173, transmitted chuan H by Chen Daling ;Pb . ca. 1174, sub commentary shu 7 by Dai Qizong Z0 . 1335. 8 juan. 1173 and 1335.

740

DZ 142, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian sanzhu HM636cL. Original by Zhang Boduan. Commentary by Xue Daoguang mX d. 1191 actually by Weng Baoguang 9V, . 1173 , Lu Shu D] byname Ziye B, . S. Song 1127 1279 ? , and Chen Zhixu C-K 12901343+ . 5 juan. After 1331. Found in multiple collections: see A4 in dissertation appendix 1. DZ 143, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen zhizhi xiangshuo sansheng miyao HM636#(W` 07.. Original by Zhang Boduan. Commentary by Weng Baoguang 9V . 1173 , subcommentary shu @ by Dai Qizong k: . 1335 . 1 juan. Ca. 1173 and 1335. DZ 144, Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian shiyi HM636)i. By Zhang Boduan. Edited by Weng Baoguang 9V . 1173 . 1 juan. 1075 ? ; ca. 1173. Also as Chanzong gesong l ^Y in DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu 30.1a12a DZ 145, Wuzhen pian zhushi 36cLv. Original by Zhang Boduan. Commentary by Weng Baoguang 9V . 1173 . 3 juan. Ca. 1173. DZ 146, Ziyang zhenren wuzhen pian jiangyi HM636cnU. Original by Zhang Boduan. Commentary by Xia Yuanding 2Z byname Xia Zongyu 2 ,, . 122027 . 7 juan. 1227. DZ 149, Xiuzhen taiji hunyuan tu 16 R?\. By Xiao Daocun hX. 1 juan. N. Song 9601127 . DZ 150, Xiuzhen taiji hunyuan zhixuan tu 16 R?(\. 1 juan. N. Song 960 1127 , before 1154. DZ 151, Jinye huandan yinzheng tu %=pt\. By Longmeizi j+. 1 juan. 1222. DZ 167, Dongxuan lingbao zhenling weiye tu *wu6wQ\. Edited by Tao Hongjing FGd 452536 , collated and edited jiaoding 5/ by Lqiu Fangyaun g a . 893 . 1 juan. Ca. 500; before 893. DZ 171, Qingwei xianpu >Ps. Transmitted chuan O by Huang Shunshen NI . 122487 , edited by Chen Cai C$ . 1293 . 1 juan. 1293. DZ 174, Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan %e S[O. Compiled by Liu Tiansu b 8 and Xie Xichan or. 1 juan. 1326. DZ 179, Taiwei lingshu ziwen xianji zhenji shangjing Pw4H T. 1 juan. E. Jin dynasty 317420 . DZ 225, Taishang jiuyao xinyin miaojing .T. Ascribed to ;! Zhang Guo Zhang Guolao ;!, Tang dyn. . 1 juan. N. Song dynasty 9601127 ? DZ 226, Ziyuan Jun shoudao chuanxin fa H%x'J7 %uq A. A.k.a. Qinghua miwen. Ascribed to Zhang Boduan ;_ 984/871082/84, or 10761155 . 3 juan. After 1350? 741

DZ 243, Chen Xubai guizhong zhinan HNE-*. By Chen Chongsu H$: byname Xubai N. 2 juan. Yuan 12791368. DZ 244, Dadan zhizhi )-. Ascribed to Qiu Chuji Db 11481227. 2 juan. Early Yuan 12501300? DZ 245, Yuxizi danjing zhiyao eW-2. By Li Jianyi #g& . 1264. 3 juan. 1264; printed 1354. DZ 247, Huizhen ji V7Q. By Wang Jichang '. 5 juan. 14th c.? DZ 248, Qizhen ji >7Q. By Liu Zhiyuan _"A . 1364, or 1304?. 3 juan. Ca. 1364 1304?. DZ 249, Zhonghe ji %Q. By Li Daochun #Z; . 12881306. 6 juan. 1306. DZ 255, Taiwei lingshu ziwen lanan huadan shenzhen shang jing Un6KBoM 97W. 1 juan. E. Jin dynasty 317420. DZ 263, Xiuzhen shishu 376. 60 juan. Compiled ca. 1340? DZ 263, juan 1416: ZhongL chuandao ji fSZQ. N. Song dynasty 9601127? Also as Chuandao pian SZ`, in DZ 1017, Daoshu, juan 3941. Also in Daoshu quanji, Daozang jiyao, Daozang jinghua, and Daozang jinghua lu. DZ 270, Pomi zhengdao ge 8<Z[. Ascribed to Zhongli Quan jhk. 1 juan. Ca. 1070. DZ 276, Xiyi zhimi lun (\-
G/. Edited by Miao

DZ 331, Taishang huangting neijing yujing R4 JW. 1 juan. E. Jin dynasty 317 420. DZ 332, Taishang huangting waijing yujing R4JW. 1 juan. Before 255. DZ 361, Taishang dongxuan lingbao bawei zhaolong miaojing .ni+d 2 juan. 5th c.

W.

DZ 388, Taishang lingbao wufu xu ni C!. 3 juan. E. Jin dynasty 317420. DZ 399, Taishang dongxuan lingbao tianzun shuo jiuku miaojing zhujie .ni I ]=0 WOX. Commentary by Dongyangzi .P, Mr. L . 1 juan. Song Yuan dynasties 9601368? 742

DZ 403, Huangting neiwaijing jing jie R8 JX\. Commentary by Jiang Shenxiu fV5. 1 juan. Tang dynasty 618907. DZ 448, Xishan Xu Zhenjun bashiyi hua lu E;j. Edited by Shi Cen 0. 3 juan. Ca. 1250. DZ 450, Taiji Ge Xiangong zhuan W[ S. By Tan Sixian rT. 1 juan. Printed 1377 or 1437. DZ 548, Taiji jilian neifa WCo *. By Zheng Sixiao g/! 12411318. 3 juan. Before 1318; preface of 1406. DZ 555, Gaoshang yuegong Taiyin Yuanjun Xiaodao Xianwang lingbao jingming huangsu shu >7 GûsB'R<9. By Fu Feiqing I46. 10 juan. Yuan dynasty 12791368. DZ 568, Lingbao guikong jue usp,D, by Zhao Yizhen b$; d. 1382. 1 juan. Before 1382. DZ 620, Taishang Laojun shuo chang qingjing miao jing a?@lX. 1 juan. Early Tang ca. 618750. DZ 639, Huangtian Shangqing Jinque Dijun lingshu ziwen shang jing 2 @-q. u9MX. 1 juan. E. Jin 317420. DZ 641, Taishang Laojun neiguan jing vX. 1 juan. Early Tang ca. 618750. DZ 660, Hunyuan bajing zhenjing AJ;X. 5 juan. Song dynasty? 11001150?. DZ 667, Wushang miaodao wenshi zhenjing K^#;X. 1 juan. 12th c. DZ 687, Daode zhenjing sanjie ê;X\. By Deng Yi hk . 1298. 4 juan. 1298. DZ 725, Daode zhenjing guangsheng yi ê;XdZY. Commentary by Du Guangting 8 850933. 50 juan. 901. DZ 726, Xisheng jing jizhu (XQP. Commentaries compiled by Chen Jingyuan F J 102494. 6 juan. Before 1094. DZ 770, Hunyuan shengji AZ3. Compiled by Xie Shouhao nw . 1191. 9 juan. Preface of 1193; postSong edition. DZ 774, Youlong zhuan LmS. By Jia Shanxiang ]NO . 10861100. 6 juan. 1086 1100. DZ 782, Dadi Dongtian tuji `1 _=. By Deng Mu h+ 12471306. 3 juan. Befofre 1306. DZ 793, Taiqing daode xianhua yi @êtc. 1 juan. Ming dynasty 13181644. DZ 824, Songshan Taiwu Xiansheng qi jing U K:X. Equivalent to DZ 828, Huanzhen Xiansheng funa yuanqi jue ;) :D, and to Huanzhen Xiansheng funa yuanqi jue ;) :D, in DZ 1032, Yunji qiqian, j. 60. Ascribed to a half dozen di erent gures. 1 or 2 juan. Ca. 770825? DZ 838, Yangxing yanming lu i&%"j. Ascribed to Tao Hongjing HJ 456536. 743

2 juan. Late Tang dynasty? DZ 851, Sanyuan yanshou canzan shu I,['. Edited by Li Pengfei ^% 1222?. 5 juan. 1291. DZ 878, Zituan danjing 8GB. 1 juan. S. Song, after 1180 1180s1279. DZ 885, Huangdi jiuding shendan jingjue =!F)B0. Juan 1, Han dynasty 206 220 ; juan 220, ca. 64983. DZ 904, Jinbi wuxianglei cantong qi L#], . Ascribed to Yin Changsheng 3. 1 juan. Five Dynasties or Song dynasty, after 947. DZ 905, Cantong qi wuxiang lei miyao , #]*$. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang Z; trad. b. 107, . 14667. Submitted by Lu Tianji U b . 1111 17. 1 juan. Ca. 111117. DZ 921, Zhigui ji "Y<. By Wu Wu or &. 1 juan. Ca. 1163. DZ 926, Da huandan zhaojian X?`. 1 juan. 962. DZ 954, Taishang hunyuan zhenlu -(V. 1 juan. Ca. 7th8th c.? DZ 956, Zhongnan Shan Shuojing Tai lidai zhenxian beiji /OBNS ( A+. Zhu Xiangxin : . 1279. 1 juan. Ca. 12801300. DZ 962, Wudang fudi zongzhen ji @MW(V. By Liu Daoming PE . 1286 91. 3 juan. 1291; 1301. DZ 999, Zhouyi cantong qi. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang Z; trad. b. 107, . 14667. Commentary ascribed to Yin Changsheng 3. 3 juan. 700. DZ 1000, Zhouyi Cantong qi zhu , juan. After 1210.

9. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. 3

DZ 1001, Zhouyi Cantong qi kaoyi , .. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. Commentary by Zhu Xi T 11301200. 3 juan. 1198. DZ 1002, Zhouyi cantong qi fenzhang tongzhen yi , 41(C. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. Commentary by Peng Xiao 5R d. 955. 3 juan. 947. DZ 1003, Zhouyi Cantong qi dingqi ge mingjian tu , FQJ\H. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. Commentary by Peng Xiao. 3 juan. 947. DZ 1004, Zhouyi Cantong qi zhu , juan. Ca. 700.

9. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. 2

DZ 1005, Zhouyi Cantong qi fahui , 76. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. Commentary by Yu Yan c 1253/81314. 9 juan. 1284. DZ 1006, Zhouyi Cantong qi shiyi , Commentary by Yu Yan. 1 juan. 1281.

_K. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang.

DZ 1007, Zhouyi cantong qi jie , D. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. Commentary by Chen Xianwei 2a>. 3 juan. 1234. DZ 1008, Zhouyi cantong qi ,

. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. 744

Commentary by Chu Huagu S;

. 3 juan. Ca. 110050?

DZ 1076, Suiji yinghua lu RPT Q. By He Daoquan E, edited by Gu Daoxuan DE. 2 juan. 1401. DZ 1016, Zhengao 2K. Edited by Tao Hongjing 452536. 20 juan. 499. DZ 1017, Daoshu EM. Edited by Zeng Zao :^ . 113163. 42 juan. 1136. DZ 1032, Yunji qiqian ?][. Edited by Zhang Junfang 5% . 100825. 122 juan. 1019. DZ 1034, Taixuan baodian Z!. 3 juan. Song dynasty 9601279? DZ 1057, Danyang Zhenren yulu =2JQ. By Ma Danyang 3= 112383. 1 juan. 12th c. DZ 1066, Xuanzong zhizhi wanfa tonui #(+C&X. By Mu Changchao '4 1 . 1294, edited by Huang Benren A. 7 juan. 1294. DZ 1067, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao =*.. By Chen Zhixu 8-< 1290 1343+. 16 juan originally 10 juan. 1331, 1336, 1343. Found in multiple collections: see A1 in dissertation appendix 1. DZ 1068, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao tu =*.F. 1 juan. See DZ 1067. A1b in dissertation appendix 1. DZ 1069, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao liexian zhi =*. I. 1 juan. See DZ 1067. A1c in dissertation appendix 1. DZ 1070, Shangyangzi Jindan dayao xianpai =*. ,. 1 juan. See DZ 1067. A1d in dissertation appendix 1. DZ 1071, Yuanyangzi fayu 0=&J. By Zhao Yizhen L$2 d. 1382. 2 juan. Before 1382. DZ 1074, Huanzhen ji V2>. By Wang Daoyuan E6 Wang Jie \, . 1392 or 133180, preface by Zhang Yuchu. 3 juan. 1392. DZ 1075, Daoxuan pian EN. By Wang Daoyuan. 1 juan. Ca. 1392 or 133180. DZ 1077, Xiulian xuzhi /W@). 1 juan. See DZ 1067. A1a in dissertation appendix 1. DZ 1081, Jindan sibai zi * . Ascribed to Zhang Boduan 5G 984/87 1082/84, or 10761155, by Bai Yuchan? Y . 11941229, commentary by Huang Ziru A. 1 juan. 1241 or before. DZ 1088, Huandan fuming pian V9"N. Ascribed to Xue Shi U byname Daoguang E, 10781191. 1 juan. 1126. DZ 1090, Cuixu pian H
DZ 1098, Neidan huanyuan jue r M. 1 juan. N. Song dynasty 9601127. DZ 1100, Minghe yuyin h{n:. Edited by Peng Zhizhong P7 . 9 juan. Ca. 1341 67. DZ 1110, Jingming zhongxiao quanshu J,*%>. By Huang Yuanji V 1271 1325. 6 juan. 1327. DZ 1123, Yiqie jing yinyi miaomen youqi [:\$2D. Compiled by Shi Chong E. 1 juan. 71213. DZ 1125, Dongxuan lingbao sandong fengdao kejie yingshi 5~v5'b6&q(. Ascribed to Jinming Qizhen 1,@. 6 juan. Ca. 618750. DZ 1139, Sandong zhunang 5?|. Wang Xuanhe w- . ca. 680. 10 juan. Ca. 680. DZ 1144, Ziran ji !RU. 1 juan. 14th c.? DZ 1156, Chongyang Zhenren jinguan yusuo jue 9T@1usM. Ascribed to Wang Chongyang 9T 111270. 1 juan. Yuan dynasty 12791368? DZ 1158, Chongyang zhenren shou Danyang ershisi jue 9T@G TM. By Wang Chongyang. 1 juan. 12th c. DZ 1165, Xianchuan waike mifang W6C. By Yang Qingsou ZH;, edited by Zhao Yizhen g)@ d. 1382 and Liu Yuanran iIR 13511431. 12 juan. Before 1378; 1395. DZ 1185, Baopuzi neipian +

l. By Ge Hong _4 284344. 20 juan. 320.

DZ 1189, Yindan neipian N

l. By Zhu Dongtian B5 . 1350. 1 juan. Ca. 1350. DZ 1191, Michuan Zhengyang Zhenren lingbao bifa AWT@~vK.. Ascribed to Zhongli Quan zt}, with L Yan " as tranmitter. 3 juan. N. Song dynasty 9601127. DZ 1192, Dahui Jingci Miaole Tianzun shuo fude wusheng jing QpX$kOfdj ^[. 1 juan. From Song or Yuan dynasties 9681368? DZ 1205, Santian neijie jing a[. By Mr. Xu = . 42178. 2 juan. Ca. 421 78. DZ 1220, Daofa huiyuan b.Y . 268 juan. Ca. 13821644. DZ 1232, Daomen shigui b2L. By Zhang Yuchu F0 13591410. 1 juan. Before 1410. DZ 1249, Sanshidai Tianshi Xujing Zhenjun yulu
15th c.? DZ 1258, Zhuzhen neidan jiyao X6 J/. Edited by Xuanquanzi . 3 juan. Late 13th c. DZ 1307, Haiqiong Bai Zhenren yulu 5_6UZ. By Bai Yuchan ` . 1194 1229 , edited by Peng Si EB, Xie Xiandao ]dQ, Lin Boqian %\, and She Guxi NS. 4 juan. 1220s?, 1251, 1302. DZ 1309, Haiqiong chuandao ji 5_KQJ. By Bai Yuchan ` . 11941229 , edited by Hong Zhichang ,&<. 1 juan. After 1218. DZ 1311, Xianquan ji 2+J, by Zhang Yuchu =' 13591410 . 12 juan. 1407. DZ 1382, Shangqing jiudan shanghua taijing zhongji jing ?.T8M. 1 juan. E. Jin dynasty 317420 . DZ 1437, Taishang Laojun kaitian jing H M. Ascribed to Zhang Pan =e. 1 juan. Ca. 220589. DZ 1460, Taishang Dongxuan jizhong jing -[@M. 1 juan. Tang dynasty 618 907 . DZ 1463, Han Tianshi shijia R 30. By Zhang Zhengchang =< d. 1377 , edited by Zhang Guoxiang =;A . 1607 . 4 juan. Before 1377; 1607.

A1.2. Daoist Primary Works Not in the Ming Daoist Canon, and Works on Sexual Cultivation Bai Yuchan Zhenren quanji `6J. By Bai Yuchan ` . 11941229 , edited by Peng Si EB, reedited by He Jigao b9. Rev. ed. 1594. In Daozang jinghua, ser. 10, no. 2. Baopuzi neipian jiaoshi " W4a. By Ge Hong O, 284344 , edited by Wang Ming $. Rev. ed. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985. Caizhen jiyao >6Y/. Ascribed to Zhang Sanfeng =1. In Sanfeng danjue, in Jiyizi daoshu shiqi zhong, edited by Fu Jinquan D(V 17651845; or, 17961850 . Ca. 1825. In Zangwai daoshu, 11:34452. Translated as Secret Principles of Gathering the True Essence in Art of the Bedchamber, by Douglas Wile, 17888. Cantong qi fenjie mijie :) L7P. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang Î trad. b. 107, . 14667 . Commentaries compiled by L Huilian FC . 1879 . 15 juan. 1879. In Zangwai daoshu, 25:26335. Cantong qi chanyou :)c*. A.k.a. Zhouyi !# Cantong qi chanyou. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. Commentary by Zhu Yuanyu . 1669 . 1669. In Daozang jiyao, Xu G coll., ce 12; Zangwai daoshu, 6:420518 from Daotong 747

dacheng, by Wang Qihuo ; Daozang jinghua, ser. 3, no. 3. Cantong qi maiwang K. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. Commentary by Liu Yiming e5 17341821 . In Daoshu shier zhong, by idem. 8 juan. 1799. In Zangwai daoshu, 8:261326. Chifeng sui 0dy. Compiled by Zhou Ljing 2g^ . Ming dyn. . 3 juan. Prefaces of 1578, 1579. In Zangwai daoshu, 9:73171; also in Daozang jinghua, ser. 14, no. 4. Translated by Catherine Despeux in La Moee du Phnix Rouge. Chunyang Yanzheng Fuyou Dijun jiji zhenjing IX`(G='?qF\. Attributed to L Dongbin &Ac. 1598. In Erotic Color Prints of the Ming Period, edited by van Gulik, vol. 2. Translated as The Classic of Perfect Union in Art of the Bedchamber, by Douglas Wile, 13336. Dacheng jieyao NB. By Xuanzhongzi Zhu Wenbin ! M. 1920s? In Wudao zhenji, Xu Zhaoren, gen. ed; also in Xiuxian baodian Cv1, published by Wang Dehuai h_ Taipei, 2003 ; also in Yongcheng yinshu guan Ep edition, 3 ce reprint, Chengdu: Qingyang gong, ca. 2004 . Dadao lun ]n. Ascribed to Zhang Sanfeng L, by Wang Xiling? .ox 1664 1724 , commentary by Li Xiyue ,$ 180656 . In Zhang Sanfeng Xiansheng quanji LY, edited by Wang Xiling. Before 1724. In Daozang jiyao, Bi Q coll., ce 5 the same is reproduced in Zangwai daoshu, 5:46570 ; also in Daojiao wupai danfa jingxuan, edited by Wang Mu, 3:45580. Danting Wuzhen pian :DFj. Original by Zhang Boduan L%a 984/871082/84, or 10761155 . Commentary by Lu Danting t : 160784 , MS copied by Fu Shan T. Before 1685. In Daozang jinghua, ser. 13, no. 5. Daode jing gujin ben kaozheng ]h\#. Ming dynasty? In Daozang jinghua, ser. 13, vol. 2. A1e.1 in dissertation appendix 1.

Daode jing zhushi ]h\6w. By Li Xiyue ,$ 180656 . In Wuqiubei Zhai Laozi jicheng chubian W-Ur"Y 8k, compiled by Yan Lingfeng uz b. 1904 . 1 juan. 1840. Daofan zhengzong wujing sishu daquan ]i3 \E. 28 juan. MidMing printing. C6 in dissertation appendix 1.

Daomen gongke ]9m. A.k.a. Qingwei hongfan PZ)i daomen gongke. By Liu Shouyuan @ . 181315 . In Daozang jiyao, Zhang coll., ce 1. 1 juan. Ca. 181315? Daoqiao tan ]sl. By Li Xiyue ,$ 180656 . From Daoyan shiwu zhong ]/ 748

U a.k.a. Shoushen qieyao ,, by idem. Before 1856. In Zangwai daoshu, 26:60625 1937, as edited by Chen Yingning ?mR, 18801969; also in Daozang jinghua, ser. 2, no. 5 as edited by Chen Yingning. Daoshu quanji P1J. Compiled by Yan Hezhou bk). Ming dynasty 1591?. Found in multiple collections: see C20 in dissertation appendix 1. Daoshu shier zhong P1U. By Liu Yiming Z$ 17341821. 30 or 46 juan. 1819. Reproduced partially in various collections the texts in Zangwai daoshu are from an 1880 ed. of Daoshu shier zhong. Daoshu yiguan zhenji yijian lu P1=2]#fa. Compiled by Fu Jinquan C&Y 17651845; or, 17961850. In Jiyizi dingpi daoshu sizhong. 12 juan. 1813. In Zangwai daoshu, 11:395541; also in Wudao zhenji, Xu Zhaoren, gen. ed. Daotong dacheng P9. Compiled by Wang Qihuo 8d 190016. 10 texts zhong U. 1900. Reproduced partially in Zangwai daoshu. Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu P3;1. Edited by Peng Haogu D . 15861600. 6 juan. C16 in dissertation appendix 1. Daoyan wuzhong P U. By Tao Susi A4: . 170011. 11 juan. 1718. Reproduced partially in Zangwai daoshu. C4 in dissertation appendix 1. Daoyuan jingwei ge PLWKS. By Liu Mingrui ZM. In Panchanzi daoshu sanzhong *jP1U, by idem. 1 juan. 1889. Daozang jinghua PgWF. Compiled by Wenshan Dunsou l/ Xiao Tianshi _

, 190986. 17 series. Taipei: Ziyou chubanshe, 195679. C5 in dissertation appendix 1. Daozang jinghua lu PgWFa. Compiled by Shouyizi Ding Fubao T', 18741952. 100 texts zhong U in 10 coll. Shanghai: Yixue shuju h\1, 1922? Reprint, Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chubanshe, 1989. Daozang jiyao Pg`,. Full title: Chongkan - Daozang jiyao. Compiled by He Longxiang Hcn, Peng Hanran DÊ, and Yan Yonghe b". 1906. 531 juan in 35 han !. Reprint, Chengdu: Erxian An, 1985. C2 in dissertation appendix 1. Dingpi Shangyangzi yuanzhu Cantong qi BI.%6(. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang iI trad. b. 107, . 14667. Original commentary by Xue Daoguang eP d. 1191 actually by Weng Baoguang 5N, . 1173, Lu Shu @Q byname Ziye >, . S. Song 11271279 ?, and Chen Zhixu ?+G 1290 1343+. Subcommentary by Fu Jinquan C&Y 17651845; or, 17961850. In Jiyizi dingpi daoshu sizhong, by idem. 3 juan. 1841. In Zangwai daoshu, 11:74489. A3a in dissertation appendix 1. Dingpi shijin shi BO&. Original ascribed to Xu Xun
sizhong, by idem. 2 juan. Ca. 1841. Reproduced in Zangwai daoshu, 11:790859. Also in Daozang jinghua, ser. 6, no. 1. A4a in dissertation appendix 1. Sanzhu wuzhen pian =,.N, a rare book printed in 1876, C12 in dissertation appendix 1, may be another edition of Dingpi Sanzhu wuzhen pian. Diyuan zhenjue .5. Attributed to Bai Yuchan Y . 11941229 . 1 juan. Before 1229. In Zangwai daoshu 6:35866 from Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu, Daoyan wai sect. ; also in Daozang jinghua, ser. 11, no. 2. Doga jikji dokyo kyng I+$'SDF. Compiled by Shin Donbok ;: 1692 1779 . C7 in dissertation appendix 1. Dongxuanzi ). By Dongxuanzi. In Shuangmei yingan congshu W<[U-, compiled by Ye Dehui GMQ, 1903 from Ishinp V , compiled by Tamba Yasuyori #0T, 984 . 1 juan. Han dynasty 206 220 ? Reprinted in Shuangmei yingan congshu Hainan: Hainan guoji xinwen chuban zhongxin, 1995 , 7995. Translated as Tung Hsan Tzu in Art of the Bedchamber, by Douglas Wile, 10813. Fanghu waishi 8. By Lu Xixing 7( 1520ca. 1601 . 16 texts zhong J . Ca. 1570s. In Daozang jinghua, ser. 2, no. 8; also reproduced partially in Zangwai daoshu. Fangzhong lianji jieyao !C1*. Compiled by Zhu Quan Z 13781448 . Before 1448. Guben Zhouyi Cantong qi jizhu "/&?=. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang X> trad. b. 107, . 14667 . Compiled and with commentary by Qiu Zhaoao \ 16381717 . 1+2+1 juan. 1710. In Daozang jinghua, ser. 13, no. 1; also in Can Wu jizhu, commentary and supplements by Zhijizi Qiu Zhaoao , compiled by Putuanzi. Guangchengzi shule L32. Commentary by Wang Wenlu E . 156382 . 1 juan. 1563. In Zangwai daoshu, 3:7048 from Bailing xueshan 6R, by idem ; also in Daozang jinghua, ser. 14, no. 5. Guwen Cantong qi /&. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang X> trad. b. 107, . 14667 . Compiled by Yang Shen BA 14881559 . Preface of 1546. C11 in dissertation appendix 1. Guwen Cantong qi /&. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. Commentary by Peng Haogu 9 . 15861600 . In Guwen Cantong qi xuanjie, in Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu Daoyan wai sect. , by idem. 1599. In Zangwai daoshu, 6:23854. Guwen Cantong qi jianzhu /&K=. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. Commentary by Peng Haogu. In Guwen Cantong qi xuanjie, in Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu Daoyan wai sect. , by idem. 1599. In Zangwai daoshu, 6:25470. Guwen Cantong qi jijie /&?H. Edited by Jiang Yibiao P4 . 1614 . 2+1 juan. 1614. In Congshu jicheng U-?, chubian %O, Wang Yunwu @, gen. ed. Beiping: Shangwu yinshu guan, 1939 . Guwen Cantong qi xuanjie /&H. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. By Peng Haogu. In Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu Daoyan wai sect. , by idem. 1599. In 750

Zangwai daoshu, 6:23475. Guwen Zhouyi Cantong qi zhu $'>/*. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. By Yuan Renlin = ). 8 juan. 16th17th c. In Baibu congshu jicheng Fh:R. Huainan Honglie jijie B.gR[. By Liu Wendian a #, collated and punctuated by Feng Yi SP and Qiao Hua KN. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989. Huayang jinxian zhenglun NQ-id. A.k.a. Jinxian zhenglun. By Liu Huayang 2N Q 1736? . 1 juan. Prefaces of 1790, 1791, 1792, 1824, 1846. In Zangwai daoshu, 5:91972. Huiming jing b%Y. By Liu Huayang 2NQ 1736? . 1794. In Zangwai daoshu, 5:876 918; also in Daozang jinghua, ser. 2, no. 1. Huixin neiji V R. By Liu Yiming a( 17341821 . In Huixin ji V R, in Daoshu shier zhong, by idem. 2 juan. 1801. In Zangwai daoshu, 8:63070. Jindan dayao - 6. By Chen Zhixu G5O 12901343+ . 1331, 1336, 1343 or after. Found in multiple collections: see A1 in dissertation appendix 1. Jindan jieyao - X6. Ascribed to Zhang Sanfeng @8. In Sanfeng danjue, in Jiyizi daoshu shiqi zhong, edited by Fu Jinquan J-` 17651845; or, 17961850 . Ca. 1825. In Zangwai daoshu, 11:33643. Translated as Summary of the Golden Elixir in Art of the Bedchamber, by Douglas Wile, 16878. Jindan jiuzheng pian - Mc. By Lu Xixing H1 1520ca. 1601 . In Fanghu waishi, juan 8. 1570s?; ca. 1678. In Zangwai daoshu, 5:36871. Jindan miaojue - E. By Jiyangzi fQ Huang Xianzhou T3. Qing dynasty 16441911 . In Daozang jinghua, ser. 4, no. 5. Jindan yaojue - 6E. By Wu Shouyang Q 15741640/44; or 1550ca. 1635 . Before 1635/44. In Daozang jiyao, Bi D coll., ce 3. the same is reproduced in Zangwai daoshu, 5:85666 ; also in Daozang jinghua lu, coll. 8, no. 6. Jindan zhenchuan -
and Wang Qisheng "AZ. In Jishi quanshu f:, a rare book. Jiyizi daoshu shiqi zhong f\:]. By Fu Jinquan J-` 17651845; or, 17961850 . 40 juan. Ca. 1825. 751

Jiuceng lianxin VM. A.k.a. Renyuan dadao jiuceng lianxin wenzhong jing Q VM?N, or Xuntu lu C@Z, or Jiuceng lian wenzhong jing VM?N, or Jiuceng lianxin fa VM1. By Li Xiyue )% 180656. 1 juan. Before 1856. In Daozang jinghua, ser. 2, no. 4. Kunyuan jing -N. In Dacheng jieyao Wudao zhenji ed., 22426; Xiuxian baodian ed., 9799; not in Yongcheng yinshu guan ed.?; also in Nzi danfa huibian, ed. Putuanzi and Zhang Liqiong, 21719. Laozi bianhua jing $ cN. S. 2295. 1 juan. Ca. 185. In Zangwai daoshu, 21:13. Laozi xianger zhu $ LT0. A.k.a. Laozi Daode jing QWN xianger zhu. In Zhonghua daozang, 9:16984. Critical edition in Rao Zongyi b.[, ed., Laozi xianger zhu jiaozheng $ LT08` Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1991. Translation and commentary in Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 29148. Liewei nzhen shige & ;PS. In Daotong dacheng, by Wang Qihuo. 1 juan. 1900. In Zangwai daoshu, 6:71926. Nei jindan xinfa 2 1. A.k.a. Nei jindan xinfa mizhi <#. Edited by Wu Shouyang !G 15741640/44; or 1550ca. 1635. In Daozang jinghua, ser. 4, no. 7. Neilian jindan xinfa M2 1. In WuLiu zhengzong, compiled by Wu Yijiang, 412 54. Also as Nei jindan xinfa mizhi 2 1<# in Daozang jinghua, ser. 4, no. 7. Ndan shize 4. Ascribed to Qinglie Gufo of Mt. Huazang D]=9'. In Zangwai daoshu, 26:45564 from Ndan hebian Y, edited by He Longxiang F\f, . 1906; also in Ndan jicui, edited by Tao Bingfu, 1752; also in Nzi danfa huibian, edited by Putuanzi and Zhang Liqiong, 12439. N jindan 2 . By Zhenyizi ; . 1892. 2 juan. 1892. In Zangwai daoshu, 26:41827 from Ndan hebian, edited by He Longxiang; also in Ndan jicui, edited by Tao Bingfu, 57122; also in Nzi danfa huibian, edited by Putuanzi and Zhang Liqiong, 143210. Qizhen yinguo zhuan ;/J also reprinted as Qizhen zhuan ;J or Beipai qizhen xiudao shizhuan 5;7QJ. By Huang Yongliang I3 . 1893. 2 juan. 1893. In Zangwai daoshu, 35:433507. Qunxian zhuyu jicheng O:H". In Daoshu quanji. C18 in dissertation appendix 1. Ruyao jing _a. Ascribed to Cui Xifan K(X . 940. Commentary by Wang Daoyuan Q> Wang Jie d, . 1392 or 133180, Peng Haogu B , Li Panlong )^\. In Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu Daoyan nei sect., by idem. Ca. 1392 or 133180; before 1600; 1900. In Zangwai daoshu, 6:12835 from Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu; also in Zangwai daoshu, 6:669703 as Ruyao jing wuzhu E, from Daotong dacheng, by Wang Qihuo. Sanche mizhi ,<#. By Li Xiyue )% 180656. In Daoyan shiwu zhong Q*

U a.k.a. Shoushen qieyao !+6. Before 1856. In Zangwai daoshu, 26:62636 as edited by Chen Yingning AeR, 18801969; also in Daozang jinghua, ser. 2, 752

no. 5 as edited by Chen Yingning . Sanfeng danjue ?Q also as Q . In Jiyizi daoshu shiqi zhong, by Fu Jinquan R:g 17651845; or, 17961850 . 1 juan. Ca. 1825. In Zangwai daoshu, 11:32252. Shesheng zongyao "w>. By Hong Ji ;I . 1638 . 9 juan. Preface of 1638. Reproduced in a volume entited Bencao gangmu; Zunsheng bajian; Meichuang milu; Shesheng zongyao; Miaoyi Zhai yixue zhengyin zhongzi bian; L Chunyang fangshu mijue ; Fuke yuchi; Miben zhongzi jindan; Yilin ce Gc$t"bplDu "w>.y|q (a m-FY6PDQJ=!Da :5U, Zhongguo gudai jinshu wenku H[B@ Hohhot: Yuanfang chubanshe, 2001 . Song Bai Zhenren Yuchan quanji /#C!~'Z. Material by or ascribed to Bai Yuchan #!~ . 11941229 . Preface by Xiao Tianshi r% 190986 . Taipei: Song Bai Zhenren Yuchan quanji jiyin weiyuanhui, 1976. Sun fang E. In Shuangmei yingan congshu }TzB, compiled by Ye Dehui ]io, 1903 from Ishinp |, compiled by Tamba Yasuyori 8Ks, 984 . 1 juan. Han dynasty 206 220 ? Reprinted in Shuangmei yingan congshu Hainan: Hainan guoji xinwen chuban zhongxin, 1995 , 3549. Translated as Prescriptions of Su N in Art of the Bedchamber, by Douglas Wile, 94100. Sun jing E\. In Shuangmei yingan congshu, compiled by Ye Dehui, 1903 from Ishinp , compiled by Tamba Yasuyori, 984 . 1 juan. Han dynasty 206 220 ? Reprinted in Shuangmei yingan congshu, 534. Translated as The Classic of Su N in Art of the Bedchamber, by Douglas Wile, 8593. Sun miaolun . In Erotic Color Prints of the Ming Period, edited by van Gulik, vol. 2. Translated as The Wondrous Discourse of Sun in Art of the Bedchamber, by Douglas Wile, 12233. Taishang bashiyi hua tushuo è. Printed after 1524. Yoshioka Yoshitoyo calls this the Hangzhou ed. 7*. See A6 in dissertation appendix 1.

Taishang shisan jing zhushi \W. Commentary by Li Xiyue 0, 1806 56 . In Daoyan shiwu zhong ^2a a.k.a. Shoushen qieyao )3> . Before 1856. Daozang jinghua, ser. 2, no. 4. Taiyi jinhua zongzhi :V4+. Ascribed to L Dongbin -
191516; printed in 1980. Available on various websites. Tonuan wen. By Liu Yiming A! 17341821. In Daoshu shier zhong, by idem. 2 juan. 1812. In Zangwai daoshu, 8:20860; also in Daozang jinghua, ser. 2, no. 6. Wu Zhenren dandao jiupian ,=B, a.k.a. Xianfo hezong yulu ?E. There are two dierent texts called Xianfo hezong yulu: a commonly cited one, and this one. By Wu Shouyang 9 15741640/44; or 1550ca. 1635. 1 juan. After 1622. In Daozang jiyao, Bi / coll., ce 4 the same is reproduced in Zangwai daoshu, 5:86674; also in Daozang jinghua, ser. 1, no. 7; also in Daozang jinghua lu, coll. 8, no. 8. Wugen shu 6+D. Ascribed to Zhang Sanfeng .). In Sanfeng danjue, in Jiyizi daoshu shiqi zhong, edited by Fu Jinquan 3$@ 17651845; or, 17961850. Ca. 1825. In Zangwai daoshu, 11:33436. Translated as The Rootless Tree in Art of the Bedchamber, by Douglas Wile, 18891. Wugen shu ci zhujie 6+D87<. Original ascribed to Zhang Sanfeng. Commentary by Liu Yiming A! 17341821, subcommentary by Li Xiyue 180656. Before 1856. In Daozang jinghua, ser. 8, no. 3. Wupian lingwen BH. Ascribed to Wang Chongyang (9 111270. 1 juan. Ming dynasty 13681644? In Daozang jiyao, Bi ' coll., ce 5 the same is reproduced in Zangwai daoshu, 25:66976. Wuqiubei Zhai Laozi jicheng chubian 64F:#C. Compiled by Yan Lingfeng GH b. 1904. 160 ce . Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1965. A1e.2 in dissertation appendix 1. Wuzhen pian *,B. Original by Zhang Boduan .> 984/871082/84, or 1076 1155. Commentary by Peng Haogu 5 . 15861600. In Daoyan neiwai mijue quanshu Daoyan wai sect., edited by idem. Ca. 15971600. In Zangwai daoshu, 6:31953. Wuzhen pian jizhu *,B:7. Original by Zhang Boduan. Compiled and with commentary by Qiu Zhaoao I 16381717. 1+3+1 juan. 1703. In Daozang jinghua, ser. 6, no. 1; also in CanWu jizhu, commentary and supplements by Zhijizi Qiu Zhaoao, compiled by Putuanzi. Wuzhen pian sizhu *,B7. Original by Zhang Boduan. Compiled and with commentary by Peng Haogu 5 . 15861600. 2 juan. 1599. Rare book. A4.14 in dissertation appendix 1. Wuzhen pian xiaoxu *,B. Original by Zhang Boduan. Commentary by Lu Xixing 1% 1520ca. 1601. In Fanghu waishi, by idem. Ca. 157080. In Zangwai daoshu, 5:31837; also in Daozang jinghua ser. 2, no. 8; also in Daojiao wupai danfa jingxuan, edited by Wang Mu, 3:157233. Wuzhen pian yuezhu *,B&". Original by Zhang Boduan. Commentary by Tao Susi 2-0 . 170011. In Daoyan wuzhong, by idem. 3 juan. 1711. In Zangwai daoshu, 10:66124. Wuzhen pian zhengyi *,B;. Original by Zhang Boduan. Commentary by Dong 754

Dening @IE . 1788. 3 juan. 1788. In Daozang jinghua, ser. 1, no. 4; also in Daozang jinghua lu, coll. 7, no. 5. Wuzhen zhizhi ,/%'. Original by Zhang Boduan. Commentary by Liu Yiming H # 17341821. In Daoshu shier zhong, by idem. 4 juan. 1799. In Zangwai daoshu, 8:327402; also in Daojiao wupai danfa jingxuan, edited by Wang Mu, 5:310595. Xianfo hezong yulu FQ. By Wu Shouyang < 15741640/44; or 1550ca. 1635. 6 juan. 1630. In Daozang jiyao, Bi 6 coll., ce 1 the same is reproduced in Zangwai daoshu, 5:639776; also in Daojiao wupai danfa jingxuan, edited by Wang Mu, 4:92522. Xianfo tongyuan =. By Zhao Youqin G; 1271before 1331/6?. 10 juan originally 81 juan. Preface of 1337. Found in multiple collections: see B1 in dissertation appendix 1. Xingming fajue mingzhi !$7#'. By Zhao Bichen GTD 1860after 1933. 16 juan. Preface of 1933. In Zangwai daoshu, 26:1133. Xingming guizhi !. Full title: Xingming shuangxiu wanshen guizhi !W+>0 . 4 sections Yuan , Heng , Li , Zhen *. Preface 1615; exp. ed. has preface of 1669. In Zangwai daoshu, 9:50695; also in Daozang jinghua, ser. 1, no. 5; also in Daozang jinghua lu, coll. 7, no. 7. Xingming yaozhi !). By Wang Qihuo 5R . 190016. Ca. 1900. In Daozang jinghua, ser. 3, no. 6. Xiuzhen biannan +/ZX. A.k.a. +/OX. By Liu Yiming H# 17341821. In Zhinan zhen '&2, in Daoshu shier zhong, by idem. 1 juan. 1798. In Zangwai daoshu, 8:46792. Xiyou zhenquan B/A. By Chen Shibin 8[. 100 chaps. hui . 1696. Available on various websites, including Loujin ge. Xuanfu lun KL. By Lu Xixing 9( 1520ca. 1601. In Fanghu waishi, by idem. 1567. In Zangwai daoshu, 5:35967; also in Daozang jinghua ser. 2, no. 8 Xuanji zhijiang N%S. Original ascribed to Zhang Sanfeng 4, by Wang Xiling? PY 16641724, commentary by Li Xiyue 180656. In Zhang Sanfeng Xiansheng quanji, edited by Wang Xiling. Before 1724. In Daozang jiyao, Bi 6 coll., ce 5 the same is reproduced in Zangwai daoshu, 5:47079; also in Daojiao wupai danfa jingxuan, edited by Wang Mu, 3:481526. Xuanyao pian )J. Original ascribed to Zhang Sanfeng, by Wang Xiling?, commentary by Li Xiyue. In Zhang Sanfeng Xiansheng quanji, edited by Wang Xiling. 2 juan. Before 1724. In Daozang jiyao, Bi 6 coll., ce 5 the same is reproduced in Zangwai daoshu, 5:43264. Yihua yuanzong . Edited by Gao Shiming 3-# . Ming dyn.. Preface of 1624. Found in multiple editions: see C14 in dissertation appendix 1. Yufang mijue "17. By Chonghezi Zhang Ding 4C. In Shuangmei yingan congshu W:\U., compiled by Ye Dehui ?IM, 1903 from Ishinp V , 755

compiled by Tamba Yasuyori *D, 984. 1 juan. Han dynasty 206 220 ? Reprinted in Shuangmei yingan congshu Hainan: Hainan guoji xinwen chuban zhongxin, 1995, 5174. Translated as Secrets of the Jade Chamber in Art of the Bedchamber, by Douglas Wile, 1028. Yufang zhiyao #&. By Chonghezi Zhang Ding. In Shuangmei yingan congshu, compiled by Ye Dehui, 1903 from Ishinp, compiled by Tamba Yasuyori, 984. Han dynasty 206 220 ? Reprinted in Shuangmei yingan congshu Hainan: Hainan guoji xinwen chuban zhongxin, 1995, 7578. Translated as Essentials of the Jade Chamber in Art of the Bedchamber, by Douglas Wile, 99101. Zhang Sanfeng Xiansheng quanji +7. Original ascribed to Zhang Sanfeng, edited by Wang Xiling EI 16641724, commentary by Li Xiyue 180656. Before 1724. In Daozang jiyao, Bi . coll., ce 5 the same is reproduced in Zangwai daoshu, 5:378638. Zhouyi Cantong qi ceshu )"3/. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang F6 trad. b. 107, . 14667. Commentary by Lu Xixing 2$ 1520ca. 1601. 1569. In Zangwai daoshu, 5:25586; and Daozang jinghua, ser. 2, no. 8; and Daojiao wupai danfa jingxuan, edited by Wang Mu, 3:33156 all three from Fanghu waishi, by idem; also in Zangwai daoshu, 6:51967 from Daotong dacheng, by Wang Qihuo. Zhouyi Cantong qi fenzhang zhu. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. Commentary by Chen Zhixu 1%5 12901343+. 3 juan. Found in multiple collections: see A3 in dissertation appendix 1. Zhouyi Cantong qi kouyi )":. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. Commentary by Lu Xixing 2$ 1520ca. 1601. 1573. In Zangwai daoshu, 5:287 317, and Daozang jinghua, ser. 2, no. 8 both from Fanghu waishi, by idem; also in Zangwai daoshu, 6:568614 from Daotong dacheng, by Wang Qihuo. Zhouyi Cantong qi shule )"/-. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. Commentary by Wang Wenlu 9 . 156382. 1 juan. 1582. In Zangwai daoshu, 9:596600 from Bailing xueshan 0C, by idem; also in Daozang jinghua, ser. 8, no. 4, and ser. 14, no. 5. Zhouyi cantong qi zhengyi )" :. Original ascribed to Wei Boyang. Commentary by Dong Dening ;?= . 1788. 1788. In Daozang jinghua, ser. 1, no. 2; also in Daozang jinghua lu, coll. 6, no. 4. Zhuzhen xuanao jicheng @( 87. Edited by Zhu Zaiwei < . Ming dyn.. 9 juan. In Jindan zhengli daquan. C15 in dissertation appendix 1. Zijin Guangyao Daxian xiuzhen yanyi 4!H '(>:. By Deng Xixian BA. 1594. In Erotic Color Prints of the Ming Period, edited by van Gulik, vol. 2. Translated as Exposition of Cultivating the True Essence in Art of the Bedchamber, by Douglas Wile, 13645. Ziqing zhixuan ji 4,# 7. By Bai Yuchan G . 11941229, compiled by Dong Dening ;?= . 1788. 1 juan. Ca. 11941229; ca. 1788. In Daozang jinghua, ser. 1, no. 4; also in Daozang jinghua lu, coll. 7, no. 4. 756

Ziyang Zhenren Wuzhen pian chanyou JR989ix.. Original by Zhang Boduan @a 984/871082/84, or 10761155. Commentary by Zhu Yuanyu . 1669. Ca. 1669. In Daozang jiyao, Kui , coll., ce 3; also in Daozang jinghua, ser. 3, no. 4.

A2. Buddhist Works T 235, Jingang bore boluomi jing '5<1%scY. Translated by Kum raj va ^hs in 407. 1 juan. T 293, Da fan uang fo huayan jing fLvY. Translated by Prajna <1 ca. 796 98. 40 juan. T 945, Da foding rulai miyin xiudeng liaoyi zhu pusa wanxing shou lengyan jing E >4tZjKrX2VvY i.e., rangama stra. Translated by Banlamidi <*c- in 705. 10 juan. T 1789, Lengqieaboduoluo baojing zhujie V)PswYN[. By Zongle Ruqi . Preface of 1378. 8 juan.

z and

T 1791, Zhu dasheng ru lengqie jing $3VY. By Baochen w. Ca. Song dynasty. 10 juan. T 1857, Baozang lun wqk. Attributed to Seng Zhao _b, but composed ca. 8th c. 1 juan. T 1988, Yunmen Kuangzhen Chanshi guanglu T( 9p7fm. Words of Yunmen Kuangzhen, compiled by Shoujian =. Preface of 1076. 3 juan. T 1999, Mian heshang yulu >M!dm. Words of Mian, compiled by Chongyue ? n, Liaowu 8 or Chongyue Liaowu, et al. Preface of 1188. 1 juan. T 2003, Foguo Yuanwu Chanshi Biyan lu #{8p7`ym. Compiled and with commentary by Yuanwu Keqin {8U. 1125. 10 juan. T 2005, Wumen guan I(u. Compiled and with commentary by Wumen Huikai I (gQ. 1249. 1 juan. T 2006, Rentian yanmu C . By Zhizhao H0. Ca. Song dynasty. 6 juan. T 2007, Platform Stra Nanzong dunjiao zuishang dacheng mohe bore boluomi jing Liuzu Huineng Dashi yu Shaozhou Dafan Si shifa tan jing + ]AF3hO<1%s cY:G;7"eB/&lY. Dunhuang MS of ca. 83060. 1 juan. T 2008, Platform Stra Liuzu Dashi fabao tan jing :7&woY. Published by Zongbao w. 1291. 1 juan. T 2015, Chan yuan zhuquan jidu xu pWj\SD. By Guifeng Zongmi 6 780841. 4 juan.

757

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T 2016, Zongjing lu pi. By Yongming Yanshou "[. 961. 100 juan. T 2035, Fozu tongji 4B5. By Zhipan d. Ca. S. Song dynasty. 54 juan. T 2036, Fozu lidai tongzai 4f CU. By Nianchang ;. After 1333. 22 juan. T 2076, Jingde chuandeng lu HbNgi. By Daoyuan V,. 1004. 30 juan. T 2116, Bianwei lu u6i. By Xiangmai Am. 1291. 5 juan. T 2859, Huiyuan waizhuan FaN. 1 juan. ZZ 1307, Wansong Laoren pingchang Tiantong Jue Heshang niangu qingyi lu R#L7 Js!e3i. Words of Zhengjue s, with commentary by Xingxiu . 1280. 2 juan. ZZ 1318, Xukan guzun suyu yao t E:`+. Compiled by Shiming -". Ca. Song dynasty. 6 juan. ZZ 1343, Baojue Zuxin Chanshi yulu qs4 l-ì. Words of Baojue Zuxin 1025 1100. 1 juan. ZZ 1583, Xudeng zhengtong tgB. Compiled by Biean Xingtong < juan.

B. 1691. 42

Wudeng huiyuan gO. Compiled by Puji Gk. Ca. S. Song dynasty. 20 juan. Reprint collated with punctuation by Su Yuanlei r@W. 3 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997. Zutang ji 48M. Compiled by Chan masters Jing j and Yun S. 952. 20 juan.

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Ding Baoshu t9, ed. Yuehe jingshe congchao ,^.qR. 1880. Reprint, Taibei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1972. E Ertai Q]; 16771745, comp. Guizhou tongzhi PE". 1741. Reprint, Taipei: Taiwan huawen shuju, 1968. Fu Xieding Jn[, ed. Jiugong Shan zhi 6". 14 juan. 1882. Reprinted in Zhonuo daoguan zhi congkan @Zx"q, vol. 7. Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 2000. C19 in dissertation appendix 1. Gao Ru ?g. Baichuan shuzhi 9". 1540. Reprint, Shanghai: Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1957. Geng Wenguang = 1830?. Wanjuan Jinghua Lou cangshu ji W%Ôcr9>. 1888. Reprint, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1993. Guo Zizhang GH 15421618, comp. Qian ji m>. 60 juan. Wanli Wi reign period 15731620. Reprint, Beijing tushuguan guji zhenben congkan, vol. 43. Beijing: Shumu wenxian chubanshe, ca. 1988. He Zhuo y 16611722, et al., comps. Yuding Fenlei zijin C(sl. 64 juan. 1722. In Siku quanshu. Hu Wei 2N 16331714. Yitu mingbian )\*k. 1706. Reprint, Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1991. Huang Tinggui !: gen ed., Zhang Jinsheng B8 comp. Sichuan tongzhi E ". 47+1 juan. 1733. In Siku quanshu. Huang Yuji TYd 162991. Qianqing Tang shumu IA9. Ca. 164050. Reprint, Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1990. Huang Zongyan T'- 161686. Taiji tu shuo bian V\`k. In Yixue bianhuo )hkK. In Congshu jicheng q9S, xubian ue Jing bu XF, Yi lei ) s, Chuanshuo zhi shu U` 9. Ji Yun 1+, gen ed. Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao M(79oL3. 1781 89. Daojia lei zongmu Z5so and Daojia lei cunmu zongmu Z5s o subsections, from section Zi bu F. Reproduced in Chongkan Daozang jiyao 4Zrj3, Zongmu zimu case o$, ce 7. Chengdu: Erxian an, 1985. Jingai Shan gu Meihua Guan zhi 0_D/x". . URL no longer active as of December, 2007. Li Wei #f, et al., comps. Zhejiang tongzhi <E". 173536. 283 juan. Reprint, Shanghai: Shanghai guji chuban she, 1991. Liu Kunyi b&, et al., eds.; Liu Duo bv, Zhao Zhiqian a p, et al., comps. Jiangxi tongzhi E". 185 juan. 1881. Reprint, Taibei: Taiwan huawen shuju, 1967. Liu Xianshi bw, et al., eds. Minguo Guizhou tongzhi @PE". 170+1 juan. 1948. Reprint, Chengdu: BaShu shushe, 2006. 759

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Wm. Clarke Hudson Dept. of Religious Studies 434 9248884 University of Virginia [email protected] Halsey Hall, P.O. Box 400126 Charlottesville, VA 229044126 Education Indiana University, Bloomington, 2007 Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies • Ph.D. minor in Chinese • Dissertation: Spreading the Dao, Managing Mastership, and Performing Salvation: The Life and Alchemical Teachings of Chen Zhixu Committee: Robert Campany advisor, Stephen Bokenkamp, John McRae, Lynn Struve • Examination Fields: Comparative Religion Alchemy, Daoism, Chinese Buddhism Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China, 19978 Nondegree graduate study • Studied the history of Daoism with the scholars of the Daoism section of the Institute of World Religions Stanford University, 1996 Master of Arts in Religious Studies • Studied East Asian Buddhism and Comparative Religious Ethics Advisor: Carl Bielefeldt University of Chicago, 19934 GraduateStudentatLarge nondegree graduate study • Studied Mandarin Chinese University of Chicago, 1993 Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, General Honors Areas of Research and Teaching Expertise Daoism Chan Buddhism Chinese Religions East Asian Buddhism History of Buddhism Religions of the East Comparative Religion Theories and Methods in Religious Studies

Religion and Social Thought Classical Chinese Language Teaching Experience University of Virginia Acting Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, 2007 Carleton College Visiting Instructor, Department of Religion, 20067 Indiana University, Bloomington Visiting Lecturer, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, 20056 Instructor lecturer, Department of Religious Studies, summers of 2002, 2003, 2005 Associate Instructor teaching assistant, Department of Religious Studies, 2000 2002 Peking University , Beijing, China Foreign Expert , Department of English, 19967 Other Positions Held Assistant Editor, Journal of Chinese Religions, East Asian Studies Center, Indiana University, Bloomington, 20022005 Subscriptions Manager, Journal of Chinese Religions and Buddhist Literature, 1999 2002 Awards Greenburg Albee Fellowship, College of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University, 20032004 supporting research in the humanities in the areas of interfaith understanding and comparative religion Associate Instructor, Department of Religious Studies, 20002002 Foreign Language and Area Study FLAS Fellowship, East Asian Studies Center, 19992000 B. Sullivan Fellowship, Department of Religious Studies, 19981999 Publications Reciting Scriptures to Move the Spirits. In Early Medieval China: A Sourcebook. forthcoming in 2008 or 2009. Xiandai dongxifang zongjiao de xing nengliang kexue: Yi 1930 Shanghai yu Weiyena wei li 1930

The science of sexual energy in modern religion, East and West, with 1930s Shanghai and Vienna as examples. Tianwen forthcoming in 2008. Daoism. In Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender, Fedwa MaltiDouglas, ed. in chief. New York: Macmillan, 2007. 2000 words. Review of The Daoist Monastic Manual by Livia Kohn. Religion 37 2007: 24648.

English translation of preface and table of contents. In Zhonuo Daojiao kaogu Archaeology of Daoism in China , by Zhang Xunliao and Bai Bin . 3 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2006. Buddhist Meditation: East Asian Buddhist Meditation. In Encyclopedia of Religion, Lindsay Jones, ed. in chief, 2:12905. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan, 2005. 4300 words. Book note on Hualin , vols. 12. Journal of Chinese Religions 30 2002 : 21214. Book note on Daojiao shenxian xinyang yanjiu , edited by Sichuan daxue zongjiao yanjiu suo . Journal of Chinese Religions 30 2002 : 211. Review of Buddhism in America by Richard Hughes Seager, and Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America by Charles S. Prebish. BuddhistChristian Studies 22 2002 : 21721. Conference Papers Medieval Daoist Polemics and the Production of Di erence and Unity. In the panel Chinas Isms: Studies in the Production of Di erence and Unity, for the Critical Theory and Discourses on Religion Group, and the Cultural History of the Study of Religion Consultation, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, San Diego, Nov. 19, 2007. The Science of Sexual Energy in Modern Chinese Qigong/Religion. In the panel Science and Chinese Traditions, History of Religions panel for 2007 Midwest American Academy of Religion MAAR Annual Meeting, River Forest, Illinois, March 31, 2007. The Ancestors, Births, and Lives of Yao Daoist Manuscripts. In the panel Daoist Images of the Gods for the Chinese Religions Group, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., November 20, 2006. The Friends and Enemies of a Sexual Alchemist. 2006 Indiana University Religious Studies Interdisciplinary Graduate Symposium, Embodying Volatile Borderlands: Religion, Gender and Sexuality , Bloomington, Indiana, March 2, 2006. The Inner Alchemist as Chan Master. Fourteenth Annual Graduate Student Conference on East Asia, Columbia University, New York, February 5, 2005. Myth in Neidan Discourse, with a Focus on the Jindan dayao. International Conference on Daoism, Chengdu, Sichuan, China, June 2004. Variations of the Deied Laozi in Medieval Daoism. Sacred Texts panel for 2004 Midwest American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Chicago, March 2004. The Charts of the True Forms of the Five Marchmounts : What Are They and What Are They For? 2000 Midwest Conference on Asian A airs MCAA Annual Meeting, Bloomington, Indiana, October 2000.

Professional Memberships American Academy of Religion Association for Asian Studies Society for the Study of Chinese Religions Languages Mandarin Chinese, Classical Chinese, French, Japanese, German Chinese Contacts Prof. Wang Zongyu , Department of Philosophy, Peking University Wang Ka and Prof. Ma Xisha , Daoism research section of the Institute of World Religions at the Academy of Social Sciences CASS in Beijing Prof. Liu Yi % , Capital Normal University &', Beijing Profs. Chen Xia !( and Zhang Qin ", Sichuan University, Institute of Daoism and Religious Culture #$ Prof. Bai Bin , Dept. of Archaeology, Sichuan University Ven. Li Hechun , Qingyang Temple , Chengdu, Sichuan Daoist monk Ven. Shi Zizhuo ) , Xiangguang Monastery , Chiayi, Taiwan Buddhist nun References Prof. Robert Campany, School of Religion, University of Southern California, ACB 130, Los Angeles, CA 900891481 Prof. Stephen Bokenkamp, School of International Letters and Cultures, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 870202, Tempe, AZ 852870202 Dr. John R. McRae, Katakuramachi 3501327, Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan 1920914

The Life and Alchemical Teachings of Chen Zhixu

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