Wang Chongyang

Wang Zhe, known by his Daoist name Chongyang, was born in 1113 near Xianyang, in Shaanxi, into a wealthy family, during the wars that brought northern China under the Jurchen Jin dynasty. He studied for the civil examinations, then the military ones, and held a minor post, but became disillusioned and took to drink.

In 1159, by his own later account, he met immortals in a tavern at Ganhe, who taught him secret instructions. He withdrew from the world and lived for some years in a pit he dug and called the “Tomb of the Living Dead”, then in a hut. In 1167 he burned the hut and went east to Shandong, where his poetry and eccentric conduct attracted disciples.

There he gathered the seven disciples later known as the Seven Perfected, and founded associations of lay followers. He taught by poems, many of them addressed to particular disciples. In 1170, travelling west with four of them, he died at Kaifeng. His disciples spread his teaching across northern China.

His surviving writings are mostly poems, collected after his death, together with a short set of fifteen instructions for founding the teaching, which set out the rules of the monastic life: dwelling in a hermitage, wandering, studying texts, refining medicines, and sitting in meditation.