Wang Chongyang (王重阳)
Wang Chongyang 王重阳 (1112/1113–1170) — the founder who organized what the alchemical poets had only taught: the Quanzhen order, built on inner alchemy, monastic discipline, and the doctrine that the three teachings are one — the last and most institutional of the tradition's great organizers.
The man and the order
- The official who resigned twice. The record’s frame: a Xianyang man of a wealthy family, literate and militarily trained, who passed the Jin military examination, served as a clerk, and — at forty-seven — resigned with his own verdict on himself: 天遣文武之进两无成焉 (heaven sent me to advance in letters and arms, and in both I have achieved nothing). The site holds the line as the tradition’s own: the career-renunciation is the standard opening of the tradition’s founders’ biographies (the burned files of Zhang Boduan are its sibling story) — and what follows is the difference: Wang Chongyang did not become a poet-teacher; he became a builder.
- The dates, registered with their wobble. 1112 or 1113 (the lunar birth date of Zhenghe 2, the twelfth month’s twenty-second day, falls across the Gregorian year — the sources print both), died 1170 at Kaifeng on the road back west, aged 58. The dating rule applies: both years are registered, neither is adjudicated.
- The hinge-events, in the record’s own order. 1159, Ganhe: the stranger’s transmission (later tradition names Lü Dongbin’s transformation — registered as the tradition’s own identification); 1161, the Living-Dead-Man’s Tomb (活死人墓) at Nanshi village — the dug grave where he sat in practice, with his own hand-written marker “Wang Haifeng’s spirit tablet” (王害风, “Madman Wang” — the village’s name for him, worn by the record itself); 1167, the burning of his own hut and the eastward journey to Shandong, under the instruction-tradition’s remembered command 投谭捉马 (“take Tan, capture Ma” — the two disciples-to-be); and the three years in Shandong that produced everything else: the seven disciples, the five lay associations (三教七宝会 and the rest, each named for the three-teachings doctrine), and the order’s charter.
- The doctrine: three teachings, one Way. 天下无二道，圣人不两心 — the founding formula, and the Jinguan yusuo jue’s image of the three teachings as a tripod’s legs. The site has tracked this confluence from Lu Xiujing’s three-teachings catalog through Zhang Boduan’s three-teachings preface to its full institutional form here: the Quanzhen order did not merely tolerate Confucian and Buddhist materials; it organized its lay associations around the claim. The borrowing boundary stays in force on this site: the confluence is the tradition’s own doctrine, recorded as such.
- The alchemical charter: nature first. The order’s practice charter inverts the Southern lineage’s 先命后性: Quanzhen held 先性后命 — nature first, life second — quieting the mind before the body’s work, with monastic discipline (celibacy, vegetarianism, labor) as the frame. The site keeps the two lineages’ charters side by side as the tradition’s own long argument about sequence — the body-first and mind-first schools — and notes the institutional consequence: the Southern line produced texts; the Northern line produced monasteries.
- What the record resists: the fiction’s frame. The Wikipedia-registered contrast belongs on this page: the martial-novel image (Quanzhen as anti-Jin patriots) against the historical order’s accommodation of Jin and Yuan rule — under Qiu Chuji, the order met Chinggis Khan in 1220 and flourished with Mongol patronage. The site registers the pattern it has already documented for Zhang Sanfeng: the tradition’s most famous names accumulate later meanings — the novel’s patriot, the martial ancestor — while the record holds the quieter founder: the resigned clerk, the dug grave, the three-year journey that founded an order.
- Why he belongs here. He closes the site’s organizer arc: Zhang Daoling founded the first community, Kou Qianzhi and Lu Xiujing reformed its courts and catalogs, and Wang Chongyang founded the last great order — the one that joined the inner-alchemical practice this site documents to a monastic rule, and whose descendants still run the temples the practice pages keep at arm’s length. The sitting practices this site studies passed through his order’s filter on their way to the present — the site documents the filter, not the faith.
His third successor as Quanzhen patriarch is Tan Chuduan (谭处端).
Sources
- The Quanzhen tradition's biographical record (Dao Zhan, the Wudang-affiliated tradition journal and the Baidu Baike Quanzhen entry): Wang Chongyang, born Zhongfu, courtesy name Yunqing, renamed Zhe (喆) with the courtesy name Zhiming and the hao Chongyangzi on entering the Way; from Dawei village, Xianyang; passed the military examination under the Jin (Tianjuan 1) and renamed Shixiong; at forty-seven resigned office in disgust; in Zhenglong 4 (1159) met a stranger at Ganhe who transmitted the inner-refinement method (later tradition identifies the stranger as Lü Dongbin's transformation); in Dading 1 (1161) dug the Living-Dead-Man's Tomb at Nanshi village and practiced inside it; in Dading 7 (1167) burned his thatched hut at Liujiang village and went east to Shandong to 'take Tan and capture Ma'; received the seven disciples Ma Yu, Sun Bu'er, Tan Chuduan, Liu Chuxuan, Qiu Chuji, Hao Datong, and Wang Chuyi; died in 1170 at Kaifeng on the road, aged 58, and was buried at Liujiang village on Zhongnan mountain
- The Quanzhen order's record: the Five Northern Patriarchs (Wang Xuanfu, Zhongli Quan, Lü Dongbin, Liu Haichan, Wang Chongyang); the seven disciples' lineages (Yuxian, Nanwu, Suishan, Longmen, Yushan, Huashan, Qingjing); the three-teachings association names (Qibao, Jinlian, Sanguang, Yuhua, Pingdeng); the doctrine of the three teachings as one (天下无二道，圣人不两心 — under heaven there are not two Ways, and the sages do not have two minds; and the Jinguan yusuo jue's image of the three teachings as a tripod's legs); and the Weihai city government's historical account (the Living-Dead-Man's Tomb years, the eastward journey, the death at Kaifeng, the disciples' separate schools)
- The Wikipedia Quanzhen survey, registering the scholarly frame: the order founded by Wang Chongyang around 1159/1167 with its center in Shandong; under Qiu Chuji the order flourished with the Mongol court (the Chinggis Khan meeting of 1220); and the notable contrast between the martial-arts fiction image (Quanzhen as anti-Jin patriots in Jin Yong's novels) and the historical record (the order accommodating Jin and Yuan rule)