Sima Chengzhen Writes the Zuowang Lun (Tang)
Sima Chengzhen (647–735), twelfth Shangqing patriarch, writes the seven-stage Zuowang Lun at the height of Tang Daoism — the founding systematic treatise of seated meditation.
Event: In the early eighth century, Sima Chengzhen — Shangqing patriarch, Tiantai recluse, and teacher of three Tang emperors — wrote the Zuowang Lun: seven stages from reverent faith through collecting the mind and true observation to attaining the Dao. Building on the Qingjing Jing, Neiguan Jing, and the Zhuangzi’s classical passage, it fixed zuowang as a named, teachable system. The treatise circulated at court (Xuanzong received him in 721) and entered the canon; the Song Daoshu would later record the tradition’s own equation: “inner observation is what is called zuowang.”
Evidence class: primary text; biographical context from official histories and steles.
Why it matters here: this is the pivot event of Chinese contemplative history — before it, zuowang was a famous passage; after it, a discipline. See the treatise and author pages.
Sources
- Sima Chengzhen, Zuowang lun; Jiu Tang shu / Xin Tang shu biographies; Kohn, Sitting in Oblivion (2010)