China & Inner Asia: Table of Contents
Organizer: Xun Liu, University of South Carolina
Chair: Fabrizio Pregadio, Ca’Foscari University, Venice
Discussant: Isabelle Robinet, University of Provence
While aiming to bring their practitioners tranquility and transcendence, China’s contemplative traditions are integral parts of history and culture. This panel will explore the formation and transformation of several "internal alchemy" (neidan) traditions—which articulated the refinement of the body’s innate energies in alchemical language, theories, and symbolism—in the crucibles of Chinese culture from mid-Tang to Republican times. Although neidan traditions have formed around qualified masters passing teachings for spiritual perfection by word-of-mouth to worthy disciples, these basically oral traditions often became embedded in more elaborate and refined cultural practices. Dr. Pregadio’s study explores the formative influence of several new theoretical alchemical treatises on emerging internal alchemy teachings from the eighth century, while Mr. Skar stresses the cultural refinement and elaboration of internal alchemy traditions by the thirteenth century as they became valuable assets to the heirs to new Daoist ritual lineages, literati interested in contemplation and cosmic speculation, and opponents of Chan Buddhism in southeast China. Dr. Esposito reminds readers that the spiritual lineages of neidan are cultural constructions with social uses in her analysis of the Longmen (Dragon Gate) patrimony of the Ming-Qing period. Finally, Mr. Liu Xun shows that some Shanghai adepts of internal alchemy in the early 20th century used journals to promote their traditions of internal alchemy, helping to reach a wider segment of society. For a millennium, Chinese neidan adepts have sought spiritual perfection, but this achievement has only come through persistent labors to weave their teachings and traditions into China’s cultural tapestry.
Fabrizio Pregadio, Ca’Foscari University, Venice
Several extant "external alchemy" (waidan) texts from Tang times describe the preparation of elixirs based on lead and mercury, relying on fundamental parts of China’s cosmological system (vinyang, wuxing, trigrams and hexagrams of the Yijing, etc.) to confer meaning to the alchemical work they focus on. Both of these features are extremely rare in earlier texts, and relate to the consolidation of the Zhouyi cantong qi, which reached its final form by the seventh century and went on to become known as the "ancestor of the myriad alchemy books" for later Chinese alchemists. This paper analyzes the main events contributing to this shift, and characterizes its impact on later traditions of Chinese alchemy. In particular, I argue, the adoption of lead and mercury as the main elixir ingredients and the use of cosmological emblems were both crucial to the rise of neidan (internal alchemy).
Lowell Skar, University of Pennsylvania
Bai Yuchan (1194–1227) and his disciples promoted a line of inner alchemy (neidan) masters as their spiritual ancestors. They traced their "Golden Elixir" teachings from Zhang Boduan (d. 1082) to his disciple Shi Tai (d. 1158), who passed them to Xue Zixian (d. 1181), who taught Chen Nan (d. 1213)—the teacher of Bai Yuchan. This patrimony was part of the foundations for Bai’s larger sacred mission. Besides teaching Golden Elixir alchemy to disciples and patrons, Bai pushed his own variety of Daoist ritual practice and scriptures, promoted and criticized some local cults, and converted at least one Chan Buddhist priest. In promoting Golden Elixir practice as a better way for Daoist priests to ritually merge with the purest emanations of the cosmic Way for Daoist priests, for literati interested in self-cultivation and cosmic contemplation, and for others seeking an indigenous form of meditation superior to Chan approaches, Bai and his followers helped to establish neidan in three important areas of literate culture. Although Bai and his Fujianese colleagues were among the first to promote neidan in liturgical Daoism and to literati interested in indigenous forms of self-cultivation, they would not be the last.
While ninth-century neidan was a peripheral discipline practiced by little-known individuals with oral instructions gotten from unnamed figures in mysterious circumstances, the efforts of those like Bai and his disciples helped make it an elaborate heritage complete with standardized spiritual genealogies, canonized writings, and historically verifiable networks of teachers and disciples in several cultural niches.
Monica Esposito, CNRS, Paris
Traditional accounts of the Longmen patrimony—a Daoist tradition which flourished in Ming and Qing times—claim the important Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) patriarch Qiu Chuji (1148–1227) as its founding patriarch. A critical study of the relevant primary sources, however, fails to trace the roots of the Longmen heritage of neidan teachings back to the Jin-Yuan Quanzhen movement that began in north China. Instead, this Ming-Qing movement is better seen as the weaving together of different local Daoist movements from southern China. The critical study of this cultural patrimony begins by distinguishing claims to spiritual filiation from critical history. A key text to clarifying the origins of this heritage is the Jingai xindeng, which includes important hagiographies of Longmen patriarchs. Examining the Longmen heritage through its patriarchs helps reconstruct the historical development of the Longmen patrimony from Ming times to today. This study of the formation of the Longmen patrimony also suggests its later use as a cultural tool for Ming and Qing teachers wanting to assert the long and continuous transmission of their internal alchemy teachings from the masters of earlier centuries and as a cultural charter for establishing most of today’s Daoist temples in China.
Liu Xun, University of Southern California
During the 1930s and early 1940s, a group of neidan (inner alchemy) enthusiasts and practitioners published two journals devoted to this subject in Shanghai. Under the leadership and guidance of a neidan adept Chen Yingning, the group produced two journals as a way of actively promoting a version of neidan it called xian xue or "learning transcendence." For eleven years, the two journals circulated to a large audience throughout China, and became an influential source of neidan information, knowledge and support for many enthusiasts and practitioners throughout the country.
This paper examines the impact of the journals on the practice of neidan during their publication. It explores the role that the publication and circulation of these journals played in the public dissemination, discussion, preservation, and promotion of the inner alchemy knowledge and practice. Moreover, it also considers how the various forms of the dynamic interaction between the reader and the journals helped transform neidan practice, by modifying its conceptions, organizations, and activity. Finally, the interaction of group members also solidified a sense of self-identity, which in turn contributed to the formation of a neidan practice community towards the end of 1930s and early 1940s.