Chiyang Daoren, Eastern Taoism
Wang Changyue was a famous Taoist priest of the Longmen (Dragon Gate) lineage in the early Qing dynasty. His lay name was Ping, his religious name Changyue, and his style Kunyang. He came from Changzhi in Lu'an Prefecture (in present-day Shanxi).
By the age of twenty he was already traveling to famous mountains everywhere in search of the great Tao. In middle age he at last met Zhao Fuyang (named Zhensong, styled Fuyang), the sixth patriarch of Longmen, on Mount Wangwu (southwest of Yangcheng County, Shanxi), and asked again and again to become his disciple. Zhao Fuyang conferred the precepts on him and named him Changyue, making him a member of the Longmen lineage of the Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) school and the seventh-generation precept master of the precept-transmission branch of the Quanzhen Longmen lineage.
His greatest contribution was to revive the Longmen lineage, which had fallen into decline; one could say he revived Quanzhen as well, and even that this was the most recent revival of Taoism as a whole. Wang Changyue himself was hailed as the “Patriarch of the Revival.” In the nineteenth year of the Kangxi era, he passed his robe and bowl to his disciple Tan Shoucheng and then ascended. Later, in the forty-fifth year of the Kangxi era (1706), he was granted the title “Recluse Who Embraces the One.”
Born amid the turmoil at the end of the Ming, he resolved with deep feeling to leave the world. Zhao Fuyang instructed him: “Attaining the Tao is very easy, yet also very hard. You must put austere practice first and sweep away every kind of outward affair. Keep strictly to the precepts. Immerse yourself in the teachings and scriptures, embody the profound mystery of naturalness in the Tao Te Ching, and explore the living true workings of the Nanhua (the Zhuangzi); only then will you be on firm ground.”
After taking leave of his teacher, he traveled among the mountains, reading the scriptures of the three teachings tirelessly. In eight or nine years he consulted teachers in more than twenty places and verified his understanding with more than fifty people. Hearing that there was a recluse on Mount Jiugong (south of Tongshan County, Hubei), he hurried to visit him—and it turned out to be his teacher Zhao Fuyang again.
Fuyang asked what he had gained and lost in keeping his mind and dealing with the world since they parted. Changyue described in turn how the Taoist tradition had decayed and the hardships he had met, and asked his teacher for guidance. Fuyang said: “For the noble person, to be blocked in the Tao is to be blocked; to penetrate the Tao is to penetrate. When the Tao is complete in oneself, why worry about being blocked or getting through? If you act rashly against the times, how can you escape the wild talk of the vulgar and the jealousy of the unworthy?” He then secretly conferred on him the Great Precepts of Celestial Immortals. After leaving his teacher, Changyue lived in seclusion on Mount Hua for many years.
In the autumn of the twelfth year of the Shunzhi era of the Qing (1655), he went north to Beijing and stayed at the Lingyou Palace, lodging as a wandering Taoist (guadan). At that time White Cloud Temple (Baiyun Guan) in Beijing, the ancestral court of Quanzhen Taoism, had lain desolate since Li Zicheng captured Beijing at the end of the Ming; only a lay practitioner surnamed Yu remained living there. Lay practitioner Yu invited Changyue to live at White Cloud Temple as its abbot. In the third month of the following year, by imperial decree, he expounded the precepts at White Cloud Temple; he opened the altar to transmit the precepts three times in all and took more than a thousand disciples. Tao Shouzhen (styled Jing'an), Huang Shouyuan (styled Chiyang), and others entered his school one after another.
In his later years he traveled south to the Yinxian Hermitage in Nanjing, the Zongyang Palace in Hangzhou, Mount Jingai in Huzhou, and elsewhere to take disciples and confer ordination with precepts, and then to the Wudang Mountains in Hubei to do the same. He ordained a great many disciples and gradually revived the long-declining Quanzhen Longmen lineage, and later Taoists hailed him as the minister of the Longmen revival. After his death he was granted by imperial edict the title Recluse Who Embraces the One.
From his taking of disciples and transmission of precepts in Nanjing, a record of his precept lectures was later compiled as the Altar Sutra of the Jade Garden (Biyuan Tanjing, also called the Heart Method of the Dragon Gate (Longmen Xinfa)) in two scrolls, which discusses both the stages of cultivation and its methods. It holds that one who enters the Tao to study immortality must practice in order twenty essentials—taking refuge in the Three Treasures, repenting of sins, cutting off obstacles, renouncing the bonds of love, keeping the precepts strictly, bearing insult and subduing the mind, purifying mind and body, seeking a teacher and asking about the Tao, holding concentration and wisdom in balance, and so on—and must strictly keep the three levels of Taoist precepts, the Initial Perfection, Central Ultimate, and Celestial Immortal precepts, taking precepts, concentration, and wisdom as the basis for gradual progress.
His method of inner alchemy proclaimed a “formless dharma gate.” He opposed “cultivation that looks to forms” and refuted the arts of life of the Golden Elixir that cling to refining essence and qi. He held that once one's nature is realized, there is no need to worry that life will not be established. He especially opposed seeking to dispel illness and prolong life by refining essence and qi, holding that the physical body must always die and only the true nature, the dharma body, does not die. “What is called prolonging life is not dispelling illness and extending one's years, nor living forever without dying; it is the true nature that does not decay through ten thousand kalpas and the dharma body that endures from ancient times.” He also said: “The Tathagata too had a time of passing into extinction; Lao Dan too had a day of ascending.” “Even if the physical body remained for a thousand years, it would only be called a demon, not the Tao. The dharma body comes and goes yet is always present; if one hears the Tao in the morning, one may die in the evening.” The Taoist faith in long life and becoming an immortal was thus completely abandoned by him.
The year of his death (the nineteenth year of the Kangxi era, 1680) is the same in every source, but the year of his birth is disputed. The Biography of Wang Kunyang by his disciple Lü Shoupu (styled Yunyin) says he was born in the twenty-second year of the Wanli era of the Ming (1594), which would make him eighty-eight at death. The Continuation of the Bowl Mirror compiled by his disciple's disciple Fan Taiqing (styled Qingyun) argues strongly against this and says he was born in the first year of the Jiajing era of the Ming (1522), which would make him 159. His works include the Bowl Mirror in five scrolls, which records the history of the Quanzhen school in the Ming and Qing, and the Precepts of Initial Perfection in one scroll, included in the Essentials of the Taoist Canon (Daozang Jiyao). The Altar Sutra of the Jade Garden is included in the Collection of the Ancient Hidden Pavilion.