Perfected Wenshi: Yin Xi

Yin Xi, courtesy name Wengong, styled Master Wenshi and also called Perfected Wenshi (Wenshi Zhenren), holds a high place in Taoism. One account says he came from Wenxian Village in Longxiang, Zhouzhi County (present-day Zhouzhi County, Shaanxi); another says he came from Tianshui (present-day Tianshui, Gansu). Under King Zhao of Zhou he was Keeper of the Hangu Pass; in pre-Qin times he was from Gui County (a native of present-day Tianshui). His mother was surnamed Lu; legend says that when she gave birth to him, “her eyes held the essence of the sun, the mark of heaven.” As a youth he especially loved to read the books called fen (the books of the “Three Sovereigns”), suo (the book of the “Eight Trigrams”—a book title), su (the Plain Book of the Grand Duke), and yi (the I Ching (Book of Changes)). He was skilled in astronomy and the secret weft texts; looking up at the heavens and down at the earth, there was nothing he did not see through. He did not follow worldly rites, but concealed his virtue and practiced benevolence. Later, while traveling among mountains and rivers, he built a thatched tower at Wenxian Village in Shenjiu Township, Zhouzhi County, in the Zhongnan Mountains of Yongzhou, and there contemplated the utmost Tao. Because he used the tower to observe the stars and watch for qi, his dwelling was called Louguan, the “Tower for Observation.” When the King of Zhou heard of him, he appointed him a grand master, and later summoned him again to be a companion to the crown prince.

Tradition says that Laozi, riding a black ox, went wandering through the world teaching the Taoist doctrine to order the state and help the world, heading west to bring civilization to the Western Regions. Yin Xi, then Keeper of the Hangu Pass, already knew that Laozi was deeply learned and held great wisdom within, so he instructed his subordinates that if any person of extraordinary appearance came, they must not let him pass through. He himself had the road swept and incense lit, and waited respectfully for the sage's arrival.

When Laozi reached the Hangu Pass, Yin Xi, hearing the news, welcomed him into his home, performed the full rites of a disciple, bowed again and again, and respectfully asked Laozi to stay. Laozi would not. Yin Xi then resigned his post on the pretext of illness and went west with Laozi. Passing through the Guanzhong plain, crossing the Qinling Mountains, and following the Wei River, they endured every hardship until they reached Boyang in Qinzhou, Yin Xi's home region.

Laozi and Yin Xi built a hermitage on Mount Long at Boyang and taught the Tao there, staying for many years. Day and night Laozi wrote books and established virtue, practiced cultivation and trained, and often explained his writings and thoughts to Yin Xi. So that his teaching might spread widely, Laozi gave the Tao Te Ching he had written to Yin Xi and went on west alone, and no one knows where he went.

Yin Xi kept his master's teachings in his heart and devoutly studied the five thousand characters of the Tao Te Ching, able to unravel its mysteries and explain its profound principles. He himself also wrote nine bamboo slips titled the Guanyinzi (that is, the Nine Chapters of the Classic of Wenshi by the Perfected Yin), both profound and vast, which scholars of every age have deeply admired. This text later became one of the Taoist classics and was included in the Complete Books of the Hundred Masters.

Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) tells a story: Laozi lived for a long time in the Zhou capital studying the Tao and virtue. Seeing the Zhou dynasty decline, he left the capital and came to the Hangu Pass. The Keeper of the Pass, Yin Xi, said: “You are about to go into hiding; please, as a favor to us, write a book.” So Laozi wrote a book in two parts, upper and lower, setting out the meaning of the Tao and virtue, in more than 5,000 characters. This is the historical story of how Laozi, crossing the Hangu Pass on his way west, left behind the five-thousand-character Tao Te Ching.

Yin Xi was one of the representative figures of the Taoist school in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods; later, Zhuangzi called him “one of the vast and great Perfected of old.”

The Biographies of Immortals (Liexian Zhuan) says: Yin Xi, Keeper of the Pass, was a grand master of Zhou. He was skilled in the inner learning of the stars and lunar mansions and took in the essences of things; he concealed his virtue and practiced benevolence, and no one of his time knew him. When Laozi journeyed west, Xi first saw his qi and knew that a Perfected was about to pass; he then looked for him and followed his traces, and indeed found Laozi. Laozi too recognized his rare gifts and wrote a book for him. Xi went with Laozi west of the Flowing Sands, took the fruit of the giant sesame, and no one knows where he ended.

The Comprehensive Mirror of Perfected Immortals Who Embodied the Tao Through the Ages also records how Yin Xi attained the Tao: under King Kang of Zhou, Yin Xi was a grand master and later a companion to the crown prince. He built a thatched tower and looked up at the celestial signs. One day he saw purple qi in the east moving west, an auspicious sign in the heavens, and knew that a sage was about to cross the pass heading west, so he asked to be made Keeper of the Hangu Pass. Meeting Laozi, he welcomed him as his teacher and begged him for the utmost Tao; Laozi gave Yin Xi the “Jade Calendar in Thirty-Five Chapters” and the “five-thousand-character Tao Te Ching” and departed. Yin Xi joyfully held and recited them, persevering for a long time without slackening, and by practicing them he succeeded in attaining the Tao.

After attaining the Tao and becoming an immortal, the Perfected Yin received from Lord Lao a jade register inscribed in gold; Lord Lao titled him Master Wenshi, and confirmed him in the rank of Supreme Perfected and Chief Minister of Jade Clarity, one of the Four Ministers of the Heavenly Palace. He was given a purple lotus crown, a skirt of flying blue feathers, red robes with green sleeves, a rainbow garment of harmonious union, a sash of patterned gauze with yellow ranks, and a nine-colored tally; he was placed above the Twenty-Four Heavenly Kings and commanded eighty thousand immortal officers.

In the third year of the Zhiyuan era of Emperor Shizu of Yuan (1266), he was given the added titles Perfected Yin of Wenshi and Supreme Taichu Broadly Learned True Lord Wenshi.

The Louguan school, one of the branches of Taoism, venerates him as its patriarch.

Guan Yin (Yin Xi) holds an exalted place in Taoism and is often enshrined beside Laozi. The Complete Collection of Illustrations and Writings, Ancient and Modern records: “No one of the time knew that Laozi was traveling west. Yin Xi, Keeper of the Pass, saw the purple qi and knew that a Perfected was about to pass; he looked for him and stopped him, and indeed found Laozi.” Guan Yin then performed the rites of a disciple and asked Laozi for teaching. Laozi, recognizing his rare gifts, granted his request and wrote the Tao Te Ching in more than five thousand characters, handing it down to the world, and passed on to Guan Yin in full the methods of inner and outer cultivation. Afterward Yin Xi “traveled with Laozi to the Flowing Sands, and no one knows where they ended.”

Historical sources record that in daily life Yin Xi kept himself pure and empty, requiring himself, as in archery, to maintain “a level mind and an upright body.” He explained: “It is not only archery. The survival of a state and its ruin, the worthiness of a person and his unworthiness, all have their causes. Therefore the sage does not look at survival and ruin, worthiness and unworthiness, but looks at the reasons for them.” This shows that the practice of a level mind and an upright body is an excellent method of nurturing life: it can not only order the body and the state but also let one know both that a thing is so and why it is so.

When Laozi gave him the Tao Te Ching, they agreed to “meet again later at the Green Goat Market in Shu.” Afterward Xi pleaded illness, declined office, and lived in seclusion in the valley; later he entered Shu and finally settled beneath the stone cliff of the Third Heavenly Gate in the Wudang Mountains.

In the fifth century, Guo Zhongchan of the Southern Dynasties wrote in his Records of Southern Yongzhou: “In the Wudang Mountains there is a stone gate and a stone chamber, said to be the place where Yin Xi dwelt.” North of the main summit of Wudang is Lion Peak, and on its cliff face is Yin Xi Cliff, also called Immortal Cliff. Below it are gullies called Ox Trough Gully and Green Goat Gully.

A legend has been handed down of Laozi visiting Yin Xi. Liu Daoming of the Yuan dynasty recorded in his Complete Record of the Perfected of the Blessed Land of Wudang that Yin Xi Cliff “once had a bronze bed and a jade table, which are now gone.” The Yuan poet Luo Tingzhen wrote in his poem “Immortal Yin's Cliff”: “Where the Tao lies hidden, there the immortal spirit is; the mind-seal of the pass is the Tao Te Ching. No need to go to Qiongzhou to ride a crane away; on this mountain the immortal is already at heaven's edge.”

Yin Xi's dates of birth and death have not yet been found, nor are the details of his life known, but the gazetteers of the Wudang Mountains through the ages all record traces of his activities there.

There is no doubt that Yin Xi became the first historical figure to practice and spread Taoist thought in the Wudang Mountains, and Taoists honor him as “Chief Minister of Jade Clarity.”

Guan Yin wrote the Guanyinzi in nine chapters, which is recorded in the “Treatise on Literature” of the Book of Han. The original is lost; the present Guanyinzi, also called the True Classic of Wenshi, first appeared in the Southern Song in the household of Sun Ding of Yongjia, and some suspect it to be a later work attributed to him.