As the name would suggest, practitioners live in the north and distance themselves from the liturgical practices of Southern Taoism. Followers believe in studying Taoist scripture to cultivate their own knowledge and become a more disciplined person. Wang Chu'ung-yang founded this division in the 12th century and the modern headquarters of this division are located in Beijing.
Although no longer practiced widely in China, sects like Shen hsiao, and T'ai i Taoism grew out of different scriptural interpretations. The former emphasized the divinity of the Sung Emperor's court, while the latter taught followers to help the disadvantaged and centered on the practice of ritual healing.
On the other hand, some divisions represent different divisions in practice that don't necessarily conform to the beliefs of a single Taoist sect. They use these concepts to create meaning in their world and hope to exert some influence on the political and social situation of their time, contributing to greater universal harmony, known as the state of Great Peace taiping.
The lineage and legitimation of such literati Daoists comes from the devotion and dedication to the classical texts, which they interpret in commentaries and essays, and whose metaphors they employ in stories and poetry. They may live a life of leisure or be active in society as local officials, poets and writers, or teachers at academies, but in all cases their self-identity derives from ideas centered on Dao. Literati Daoists have been part of the tradition since its inception, and the ancient thinkers Laozi and Zhuangzi may well be considered their first example.
But they also appear among commentators to the texts, patriarchs of religious schools, thinkers of Confucian or Buddhist background, and academics today. Communal Daoists, too, are found in many different positions and come from all levels of society. Some communal Daoists organisations are tightly controlled fraternities with secret rites and limited contact to the outside world.
Others are part of ordinary society, centred on neighbourhood temples and concerned with the affairs of ordinary life-weddings and funerals, protection and exorcism.
Their expression tends to be in liturgies, prayer hymns, and moral rules. Historically, they have been documented from the second century C.
While specific rites and organizational patterns changed, there is a distinct line from the early millenarian movements to the Celestial Masters today, and one can see a clear link between the ritual of medieval China and contemporary liturgies, both lay and monastic. The third group of Daoists focus on self-cultivation and are known as practitioners of yangsheng or "nurturing life.
They tend to pay little attention to political involvement, and their organisation depends strongly on the master-disciple relationship. Their groups can be small and esoteric, with only a few active followers as certain Taiji lineages , large and extensive with leanings toward organized religion as the contemporary Falun dafa , or vague and diffuse with numerous people practicing a variety of different techniques as in modern Qigong.
Again, historical continuity is strong. The earliest examples of self-cultivation groups are found before the Common Era, tentatively among the followers of Laozi and Zhuangzi and quite evidently among the magical-practitioners and their lineages. While the main function of the Shangqing master is to transmit texts and oral instructions, the priest is at the center of the second corpus. The Lingbao synthesis of different traditions is even more visible compared to Shangqing: it incorporates elements of Tianshi dao ritual and pantheon, as well as certain aspects of Shangqing itself including visualization, performed for instance by the priest when he sends off his own inner gods to submit petitions to the highest celestial deities.
At the center of Lingbao lies communal ritual. The new codification by Lu Xiujing —77 , which followed the original revelations by a few decades, served as the blueprint for several later ones, and clear traces of it are still apparent in present-day Daoist ritual.
With the creation of the Shangqing and Lingbao corpora, Daoism for the first time clearly defined its two main poles, which consist of both individual practices codified in the Shangqing corpus and communal practices codified in the Lingbao corpus.
In the 5 th century, the relations among these corpora and the other traditions of Jiangnan were formally defined in the system of the Three Caverns sandong , which is traditionally attributed to Lu Xiujing but clearly reflects the perspectives of the Daoist community as a whole Schipper and Verellen 14— In this system, the main Daoist traditions and scriptural corpora of southeastern China are arranged into three hierarchical groups, namely 1 Shangqing, 2 Lingbao, and 3 Sanhuang Three Sovereigns, understood as the Sanhuang wen and related textual materials.
The Three Caverns also provided a model for other aspects of doctrine and practice, including the ranks of priestly ordination and the classification of scriptures in the future Daoist Canons id. The founding of the Tang dynasty — was accompanied by millenarian prophecies about the advent of a sage-emperor surnamed Li Bokenkamp Li Yuan—the future Emperor Gaozu—finally founded the Tang dynasty. The support of the court culminated in ca. While the disastrous An Lushan rebellion of —63 put an end to the glory of the Tang dynasty, for Daoism as a whole the Tang was an age of consolidation, but also of major changes and innovations.
With regard to ritual, the Tang period and the successive decades of the Five Dynasties —60 were marked by two important new codifications, respectively created by Zhang Wanfu fl. Intersections of Daoist and Buddhist thought and religion are visible in doctrines Robinet , cults with several shared deities, e. After China was reunified by the Song dynasty — , major changes in society—in particular urbanization, the creation of a market economy, and the rise to prominence of new classes, especially in the southeastern regions—led to major transformations in religion.
The Way of the Celestial Masters then based at Mount Longhu, in present-day Jiangxi was officially assigned the task of ordaining priests, but a series of revelations resulted in the creation of lineages that, in several cases, claimed to have been originated by Zhang Daoling himself. All of them were based on different codifications of ritual—including exorcist rites—but with little variation in the basic practices Boltz 26—49; Skar In , the Jurchen Jin dynasty — captured Kaifeng, and the Song dynasty was obliged to move its capital to Hangzhou, establishing the Southern Song dynasty — This monastic order is, with the Way of the Celestial Masters, the main branch of present-day Daoism.
Controversies with Buddhism led to proscriptions in the second half of the 13 th century, which included the burning of a Daoist Canon recently compiled by Quanzhen representatives. Quanzhen, however, maintained a strong local presence, and after the reunification of China under the Yuan dynasty it obtained again the favor of the court.
While the Ming dynasty — gave priority to the Celestial Masters, Wang Changyue — gained the support of the newly-established Manchu Qing dynasty — Unlike Tianshi dao, whose priests are married and live with their families, Quanzhen is a celibate monastic order, and under this form it has propagated mainly in northern China.
In addition to certain forms of ritual, the main practices of Quanzhen monks include meditation and Internal Alchemy Eskildson However, the overall image of Quanzhen and Longmen is complex, as it also includes non-institutional and non-monastic forms. At their origins lies the fact that Wang Zhe and his seven disciples are also identified as the so-called Beizong, or Northern Lineage, of Neidan; and especially the fact that Longmen as a whole traces its origins to the above-mentioned Qiu Chuji, who is traditionally known as a Neidan practitioner.
This and the following three sections are concerned with subjects that are relevant to Daoism as a whole: cosmology, gods and rituals, soteriology, and the views of the human being and the human body. In different ways and to different extents, all of them have contributed to frame doctrines and practices of several Daoist schools or lineages.
Discussing the main points of doctrine before approaching their particular subjects is—in addition to references to Laozi and the Daode jing , already noted above—the other main way used in Daoist texts to declare their affiliation to Daoism.
In the first sense, the Dao is devoid of definition, determination, form, name, attributes, and qualities. Yet, it comprises all definitions, determinations, forms, etc. This Unity, or Oneness, is meant as the transcendent unity both beyond multiplicity 1 as the origin of numbers, but itself not a number and as the origin of the many 1 as the first number. With its self-manifestation, the Dao gives birth to the three main components of the cosmos.
The same three components are also seen as the primary components of the human being. In certain cases, Original Breath yuanqi is also seen as a principle prior to the emergence of Essence, Breath, and Spirit; when it is used in this sense, it is also called Ancestral Breath zuqi and is equated to the Dao itself. In the manifested world, the three components take on different aspects. The vertical arrangement of the stages illustrates the process of descent from the Dao to the cosmos, but also implies—and often explicitly outlines—a corresponding process of ascent from the cosmos to the Dao, to be performed gradually and with the support of suitable practices.
When this hierarchical arrangement is represented as a sequence of metaphoric time stages, the discourse shifts from ontology to cosmogony. In addition to the one mentioned above, Daoism has elaborated several other accounts of cosmogony during its history Robinet a. As his body had no openings, the Emperors of the North and of the South decided to make him look similar to a human, providing him with eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth. The Way of the Celestial Masters Bokenkamp —92; Seidel 79—84 and Lingbao Daoism Lagerwey ; Bokenkamp —81; Robinet —55 also created their own cosmogonies.
After the cosmos is generated, it is subject to the laws of cosmology. Among the main emblems are the following:. In addition to those mentioned above, Daoist traditions draw several other images, concepts, and terms from the standard Chinese cosmological system, but one point requires mention. Cosmology provides Daoism with tools to represent the unfolding of Unity into multiplicity; to express the relation between Dao, cosmos, and human being; and to frame practices supported by microcosmic frameworks—the ritual area, the alchemical laboratory, or the human body itself.
To give one example, alchemists often represent the return to Unity as the reduction of the five agents to three and then to one. In China, the boundaries among Daoism, Buddhism, and the common religion are much less marked compared to those among monotheistic religions. According to individual needs and circumstances, lay persons may perform cults and address prayers and petitions indifferently to Daoist, Buddhist, or popular deities.
This has placed Daoism in close touch with the common religion, but has also been the reason for a controversial relation.
Daoism attempts to undertake the dual task—by no means always successful—of drawing people closer to the deities that represent the Dao, while at the same time responding to their immediate religious demands. As a consequence, in the words of Peter Nickerson ,.
Taoists, precisely because they relied upon traditions of practice they claimed to have superseded, were compelled to try to distinguish themselves from their popular predecessors and competitors. Demonizing the gods of popular religion was one of the options Mollier : in the course of its history Daoism has prohibited cults to minor deities and spirits, just like it has proscribed acupuncture healing is supposed to occur by confession of sins or other ritual means overseen by a Daoist officiant and divination performed by lay specialists who do not belong to Daoist schools or lineages.
Yet, plenty of examples show that the opposite attitude was also applied. To quote Nickerson again,. Nickerson, id.
One reason at the basis of these divergent—more precisely, contradictory—attitudes may be the intent of exploiting the popularity of certain cults and the demand for certain basic religious services. Another reason may be the attempt of not alienating lay persons and of paying tribute to local religious traditions. In any of these cases, Daoism incorporates certain practices of common religion into its rites and includes certain gods of common religion into its pantheon.
As has been noted, the first competitor of the Daoist priest within local communities, in past and present times, is not the Buddhist monk or the Confucian officer, but the spirit-medium Seidel 62; see Lagerwey —18, for an amusing but revealing episode.
In several cases, these domains are not only the residences of deities, but also correspond to degrees of priestly ordination and to inner spiritual states, and are associated with revelations of teachings and textual corpora. The existence of multiple systems reflects the development of the religion.
Different traditions created their own systems in order to demonstrate that the respective methods derive from a superior celestial domain compared to those of other traditions, and therefore are more effective or grant access to a higher spiritual state. The thirty-two heavens of Lingbao are arranged horizontally, with each heaven occupying one sector of an imaginary circle.
At their center is the Grand Veil Daluo , the highest celestial domain. The thirty-six heavens of Shangqing, instead, are arranged vertically. This system was created after the Lingbao model and draws in part from it. In one of several lists, the highest heaven is again the Grand Veil.
The term itself defines both the three highest deities and the heavens in which they reside. While this became the classic Daoist model of the celestial realms, it could be modified in several ways. Different systems were devised in later times; these include the Shenxiao cosmography, which places the eponymous Divine Empyrean shenxiao at the center of nine celestial realms Boltz 26—33; Despeux They are associated with different pre-cosmic eras and are deemed to be at the origins of the textual corpora associated with the Three Caverns.
Most important among them are Taiyi, or Great One, who represents the fundamental Unity of the cosmos in a deified form; and Yuhuang, or Jade Sovereign, the highest god of popular religion before his incorporation in the Daoist pantheon in the Song period. In addition, a multitude of deities, most of which originate from local cults and are shared with the common religion, contribute to form a pantheon that is impossible to describe in full, as it takes different forms in different places and times Lagerwey 19—55; iconography in Little , Delacour et al.
The highest gods reveal texts, teachings, and methods either directly or through their representatives. For instance, the Shangqing and Lingbao scriptures are deemed to have taken shape from self-generated graphs coagulated from Original Breath Robinet 21—24 , or from sounds generated by its vibration Bokenkamp —87 , in the early stages of the formation of the cosmos.
The so-called talismans fu , a word almost exactly corresponding to the original meaning of Greek symbolon are traced on paper or other supports in graphs hardly comprehensible to humans but intelligible to the gods Despeux ; Mollier Like the revealed scriptures—some of which, in fact, are deemed to have evolved from them—talismans have counterparts in Heaven, and thus serve to identify and authenticate their possessors in front of the gods. The two main Daoist ceremonies in the present day are the Offering jiao and the Merit gongde rituals.
On their history and on earlier forms of ritual see Benn ; Andersen ; Lagerwey 58— The Offering ritual Lagerwey 51—; Schipper 72—99; Dean —77 is performed to renovate the bond between a community—from the village to the empire—and its gods.
The Merit ritual Lagerwey — is a funerary ceremony performed to ensure that the deceased is not kept in the netherworld but may ascend to Heaven. The main officiant is the Daoist priest, or daoshi lit. When he receives a request to celebrate an Offering, the daoshi convenes his assistants to perform the ritual. The celebration typically lasts one, two, three, five, or ten days, but arrangements especially the preparation of the necessary paperwork require a much longer time.
While the Offering is celebrated in the temple, a festival is performed in the streets outside, with processions—the statue of the local tutelary god is carried through the neighborhood—music, and theatrical performances. Both have been understood in different ways according to the perspectives of the respective texts and authors. According to hagiographic works, the Daoist immortals are historical, semi-historical, or entirely legendary persons who transcend the limits of ordinary human existence, sometimes by birth but usually by means of their practices.
The main power possessed by the immortals, however, is certainly the ability to reach indefinitely long lifespans.
The earliest extant hagiographic collections are the Liexian zhuan Biographies of Exemplary Immortals; Kaltenmark , probably dating from the 1 st century BCE, and the Shenxian zhuan Biographies of Divine Immortals; Campany , traditionally attributed to Ge Hong although no conclusive evidence is available about his authorship Penny More importantly, hagiographic works are intended for open circulation and are not the object of transmission among initiated or ordained Daoists.
When we look at other sources, belonging to the various traditions that have evolved during the history of Daoism, a different picture emerges. Taoism was formally established at the end of Eastern Han Dynasty , with the emergence of Taiping Tao and Wudoumi Tao as its indication.
Apart from the above two sects, other sects such as Shangqing upper clear and Lingbao quick and precious also appeared in the Jin Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties In the Tang and Song periods, due to the adoration of the ruling class, Taoism was further developed, with many new sects coming into being. Since the Yuan Dynasty , Quanzhen totally true Sect and Zhengyi exact one Sect have gradually become the two main sects of Taoism.
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