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Qiu Chuji and the Summons to the West

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Qiu Chuji and the Summons to the West

Quanzhen, the teaching of complete perfection, was founded in the twelfth century by Wang Chongyang in northern China under the Jurchen Jin, and it broke with the Daoism around it by being monastic and celibate. Its central discipline is internal alchemy, the refining of essence, breath and spirit within the practitioner rather than in a crucible, and it drew openly on Buddhist meditation and Confucian ethics while insisting the three teachings agreed at the root.

Qiu Chuji was one of Wang Chongyang seven principal disciples and the founder of the Longmen or Dragon Gate branch. In old age he was summoned by Chinggis Khan and travelled from Shandong to the Hindu Kush to meet him, a journey of three years recorded by his companion Li Zhichang in a travel account that is still read as a source for the geography and peoples of the route. What he said at the audience is reported as counsel against killing and in favour of restraint.

What he returned with mattered more institutionally. Quanzhen received Mongol favour, including exemption from taxation and corvee for its clergy, and it used the position to acquire temples on a very large scale. That expansion produced a backlash under later Mongol rulers, including public debates with Buddhists that Quanzhen lost and orders to burn Daoist texts, but the school survived with its monastic organisation intact.

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