Monastic Asceticism (Complete Reality)

Quanzhen (Complete Reality) Taoists affirm monastic celibacy and asceticism. Founded in twelfth-century northern China by Wang Chongyang, the tradition gathered its adherents into monasteries under a disciplined life of celibacy, simplicity, meditation, and inner cultivation. Drawing together strands of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, Quanzhen emphasises the refinement of body and spirit through internal alchemy (neidan), the cultivation of the vital energies within, aimed at realising one's original, complete nature and attaining the Tao.

Wang Chongyang (1113 to 1170) trained a core group of disciples remembered as the Seven Perfected Masters (Qizhen), among whom Qiu Chuji became the most historically consequential: summoned by Genghis Khan, Qiu travelled thousands of kilometres to meet the Mongol ruler in Central Asia around 1222, and his teaching on longevity and governance so impressed the khan that Quanzhen Taoism received tax exemption and official patronage under the early Mongol administration, briefly making it the most powerful religious institution in northern China, before Buddhist-Taoist debates at the Yuan court in the 1250s and 1280s reversed much of that favour and led to the burning of many Taoist texts.