A Quanzhen Immortals Anthology 群仙集
Paul PengA Quanzhen Immortals Anthology
Also known as Collected Teachings of the Quanzhen Immortals.
Compiled by Zhu Jianshen, the Chenghua Emperor of the Ming Dynasty.
Completed in the Guimao year of the Chenghua reign (1483).
A Quanzhen Immortals Anthology
It comprises three volumes and is an anthology of cultivation methods of The Quanzhen Dao.
In his preface, Zhu Jianshen states:
After the Yellow Emperor cast the nine tripods and rode the green dragon, “Immortals such as Chunyang, Haichan, Daoguang, and Niwan transmitted the teachings from generation to generation, all attaining the Dao of immortality through these practices. Their accumulated merits, practices, and refined arts are clearly recorded in the Taoist scriptures.”
Yet people do not believe in the Daoist arts, because they “do not know the essentials of cultivation or the gate to entering the Dao.”
Therefore, the author “in his leisure from governing, examined the essential teachings of the immortals on cultivation, ordered the work to be printed and published to spread its transmission, so that aspiring scholars may trace the stream to its source and advance without stumbling.”
The book is divided into forty-one topics, covering the illumination of nature and life, practice of immortality, sitting meditation, refining the elixir and absorbing qi, as well as various divine incantations, seals, talismans, and medicinal elixirs.
It frequently quotes teachings from Lü Chunyang, Liu Haichan, Wang Chongyang, Qiu Changchun, Ma Danyang, and others, and also cites the sayings of Leiyangzi, namely Gao Zhouzong.
The first volume lists the immortal lineage of Realman Yang Chunpu of Ruiyang, compiled and recorded by Gao Zhouzong. Thus the Internal Alchemy views of this book are closely related to him, though details of his life are unknown.
The work also contains numerous finely drawn illustrations: images of immortals, narrative scenes, and especially many diagrams of cultivation practices.
It is included in the Biographies of Immortals category of Extra-Canonical Taoist Texts.
