Liu Yu 刘玉 — Founder of the Jingming Dao and Reformer of Daoist Ethics
Paul PengLiu Yu 刘玉 (1257–1308), courtesy name Yizhen, literary name Yuzhenzi (玉真子 — "Master of Jade Perfection"), was a native of Jianchang, Jiangxi Province, and the founder of the Jingming Dao (净明道 — Pure and Bright Dao). In an era when Daoist institutions were navigating the complex politics of the Yuan Dynasty, Liu Yu proposed something radical: that the foundation of genuine Daoist practice was not ritual mastery but moral character — specifically, the Confucian virtues of loyalty and filial piety, reinterpreted as the ground of authentic cultivation. The school he founded became one of the most ethically distinctive movements in Song–Yuan Daoism.
In 1296, the second year of the Yuanzhen reign, Liu Yu made a claim that would define the rest of his life and establish a new Daoist lineage: he announced that Xu Xun — the fourth-century Daoist master venerated as the patriarch of the Jingming tradition and the patron deity of Jiangxi Province — had descended to the mortal world as a divine incarnation. Through this descent, Liu Yu received two foundational texts: the Zhonghuang Dadao Baji Zhenquan (True Interpretation of the Eight Extremes of the Central Yellow Great Dao) and the Lingbao Tanji (Record of the Lingbao Altar).
The claim of divine transmission was a recognized form of religious authority in the Chinese tradition — a way of grounding a new teaching in the prestige of an established lineage while simultaneously claiming the authority to develop it in new directions. For Liu Yu, the transmission from Xu Xun provided the legitimacy to recruit followers and propagate the Jingming Dao on a broad scale, which he proceeded to do with considerable success.
The philosophical system Liu Yu developed for the Jingming Dao was explicitly syncretic, advocating the "unity of the three teachings" — the integration of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism into a single coherent framework. This was not an unusual position in the Song–Yuan intellectual environment, where the boundaries between the three traditions had been increasingly porous for centuries. What distinguished Liu Yu's synthesis was its specific emphasis: he placed Confucian ethics — particularly loyalty (zhong) and filial piety (xiao) — at the foundation of Daoist cultivation.
His understanding of the Dao itself was recorded as follows: he "clearly comprehended the essence of the teaching and took Laozi's doctrines as the core." This grounding in the classical Daoist philosophical tradition — the Daodejing's vision of the Dao as the source and pattern of all things — provided the metaphysical foundation for his ethical emphasis. Filial piety and loyalty were not merely social virtues; they were expressions of the Dao's own nature, which the Daodejing described in terms of nurturing, sustaining, and returning.
Liu Yu's most practically significant contribution was his reform of the Jingming Dafa (Great Law of Pure and Brightness). He simplified complex rituals, advocating the worship of Heaven, reverence for the Dao, and regarding the salvation of the living and deliverance of the deceased as the major undertakings of Daoist practice. He emphasized rectifying one's mind and cultivating one's moral character, and explicitly opposed two tendencies he saw as distortions of genuine practice.
The first was rigid adherence to talismans (fuzhuan) — the use of written ritual instruments as if they had power independent of the practitioner's inner state. The second was excessive focus on holding fasts and offering sacrifices (xiuzhai shejiao) — the performance of elaborate ritual sequences as ends in themselves. Against both, Liu Yu insisted on a state of tranquility, simplicity, and sincere devotion as the true foundation of Daoist practice.
Liu Yu was a prolific author whose works became the foundational texts of the Jingming Dao tradition. His major writings include Jingming Mizhi (Secret Essentials of Pure and Brightness), Xiazhen Xiansheng Yulu Neiji (Inner Collection of Sayings of Master Xiazhen), Yuzhen Xiansheng Yulu Waiji (Outer Collection of Sayings of Master Yuzhen), and Yuzhen Xiansheng Yulu Bieji (Supplementary Collection of Sayings of Master Yuzhen). These works were later compiled into the Jingming Zhongxiao Quanshu (Complete Book of Pure and Bright Loyalty and Filial Piety), the canonical collection of the Jingming Dao tradition.
The Sayings collections — the inner, outer, and supplementary collections — are particularly significant as records of Liu Yu's teaching in a more direct, conversational form than formal doctrinal treatises. They preserve the texture of his thought as it was communicated to disciples in the context of actual practice, providing evidence of how his ethical and philosophical positions were translated into practical guidance for cultivation.
Liu Yu's most notable disciple was Huang Yuanji, who continued the Jingming Dao after his master's death in 1308. The transmission to Huang Yuanji ensured the school's survival and development into the later Yuan period, when it would attract further followers and produce additional textual contributions to the tradition.
Liu Yu died in 1308, the first year of the Zhida era, at the age of fifty-one. He had spent the last twelve years of his life — from the founding vision of 1296 to his death — building a school that would outlast him by centuries. The Jingming Dao he founded continued to develop through the Yuan and Ming periods, eventually producing the Jingming Zhongxiao Quanshu that preserved his teachings for later generations.
