Ma Shu 马枢 — Scholar of Three Teachings, Hermit of Maoshan
Paul PengTwenty thousand scrolls. That is what Xiao Lun left behind when he marched his troops toward the capital.
He left them with Ma Shu (马枢). And Ma Shu read them. All of them — Confucian classics, Buddhist sutras, histories, commentaries on the I Ching and the Laozi. When he was done, he went to Maoshan. The Chen emperor sent an offer: Minister of Revenue, one of the highest posts in the realm. Ma Shu declined.
He stayed on the mountain until he died.
Key Takeaways
- Ma Shu (马枢, d. 581 CE), styled Yaoli (耀离), was a native of Fufeng Commandery (扶风郡, present-day Shaanxi Province) active during the Liang and Chen dynasties of the Southern Dynasties period
- He was broadly learned in Confucian classics, Buddhist scriptures, and Daoist texts — particularly the Zhouyi (《周易》) and the Laozi (《老子》) — and was appointed as a Scholar (xueshi 学士) by Xiao Lun (萧纶, 邵陵王), the sixth son of Emperor Wu of Liang (梁武帝第六子), when Xiao Lun served as Governor of Southern Xuzhou
- When Xiao Lun marched to reinforce the capital, he left Ma Shu a collection of 20,000 volumes; Ma Shu read through nearly all of them
- In his later years he went to Maoshan (茅山), intending to spend the rest of his life there; in the 1st year of the Tianjia era (560 CE), Emperor Wen of Chen summoned him to serve as Minister of Revenue (Duzhi Shangshu 度支尚书) — he declined and remained on the mountain
- He died of illness in the 13th year of the Taijian era (581 CE) and authored the Dao Jue Lun (《道觉论》, Treatise on the Awakening to the Dao)
- Primary source: Maoshan Zhi (《茅山志》), Vol. 15
Ma Shu (马枢, d. 581 CE, styled Yaoli 耀离) — the Liang and Chen dynasty scholar who read 20,000 scrolls, refused the post of Minister of Revenue, retreated to Maoshan, and wrote the Dao Jue Lun.
Note on Xiao Lun (萧纶): Xiao Lun, Prince Shaoling (邵陵王), was the sixth son of Emperor Wu of Liang (梁武帝萧衍) — and therefore the younger half-brother of Xiao Tong (萧统, the Zhaoming Crown Prince who compiled the Wenxuan), not his son. The two were of the same generation.
A Scholar in a Collapsing World
Ma Shu came from Fufeng (扶风) in the northwest — the old heartland of the Han dynasty, far from the Jiangnan world where he would spend his adult life. He had settled in the south and made his reputation as a scholar of unusual breadth. Confucian classics, Buddhist sutras, the Zhouyi, the Laozi — he moved through all of them with equal ease. Xiao Lun (萧纶), Prince Shaoling, the sixth son of Emperor Wu of Liang, recognized this and appointed him as a Scholar when he served as Governor of Southern Xuzhou.
Then the Liang dynasty began to fall apart. Xiao Lun raised troops to march on the capital. Before he left, he handed Ma Shu his library: twenty thousand volumes. What the sources don’t tell us is what Ma Shu thought about this — whether he saw it as a gift or a burden, a trust or an accident of history. What they do tell us is that he read them. Nearly all of them.
Twenty Thousand Scrolls
The number is worth sitting with. Twenty thousand volumes, in a world where books were hand-copied and a private library of a few hundred scrolls marked a wealthy household. Xiao Lun’s collection was extraordinary by any standard of the age. Ma Shu worked through it — not skimming, the sources imply, but reading with the sustained attention of a man who had nothing else to do and nowhere else to be. By the time he was done, the Liang dynasty was gone. The Chen had risen in its place. Ma Shu was older, and he knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
He went to Maoshan.
Maoshan and the Decision to Stay
Maoshan (茅山) — the sacred mountain in present-day Jiangsu Province, center of the Shangqing (上清) Daoist tradition, where Tao Hongjing (陶弘景) had spent his final decades — was not an obvious destination for a Confucian-trained scholar. But Ma Shu had read the Laozi and the Zhouyi with the same attention he had given to the Buddhist sutras and the Confucian histories. He had arrived, through reading, at something that the mountain could offer and the court could not. The sources record that he “harbored the aspiration to spend the rest of his life there” (zhi zai zhongyan 志在终焉). That phrase — zhongyan, ending one’s years — has a finality to it. He wasn’t visiting. He was arriving.
The Offer He Refused: 560 CE
In the 1st year of the Tianjia era (560 CE), Emperor Wen of Chen (陈文帝) summoned Ma Shu to serve as Minister of Revenue (Duzhi Shangshu 度支尚书). This was not a minor appointment. The Duzhi Shangshu was responsible for the financial administration of the entire state — taxation, expenditure, the economic machinery of the dynasty. The emperor was offering Ma Shu one of the most powerful positions in the realm.
Ma Shu said no.
He stayed on Maoshan and devoted himself to Daoist practice. The sources don’t record any elaborate explanation. The refusal speaks for itself.
The Dao Jue Lun: Awakening to the Dao
Ma Shu wrote one work that the sources record by name: the Dao Jue Lun (《道觉论》, Treatise on the Awakening to the Dao). The title is suggestive. Jue (觉) — awakening, awareness, realization — is a term with resonances in both Buddhist and Daoist thought. A man who had read Buddhist sutras and Daoist classics with equal attention, who had spent years on Maoshan after a lifetime of scholarship, writing a treatise on “awakening to the Dao”: the text, if it survived, would be worth reading. It does not appear to have survived. What remains is the title, and the life that produced it.
Why Ma Shu Still Matters
Ma Shu’s story is not unusual in the Southern Dynasties period — there were many scholars who retreated to mountains, many officials who refused appointments. What makes his biography worth reading is the specific combination: the breadth of his learning across all three teachings, the scale of his reading (twenty thousand volumes is not a detail you forget), and the clarity of his final choice. He had read everything the tradition had to offer. He had been offered everything the court had to offer. He chose the mountain. The Zhengyi (正一) tradition, rooted in the Tianshi Dao’s understanding that the Dao is not separate from the world but a different way of being in it, recognizes in Ma Shu’s choice not a rejection of learning or of the world, but its completion. You read the twenty thousand scrolls. Then you go to the mountain. That is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of a different one. For more, see What is Taoism.
Related Concepts
- Maoshan (茅山): the sacred mountain in Jiangsu Province, center of the Shangqing tradition, where Ma Shu spent his final years
- Dao Jue Lun (《道觉论》): Ma Shu’s treatise on awakening to the Dao — the written record of a lifetime of learning across three traditions
- Three Teachings (sanjiao 三教): Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism — the three traditions that Ma Shu studied with equal depth before choosing the Daoist path
- Xiao Lun (萧纶, Prince Shaoling 邵陵王): the sixth son of Emperor Wu of Liang, who appointed Ma Shu as Scholar and left him twenty thousand volumes of books
Source Texts
- Maoshan Zhi (《茅山志》, Records of Maoshan Mountain), Vol. 15.
