Ma Ziran 马自然 — The Daoist Who Met Four Immortals in a Wine Shop
Paul PengThe meeting happened at a wine shop. Ma Ziran (马自然) was in Jianchang (建昌, present-day Jianchang County, Jiangxi Province) when he encountered four figures: Zhongli Quan (钟离权), Lü Dongbin (吕洞宾), Liu Haichan (刘海蟾), and Chen Qizi (陈七子). Liu Haichan explained the secrets of the Golden Elixir to him, and then gave him a teaching that the sources preserved word for word.
"Seek the essential in the profound void; seek the substance in the indistinct trance. Let your physical form and spirit be thoroughly unobstructed, and unite with the Dao to attain true reality."
Ma Ziran practiced these teachings diligently. He attained the Dao. He wandered around Mount Zaoshan (皂山), roaming freely among mountains and marshes. His whereabouts were unknown afterward.
Key Takeaways
- Ma Ziran (马自然) was a Daoist practitioner of the Northern Song Dynasty; from youth he practiced techniques of cultivating the true essence and refining vital energy (qi 气)
- At a wine shop in Jianchang (建昌), present-day Jiangxi Province, he encountered four figures: Zhongli Quan (钟离权), Lü Dongbin (吕洞宾), Liu Haichan (刘海蟾), and Chen Qizi (陈七子)
- Liu Haichan explained to him the secrets of the Golden Elixir (金丹) and transmitted a teaching on the method of practice: seeking the essential in the profound void, seeking the substance in the indistinct trance, letting form and spirit become unobstructed, and uniting with the Dao
- Ma Ziran practiced these teachings diligently and attained the Dao, becoming a true immortal (zhenxian 真仙)
- He subsequently wandered around Mount Zaoshan (皂山), roaming freely among mountains and marshes; his whereabouts thereafter were unknown
- Primary source: Lishi Zhenxian Tidao Tongjian (《历世真仙体道通鉴》), Vol. 49
Ma Ziran (马自然) — the Northern Song Daoist who encountered four immortals at a wine shop in Jianchang, received the Golden Elixir teaching from Liu Haichan, attained the Dao, and vanished into the mountains of Zaoshan.
The Wine Shop Encounter
The wine shop as a setting for Daoist transmission is not accidental. In the Chinese literary and religious tradition, the wine shop is a liminal space — a place outside the ordered structures of official and domestic life, where unexpected encounters become possible. The great Tang poet Li Bai (李白) associated wine with poetic inspiration and Daoist freedom; the Eight Immortals are frequently depicted drinking. Wine, in this tradition, is not simply alcohol — it is a symbol of the loosening of ordinary constraints, the opening of perception to what is usually hidden.
That Ma Ziran encountered four of the most significant figures in the inner alchemy tradition at a wine shop in Jianchang is consistent with this pattern. The meeting was not arranged. It happened in an ordinary commercial space, to a practitioner who had been cultivating since youth but had not yet received the decisive transmission. The wine shop was where the transmission found him.
The Four Figures: Who They Were
The four figures Ma Ziran encountered represent the core of the Zhong-Lü inner alchemy lineage and its extensions. Zhongli Quan (钟离权) is the patriarch of the lineage — the master who transmitted the inner alchemy methods to Lü Dongbin and through him to the broader tradition. Lü Dongbin (吕洞宾) is the most widely venerated figure in the tradition — the immortal whose name is attached to countless texts, temples, and transmissions across Chinese religious history.
Liu Haichan (刘海蟾) — the Toad Immortal — was a Five Dynasties official who abandoned his position after an encounter with Lü Dongbin and became one of the most important transmitters of the inner alchemy tradition. He is credited with transmitting the Southern School (Nanzong 南宗) lineage of inner alchemy, which would later be systematized by Zhang Boduan (张伯端). Chen Qizi (陈七子) is less widely documented but appears in the tradition as a companion of these figures. That all four were present at the wine shop in Jianchang suggests a gathering of the tradition's most significant transmitters — and Ma Ziran was the recipient.
Liu Haichan's Teaching: The Words the Sources Preserved
Of the four figures present, it was Liu Haichan who spoke directly to Ma Ziran — who explained the secrets of the Golden Elixir and gave him the teaching that the sources preserved verbatim:
"Seek the essential in the profound void; seek the substance in the indistinct trance. Let your physical form and spirit be thoroughly unobstructed, and unite with the Dao to attain true reality."
This teaching is worth sitting with. The "profound void" (xuanxu 玄虚) and the "indistinct trance" (huanghu 恍惚) are terms drawn directly from the Dao De Jing — the state in which the Dao is apprehended not through conceptual clarity but through a kind of receptive, unfocused awareness. The instruction to "seek the essential" and "seek the substance" in these states is an instruction to find the real within the apparently empty and formless.
The second part of the teaching — "let your physical form and spirit be thoroughly unobstructed, and unite with the Dao to attain true reality" — describes the goal of inner alchemy practice: the removal of all blockages between the practitioner's body, mind, and the Dao, until the distinction between practitioner and Dao dissolves. This is not a metaphor. In the inner alchemy tradition, it describes a specific experiential state that the practice is designed to produce.
Mount Zaoshan and the Vanishing
After attaining the Dao, Ma Ziran wandered around Mount Zaoshan (皂山) — a mountain in present-day Jiangxi Province, in the same general region as Jianchang where he had received his transmission. The choice of Zaoshan is consistent with the pattern of accomplished Daoist practitioners who settle in or near the sacred landscapes of their region after attaining realization.
The sources record that he roamed "freely among mountains and marshes" — a phrase that evokes the Daoist ideal of the perfected person who moves through the natural world without constraint, at home in every landscape. His whereabouts were unknown afterward. The tradition does not record his death. It records his disappearance into the landscape — which, in the Daoist hagiographical tradition, is its own kind of ending.
Why Ma Ziran Still Matters
Ma Ziran had been practicing since youth. He was not a beginner when he walked into that wine shop in Jianchang. He was a practitioner who had been cultivating for years, who had the foundation to receive what Liu Haichan was offering. The Zhengyi (正一) tradition understands that transmission requires preparation on both sides — the teacher must have something to give, and the student must be ready to receive it. Ma Ziran was ready. The wine shop was the occasion. The teaching was the gift. What he did with it — the diligent practice, the attainment, the wandering — was his own. If you want to understand what the inner alchemy tradition is and why encounters like this one are at its heart, the tradition's own account of the Golden Elixir is where to begin.
Related Concepts
- Golden Elixir (jindан 金丹): the central metaphor of inner alchemy — the refined state of vital substances that the practice aims to produce; the "secrets of the Golden Elixir" that Liu Haichan transmitted to Ma Ziran
- Profound void (xuanxu 玄虚): a term from the Dao De Jing describing the state in which the Dao is apprehended — the first of the two states Liu Haichan instructed Ma Ziran to seek the essential within
- Indistinct trance (huanghu 恍惚): a second term from the Dao De Jing describing the receptive, unfocused awareness in which the Dao's substance can be found — the second state in Liu Haichan's teaching
- Liu Haichan (刘海蟾): the Toad Immortal — Five Dynasties official turned Daoist master, credited with transmitting the Southern School inner alchemy lineage; the figure who gave Ma Ziran his decisive teaching
- Mount Zaoshan (皂山): the mountain in present-day Jiangxi Province where Ma Ziran wandered after attaining the Dao; his final known location before his disappearance from the record
- Zhong-Lü lineage (钟吕传道): the inner alchemy tradition traced through Zhongli Quan and Lü Dongbin, represented by three of the four figures Ma Ziran encountered at the wine shop
Source Texts
- Lishi Zhenxian Tidao Tongjian (《历世真仙体道通鉴》, Comprehensive Mirror of the True Immortals Who Embodied the Dao Through the Ages), Vol. 49, compiled by Zhao Daoyi (赵道一) — Yuan Dynasty Daoist biographical compendium; primary source for Ma Ziran's biography.
