Entry Index · Page 2

Changsheng Zhiyao Pian is a one-juan Southern Song inner-alchemical text attributed to Lin Ziran, also titled Changsheng Zhiyao. Its preface is dated 1250; seven sections connect primordial qi, life, cosmology, and ethical conduct.

Changzhu can refer to property held for a Daoist temple community, and in some contexts to a person responsible for temple affairs. Buddhist and philosophical uses meaning enduring or constant are separate senses.

Chen Jingyuan (d. 1094), courtesy name Taichu and religious name Bixuzi, was a Northern Song Daoist scholar and commentator. His surviving work concerns Laozi and Zhuangzi interpretation, Daoist scripture, textual editing, and court religious institutions. Accounts disagree on his birth year and some early dates.

Chen Nan, known as Cuixu, was a Southern Song Daoist later counted among the five patriarchs of the Southern inner-alchemical lineage. Accounts connect him with Bai Yuchan and thunder rites but mix history with hagiography.

Chen Tuan (died 989; his birth year and birthplace are disputed), courtesy name Tunan, was a recluse and Daoist associated with the Wudang and Hua mountains in the Five Dynasties and early Song. Later traditions linked him to diagrams of the Changes, inner alchemy, and stories of extraordinary sleep. These layers should not be treated as equally documented biography.

Chenxing is a classical Chinese name for Mercury, one of the traditional Five Planets. Historical astrology associated it with the north and Water phase and drew political or disaster omens from its appearance; these are not reliable forecasts.

Chen Xubai Guizhong Zhinan is a two-fascicle neidan work attributed to Xubaizi Chen Chongsu. It organizes nine topics in the first fascicle and considers three central terms in the second. Its structure is material for intellectual history, not a contemporary self-experiment guide.

Chen Zhixu was a Yuan-period Daoist writer and inner-alchemy thinker, known by the courtesy name Guanwu and the sobriquet Shangyangzi. His work sought to connect northern and southern alchemical lineages and interpreted Daoist texts through a theory of the golden elixir.

Chengfu is an early Daoist account of inherited consequences, developed especially in the Taiping jing. It holds that actions can accumulate across generations and affect descendants and society. Its intergenerational focus differs from an individual's rebirth and karmic retribution.

Chenghuang originally referred to city walls and their surrounding moat. It later named a City God imagined to protect an urban area, govern local spirits, and judge moral conduct. The cult joins state sacrifice, Daoist divine hierarchies, and local custom; particular cities may identify their City God with different historical figures.

Cheng Xuanying was an early Tang Daoist scholar and commentator associated with the Twofold Mystery approach. His commentaries on Laozi and Zhuangzi helped articulate Daoist philosophy in dialogue with Buddhist thought.

Chongxu Zhenjing is a Tang-era honorific title for the book known as Liezi. The received work is rich in stories and philosophical arguments, but its formation date and traditional attribution to Lie Yukou are disputed.

Chongyang Palace in the Guanzhong region is an ancestral site associated with Wang Chongyang and early Quanzhen Daoism. Jin-Yuan growth, inscriptions, later rebuilding, and today's remains must be distinguished.

Chongyang Jiaohua Ji is a three-fascicle collection of verses associated with Wang Chongyang's exchanges with Ma Yu in early Quanzhen Daoism. Prefaces dated 1183 offer clues to its compilation, while poem counts and author attributions need comparison across witnesses.

Chongyang Lijiao Shiwulun presents fifteen discussions of early Quanzhen ideals associated with Wang Chongyang. The transmitted work is attributed either to Wang himself or to disciples who compiled his teaching.

Chongyang Quanzhen Ji is a collection of poems and other writings attributed to Wang Chongyang, an early Quanzhen teacher of the Jin dynasty. His disciples assembled the collection after his death.

Chongyin Xuanmiao Guanzhi is a reprinted gazetteer of Suzhou's Xuanmiao Temple. Gu Yuan, whose courtesy name was Xiangzhou, compiled the Qing work; a 1927 reprint transmitted it. Twelve main fascicles plus a front fascicle explain differing totals.

Choutian, literally 'withdrawing and adding,' is an internal-alchemy term for paired changes described in nature and in the symbolic refinement of the practitioner.

Chujia in Daoist contexts can mean leaving ordinary household life to enter a particular religious community. Rules vary across periods and Daoist traditions. Classical writings also distinguish leaving family attachment from leaving a wider realm of attachment, which is not a command for all Daoists to sever family ties.

Xuhuo Lüling Deng Tianjun Dafa is a thunder-rite work in Daofa Huiyuan centered on the divine officer Deng Tianjun. Its descriptions of deities, petitions, and expulsion belong to religious literature, not proof of weather control or healing.

Chuandu is a formal Daoist transmission through which a teacher receives a student into a line of training. It can establish teacher-disciple affiliation, a Daoist name or generational designation, precept obligations, and a course of study. In Zhengyi settings it may precede later reception of registers, but the sequence differs among traditions.

Transmission of precepts, or chuanjie, is the formal conferral of a body of Daoist precepts. It is especially associated with Quanzhen ordination and should be distinguished from personally observing a rule or receiving a ritual register.

Conglin can mean a grove. As a religious term it first described Buddhist monastic communities and was later used for some Daoist temple communities. The shared label does not make every guan a conglin or make Buddhist and Daoist institutions identical.

Cunsi, also called cunxiang, is a Daoist term for mentally attending to deities, the body, or cosmic images. The objects and explanations differ among scriptures; no single sequence of exercises represents every cunsi tradition.

Cunxiang is a Daoist term for concentrated imagining or visualization. In general Chinese it can also mean thinking about or imagining something without a religious technique.

Dadan Zhizhi is a two-fascicle inner-alchemy work transmitted under Qiu Chuji's name and preserved in the Daozang. Its three-part, nine-section design and posthumous honorific in the heading raise questions about later compilation.

Dadong Lianzhen Baojing Jiuhuan Jindan Miaojue is an external-alchemy text attributed to the Tang Daoist Chen Shaowei. A Daozang witness treats it as one fascicle of two chapters and nine units.

Da Dong Lian Zhen Bao Jing Xiu Fu Ling Sha Miao Jue is a one-fascicle external-alchemy text attributed to the Tang Hengyue Daoist Chen Shaowei. Its Daozang version relates to another companion text and to material preserved in Yunji Qiqian.

Dahuan Dan Zhaojian is a one-fascicle neidan work associated with a longer transmitted title. Its anonymous preface gives 962, in Later Shu; spacing and alternate jian characters in titles require edition-specific checking.

Dajie can describe a cosmic cycle of world renewal, a long ordeal in religious writing, or a major disaster in broad later use. The senses have different time scales.

Da Luo Tian is a transcendent heaven in Daoist cosmological writing, commonly set above other heavens and sometimes above the Three Pure Ones. Texts differ in how they place it and which divine figure they associate with it.

Da Xiao Zhoutian is a pair of later inner-alchemy terms. Accounts distinguish smaller and greater circulation through qi and shen, lesser and greater return, or body and cosmos; these are not one universal physiological route.

The Great Expansion Number is a term from Yijing divination, later discussed in Daoist interpretations of cosmic change. Its classical formulation gives fifty counting stalks, forty-nine of which are used. The number belongs to a symbolic calculation, not a measurable law governing all events.

Great Medicine, or dayao, is not one fixed substance in Daoist alchemical writing. The Chinese sources use it for essence, qi, and spirit; for a stage or result of inner alchemy; and, in some external-alchemy accounts, for an elixir. Its meaning depends on the author and method described.

Dazhoutian is an inner-alchemy term for a large-scale cycle or phase. It is often related to Daheche, but texts differ in routes, timing, and symbolic emphasis.

Dai Shi is an eighteen-fascicle Mount Tai gazetteer compiled by Zha Zhilong in the Ming. Its divisions organize landscape, state sacrifice, temples, and local life; it was later included in Xu Daozang.

Dan can name cinnabar or a red color in ordinary Chinese, and an elixir in Daoist alchemical writing. These senses are related historically but not interchangeable in every passage.

Dandao is a broad name for Daoist elixir traditions. Modern usage often emphasizes inner alchemy, while historical texts can also encompass external alchemy, elixir theory, and different accounts of xing and ming. It does not name one unchanging method or lineage.

Danfang Jianyuan is a three-fascicle external-alchemy reference attributed to Dugu Tao. Its twenty-five divisions classify material names, while title, dating, and manuscript differences remain disputed.

Danpin danfa denotes schemes for ranking and describing alchemical methods. The Chinese entry compares classifications attributed to different authors rather than defining one standard hierarchy accepted by all Daoist traditions.

Cinnabar, called dansha or zhusha in Chinese, is a red mineral composed of mercury sulfide (HgS). It was important in historical external alchemy and acquired many symbolic names in Daoist texts. Older medicinal and immortality claims about it are descriptions of past belief, not advice to ingest it.

Danshi is Daoist verse, including poems and lyrics, that discusses inner- or external-alchemy ideas. Its symbols are literary and interpretive, not a ready-made procedure.

Dantai can mean an immortal's dwelling or a center in a Daoist symbolic body; texts differ on whether the bodily sense concerns dantian, heart, or a throat-area image.

Dantian is a Daoist term for a bodily center in writings on cultivation and inner alchemy. Sources commonly distinguish upper, middle, and lower dantian, but give different locations and symbolic roles; a dantian is not a single universally agreed anatomical organ.

Dantou is a term in Daoist inner-alchemy commentary. Some authors discuss it as a basis in language about inner and outer 'medicines'; another source equates it with jing, qi, and shen. It is not an identified pharmaceutical substance.

Danyuan can name a heart spirit or a center in a Daoist symbolic body map. Texts place that center differently, so the meanings cannot be collapsed into one anatomical location.

Dao is a central concept in Chinese thought and Daoism. It can name the source and course of the world, a principle or path to follow, or the orientation of religious cultivation. Its meaning depends on the passage, period, and tradition rather than one fixed English equivalent.

Daochang can denote a sacred or ritual space, and in Daoist usage it can also name the ceremony held there. The word is shared across religious traditions, so its meaning depends on whether a passage concerns a place, a gathering or a ritual event.

Daodejing, also known as Laozi, is an early Chinese work central to Daoist thought and later Daoist religion. Its received chapters, manuscript versions, and centuries of commentary show why neither its wording nor its interpretation should be reduced to one fixed form.

Daode Tianzun is one of the Three Pure Ones, associated with Great Purity and Taishang Laojun. Laozi in historical writing, the divine Lord Lao, and this deity's place in the triad need to be distinguished.