Chinese Healing Exercises: The Tradition of Daoyin

Chapter Four Pathways to Immortality

Pathways to Immortality 129 process creating an integrated vision of the entire Daoist path and transforming the role and importance of healing exercises into yet new dimensions. Not only unique in their specific effort and vision, they are also well documented biographically , allowing us a first detailed look at the social background, lifestyle, and activities of traditional practitioners. And, of course, they wrote a number of essential works on self-healing and self-realization. These works go beyond the previous literature in that they actively integrate medical techniques, such as diet control and the taking of herbal medicines, with the practices common to healing exercises (moderation, breathing, stretching, guiding the qi), then on this basis systematically guide followers to spiritual attainments through more cosmic-oriented exercises , which include talismans, meditations, and qi-absorption. The works of the great Tang masters are longer and more intricate, and they place exercise practice firmly in the transition between healing and spiritual transcendence. Who were these great masters and innovators? What kind of life did they lead? How did they come to the practice, and what did the practice do for them? What system of healing and immortality did they develop? Are their systems compatible, or do they show differences? How are healing exercises changed under the new impact of the systematization and the quest for immortality? Sun Simiao The first and maybe most important master of longevity in the Tang is Sun Simiao 孫思邈, born in 581 near the western capital of Chang’an. According to official biographies, which tend to stereotype masters as child prodigies and emphasize personal virtues, such as bone-deep honesty and a hesitation to accept imperial honors, he was a precocious child who studied eagerly from an early age. By age twenty he supposedly not only had an extensive knowledge of the classics and philosophers, but was also familiar with Buddhist and Daoist scriptures. Despite several invitations to serve at the imperial court under the Sui and early Tang dynasties, he went to live in seclusion on Mount Taibai 太白山 in the Zhongnan mountains, about a hundred miles from his ancestral home.2 In contrast to the report of this shining and easy childhood that brought forth anuprightandnoblecharacter,anautobiographicalnoteintheprefacetohisQianjin fang 千金方 (Priceless Prescriptions) notes that he was a sickly boy who underwent all kinds of treatments, thus inspiring a great interest in medical matters and an inclination toward longevity practices and Daoist seclusion. The text says, 2. Details of Sun’s early life are outlined in Sivin 1968, 82–96; Engelhardt 1989, 266; Sakade 1992, 2; Chen 2000, 91–94. 130 Chinese Healing Exercises In my childhood I suffered from a cold disorder due to winds, and constantly consulted physicians. My family’s finances were exhausted to pay for medicine. So it was that during my student years I held the medical classics in special regard, and that even in my old age I have not set them aside. As to the reading of pulses and other techniques of diagnosis, the gathering of herbs and their compounding, administration and dosage, hygiene and the various precautions associated with health—when I heard of any man who excelled me in any of these, no distance would keep me from him. I would learn what he had to teach and apply it. When I reached maturity, I became aware that I had attained some understanding. (Sivin 1967, 271; see also Engelhardt 1989, 279) This documents Sun Simiao’s early start in medical studies, which resulted from an intense personal need, and his dedication to being the best and knowing the most in this field. To this end he also traveled widely, collecting ancient books and recipes all over the country and, especially between 605 and 615, engaged in various alchemical experiments to find the medicine of immorality, thus entering the realm of religion and going beyond the goals of healing and long life. Most of his case histories, and therefore his main activities as a healer, date from 616 to 626. In 633, it seems, he was in Sichuan, where he conducted various alchemical experiments and contracted “cinnabar poisoning” (dandu 丹毒). He reports on the illness in his Qianjin yifang 千金翼方 (Supplementary Priceless Prescriptions): While asleep, I felt pain throughout the flesh and bones of my extremities. By dawn, my head was aching and my vision unclear; there was a blister the size of a crossbow pellet on my left temple, which ached so...