Daoist Leader (Biography of Du Guangting)

Author: Cai Tanggen
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-12-01
Features: Du Guangting, a renowned Taoist figure of the late Tang and Five Dynasties period. His courtesy name was Binsheng, and his title was Dongyingzi. He was from Xianzhou Jinyun (now part of Zhejiang). In the first year of the Hezhong era (881 AD), he followed Emperor Xizong of Tang into Shu to escape turmoil and settled in Chengdu. He was appreciated by Wang Jian, the founding emperor of Former Shu, and appointed as Jinzi Guanglu Dafu, Zuo Jianyi Dafu, and enfeoffed as Duke of Cai. He was also granted the title of Guangcheng Master. Later, Emperor Zong of Later Shu received the Taoist ordination in the garden and appointed Du Guangting as Chuanxin Tianshi and Chongzhen Hall Grand Scholar. Du Guangting later declined the position and retired to live in seclusion at Baiyun Creek in Qingcheng Mountain, where he devoted himself to Taoist practice until his death. He once built the Shunhe Pavilion and practiced the Shangqing Zixu method of swallowing the qi of the sun and moon. Du Guangting was the synthesizer of Taoist scholarship in the late Tang and Five Dynasties period. His contemporaries highly praised him as "a thousand leaves in the garden of words, a thousand depths in the sea of learning, upholding the sect and establishing the teaching, revered by all under heaven." Zhejiang, a land not too vast but deeply rooted in culture, has nurtured numerous cultural figures: Wang Xizhi, Xie Lingyun, Luo Binwang, Meng Jiao, Han Shan, Zhao Mengfu, Huang Gongwang, Wang Meng, Mao Dun, Xia Yan, Yu Dafu, Zhu Kezhen, Tong Dizhou. They devoted their talents to the inheritance and innovation of culture, achieving great accomplishments. The "Biographies of Zhejiang Cultural Figures Series" is a cultural project launched by the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences in response to the call of the provincial party committee and government, introducing the biographies of 100 ancient and modern Zhejiang-born cultural figures. This book is one of the series, introducing the Taoist leader—Du Guangting.