Cultivating perfection: Mysticism and self-transformation in early Quanzhen Daoism

This dissertation is a study of early Quanzhen (Ch'uan-chen; Complete Perfection) Daoism, a Daoist religious movement and subsequent monastic order. The Quanzhen movement began in the twelfth century under the leadership of Wang Zhe (Chongyang [Redoubled Yang]; 1113--1170). This dissertation focuses on the early phases of the Quanzhen religious movement, here spoken of as its formative, incipient organized, and organized phases. It emphasizes the lives and teachings of Wang Chongyang and his first-generation disciples. Employing a comparative religious studies methodology, this study examines early Quanzhen Daoism in terms of conceptions of self, religious praxis, and mystical experience. This study also contains a complete annotated translation of the Chongyang zhenren jinguan yusuo jue (Perfected Chongyang's Instructions on the Gold Pass and Jade Lock; DZ 1156). Attributed to the founder Wang Chongyang, the text is one of the most technical discussions of early Quanzhen practice principles, training regimens, and models of attainment. In terms of Daoist Studies, I argue, based on historical contextualization and textual analysis, that in its formative and incipient organized phases Quanzhen was a Daoist religious community consisting of a few renunciants dedicated to religious praxis. In contrast to most previous studies that characterize Quanzhen as a "syncretistic" or "reform" movement, this study repositions Quanzhen in the history of Daoism as a soteriological system, complete with distinctive views of self, training regimens, and mystical experiences. The primary characteristics of this Daoist movement center on self-cultivation, alchemical transformation, and a shift in ontological condition herein referred to as "mystical being" and "mystical experiencing." With regard to comparative religious studies, I suggest that in order to gain a nuanced understanding of any religious system more attention needs to be given to the complicated interplay among views of self, specific training regimens, and the types of experiences that are expected to follow from dedicated praxis. Every practice or training regimen embodies, quite literally, specific views of self, and the attainment of more advanced states requires these views of self. Moreover, specific techniques may lead to tradition-specific experiences, and the soteriological import of these techniques and their related experiences are directly related to the ultimate concerns of a given religious tradition.