Bai Yuchan Neidan Si Wanted To Study

Bai Yuchan is the actual founder of the South-school of inner alchemy in Song Dynasty, who is known as the fifth ancestor. He reads as more scriptures as he can, which are comprised of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. And he is a fairly legendary senior Taoist priest with plentiful writings. Thought on inner alchemy is the core of Bai Yuchan's ideology, which accounts for his major achievement on Taoist philosophy. The chief purpose of the article is to study Bai Yuchan's inner alchemy ideas on two aspects, from internally logical clue to external features, giving an analysis on origins of theories, basic theories, methods of practice and characteristics of theories,and to discuss about his thunder magic thought which is close to his inner alchemy as well.There are two historical views about Bai Yuchan's birthday and death date, which lead to the issue in scholars. Comparing the two views, the opinion that Bai Yuchan should be born in Shaoxing-jiayin is held highly by more scholars, but it is still difficult to give reasonable explanations of some contradict history materials. With growing number of historical materials that support view of Shaoxing, it is not suitable for using common sense to understand the remarkable words and marvelous deeds of Bai Yuchan who is extraordinary and legendary in that era.South-school's alchemy lay emphasis on practice, the methods of which are derived from traditional alchemy ideas radically. By carrying forward traditional alchemy, Bai Yuchan develop Zhang Boduan's ideas of incorporating Zen into Taoist, and get together the law of mental training of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism with alchemy practice, by that Bai's theories of alchemy and its characteristics are burn. The basic theories of Bai Yuchan's inner alchemy are mainly embodied in the issues of mind and life, furnace, drugs, heat and so on, and he creatively put forward ideas that alchemy and Taoism are just the same as mind. Based on the underlying theories as a guide, he believes that all practical methods of alchemy are from mind, so that mind practice should be the central method running through all the process of alchemy practice. He criticizes the traditional practitioner of inner alchemy for rigidly adhering in dogmatic words or mechanical programs, stresses on touching Taoism by heart, and asks not to escape living in actuality, but to hide in people's common lives. By putting alchemy practice with thunder magic together, Bai Yuchan states the Mahayana practice ideas of making alchemy inward and using it outside, which break through the limitation that alchemy practitioners do only for themselves.Bai's inside practice theories of thunder magic is closely related to his alchemy theories and both of them are based on common philosophy at theory level. Bai studies thunder magic from Chen Nan, and follows the well-known Taoist, Wang Shouzhen and Wang Wenqing, so he is known as a just successor of Shenxiao-school of thunder magic. Still based on such theories as thought on the Original Gas, the Yin-Yang and the harmony between man and nature, he takes alchemy into thunder magic practice inward, and works out new thunder magic theories that characterized by God mastering, Qi of ontology, mind controlling method and stressing on moral cultivation. He pays more attention to theoretical construction and accentuates understanding thunder magic before using it. Bai Yuchan is honored as a master, for he adopts merits from several of magic to further develop and promote thunder magic theories of Shenxiao-school.