Event

Quanzhen Daoism was the most influential religion in north China in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was also the first Daoist movement that rejected family life completely and promoted celibacy and monasticism. How did Quanzhen masters address the difficult problem of abandoning one’s family to join monastic life, a problem Buddhists had faced centuries earlier? Exploring widely disparate materials including Quanzhen poetry, hagiographies, murals, inscriptions, and plays, this presentation discusses the puzzling nature of the Quanzhen discourse about family abandonment. Paradoxically, Quanzhen teachings recognized the obligation to take care of one’s parents at precisely the same time they urged adepts to abandon their families. This presentation will contrast Buddhist and Quanzhen Daoist approaches to family obligations and suggest why they differed as much as they did.