Awakening to Truth
Exiled to the south, he met his master in Chengdu and received the oral transmission; the Wuzhen Pian was written in old age — its sixteen poems of the golden elixir became the second classic of inner alchemy after the Cantong Qi.
悟
張伯端 紫陽真人
Zhang Boduan, Founder of the Southern Lineage
Author of 'Awakening to Reality'
Era · 984–1082 CE, Song dynasty
Author of 'Awakening to Reality'
His Wuzhen Pian — 'Awakening to Reality' — is the classic scripture of inner alchemy, reading the body as the laboratory and the mind as the elixir. He is honored as the first patriarch of the Southern Lineage of the Complete Reality tradition.
- Wuzhen Pian, 'Awakening to Reality'
- The inner elixir
- Southern Lineage of inner alchemy
Era · 984–1082 CE, Song dynasty
History · 史记
Historical Record
Zhang Boduan (984–1082) wrote the Wuzhen Pian — the treatise on awakening to truth — the foundational scripture of southern inner alchemy and one of the most commented books in the Taoist Canon. A low-ranking official of Taizhou, he was exiled for burning official documents; legend says that in Chengdu he met his master and received the oral transmission, and wrote the Wuzhen Pian as an old man.
His transmission line — Zhang Boduan to Shi Tai, Xue Daoguang, Chen Nan and Bai Yuchan — is the Southern Five Patriarchs, mirror of the Quanzhen Northern Five Patriarchs; his book welds inner alchemy to Chan insight, insisting that the nature and the life complete each other.
Stories of the Divine
The Five Patriarchs' Transmission
He transmitted to Shi Tai, Shi Tai to Xue Daoguang, down to Bai Yuchan — five generations, each with collected works. Quanzhen later adopted him as the southern branch, and the two lines merged into one tree.
Classical Sources
- 01
悟真篇
His own work — the foundational scripture of southern inner alchemy.
- 02
歷世真仙體道通鑑
Preserves his biography and the lineage of the Southern Five Patriarchs.