Wang Chongyang.
A failed military examinee who dug himself a grave, called it the tomb of the living dead, and lived in it for two years. He then founded Quanzhen — celibate, vegetarian, monastic, and deliberately uninterested in the ritual services that were the other clergy's living. His order now holds most of the great temples of China.
Wang Chongyang failed the military examinations, drank heavily, and in 1159 claimed to have met immortals at Ganhe who gave him instruction. He then dug a pit, called it the tomb of the living dead, and lived in it for two years. Emerging, he burned his hut and travelled east to Shandong, where he gathered the seven disciples known as the Seven Perfected. Quanzhen — Complete Perfection — that he founded differed from existing Taoism in ways that were deliberate and structural: it was celibate and monastic, took its clergy out of the funeral and exorcism trade that supported the hereditary priesthood, was strictly vegetarian, and drew openly on Chan Buddhism and Confucianism, teaching that the three traditions were one at root. It received Mongol patronage after his disciple Qiu Chuji made an extraordinary journey to meet Genghis Khan in Central Asia, and it now holds the great public monasteries of mainland China, including the White Cloud Temple in Beijing.
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