Seven ‘All True’ Greats VI

After Wang’s death, Qiu stayed at Wang’s tomb site for three years in accordance with China’s Confucian tradition of filial piety. He then went to Panxi (磻溪) in Shanxi (陝西) to continue practicing Taoist, Confucian and Buddhist rules all alone in a mountain cave for six years. Another seven years of secluded practice followed at Dragon Gate Mountain or Longmenshan in Longzhou (龍門) in Gansu (甘肅). He was summoned to the court of the Emperor Shi-zhong of the Jurchen Tartar Dynasty in 1188 and stayed in Beijing briefly as an imperial consultant on health and longevity. The Emperor Xuan-zong (宣宗) asked him to persuade a rebel army in Shandong to defect to the Jurchens in 1214. But he did not support the Jurchens when the Mongols under Genghis Khan began invading northern China.

Genghis Khan invaded Shanxi and Hebei in 1211, and Beijing fell in 1215. The Jurchens moved their capital to Kaifeng (開封). In 1219, Korea submitted to Genghis Khan as a vassal. In southern China, the Song dynastsy (南宋朝) held on to their precarious rule south of the Yangtze River. The Jurchens had lost nearly all of their former domains except south of the Yellow River. Pressed on the one side by the Song Chinese and on the other by the Mongols, they were in a sad plight. The Jurchen emperor Xuan-zhong urgently needed the help of the Eternal Spring. The Song emperor and Genghis Khan also sought the Taoist master’s assistance.

The Eternal Spring turned down the requests from Xuan-zong and the Emperor Ning-zong of the Song Dynasty (南宋寧宗1195-1225). But he accepted Genghis Khan’s call. At the ripe old age of 70, the Taoist master, accompanied by 18 of his top disciples, went all the way from Shandong to Great Snow Mountain (大雪山) to meet the great Mongol emperor, who conquered Xinjiang or Chinese Turkestan and was carrying his victorious Mongol arms into the valleys of the Oxus and Jaxartes, to the banks of the Indus River, into Persia, and even into the southeastern portions of Europe. Why eighteen disciples? It’s the number of Buddhist arhats (十八羅漢) best known in China. Why should a Han Chinese like him serve the Mongols? Qiu made it clear that he would follow in the footsteps of Laozi or Laotzu (老子) who tried to persuade the Huns to follow the Tao. All Qiu wanted was to proselytize the Mongols, Genghis Khan in particular. If they were, the All True Great believed, there would be peace and prosperity in the whole of China.

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