The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (518 page)

 
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Chang Po-tuan
(practitioner and teacher)
:

see
NEI-TAN
.

 
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Chang San-feng
.

Taoist immortal and source of
Ch’üan-chen tao
; he is also said to be the founder of a school of Chinese boxing.

 
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(d. 868).
Chinese Ch’an Buddhist master. He had no set school or monastery, but wandered in China, allowing his teaching to arise from whatever he encountered.

 
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(Chin., ‘long-lasting’, ‘immortal’). The goal of Taoism in many of its practices. Initially, Taoism was concerned with literal and physical immortality (see
ALCHEMY
), which involved the quest for substances and exercises which might produce this (e.g.
tao-yin
(see
GYMNASTICS
),
fang-chung shu
). The attainer of immortality (
hsien
) ascends to heaven (
fei-sheng
) visibly, or else seems to die and is buried, but when the coffin is opened, it is found to be empty.
The more reflective Taoism of
Lao-tzu
or of
Chuang-tzu
regarded spiritual immortality as more important—and indeed as alone attainable.
Many symbols of immortality appear in Chinese art under Taoist influence. Particularly frequent are peaches (cultivated by
Hsi Wang mu
), the herb or mushroom of immortality (
ling-chih
), a crane (often holding the
ling-chih
), pine trees, a gnarled stick of wood.

 
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(2nd cent. CE).
Founder of the Taoist school of
wu-tou-mi tao
, which emphasized the connection between sin and suffering, and which introduced repentance and healing ceremonies (see
CHAI
), for which were required payment of five pecks of rice—hence the name for the school. The movement was further organized and developed by
Chang Hsiu
and
Chang Lu
. After his death, he has continued to be revered as the Celestial Master (religiously as Chang T’ien Shih) down to the present day.

 
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