Clerics › Religious Figure
Sima Chengzhen
Tang Shangqing Daoist master of Mount Tiantai, honoured by three sovereigns and skilled in seal and clerical calligraphy.
In a temple courtyard at dusk, a great bronze bell hangs at the right and incense smoke rises from a bronze urn; monks in orange robes and plainly dressed visitors walk toward a lamplit hall, lotus flowers bloom in a stone basin, and a gold prayer wheel stands at the left.
Also known as Zi Ziwei · Sima Ziwei · Hao Baiyunzi · Master Zhenyi
Sima Chengzhen, courtesy name Ziwei and styled Baiyunzi, came from Wen county in Henei. Drawn to Daoism early, he studied under Pan Shizheng on Mount Song, inheriting the Shangqing tradition, and later lived as a hermit on Mount Tiantai. Empress Wu, Emperor Ruizong and Emperor Xuanzong all summoned him; Xuanzong received Daoist registers from him and built him a monastery on Mount Wangwu. A distinctive calligrapher in seal and clerical scripts, he also wrote the Treatise on Sitting in Forgetfulness. He was posthumously titled Master Zhenyi. In the preface to his Rhapsody on the Great Peng, Li Bai recalls meeting him at Jiangling and being told he had the bearing of an immortal.
Life and times
Dates 647–735 CE