Lu Dayou

Lu Dayou, styled Dongxuanzi. In the early Yuan Dynasty, Wudang was a high-ranking Taoist priest. According to the Ming Dynasty's "Great Mountain Taihe Mountain Annals", Lu was from the east of Suizhou, Hubei Province (now part of Yingshan County, Hubei Province). His family background was that of an official. Lu Yue was born during the Qingyuan period of Emperor Ningzong of the Southern Song Dynasty (1196-1200 AD). He was fascinated by Taoism from a young age and became a monk in Wudang, subsequently following the 符箓 school of Taoism. For forty years, he practiced fasting and only ate wild vegetables and fruits to satisfy his hunger. Yuan Dynasty's Cheng Jufu (1246-1316 AD) wrote the "Stele of the Great Yuan Imperial Edict Bestowing the Great Heaven of Wudang Mountain - Zhenqing Wanshou Palace", recording that it "provided disaster relief and protection against disasters, predicted fortune and misfortune, and was a deity of the time." At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, Wudang was plagued by military disasters and thus traveled around the north and south. "Beyond 汘 long in the west and beyond Yinshan in the north," he visited the Taoist Quanzhen and obtained the inner elixir method. He returned in the twelfth year of the Zhiyuan era (1275 AD). Fellow practitioner Wang Zhenchang led his disciples to establish Taoist temples such as the Five Dragon Palace and the Zixiao Palace. When the Taoist temple was restored, he alone gathered thatched cottages and built a hermitage near the Southern Rock at Zixiao Rock to practice. When the imperial court heard that Gao Ming was invited to the capital, he himself admitted that he had no ability and thus thanked and rejected him. At the age of eighty, he still treats patients from time to time. The medical technique is unique: Just by applying red ink dots on a piece of paper and having the patient take it, they are immediately cured. It is unknown whether it is a talisman technique or an inner strength. Lu Dayou took over a hundred disciples in Wudang and all of them achieved success. Only one of his disciples, Zhang Shouqing, later became the most renowned. In the first month of spring in the 22nd year of Zhiyuan (1285), Lu Dayou passed away without illness. He passed away in his eighties. The "General True Collection of the Blessed Land of Wudang" records that "On the day of enlightenment, his face was as youthful as a child's, and it can be known that he had achieved enlightenment."