Seven Taoist Masters: A Folk Novel of China (in progress)

[js_thrill]

One book I’ve been slowly reading is “Seven Taoist Masters: A Folk Novel of China”.

Kate got it for me a couple holidays ago as a gift, knowing my interest in Taoism.

I am 8 chapters in (out of 28) and it is sort of a fascinating book in that, if this hadn’t been presented as “a novel about these seven people achieving self-mastery by Taoist sages”, it would 1000% read, so far, like a story about a charlatan establishing a cult.

The main master, and instructor of the other seven, Wang Ch’ung Yang, commences his journey to enlightenment because he had a vision at/of a nearby mountain. In order to cultivate himself he deceives his spouse and family and pretends to be ill so that he can have solitude. He then goes out in search of students (abandoning his family), and encounters a couple, Ma Yü and Sun Yüan-Chen, who are worthy of being his disciples. But only if they sign over all their wealth and family property to him.

It is one thing to have a spiritual leader say “you need to divest yourself of material possessions to pursue this course”; it is another thing to have them say “actually you need to formally sign all your wealth and property over to me, so I can use it to build a spiritual retreat/school, and to require them to formally and legally arrange the transfer rather than, as they initially offer, letting him use the funds without transferring them.

The couple then creates an elaborate lie to get the transfer done with the approval of the couple’s other relatives, claiming the transfer is temporary and related to the husband’s ill health. Immediately upon getting the transfer done, the Master then creates some charitable activity to create the impression that he is just a custodian of the couple’s wealth, and then the couple decide that instead of husband and wife, they will be brother and sister in the Tao.

If you’ve watched literally any documentaries about cults and how they operate, it is impossible not to parse virtually every part of this as red flags!

Anyway, I am curious to see where the narrative goes but it doesn’t seem like a manual for cultivating one’s virtues, on the face of it.