Shangqing (Highest Clarity)
A tradition no longer extant within Taoism. The disagreements in the sources are shown rather than settled.
Shangqing (Highest Clarity) is recorded within Taoism and is no longer extant. Also written 上清, Upper Clarity, Maoshan school (Mount Mao), Supreme Purity.
Origin
Founders named in the sources: Yang Xi (330–c. 386), recipient of the revelations, Tao Hongjing (456–536), compiler and systematiser. Founding date given as 364–370 CE. The Stanford Encyclopedia dates the Shangqing revelations to 364–370 CE, received near present-day Nanjing; its principal scripture is the Dadong zhenjing (True Book of the Great Cavern). Bokenkamp names Yang Xi (330–c. 386) as revelator and Tao Hongjing (456–536) as compiler. Practice was individual and visionary — visualisation, breathing, physical exercises — in contrast to the collective liturgy of the Celestial Masters.
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Citation
English
The language and the date you read it belong in the citation: this corpus is multilingual and articles are revised after publication.
John Shaqi. “Shangqing (Highest Clarity).” English version. 11 August 2026. https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-shangqing-highest-clarity.
@misc{johnshaqi-sect-shangqing-highest-clarity-en,
author = {John Shaqi},
title = {Shangqing (Highest Clarity)},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {English version},
url = {https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-shangqing-highest-clarity},
note = {Accessed n.d.}
}The word count is counted from this edition. The minute estimate uses 238 words a minute, the silent reading rate for English non-fiction reported by Brysbaert (2019). The Urdu, Hindi and Roman Urdu editions carry a word count and no estimate, because no comparable rate has been published for those scripts.