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106 T H E ENCYCLOPE DI A OF TAO ISM VOL. I

of rules, was applied in one notorious instance in 1946, when the last prior
of the *Baiyun guan (Abbey of the White Clouds) in Beijing, An Shilin 121!1:
~ , was condemned to death by a council of twelve monks and burned in the
great courtyard.
The constraints of Taoist monasticism were as sharp as their ideal was
lofty. No more than twenty large monasteries have existed during the modern
period; most Taoists monks and nuns lived in small temples or travelled, and
came to the larger establishments for training and monastic ordination. Under
the Longmen system, which has dominated Taoist monasteries since the
mid-seventeenth century, ordinands stay one hundred days (later reduced to
fifty-three at the Baiyun guan) at a "public" monastery that hosts an ordination
platform, and follow a very intensive and demanding course of preparation
under specific rules.
Vincent GOOSSAERT

m Goossaert 1997, 259-301; Goossaert 2004; Hackmann 1919- 20; Kohn 2001;
Kohn 2004a; Kohn 2004b; Tsuzuki Akiko 2002

* jie [precepts]; ETHICS AND MORALS ; MONASTICISM ; ORDINATION AND
PRIESTHOOD

Temples and shrines

To study Taoist temples and shrines is to raise the question of the relationship
between Taoism and Chinese religion. This relationship is a topic of scholarly
debate; some see Taoism as the written expression of popular cults, while others
see it as an elite tradition that formed as a reaction against those very cults.
Actually, these views need not contradict each other. Most Chinese temples
and shrines devoted to the cults of local deities or saints were never controlled
by any established religion, neither Taoist, Buddhist, nor Confucian.
Early communal Taoism-the Way of the Celestial Masters (*Tianshi
dao )-was for theological reasons strongly opposed to local cults, which it
saw as dangerous and eventually destructive pacts with demons, and thus it
actively supported their suppression. The Celestial Masters also permitted,
however, limited forms of certain cults (ancestors, domestic gods), which
suggests that those who sought to completely reform Chinese religion had to
make compromises with prevalent beliefs from very early on. The *Lingbao
revelations ushered in a greater acceptance of dealings with the dead (ancestors
and local gods all being dead people), thus rescinding the Celestial Masters'
precept that the living and the dead should not come into contact with each