Qiu Zu Ji Xizhou Daoyou Shu — Attributed to Qiu Chuji (1148–1227)
This short letter is attributed, in its own title, to Qiu Chuji (丘處機, 1148–1227), the Jin-and-Yuan-dynasty Daoist master known by his religious name Changchun zi ("Master of Eternal Spring") and remembered as founder of the Dragon Gate (Longmen) lineage of Quanzhen Daoism. It is preserved in the Daoist Canon; no volume or catalogue number for it was found among the materials consulted in preparing this translation. Its addressees are named only as "Daoist friends of Xizhou" — a place the letter does not otherwise identify; readers may notice that Qiu's own westward journey of 1220–1224 passed through Central Asian territory once called by that name, but nothing in the letter confirms any such connection, and none is claimed here.
The letter is prose exhortation, not scripture or verse. Qiu writes to fellow practitioners discouraged by years of effort without visible result, offering first a parable — a man saving toward a priceless pearl he cannot yet afford — and then his own example. He names two fellow disciples of Wang Chongyang, Ma Yu ("Danyang") and Tan Chuduan ("Changzhen"), as men whose gifts from past lives carried them swiftly to freedom, and confesses that he himself, by contrast, has endured great hardship without yet "completing" the Way. The letter closes by citing a saying of "the Patriarch" — almost certainly Wang Chongyang (1113–1170), founder of the Quanzhen school and Qiu's own teacher — on accepting illness and death without resistance.
One word is worth flagging for the reader: 陰功, here "hidden merit," names good done in private, unseen even by the one who does it — the letter's reassurance to the discouraged is that such merit gathers in every sitting, lying down, standing, and walking, whether or not the mind feels any nearer to waking. One character in the source, in the sentence about the pearl, reads "sell" (賣) where the passage's own arithmetic requires "buy" (買); the two characters are easily confused in transmission, and this translation follows the sense of the passage, noted here rather than silently corrected.
Translated for the Good Works Library directly from the classical Chinese of the Daoist Canon, printed in full below the translation. To our knowledge, this is the letter's first complete published English translation.
Translation
In general, to cultivate reality and long for the Way, one must rely on accumulated practice and piled-up merit. Without a will hardened by hardship and a reverent heart, it is difficult to pass beyond the ordinary and enter the ranks of the sages. Some exert themselves within the gate of the teaching, stirring up a great deal of worldly toil; some apply their effort to the ground of the mind, casting aside worldly affairs entirely. But so long as one masters the self and keeps the mind fixed on the Way, all of it becomes a foundation for good fortune to come.
Yet the Way encompasses heaven and earth; its greatness cannot be measured, and small goodness, small merit, will in the end be hard-pressed to show any effect. To awaken to the Way in a single instant still depends on long kalpas of tempering and grinding; the sudden awakening of the one mind still must draw on the complete cultivation of ten thousand practices. Awakening to the Way in this present life is the fruit of merit laid down in past lives.
But not knowing the causes laid down in those past lives, people see only the deepening years of their hard-won resolve, without visible success, and take their toil to have been empty and vain; they grow discouraged and give up — which is truly a pity. Little do they know that in sitting, lying down, standing, and walking, if the mind abides in the Way, then even while the ground of the mind has not yet opened, hidden merit gathers in every passing moment. When merit is not yet sufficient, the Way is not yet whole.
It is like this: a man owns a great and precious bright pearl worth a million, and I wish to buy it from him. Though my money is not yet enough, I must, day and night, manage my affairs, spend frugally and search diligently, gathering wealth together — three thousand, then five thousand, or thirty thousand, then fifty thousand — and still, however much the sum, it falls short, and the pearl is not yet mine. Even so, the wealth gathered along the way can serve some urgent need in the meantime. Set beside a household in utter poverty, the gap is as wide as that between cloud and mud — and it is the same for one who accumulates practice and piles up merit. Though the Way is not yet attained, one's roots of goodness run deep, and in this life and lives to come the sages and worthies will lift and guide, until full realization is reached.
I myself have no bones of a destined past. Though I met an enlightened master, I have endured a thousand hardships and ten thousand pains, and to this day have not yet completed it. Danyang and Changzhen both had affinities carried from past lives, so that within ten years — or even five — they soared beyond the heavens, free and unhindered. Though I myself have not yet completed it, the hardships I have borne are also unlike those of ordinary people.
The Patriarch said: "One who practices the Way of non-action first relinquishes his household, and afterward relinquishes his very body. When sickness comes, let him be sick; when death comes, let him die. At the one final juncture of death, let him embrace the Way and pass away, leaving all to Heaven's judgment." This is the utmost saying. Let students examine it closely.
Colophon
This Good Works Translation was prepared for the Daoist shelf of the Good Works Library. The English was translated independently from the classical Chinese text printed below. The letter's own two paragraphs are kept as two units of content and in their original order; within each, this translation adds paragraph breaks at natural sentence boundaries for readability in English, since the source itself runs each half as one continuous block of prose.
Before the claim below was written, a genuine translation-status check was performed. The two local bibliographies of Daoist texts in Western-language translation compiled for this project — Komjathy's Daoist Texts in Translation and the 2023 Purple Cloud survey of Daoist texts in Western languages — were searched under the letter's Chinese title, under 丘處機 / Qiu Chuji, and under his religious name Changchun; both list other works associated with Qiu Chuji (notably the travel record Changchun zhenren xiyou ji and the alchemical Dadan zhizhi) but neither lists this letter. Two web searches were then run, for the Chinese title and for an English-language search on Qiu Chuji's letters to Daoist companions; neither returned any trace of a published translation. To our knowledge, this is the first complete published English translation of this letter. We state this as the limit of our search, not as a certainty.
A note on two points. 陰功 is rendered "hidden merit" throughout: good done in private, unseen even by the one who does it. And one character in the pearl parable — 賣, "sell" — is translated as its near-homograph 買, "buy," which the passage's own arithmetic requires (it describes saving money toward a pearl not yet owned, which only "buy" supports); no other character in the source was altered, and 賣 is left standing in the Chinese text below exactly as transcribed. The addressees' "Xizhou" is left as a place-name in both title and translation, since this translation could not confirm which historical Xizhou is meant. No illegible or unencodable characters occurred in this source text.
Prepared for the Good Work Library by the Tianmu Anglican Church with AI-assisted translation and editorial work.
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Source Text: 丘祖寄西州道友書
Classical Chinese text of the Daoist Canon, in the Chinese Wikisource transcription. Presented complete for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above.
丘祖寄西州道友書
大抵修真慕道，須憑積行累功，若不苦志虔心，難以超凡入聖。或于教門用力，大起塵勞，或於心地下功，全拋世事。但克己存心於道，皆為致福之基。然道包天地，其大難量，小善小功卒難見效。剎那悟道，須憑長劫煉磨；頓悟一心，必假圓修萬行。今世之悟道，宿世之有功也。而不知宿世之因，只見年深苦志，不見成功，以為塵勞虛誕，即生退怠，甚可惜也。殊不知坐、臥、住、行，心存于道，雖然心地未開，時刻之間，皆有陰功積累。功之未足，則道之不全。如人有大寶明珠，價值百萬，我欲賣之，而錢雖未足，須日夜經營，儉用勤求，積聚財物，或三千、五千，或三萬、五萬，錢數未足，而寶珠未得。其積聚錢物，應急且得使用耳。比于貧窶之家，雲泥有隔，積行累功者亦然。雖未得道，其善根深重，今世後世，聖賢提挈，直至了達耳。
我無宿骨，雖遇明師，萬苦千辛，至今未了。丹陽、長真皆是宿緣，則十年、五載之間，天外飛騰自在。我雖未了，所受艱難亦與常人異耳。祖師雲：「無為道者，先舍家而後捨身。病即教他病，死即教他死。至死一著，抱道而亡，任從天斷。」斯為至言。學者其審之。
Source Colophon
The Chinese text follows the Chinese Wikisource transcription of the Daoist Canon edition of this text (article 丘祖寄西州道友書, revision of 12 July 2009), inspected from a witness copy captured on 8 August 2026. Chinese Wikisource transcriptions are published under CC BY-SA 4.0 and the GFDL; the text itself is ancient and in the public domain. The wiki header and license templates have been removed; the text is otherwise complete and unaltered.
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