It originated in the Taoist Tao Te Ching that has similar characteristics to the Ancient Chinese term Jūnzǐ (君子) that appears in the early Confucian classics.
This modern character 真 appears to derive from wu 兀 "stool" under zhi 直 "straight", but the ancient 眞 has hua 匕 (a reduced variant of 化) "upside-down person; transformation" at the top, rather than shi 十 "10".
Xu Shen's Shuowen Jiezi (122 CE), the first Chinese dictionary of characters, gives small seal script and "ancient text" forms of zhen 眞, noting origins in Taoism.
[5] Duan Yucai's Shuowen commentary (1815 CE) confirms that zhen originally depicted a Taoist zhenren and was semantically extended to mean cheng 誠 "sincere; honest; true; actual; real".
The second set of words basically mean ding 頂 "crown (of head); top; tip; summit; prop up; fall down".
[6] Tōdō envisions that the original "upside-down zhenren" ideograph pictured a sacrificial victim zhen 眞 "falling into; fitting into" a burial pit being tian 塡 "filled in", and proposes an etymon of *TEN "full; stuffed" (expanding upon Duan Yucai's examples above).
The first time we encounter zhen in the Inner Chapters [see Zhuangzi 2 below] is in the context of the flux and interrelatedness of life and death, where "genuineness" is something ever-present, yet without any apprehensible fixed "identity".
The True Man of ancient times slept without dreaming and woke without care; he ate without savoring and his breath came from deep inside.
This was the True Man of old: his bearing was lofty and did not crumble; he appeared to lack but accepted nothing; he was dignified in his correctness but not insistent; he was vast in his emptiness but not ostentatious.
One Huainanzi chapter uses zhenren to describe a spiritual state in which "closing the four senses" results in one's jing 精 "essence" and shen 神 "spirit" returning to the ultimate Daoist zhen 真 "truth".
The spirit fills the eye, so he sees clearly; it is present in the ear, so he hears acutely; it abides in the mouth, and so the person's words are with wisdom; it accumulates in the mind, so his thoughts are penetrative.
Drifting aimlessly, they led the ghosts and spirits and ascended the Nine Heavens, where they paid court to the Lord as the Sacred Gate and remained reverently silent in the presence of the Great Ancestor.
(6)[18] A third Huainanzi chapter contains what Le Blanc considers "the locus classicus for the True Man's ability to return to the origin."
The True Man is he who has not yet begun to differentiate himself from the Great Unity (wei shih fen yu t'ai-yi che 未始分於太一者).
But in periods of imminent chaos (the clash of darkness and light, of Yin and Yang) the True Man suddenly manifests world-shaking power (universal resonance) and completely overwhelms his detractors.
Our only fear is lest, wishing to gaze our fill at all the beauties of this one life, and to exhaust all the pleasures of the present years, the repletion of the belly should prevent us from drinking what our palate delights in, or the slackening of our strength not allow us to revel with pretty women.
Real people embody this through open emptiness, even easiness, clear cleanness, flexible yielding, unadulterated purity, and plain simplicity, not getting mixed up in things.
Movements of alchemy, life-prolonging techniques, and the quest for "immortality" flourished, yet most mystical allusions remained firmly ground in the Zhuangzi.
Chinese Buddhists adapted zhenren 真人 as an early translation for the loanword arahant or arhat,[29][30] a "worthy one" who has destroyed the afflictions and causes of future rebirth.
[32] The oldest example is the Tang dynasty (c. 649) Buddhist dictionary Yiqiejing yinyi "Pronunciation and Meaning in the Tripitaka", edited by Xuan Ying 玄應.
The term wúwèi zhēnrén 無位真人, "true man with no rank," was coined by the Tang era Chan master, Linji Yixuan, to refer to the Buddha-mind.
Tathata "thusness, suchness, the unconditioned, unchanging reality" is Chinese zhenru 真如 (Japanese, shinnyo) "true resemblance".
Beginning around the end of the 1st century BCE, says Miura, "the idea spread that a zhenren who had received the Heavenly Mandate (tianming 天命) would appear to renew the world.
It records that the "First Emperor" Qin Shi Huang (r. 221–210 BCE) was fascinated with the immortality of the xian and decided to call himself zhenren rather than the homophonous Chinese honorific zhen 朕 "(imperial) I, we".
This meaning is expressed in the idiom zhengren mian qian bu shuo jia 真人面前不說假 "don't tell lies in front of a true/honest person".
Among Traditional Chinese star names, Zhenren 真人 is a literary reference to Gamma Ursae Majoris, near the Big Dipper.
Etymologically, "genuine" comes from the Latin genuinus, "natural," which is akin to gignere, to beget (possibly an alteration of ingenuus, native, or freeborn), and thus connotes a processionality necessary to any Zhuangzian interpretation.
Yearley characterizes the zhenren in terms of skepticism from a "radical Zhuangzi" framework, intraworldly mysticism, centered responsiveness, the "mind as a mirror" image, subtle detachment, and viewing life as an "esthetic panorama.
Such being his basic spiritual state, the Perfect Man perceives in the whole world nothing to disturb his cosmic balance of mind, although he does notice accurately all things that happen to him and to others.
Instead, the text simply presents us with strange and unsettling, though ultimately fascinating and compelling, stories that disturb our balance and force us to adjust.