Bǎoshēng xīnjiàn 保生心鑑
Heart-Mirror for Preserving Life by 鐵峰居士 Tiěfēng jūshì (“the Lay Practitioner of Iron-Peak”), of Gǔ Nánshā 古南沙 — pseudonymous early-Míng yǎngshēng compiler.
About the work
A one-juan illustrated dǎoyǐn and yǎngshēng manual containing 32 figures depicting cultivational postures and seasonal-cosmological diagrams. The opening xù outlines a deliberate historical-pedagogical project: the author identifies the Tàiyǐ 太乙 era as the origin of xiūyǎng (cultivation) and the Yīnkāng 陰康 era as the origin of dǎoyǐn, and laments their decay over millennia. He then narrates his encounter with the 聖賢保修通鑑 Shèngxián bǎoxiū tōngjiàn (“Comprehensive Mirror of the Sages and Worthies’ Methods of Preservation”) in autumn of Hóngzhì yǐchǒu = 1505, of which he secretly transcribed an outline. After successful self-experimentation, he supplemented the work with materials from the Yuèlìng 月令 tradition and from ancient medical classics, “corrected the errors and supplemented the abbreviations,” and added the eight figures from the 活人心書 Huórén xīn shū (the Huórén xīnfǎ tradition), making a total of 32 illustrated figures. The work is signed Zhèngdé bǐngyín chūnwángzhèngyuè 正德丙寅春王正月 = 1506 first lunar month.
Prefaces
Two prefaces are transmitted. The principal xù (dated 1506) lays out the program above. A second internal xù — Tàiqīng èrshísì qì shuǐhuǒ jùsàn tú xù 太清二十四氣水火聚散圖序 — introduces the work’s Twenty-Four Solar-Term (二十四節氣) water-fire convergence diagrams, arguing the priority of dǎoyǐn over yàoshí 藥石: “The Tàiqīng three-fold canon — clearly, clearly, and forest-thick — only takes its master as dǎoyǐn, and does not speak of drugs and minerals — how is it because they hold the dwellers of mountains and ponds as form-of-clay-and-wood? — No, not so. Drugs have authenticity and counterfeit, natures have contradictions and errors; the disease may be expelled but the poison remains, or [the person] is exposed to the changes of cold-and-warmth, or by reason of contradictory food-and-drink generates other diseases, to the point of death — these occur. Therefore the xiāndào does not take drugs and minerals, but values dǎoyǐn. — The highest dǎoyǐn practises the no-disease [stage]; the middle practises the not-yet-diseased; the lower practises the [stage in which]…”
Abstract
The work is one of the principal early-Míng illustrated dǎoyǐn manuals — a small but consequential genre that visually encodes posture sequences for cultivation. Its 32-figure illustrated content places it alongside (and methodologically intermediate between) the Yuán-era Sānyuán cānzàn yánshòu shū 三元參贊延壽書 (KR3eo012) with its two illustrative diagrams and the late-Míng 修真圖 Xiūzhēn tú tradition (which crystallised in Chóngzhēn-era recensions). The borrowing of the Huórén xīnfǎ eight-figure sequence — likely sourced from the Korean 李翯 Lǐ Hè (Yi Hwang)–tradition Sòng yǎngshēng manual — places the Bǎoshēng xīnjiàn in the Wànlì-era informational economy of cross-East-Asian yǎngshēng texts.
The pseudonym Tiěfēng jūshì (“Lay Practitioner of Iron-Peak”) of Gǔ Nánshā 古南沙 (likely Shāzhōu 沙洲, modern Chángshú in Jiāngsū) has not been firmly identified with any historical figure. The dating bracket 1505–1506 reflects (i) the Hóngzhì yǐchǒu (1505) date at which the author first encountered the source-text and (ii) the Zhèngdé bǐngyín (1506) date of his own preface.
Translations and research
- Catherine Despeux, Taoïsme et corps humain: le Xiuzhen tu (Paris: Guy Trédaniel, 1994).
- Livia Kohn, Chinese Healing Exercises: The Tradition of Daoyin (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008).
- 馬繼興, 《Zhōng-yī yǎng-shēng tú-jiě* 中醫養生圖解 (Běijīng, 1995).
- Lo Vivienne and Stanley-Baker, Yangsheng and Self-cultivation in China (forthcoming).
Other points of interest
The argument of the Tàiqīng èrshísì qì preface — that drugs are unreliable on account of their adulteration, their constitutional contraindications, and their potential to provoke iatrogenic illness, whereas dǎoyǐn practice is intrinsically safe — is one of the more cogent early-Míng formulations of the anti-pharmaceutical wing of the yǎngshēng tradition.