Yuánshǐ tiānzūn shuō dédào liǎoshēn jīng 元始天尊說得道了身經
Scripture Spoken by Yuánshǐ Tiānzūn on Attaining the Way and Completing the Body
anonymous short Sòng-era nèidān 内丹 (“inner-alchemy”) Daoist scripture, one folio, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0025 / CT 25), 洞真部 本文類
About the work
A single-folio Daoist inner-alchemy scripture framed as the revelation of Yuánshǐ tiānzūn 元始天尊 at the Yùqīng shèngjìng Qīngwēi tiāngōng 玉清聖境清微天宮 (“Jade-Pure Holy Realm, Qīngwēi Heavenly Palace”), in the Yùluó xiāotái 鬱羅簫臺 (“Yùluó Pipe-Tower”). The scripture teaches dédào liǎoshēn 得道了身 (“attaining the Way and completing the body”) through a tightly-focused nèidān 内丹 practice programme: jìnkǒu dúzuò 禁口獨坐 (“stilling the mouth and sitting alone”), xǐxīn dílù 洗心滌慮 (“washing the heart and rinsing the mind”), tiáoxī miánmián 調息綿綿 (“regulating the breath smoothly”), and xìngmìng shuāngquán 性命雙全 (“completing both nature and destiny together”). The doctrinal vocabulary — sānwǔ hùndùn 三五混沌 (“fused chaos of the Three-and-Five”), zhànzhan chéngchéng yǎoyǎo míngmíng 湛湛澄澄杳杳冥冥 (reduplicative adverb cluster typical of late-Sòng nèidān verse), xíngshén jù miào yǔ dào hé zhēn 形神俱妙與道合眞 (“form and spirit together marvellous, uniting with the truth of the Way”) — places the text within the mature Sòng inner-alchemy vocabulary of the Southern Sòng Nánzōng 南宗 and its cognate Quánzhēn 全眞 schools.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The scripture opens directly with the revelation-scene and continues without transition through the nèidān instructions to the closing efficacy-promise.
Abstract
The scripture is anonymous and undated. The vocabulary is, however, diagnostic: the compound xìngmìng shuāngquán 性命雙全 and the doctrine of jù miào yǔ dào hé zhēn 俱妙與道合眞 are mature Sòng-dynasty inner-alchemy formulations not attested in the Táng short-scripture corpus; the triad jīngshénhúnpòyì 精神魂魄意 together with sānwǔ hùndùn presupposes the Cāntóng qì 參同契 and the Sòng nèidān literature built upon it. The scripture thus belongs to the Sòng, most probably the Northern or Southern Sòng. No external citation fixes the terminus ante quem more narrowly. The frontmatter accordingly brackets composition notBefore 1100 (plausible earliest Southern-Sòng nèidān-influenced context) / notAfter 1279 (fall of Southern Sòng), with dynasty 宋.
The scripture is thematically adjacent to [[KR5a0024|DZ 24 Shēngtiān dédào jīng]] (Táng) and to [[KR5a0013|DZ 13 Gāoshàng Yùhuáng xīnyìn jīng]] (Southern Sòng) — together forming the short nèidān-oriented scripture cluster at the opening of the Dòngzhēnbù běnwén section.
Translations and research
No translation or dedicated scholarly study is known. The scripture is catalogued in the Dàozàng jíyào 道藏輯要 as JY011, directly following JY010 Shēngtiān dédào jīng. No separate entry appears in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004). For the Sòng nèidān vocabulary in which the scripture is written, see Fabrizio Pregadio, The Seal of the Unity of the Three (Golden Elixir Press, 2011), and Isabelle Robinet, Introduction à l’alchimie intérieure taoïste (Cerf, 1995).
Other points of interest
The scripture is a compact exemplar of the Sòng-era re-authoring of short Daoist scriptures under the nèidān doctrinal rubric: an earlier Táng genre of “scripture of ascent to heaven” has been rewritten with internal-alchemy vocabulary, the ritual apparatus stripped, and the practice-programme recast as a sitting-meditation regime. The title dédào liǎoshēn itself (“attaining the Way and completing the body”) is a deliberate Sòng contrast to the earlier shēngtiān dédào (“rising to heaven by attaining the Way”): the soteriological geography has been internalised.