Tàishàng xuándū miàoběn qīngjìng shēnxīn jīng 太上玄都妙本清靜身心經
Scripture of the Marvellous Root of the Pure Calm of Body and Mind, from the Capital of Mystery of the Most High
Táng Daoist dàshèng 大乘 scripture on the recovery of original purity of body and mind, six folios, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0035 / CT 35), 洞真部 本文類
About the work
A six-folio Táng Daoist scripture on the recovery of the miàoběn 妙本 (“marvellous root”) of the purity of body and mind. The revelation is set at the Xuándū 玄都 (“Capital of Mystery”) — the celestial counterpart of the imperial capital, the standard Táng locus of Daoist scripture-revelations — in the Yuányáng shàngguān 元陽上觀 (“Primordial-Yáng Superior Abbey”) within the Qībǎo huālín 七寶華林. Yuánshǐ tiānzūn 元始天尊, styled the Dà cí bēi zhě 大慈悲者 (“Worthy of Great Compassion”), expounds the “reversal” (diāndǎo 顛倒) of the correct nature and the method for recovering original purity. Two zhēnrén 真人 interlocutors ask successive questions: the Fǎjiè zhēnrén 法解真人 — on how to perform the salvific ritual; and a second zhēnrén — on how the “borrowed” (jiǎyǒu 假有) body of deluded humans may participate in salvation. Yuánshǐ answers with a prescribed monthly ritual (ten times per month, sitting in the Pure Chamber, reviewing the body’s and heart’s filthinesses, then washing with the fǎxiāng tāng 法香湯 and the jìngguān 靜觀 incense of quiet contemplation) and with the central Mahāyāna-Daoist doctrine that xìngxiàng 性相 (nature and characteristics) are empty and that yīshèng 一乘 (the Single Vehicle) is the comprehensive path.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens with the Xuándū revelation-scene and proceeds through the two question-and-answer exchanges.
Abstract
John Lagerwey, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:542–543 (§2.B.7, Língbǎo), assigns the scripture to the Táng on the basis of its developed Buddhist-Daoist rhetoric of yīshèng, xìngxiàng, jiǎyǒu, and sāmdhi (shédìng 攝定) — all characteristic Táng Mahāyāna-Daoist vocabulary — and its Xuándū revelation-frame. The frontmatter brackets composition notBefore 618 (opening of Táng) / notAfter 907 (close of Táng), with dynasty 唐.
No author is attributed; no persons are listed in the catalog meta. The Fǎjiě zhēnrén is the scripture’s fictional Mahāyāna-style interlocutor.
Translations and research
No translation or dedicated study is known. Standard scholarly entry: John Lagerwey, “Taishang xuandu miaoben qingjing shenxin jing,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.B.7, 542–543. For the wider Táng Mahāyāna-Daoist scripture-genre: Livia Kohn, Early Chinese Mysticism (Princeton, 1992); Sunayama Minoru 砂山稔, Zui-Tō Dōkyō shisōshi 隋唐道教思想史 (Hirakawa shuppansha, 1990).
Other points of interest
The scripture’s programmatic xuándū (“Capital of Mystery”) revelation-frame is shared with a cluster of Táng Mahāyāna-Daoist scriptures that locate the revelation in the celestial imperial capital rather than in the Língbǎo Dàfútáng guó 大福堂國 or the Shàngqīng Yùqīng jìng 玉清境 — a distinct revelation-topography whose development through the Táng reflects the increasing bureaucratic idiom of late-Táng Daoist scripture-composition.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0035
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.B.7, 542–543 — DZ 35 entry (John Lagerwey).