Tàiyī yuánzhēn bǎomìng chángshēng jīng 太乙元真保命長生經
Scripture of Tàiyī Yuánzhēn on Guarding Vitality and Extending Life
short two-folio Daoist incantation-and-visualisation scripture attributed to the divine speaker Tàiyī Yuánzhēn 太乙元真, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0046 / CT 46), 洞真部 本文類
About the work
A short two-folio Daoist bǎomìng 保命 (“guarding vitality”) scripture framed as the pronouncement of Tàiyī Yuánzhēn 太乙元真 (“The True Origin of the Grand Unity”). The scripture opens with the doctrinal couplet jī yáng wéi shén, jī yīn wéi xíng 積陽爲神、積陰爲形 (“the accumulation of yáng is spirit; the accumulation of yīn is form”), and sets the frame for an inner-alchemical meditation programme. The core of the text is an incantation whose recitation, followed by cúnxiǎng 存想 visualisations and the circulation of the vital qì and shén, ensures “the protection of your original life-force” (bǎomìng 保命) and even “eternal life” (chángshēng 長生).
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens with the divine speaker’s pronouncement.
Abstract
Marc Kalinowski’s entry in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:1242–1243 (§3.B.14, “Other Popular Cults”), treats the scripture among short incantation-and-visualisation texts and does not commit to a narrow date. The doctrinal vocabulary (jīyáng wéi shén, jīyīn wéi xíng) is consistent with late-Táng or Sòng Daoist cultivation literature; no external citation fixes the terminus ante quem. The frontmatter brackets composition broadly notBefore 900 / notAfter 1279, with dynasty 唐—宋.
No author is attributed. The divine speaker Tàiyī Yuánzhēn is a manifestation of Tàiyī 太乙, the supreme astral divinity of the Northern Heaven.
Translations and research
No translation or dedicated scholarly study. Standard scholarly entry: Marc Kalinowski, “Taiyi yuanzhen baoming changsheng jing,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.14, 1242–1243.
Other points of interest
The scripture is a compact primary example of the late-Táng / Sòng Daoist short-incantation bǎomìng literature in which an incantation text is embedded within a minimal doctrinal frame and an explicit visualisation programme — the three components together constituting a portable devotional-cultivation practice that can be undertaken without ritual-apparatus.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0046
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.14, 1242–1243 — DZ 46 entry (Marc Kalinowski).