Xuéxiān biànzhēn jué 學仙辨真訣
Instructions for Discerning Truth in the Study of Immortality
Anonymous Northern-Sòng treatise on theoretical alchemy, copied in the same Dàozàng fascicle as [[KR5a0140|DZ 139 Tàishàng dòngzhēn níngshén xiūxíng jīng jué]].
About the work
A six-folio anonymous treatise on the theoretical foundations of jīnyè huándān 金液還丹 (“the cyclically-transformed elixir of liquefied gold”), preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0138 / CT 138 = TC 138), 洞真部 玉訣類. The work is built around a five-section discrimination of the true ingredients of the elixir — biàn zhēn 辨真 (“discerning the truth”), biàn bǎo 辨寶 (“discerning the jewel”), biàn shuǐyín 辨水銀 (“discerning the liquid silver”), biàn gǒng 辨汞 (“discerning the mercury”), and a tōng biàn 通辯 (“comprehensive discrimination”) — followed by a Zǐmǔ gē 子母歌 (“Song of the Mother and Child”) with interlinear commentary. The author, anchoring himself in the Jīnbì cāntóng qì 金碧參同契 tradition and citing Táo Hóngjǐng’s Huánjīn shù 還金術 (see DZ 922), insists that the alchemical qiān 鉛 (“lead”), gǒng 汞 (“mercury”), zhēn yī 真一 (“true unity”), jīn 金 (“gold”), and shuǐyín 水銀 (“liquid silver”) are not the common substances of the same names — repudiating, in particular, the misidentification of gǒng with the mercury of cinnabar and of qiān with mineral lead.
Prefaces
The work opens with a brief authorial preamble in lieu of a formal preface: “Whoever wishes to return to the root and recover the simple, to summon back the soul and revert to the source, to live long and secure the foundation, can find no better method than the art of liquefied gold; whoever obtains it flourishes, whoever loses it perishes. The True Persons hold it as their supreme mystery, and it is not to be glimpsed by ordinary men. Without long discipline and sincere intent, none of its essential matter — kept locked in the Jīnbì cāntóng qì — will be obtained, for without the personal oral instruction of an adept the seeker is like a man without a vessel attempting to cross the great sea. Master Zuǒ once met an adept and was given the secret essentials, and only then did he know that the highest Way is in fact most simple and its sayings most direct: this is a heavenly mechanism, never to be openly disclosed. I shall therefore briefly set forth in five chapters of Discrimination of the True what I have obtained, by way of clarifying the true and the false.”
Abstract
The work is mentioned for the first time in the Sòngshǐ 宋史, Yìwén zhì 藝文志 4.5198 (see Van der Loon 159); it is fundamentally an explication of [[KR5a0922|DZ 922 Huánjīn shù]] of Táo Zhì 陶埴 (d. 825). The five-section structure is followed by a poem entitled Zǐmǔ gē 子母歌 (Song of the Mother and Child); this poem was widely known by the end of the twelfth century — Wēng Bǎoguāng 翁葆光 cites it (see [[KR5a0142|DZ 141 Zǐyáng zhēnrén Wùzhēn piān zhùshū]] 4.15a and [[KR5a0146|DZ 145 Wùzhēn piān zhùshì]] 2.20b) — and was attributed elsewhere to Zhōnglí Quán 鍾離權 (cf. [[KR5c1258|DZ 1258 Zhū zhēn nèidān jíyào]] 1.1b, where it is called Huándān gē 還丹歌). The author’s own preface, however, mentions only the five paragraphs and does not speak of the poem and its commentary, which may have been added at a later stage. Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:851 (§3.A.5, Alchemy), accordingly assigns the body of the treatise to the Northern Sòng (960–1127). The frontmatter brackets composition notBefore 960 / notAfter 1127.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, “Xuexian bianzhen jue,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.5, 851.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0139
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.5, 851.