Shàngqīng wòzhōng jué 上清握中訣
Shàngqīng Instructions to Be Kept in Hand
attributed to 陶弘景
About the work
A three-juàn condensed manual of Shàngqīng 上清 meditation, ritual, and astral practice, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0140 / CT 140 = TC 140), 洞真部 玉訣類. The text is composed largely of methods for the visualisation of stellar deities and their absorption into the body’s organs (nèi guān 內觀): pacing the Northern Dipper (bù gāng 步綱), facing the Four Quadrants (cháo sì jí 朝四極), audience at the constellations of the Three Terraces (Sāntái 三台) and Five Planets (Wǔ xīng 五星), absorbing seasonal stellar energies into the corresponding viscera, and reciting the associated incantations. The 提綱 of the title — “kept in hand” (wòzhōng 握中) — signals a practitioner’s vade-mecum: a portable digest of essential techniques.
Prefaces
No preface in the source; the text opens directly with the practice (the head of juàn 1 marks an 闕文, indicating loss of an opening passage).
Abstract
According to Ursula-Angelika Cedzich in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:628–629 (§2.B.8 Dòngzhēn Division), the work corresponds to a Wòzhōng jué listed in Sòng-dynasty bibliographical sources, but there is no proof of the existence of a book of this title before the Táng (618–907); references to a Wòzhōng jué in [[KR5a0446|DZ 446 Shàngqīng zhòngjīng zhū zhēnshèng bì]] 7.1b–5a, moreover, point to a far more voluminous original than the text now preserved. The ascription to Táo Hóngjǐng 陶弘景 (456–536) seems to derive from a biography of uncertain date, quoted in Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽 666.1b, according to which Sūn Tāo 孫韜 and Huán Kǎi 桓闓 — both disciples of Táo — received from the master “secret instructions to be kept in hand” (wòzhōng bìjué 握中祕訣). The present text bears close resemblance to Táo’s confirmed [[KR5b0105|DZ 421 Dēngzhēn yǐnjué]] (e.g. compare 1.3a–11b of that work with 3.1a–2b of ours): the degree of correspondence, in both root text and commentary, is best explained as extensive borrowing rather than as common authorship — that is, the Wòzhōng jué is a condensed Sòng-era remake of Táo’s Dēngzhēn yǐnjué. Its contents include excerpts from [[KR5a1316|DZ 1316 Dòngzhēn shàngqīng tàiwēi dìjūn bù tiāngāng fēi dìjì jīnjiǎn yùzì shàngjīng]] (1.1a–4a, opening lost), methods transmitted in [[KR5a1016|DZ 1016 Zhēn’gào]] 9–10 and [[KR5b0105|DZ 421 Dēngzhēn yǐnjué]] 2, and excerpts from the biographies of Sū Lín 蘇林, the Máo brothers 茅氏三君, Wáng Bāo 王褒 (3.7b–9b; cf. [[KR5a0424|DZ 424 Shàngqīng míngtáng yuánzhēn jīngjué]]), and Wèi Huácún 魏華存 (3.10a–b; cf. DZ 421 3.1a, 3.23b–27b). The frontmatter accordingly brackets composition of the received recension to the Northern Sòng (960–1127); the Táo Hóngjǐng attribution is followed only as a traditional one, contradicted by both the catalog history and the textual evidence.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Ursula-Angelika Cedzich, “Shangqing wozhong jue,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.B.8.c.3 (Encyclopedias), 628–629. On Táo Hóngjǐng and the Shàngqīng tradition see Michel Strickmann, Le taoïsme du Mao Chan: Chronique d’une révélation (Paris, 1981); Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures (Berkeley, 1997).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0141
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.B.8.c.3, 628–629.