Zǐyáng zhēnrén Wùzhēn piān shíyí 紫陽真人悟真篇拾遺
Supplement to the Essay on Zǐyáng Zhēnrén’s Awakening to Truth
by 張伯端 (撰)
About the work
An eleven-folio collection of thirty-two Buddhist-themed poems by Zhāng Bóduān 張伯端 (984–1082), Zǐyáng zhēnrén 紫陽真人, presented as a supplement to his Wùzhēn piān 悟真篇 (1075). Preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0144 / CT 144 = TC 144), 洞真部 玉訣類. The collection bears the subtitle Chánzōng gēsòng shīqū záyán 禪宗歌頌詩曲雜言 (“Songs, Hymns, Poems, Tunes and Miscellaneous Verse of the Chán School”) — including a sequence of six Xìngdì sòng 性地頌 (“Hymns on the Nature-Ground”), short topical pieces on Wúzuì fú 無罪福, Sānjiè wéi xīn 三界唯心, Jiàn wù biàn jiàn xīn 見物便見心, Yuántōng 圓通, Bǎoyuè 寶月, the Xīnjīng sòng 心經頌, Rénwǒ 人我 (also called Qíwù 齊物), readings of Chán predecessors (the Zǔyīng jí 祖英集 of Xuědòu 雪竇), the Jièdìnghuì jiě 戒定慧解 (an essay on the three Buddhist disciplines), the Cǎi zhū gē 採珠歌, the Chándìng zhǐmí gē 禪定指迷歌 (a long gē), the Wúxīn sòng 無心頌, and twelve Xījiāng yuè 西江月 lyrics on points of Buddhist philosophy and practice.
Prefaces
The text opens with a brief authorial preamble: this collection is appended to the Wùzhēn piān lest students of the Way, supposing that nèidān alone is the path, fail to penetrate the doctrine of innate nature. Even those who, “of the ten kinds of immortals,” cultivate mind firmly and refine essence may, “after eons,” still scatter back into the destinies. Hence Maitreya in his Vajracchedikā hymn says, “Even if you live a million eons, in the end you fall into emptiness and ruin.” The Wùzhēn piān therefore begins by leading students through the nèidān arteries (shénxiān mìng mài 神仙命脉) into the cultivation of vital force, then broadens the scope through the wondrous applications of the Buddhas, and finally bequeaths the Suchness-Awakened-Nature (zhēnrú jué xìng 真如覺性) so as to dispel illusion and return the practitioner to the source of ultimate quiescent emptiness.
Abstract
The Shíyí is mentioned in Zhāng Bóduān’s preface to the Wùzhēn piān itself (1075) as comprising thirty-two Chán-flavoured poems, and is also included in [[KR5c0263|DZ 263 Xiūzhēn shíshū]] 26.30.1a–12a under the title Chánzōng gēsòng 禪宗歌頌; the present Daozang recension carries the subtitle Chánzōng gēsòng shīqū záyán (per Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon [2004] 2:819, §3.A.4, Nèidān and Yǎngshēng). Although in his preamble Zhāng explicitly grounds the work in his nèidān programme, the body of the text is a programmatic statement of three-teaching syncretism: Chán-style language (“the body has from the start a precious round-bright pearl”; “all dharmas are originally without dharma”; “xìng and xiāng are mind itself”) is woven with the Daoist insistence that xìng without mìng leaves the spirit unembodied. The Wùzhēn piān shíyí is thus among the earliest documents of explicit Chán-Daoist nèidān fusion in the Sòng. The frontmatter dates the work to Zhāng’s Wùzhēn piān programme, that is, to the period 1075–1082 (Wùzhēn piān preface 1075; Zhāng’s death 1082).
Translations and research
Selected poems are translated in Thomas Cleary, Understanding Reality: A Taoist Alchemical Classic (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1987), and Fabrizio Pregadio, Awakening to Reality (Mountain View: Golden Elixir Press, 2009). Standard scholarly entry: Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, “Ziyang zhenren Wuzhen pian shiyi,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 819. On Zhāng Bóduān’s Chán-Daoist syncretism see Isabelle Robinet, “Original Contributions of Neidan to Taoism and Chinese Thought,” in Livia Kohn ed., Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1989), 297–330.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0145
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 819.