Wùzhēn piān zhùshì 悟真篇註釋
Explication of the Essay on Awakening to Truth
by 張伯端 (root text, 1075), with commentary by 翁葆光 (註, fl. 1173); compiled by 戴起宗 (postface 1336)
About the work
A three-juàn variant version of the Wēng Bǎoguāng 翁葆光 commentary on the Wùzhēn piān 悟真篇, distinct from the eight-juàn recension preserved in [[KR5a0142|DZ 141 Zǐyáng zhēnrén Wùzhēn piān zhùshū]]; preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0145 / CT 145 = TC 145), 洞真部 玉訣類. Compiled by Dài Qǐzōng 戴起宗 and described by him in a postface dated 1336 (cf. [[KR5a0144|DZ 143 Sānchéng bìyào]] 22b). Following Wēng’s reading, the editor divides the Wùzhēn piān into three juàn keyed to the three operative phases of the work — the gathering of the elixir (qiángbīng zhànshèng 強兵戰勝), the running of the cycle (fùguó ān mín 富國安民), and the nine-year bào yī 抱一 — with an introductory essay (Sānchéng bìyào lùn 三乘秘要論) at the head of each chapter; the third juàn is devoted to a long alchemical poem by Zhāng Bóduān entitled Dú Zhōuyì cāntóng qì 讀周易參同契. The Buddhist-themed poems separately collected in [[KR5a0145|DZ 144 Wùzhēn piān shíyí]] are not included here.
Prefaces
The Daozang witness opens with the preface of Zǐxūzǐ 子虛子 (the editorial pseudonym; the Wùzhēn piān zhùshì xù 悟真篇註釋序), unsigned and undated. The preface recounts that Zǐyáng zhēnrén Zhāng Bóduān, formerly Bóduān 伯端 zì Píngshū 平叔, of Tiāntái 天台, in early life befriended the editor’s grandfather at the Imperial Academy (Bìyōng 辟雍) but failed the jìnshì; he came to read Buddhist scriptures, was suddenly enlightened by the “striking-bamboo” episode (jīzhú zhī gǎn 擊竹之感), penetrated the zhēnkōng qīngjìng xìng hǎi 真空清淨性海, and at last received the inner-alchemical instructions of the Qīngchéng zhàngrén 青城丈人 at Chéngdū. He composed the Wùzhēn piān — the title meaning “the awakening to the True of nature and life” (xìng mìng zhī zhēn 性命之真) — first leading students through nèidān and only then closing the work with Chán-style verses, “lest those who know only of cultivating life should fail to exhaust nature.” The text was widely transmitted but in many corrupted recensions; the editor obtained the right text from the Lù 陸 family — Lù Sīchéng 陸思誠 — and corrected the work, “now perceiving for the first time the original ordering of the zhēnrén’s composition.” The editor mounts a sustained polemic against the rival commentator Yè Wénshū 葉文叔, whose Wùzhēn piān wàizhuàn 悟真篇外傳 had imposed a Tàijí / Dàyǎn numerological apparatus on the poem, mistaking the firing-of-the-cycle for the elixir itself; against this the present editor, “without fearing the wrath of Heaven, openly discloses the heavenly mechanism” by dividing the work explicitly into three juàn corresponding to the gathering of gold, the running of the fire, and the entry into formlessness. Signed Wúmíngzǐ 無名子 (the pseudonym standing here for Wēng Bǎoguāng’s editorial persona).
Abstract
According to Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:820 (§3.A.4, Nèidān and Yǎngshēng), the present text is described in Dài Qǐzōng’s 1336 postface (preserved in [[KR5a0144|DZ 143 Sānchéng bìyào]] 22b) as having been preceded by a short preface by Zǐxūzǐ 子虛子 — that preface being the same that opens the present edition (preface 4a is shorter and quite different from the preface preserved in DZ 141 10b, and is undated, whereas the DZ 141 version is dated 1173). The numerical order of the Wùzhēn piān poems in the present work differs from that in all other commentaries; the biéběn 別本 referred to once at 7.7b coincides with the Xuē Dàoguāng commentary in [[KR5a0143|DZ 142 Wùzhēn piān sānzhù]] 4.11a. Dài Qǐzōng identified this version as a “separate edition” (biéběn) — that is, an alternative recension of Wēng Bǎoguāng’s commentary, prepared (per his testimony) by Wēng himself but in a different organisation from the one transmitted in the principal zhùshū recension. The frontmatter brackets composition of the received recension to 1335–1340.
Translations and research
Modern translations of the Wùzhēn piān: Thomas Cleary, Understanding Reality (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1987); Fabrizio Pregadio, Awakening to Reality (Mountain View: Golden Elixir Press, 2009). Standard scholarly entry: Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, “Wuzhen pian zhushi,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 820. See also the entries on the related Wēng-Bǎoguāng witnesses DZ 141 and DZ 143 in the same volume.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0146
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 820.