Xiūzhēn tàijí hùnyuán tú 修真太極混元圖
Diagrams on the Mystery of Ultimate and Primordial Chaos for the Cultivation of Truth
by 蕭道存 (撰)
About the work
An eighteen-folio illustrated nèidān 內丹 (“inner alchemy”) treatise of the ZhōngLǚ 鍾呂 tradition (cf. [[KR5a1192|DZ 1191 Bìchuán Zhèngyáng zhēnrén língbǎo bìfǎ]]), composed by the Northern-Sòng Daoist Xiāo Dàocún 蕭道存, hào Hùnyīzǐ 混一子, of Zhānggòng 章貢 (modern Gànzhōu, Jiāngxī). The work is preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0149 / CT 149 = TC 149), 洞真部 靈圖類, copied in the same Dàozàng fascicle as [[KR5a0151|DZ 150 Xiūzhēn tàijí hùnyuán zhǐxuán tú]] (the title page of _001.txt notes 二圖同卷, “two charts in the same juan”). The diagrams and supporting quotations illustrate the system expounded in the Xiūzhēn zhǐxuán piān 修真指玄篇 of [[KR5c1017|DZ 1017 Dàoshū]] 19.9a–22a — the theoretical order of the microcosm, the circulation and union of internal qì 氣 and yè 液, and the final transfiguration of the adept. A famous illustration shows the Ten Islands of the Blessed for visualisation in meditation, with the Purple Residence of Tàiwēi zhēnjūn 太微真君 in the foreground and the remaining nine islands grouped in clusters of three above (8a; cf. TC fig. 20).
Prefaces
The volume opens with a preface by Xiāo Dàocún (Xiūzhēn tàijí hùnyuán tú xù). He writes that the gold elixir is the secret which the supreme sages do not transmit, the source of the Great Way, encompassing Heaven and Earth and operating in concert with humankind; the sages do not withhold it but the world’s coarseness leaves few worthy to receive it (“once in forty thousand kalpas a transmission” is no celestial parsimony, only a refusal to spill it cheaply). By prior karmic merit and the favour of his teachers — not by his own striving — Xiāo, having earlier travelled the directions in search of the supreme Way, met “the former master” who took pity on his hardships and bestowed the secret of the Return of Metal and Fire (jīnhuǒ fǎnhuán 金火返還) and the talisman-fire (guī fú huǒ 一圭符火). Returning home and putting it to trial, “in the space of a single breath, dragon and tiger contended”; he laments how today’s students, ignorant of the source of the Great Way, settle for empty quietism and end as “spirits of pure clarity” (qīnglíng zhī guǐ xiān 清靈之鬼仙) rather than the pure-yáng immortal. Reflecting on the Xiūliàn tàijí hùnyuán tú of his patriarch Shī zhēnrén 施真人 (Shī Jiānwú), in which the Three Powers are arrayed and the elixir’s nodes laid bare, Xiāo sets out his own chart, having “gained the hare and forgotten the snare”: signed Zhānggòng Hùnyīzǐ Xiāo Dàocún 章貢混一子蕭道存謹序.
Abstract
Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:803–804 (§3.A.4, Nèidān and Yǎngshēng), classifies the work in the ZhōngLǚ tradition. Xiāo’s preface attributes the original on which he draws to Shī Jiānwú 施肩吾 (the Tang Daoist Huáyáng zhēnrén 華陽真人), in a Xiūliàn tàijí hùnyuán tú otherwise unattested; given Shī’s role as transmitter of the ZhōngLǚ scriptures (cf. DZ 1191), the attribution belongs to the standard Sòng practice of pegging nèidān texts to Táng patriarchs. The short preface attributed to Jīn Quánzǐ 金筌子 that opens the present text is in fact misplaced and belongs at the head of the next text in the Dàozàng, [[KR5a0151|DZ 150 Xiūzhēn tàijí hùnyuán zhǐxuán tú]] (TC 150). The frontmatter brackets composition notBefore 960 / notAfter 1127, the dates of the Northern Sòng.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, “Xiuzhen taiji hunyuan tu,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 803–804. On the Zhōng-Lǚ inner-alchemical tradition see Baldrian-Hussein, Procédés secrets du joyau magique (Paris: Les Deux Océans, 1984).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0150
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 803–804.