Xiūdān miàoyòng zhìlǐ lùn 修丹妙用至理論
Discourse on the Marvellous Practice and Ultimate Principle of Cultivating the Elixir
Anonymous Northern-Sòng alchemical treatise, ten folios, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0234 / CT 234 = TC 233), 洞真部 方法類.
About the work
A short anonymous treatise in nine sections plus an opening huǒhòu jué 火候訣 (“formula on fire phasing”). The author identifies the Returned Elixir (huándān 還丹) as the indispensable foundation of the work of transcendence and addresses its practice in nine numbered chapters: (i) guàqì 卦氣 (the qì of the trigrams, organised through the twelve sovereign-hexagrams Fù 復, Lín 臨, Tài 泰, Dàzhuàng 大壯, Guài 夬, Qián 乾, Gòu 姤, Dùn 遁, Pǐ 否, Guān 觀, Bō 剝, Kūn 坤); (ii) huǒhòu 火候 (fire phasing, with the elaborate compression of the cycle from year, to month, to half-month, to fifteen days, to one day); (iii) yàojué 藥訣 (the formula of the substances — eight ounces of true lead and eight of true mercury, together making the canonical sixteen ounces or one jīn 斤); (iv) zhèng yí 正疑 (resolving doubts); (v) jiǎgēng 甲庚 (the trigrammatic and lunar pairings); (vi) wǔxíng 五行 (the Five Phases as the structural skeleton of the rite); (vii) yào zhèng 藥證 (verification of the substances); (viii) jù yòng 具用 (the apparatus); and (ix) jiǔzhuǎn 九轉 (the nine cyclical transformations).
Prefaces
The author’s own opening (1a): “Of those who would cultivate life, the body is the basis: when the body is whole the spirit endures, and the spirit endured is the saint formed. There must therefore be the ultimate medicine to be ingested, that one may at last attain to spiritual penetration. The wise of antiquity were many who fully grasped this art; in the latter age, those who chase after this study often spend their substance, exhaust their wealth, and grow old without ever hearing of one who has achieved it. Why? They themselves are blind to what they see, and so miss the original instruction; or, leaning on their own scant learning, they cannot reach the ultimate principle. Some take swallowing saliva and circulating the breath as cultivation; some take leaving the body and fixing the wisdom as the True One; the worst take the five metals and eight stones, lees and dross, and recklessly subject them to fire, hoping for a result. All these are vulgar and shallow practices and have nothing to do with the marvellous teaching of the Mysterious Origin… Yet the cause of transcending the common does not depart from the single method of the Returned Elixir. I, having had the good fortune to receive the master’s transmission, dare not keep his goodness to myself, and so have written nine chapters with the Huǒhòu jué — gathered into one juàn — to receive those who come after.”
Abstract
The text is unsigned and undated; the closing colophon is anonymous. Internal evidence — the elaborate quote from the Yuánhuáng shàngjīng 元皇上經 in section 5 (on which see [[KR5a0231|DZ 230 Zhūzhēn lùn huándān jué]] for the cross-reference); the integrated treatment of the twelve sovereign-hexagrams scheme worked out by Northern-Sòng nèidān; and the citation patterns within other Sòng nèidān and wàidān texts — places the treatise within the Northern-Sòng (960–1127). The frontmatter brackets composition accordingly. Although the chapter on fire phasing repeatedly insists that the most precise transmissions remain in oral kǒujué 口訣 and not in written form (“the bathing-times mùyù 沐浴 are transmitted in oral instruction; from antiquity they have not been set down in script”), the text is nonetheless one of the more systematically organised exposés of the Northern-Sòng nèidān-wàidān synthesis.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 (cross-referenced at the Huándān zhòngxiān lùn and Zhūzhēn lùn huándān jué entries). On the trigrammatic-fire-phase scheme see Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China V.5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Isabelle Robinet, Introduction à l’alchimie intérieure taoïste (Paris: Cerf, 1995).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0235
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.5.