Bìxū zǐ qīnchuán zhízhǐ 碧虛子親傳直指
Direct Pointers Personally Transmitted by Master Bìxū
attributed to 楊明真 (hào Bìxū zǐ 碧虛子, 1150–1228)
About the work
A short nèidān 內丹 treatise of eleven folios, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0241 / CT 241 = TC 240), 洞真部 方法類, sharing a Dàozàng fascicle with [[KR5a0243|DZ 242 Zhǐzhōu xiānshēng quánzhēn zhízhǐ]]. The work is a single connected discourse on Internal Alchemy, organized as a teacher’s transmission to a disciple — first defining the xiāntiān yī qì 先天一氣 (“the One Pneuma of Pre-Heaven”) as the only true yáng substance in a man, distinct from any of the four elements of the gross body; then laying out the xuánpìn zhī mén 玄牝之門 (the gate of the obscure-feminine) as the locus of the nèidān practice; and finally giving extended practical instructions on cǎiyào 採藥 (gathering the substance), huǒhòu 火候 (fire phasing), mùyù 沐浴 (bathing in mǎo 卯 and yǒu 酉), jiétāi 結胎 (forming the embryo), bù tāi 哺胎 (“nursing” the formed embryo for a further three / nine years until the spirit-body is firmly settled), and the dangers of mózhàng 魔障 (demonic interference) at the moment of the spirit-body’s emergence.
Prefaces
The author’s own opening: “From childhood I have studied the Way; in my prime I left home and travelled the rivers and lakes seeking participation in the Dào and dé. I read through the alchemical scriptures, cí-poems, songs, and traditional records of the masters of Zhāng Zǐyáng’s line, applied my mind in deep study, and ranged through the texts in search of the meaning. I also went round and questioned eminent men of the Daoist company, exhausting the essentials of the Great Way. After that I wandered the famous mountains and great rivers, the cave-mansions and fútiān 福地, beseeching the stone-cliffs and stelae for instruction. Late in life I passed by Master Hǎiqióng 海瓊先生 [Bái Yùchán], who bestowed on me the essentials of the Great Way; and at the Zhūlíng cave-heaven 朱陵洞天 I met the Recluse An-rán 安然居士, who composed several pieces in token of our friendship. Only then did I attain the marvellous meaning of Hǎiqióng — and only then did I realise that what I had sought, heard, and seen in my youth had been merely ‘a roof under a roof, a branch grafted on a branch.’ I had not realised that the roof is just the roof and the branch is just the branch — that this matter lies straight before the eyes; what need to seek it far afield? Now I bestow it on you. You may, by reading the text, grasp the meaning, and so go boldly to work, undisturbed by doubt — the Way is in this.”
Abstract
Kristofer Schipper, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:836–837 (§3.A.4, Nèidān and Yǎngshēng), identifies the work as presumably by the Quánzhēn 全真 patriarch Yáng Míngzhēn 楊明真 (1150–1228), whose hào Bìxū zǐ matches the title and who is described in [[KR5e0955|DZ 955 Zhōngnánshān zǔtíng xiānzhēn nèizhuàn]] 2.2b–3b as an expert in nèidān. Although Yáng’s biography does not mention travels in southern China, the meetings recorded in the introduction with Bái Yùchán (Hǎiqióng zhēnrén) and Ānrán jūshì at the Zhūlíng cave-heaven (Mount Héng) are chronologically possible. Schipper takes pains to refute the alternative attribution to Chén Jǐngyuán 陳景元 (1025–1094), the celebrated Northern-Sòng LǎoZhuāng commentator who also bore the hào Bìxū zǐ — a refutation already made by Boltz, A Survey of Taoist Literature, 327 n. 569. The nèidān methods described are generally those of the Southern Lineage (Nánzōng 南宗), with extensive citation of the Wùzhēn piān 悟真篇. The frontmatter brackets composition within Yáng’s lifetime, c. 1200–1228.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Kristofer Schipper, “Bixu zi qinchuan zhizhi,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 836–837. On Quánzhēn nèidān see Vincent Goossaert, The Taoists of Peking, 1800–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007); Stephen Eskildsen, The Teachings and Practices of the Early Quanzhen Taoist Masters (Albany: SUNY Press, 2004). On the doctrinal disambiguation of the two Bìxū zǐ: Judith M. Boltz, A Survey of Taoist Literature: Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987), 327 n. 569.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0242
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 836–837.