Quánzhēn jí xuán bìyào 全真集玄祕要
Secret Essentials of the Collected Quánzhēn Mysteries
by 李道純 (撰, hào Qīngān 清庵, also Yíngchánzǐ 瑩蟾子, d. 1306)
About the work
A one-juan Quánzhēn 全真 nèidān 內丹 commentary by Lǐ Dàochún 李道純 (d. 1306), preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0251 / CT 251 = TC 250), 洞真部 方法類. The work is composed of two distinct commentaries. The first (1a–6a), titled Zhū dú Zhōuyì cāntóng qì 註讀周易參同契 (“Reading-Notes on the Zhōuyì cāntóng qì”), is Lǐ’s gloss on a section of Zhāng Bóduān’s 張伯端 Wùzhēn piān 悟真篇 known as Zhú dú Zhōuyì cāntóng qì (cf. DZ 141 8.1 and DZ 145 3.3a) — Lǐ states it concerns the principles of fire-phasing (huǒhòu 火候). The second part (6a–18b) is a commentary on Zhōu Dūnyí’s 周敦頤 (1017–1073) Tàijí tú jiě 太極圖解 (“Explanations on the Diagram of the Great Ultimate”). Throughout, Lǐ deploys a remarkably integrated sānjiào 三教 (“Three-Teachings”) synthesis: he reads each successive line of Zhōu’s Tàijí essay as encoding a stage of the nèidān process, drawing equally from the Yìjīng 易經, the Lǎozǐ, the Neo-Confucian thinkers Zhōu Dūnyí and Shào Yōng 邵雍, the Wùzhēn piān, and the Cāntóng qì 參同契. The work shows Lǐ’s signature “Central Branch” hermeneutic of locating Quánzhēn nèidān on a continuum with the philosophical Yìjīng tradition of the Northern Sòng.
Prefaces
No preface in the source. The text opens directly with its title-couplet “Quánzhēn jí xuán bìyào — by Qīngān Lǐ Dàochún composed.”
Abstract
Catherine Despeux, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:1175–1176 (§3.B.9, The Quánzhēn Order), identifies the work as comprising two parts: a commentary on a section of the Wùzhēn piān called Zhú dú Zhōuyì cāntóng qì (the principles of fire-phasing), and a commentary on Zhōu Dūnyí’s Tàijí tú jiě. The author draws on the Yìjīng, the Lǎozǐ, the Neo-Confucian thinkers Zhōu Dūnyí and Shào Yōng, the Wùzhēn piān, and the Cāntóng qì. The work bears no internal date but must fall within Lǐ Dàochún’s mature period of activity at the Hermitage of Central Harmony in Nánjīng; the frontmatter brackets composition ca. 1280–1306. The text complements Lǐ’s [[KR5a0251|Sāntiān yìsuǐ]] (DZ 250) and [[KR5a0250|Zhōnghé jí]] (DZ 249) in articulating the Yìjīng-based nèidān hermeneutic of Lǐ’s “Central Branch” (Zhōngpài 中派).
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Catherine Despeux, “Quanzhen ji xuan biyao,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.9, 1175–1176. Pierre Marsone, “Li Daochun et la synthèse des courants de l’alchimie intérieure,” in Matériaux pour l’étude de la religion chinoise (2000). On the late-Sòng/early-Yuán Tàijí tú tradition in Daoist alchemical hermeneutics: Isabelle Robinet, Introduction à l’alchimie intérieure taoïste (Cerf, 1995); Anna Seidel, “Daoist Hermeneutics,” in Religion and Chinese Society (1979).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0252
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.9, 1175–1176.