Jīnyè dàdān kǒujué 金液大丹口訣
Oral Formula on the Great Elixir of Liquefied Gold
by 鄭德安 (述, hào Chōngxū miàojìng Níngzhēn zǐ 冲虛妙靜寧真子)
About the work
A short Southern-Sòng nèidān 內丹 manual of eleven folios, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0280 / CT 280 = TC 280), 洞真部 眾術類. According to a heading following the title, the formula was “transmitted by a Daoist clad in white from the Tàiwēi cavern-heaven” (太微洞天白衣道者授); the preface and the editorial work are by Zhèng Dé’ān 鄭德安 (hào Chōngxū miàojìng Níngzhēn zǐ 冲虛妙靜寧真子), who calls Zhāng Bóduān 張伯端 his zǔshī 祖師 (“patriarch”) and quotes a half-verse from the Huándān fùmìng piān 還丹復命篇 by Xuē Dàoguāng 薛道光. The jué 訣 proper (3a–3b) covers the entire alchemical process; the remainder consists of alchemical poems (six in cí 詞 metre), a short treatise on the xīn 心 / Way relation, and a further alchemical poem.
Prefaces
Zhèng Dé’ān’s preface (no date): “He who would cultivate the Real must exhaust principle (qiónglǐ 窮理) and complete xìng 性 in order to arrive at mìng 命 — that is the way. If xìng is not yet clear, mìng cannot be known. Hence Buddhists make xìng the master and mìng the companion; Tàishàng 太上 makes mìng the master and xìng the companion. Both these accounts are good. He who makes xìng the master must first see clearly what ‘I’ was before father and mother had begotten me; let all worlds and all conditions be seen through; in the end, only this one drop of empty líng 靈 is master, and even this body is itself an illusion. As to the final step, the Buddha said: ‘The one stroke from above, the thousand sages do not transmit’… The patriarch [Zhāng Bóduān] said: ‘Even if you waken to the zhēnrú 真如 nature, you cannot help but cast off this body and re-enter another. Take therefore the great medicine in addition, suddenly leap beyond the leakages, and become a real man.’ He who makes mìng the master must first fill the belly and nourish the body, preserve essence and beget qì, transmute qì into spirit, and conjoin spirit with the Way; then he may go horizontal or vertical and yet endure long…” The preface continues with a long warning on the danger of careless transmission (citing Wèi Bóyáng 魏伯陽 and Zhāng Píngshū 張平叔), recounts how, having received the teaching from a master, the author has now composed sixty-four lines of kǒujué under the title Tàiyī hánzhēn huǒfú zhízhǐ 太一含真火符直指, plus seventeen qī yán 七言 poems titled Yīchèng jīn 一秤金, plus six Xījiāng yuè 西江月 — together exhausting the procedures of the gateway of mystery (xuánguān 玄關), the source of the medicine, the secrets of fire-phasing, and the apotheosis of the spirit-foetus. He closes with a vow not to pass the teaching to the unworthy.
Abstract
Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:835–836 (§3.A.4, Nèidān and Yǎngshēng), notes the heading-attribution to a “white-robed Daoist of the Tàiwēi cavern-heaven” and identifies Zhèng Dé’ān as the actual editor. The text is no earlier than the thirteenth century, since it cites Zhāng Bóduān as “patriarch” and quotes a half-verse from Xuē Dàoguāng’s Huándān fùmìng piān. Like Zhāng Bóduān, Zhèng Dé’ān deals in his preface with the differences and similarities between Buddhists and Daoists and with the dangers of unsuitable transmission. The jué 訣 that follows (3a–3b) describes the entire nèidān process; the rest of the text comprises the alchemical poems, the prose treatise on xīn and Dào, and the closing poem. The frontmatter brackets composition to the Southern Sòng broadly (1200–1279).
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, “Jinyi dadan koujue,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 835–836. On Zhāng Bóduān and the Wùzhēn lineage: Isabelle Robinet, Introduction à l’alchimie intérieure taoïste (Paris: Cerf, 1995); Fabrizio Pregadio, Awakening to Reality: The “Regulated Verses” of Zhang Boduan’s Wuzhen pian (Mountain View, CA: Golden Elixir Press, 2009).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0292
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 835–836.