Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo zhìhuì dìngzhì tōngwēi jīng 太上洞玄靈寶智慧定志通微經
Scripture on Wisdom, Fixing the Will and Penetrating the Sublime, of the Most High Cavern-Mystery Numinous Treasure
About the work
An early Língbǎo scripture, one of the original texts of the Gě Cháofǔ 葛巢甫 revelation corpus of ca. 400. The scripture’s internal variant title is Sīwéi dìngzhì jīng 思微定志經. Its narrative pivots on the transmission, by the Língbǎo tiānzūn 靈寶天尊, of a two-part cosmic-diagram contract and of Ten Precepts to the twin zhēnrén Zuǒxuán 左玄 and Yòuxuán 右玄, interwoven with parables modelled on the Buddhist avadāna genre and with hymns.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The scripture opens directly into the revelation scene at the Zǐwēi 紫微 palace of the Primordial yáng 元陽 and carries no author preface, postface, or transmission colophon beyond its internal transmission narrative.
Abstract
The Zhìhuì dìngzhì tōngwēi jīng belongs to the “original” phase of the Língbǎo canon associated with Gě Cháofǔ (fl. late 4th c.) and is conventionally dated ca. 397–402. All citations of the text in the Wúshàng bìyào 無上祕要 and in Falin’s 法琳 Biànzhèng lùn 辯正論 8.544a correspond to the received text, and a Dūnhuáng manuscript of the Sīwéi dìngzhì jīng (Pelliot 5563, reproduced in Ōfuchi, Tonkō dōkyō: Zurokuhen 53) differs only in minor particulars from the present 18b–20a. A further Dūnhuáng citation in Stein 1438 (Dàojiào yì 道教義) missing in the received text can be recovered almost entirely from the diagram at 6a–b.
The doctrinal kernel is the transmission by Língbǎo tiānzūn of a “two-halves revolving-wheel contract” (liǎngbàn lúnzhuàn 兩半輪轉) — a cosmic diagram in two interlocking halves — and of the Ten Precepts (shí jiè 十戒) to the twin zhēnrén Zuǒxuán and Yòuxuán. Interspersed are avadāna-style tales including an extensive account of the two zhēnrén’s previous existence as a charitable married couple (9a–15b). Buddhist influence is overt: the first five of the Ten Precepts correspond to the pañca-śīla, while the tenth is a formulation of the Mahāyāna bodhisattva vow, and Daoism and Buddhism are explicitly figured, through the paired zhēnrén, as “two paths returning to the one” (èr tú guī yī 二途歸一).
The work corresponds to number 10–11 of the canonical list of the Língbǎo corpus (for the transmission-rite apparatus, see the cognate DZ 410 Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo zhōngjiān wén 太上洞玄靈寶終戒文, further codified by Lù Xiūjìng 陸修靜, 406–477).
Translations and research
- Ōfuchi Ninji 大淵忍爾. Tonkō dōkyō: Zurokuhen 敦煌道經：圖錄編. Tokyo: Fukutake shoten, 1979 — facsimiles of Pelliot 5563 (Sīwéi dìngzhì jīng) and Stein 1438 (Dàojiào yì).
- Ōfuchi Ninji 大淵忍爾. “On Ku Ling-pao Ching.” Acta Asiatica 27 (1974): 33–56.
- Bokenkamp, Stephen R. “The Peach Flower Font and the Grotto Passage.” In Early Daoist Scriptures. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, 373–438 (contextualising the original Língbǎo corpus).
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:226–227 (DZ 325).