Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo tiānzūn shuō dàtōng jīng 太上洞玄靈寶天尊說大通經
Scripture of the Sermon of the Heavenly Worthy on the Great Communication, of the Most High Cavern-Mystery Numinous Treasure
About the work
A one-folio Sòng-period Daoist meditation scripture, arranged in three named章 — Zhēnkōng zhāng 真空章 (“True Emptiness”), Xuánlǐ zhāng 玄理章 (“Mysterious Principle”), Xuánmiào zhāng 玄妙章 (“Mysterious Marvel”) — closed with a verse (jì 偈). Transmitted in a composite juàn with DZ 326 and DZ 328 (KR5b0010 and KR5b0012 here).
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly into the first chapter and has no preface or transmission colophon.
Abstract
The scripture is attributed to the Língbǎo tiānzūn 靈寶天尊 and develops the concept of dàtōng 大通 — “great communication” or thoroughgoing pervasion — in three short paragraphs and a concluding verse. “True emptiness” is “beyond conception and beyond speech,” for it has no form and no substance; human beings are the locus of alternation between rest (their nature, xìng 性) and activity (their mind, xīn 心), and must learn to harmonize the two. The Great Way has no image, and one’s true nature is without action (wúwéi 無為); those who attain the rest in which there is no activity illumine the world with their wisdom.
Lagerwey’s notice (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 1: 595, DZ 327) dates the work to the Sòng (960–1279) on stylistic grounds, noting that its vocabulary is cognate with Sòng philosophical concepts, especially those of the neo-Confucian School of Principle (Lǐxué 理學) — xìng / xīn, zhàoyòng 照用, zhēnrú 真如. The text thus belongs to the mature inner-alchemical and neidan-adjacent meditative literature in which Daoist, Buddhist, and Lǐxué vocabulary become richly intercalated.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located beyond the notice in Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 1: 595 (DZ 327).