Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo sùmìng yīnyuán míngjīng 太上洞玄靈寶宿命因緣明經
Luminous Scripture on the Karmic Causality of Former Lives, of the Most High Cavern-Mystery Numinous Treasure
About the work
A Táng one-juàn doctrinal scripture in which the Tàishàng dàojūn 太上道君 — here explicitly identified with Lǎozǐ — explains to Yǐn Xǐ 尹喜 that present circumstances have their “karmic causes in former lives” (sùmìng yīnyuán 宿命因緣).
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with Tàishàng dàojūn’s discourse at the “banqueting scene on the Tàixiá” (宴景太霞之上) and carries no author preface or transmission colophon.
Abstract
Dated to the Táng by Lagerwey (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 2: 536–537, DZ 338), with a probable terminus ante quem supplied by Dù Guāngtíng’s 杜光庭 (850–933) citation of a Dòngxuán língbǎo sùmìng yīnyuán miàojīng in his “Zhāitán jīngmù 齋壇經目” (cf. DZ 508 Wúshàng huánglù dàzhāi lìchéng yí 1.6a–b).
The body of the scripture consists of nine paragraphs, each followed by a hymn, each enumerating the karmic conditions — “six things” and “five sins” — that determine rebirth in the heavens, as a human, or as an animal. The “six things” at 2b closely resemble the “five things” of DZ 321 Dòngxuán língbǎo zhūtiān shìjiè zàohuà jīng 6a (KR5b0005), and only in this passage does the present text adopt the pronoun rǔcáo 汝曹, conspicuously frequent in DZ 321 — suggesting a close textual relationship between the two sūtras.
The opening and closing frame of the text is unusually interesting. Its opening telescopes a mythological history backward from the “Method of the Three Treasures” (sānbǎo zhī fǎ 三寶之法) attributed to Yǔ 禹, to the proto-sovereigns Fúxī 伏羲 (with his unicorn body) and Nǚwā 女媧 (with her serpent body), and thence to the Three Ways of the Origin (yuándào 元道), of the Beginning (shǐdào 始道), and of Humanity (réndào 人道) — a scheme paralleled at DZ 1205 Sāntiān nèijiě jīng 1.3a. Its closing distinguishes Three Ways: the Way of Communication with the Perfected (i.e. Daoism proper), the Way of the West — that is, Buddhism, explicitly derived from the “division of the body” of the Dào named Rúlái 如來 (Tathāgata) — and the Way “spat from the mouth” of Lǎozǐ into Yǐn Xǐ’s ear, i.e. the Dàodé jīng tradition. This threefold classification of the religious dispensation of East and West is a characteristic Táng Daoist response to the politics of the “Three Teachings” debate.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:536–537 (DZ 338).