Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo tàixuán pǔcí quànshì jīng 太上洞玄靈寶太玄普慈勸世經
Scripture of the Great-Mystery Universal-Compassion Exhortations to the World, of the Most High Cavern-Mystery Numinous Treasure
About the work
A Táng one-juàn homiletic scripture transmitted in a composite juàn (èr jīng tóng juàn 二經同卷) together with DZ 343 Sìfāng dàyuàn jīng (KR5b0027). Pǔcí 普慈 (“Universal Compassion”) is the name of the zhēnrén who serves as the scripture’s interlocutor.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with the dialogue between Pǔcí zhēnrén and the Jiǔkǔ tiānzūn and carries no author preface or transmission colophon.
Abstract
Dated to the Táng by Lagerwey (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 3: 988–989, DZ 342). The zhēnrén Pǔcí, dwelling in the “World of Diverse Recompenses” (諸報世界), interrogates the Jiǔkǔ tiānzūn 救苦天尊 on the origin of human suffering and the means of escape from it; the Tiānzūn responds point by point, each time instructing Pǔcí to transmit the response down to the human world as an “exhortation” (quàn 勸). Each exhortation is paired with a description of a corresponding moral failing that results in consignment to one of eighteen hells.
The preferred means of escape are (in decreasing order of soteriological potency): deep meditation (rùdìng 入定); for those lay persons without time to pursue meditation, listening to and being initiated in the Greater Vehicle (dàshèng 大乘), reception of its precepts, and formal confession of faults; the donation of money for preaching, scripture-copying, and image-making; and paying on behalf of the dead by having monastic communities (fǎzhòng 法眾) recite confessions for them. Whatever contributes to the propagation and exegesis of the Law is a source of merit.
The text (at 8b) contains an explicit reference to DZ 9 Tàishàng yīchéng hǎikōng zhìzàng jīng 太上一乘海空智藏經 1.6a ff., which provides a loose terminus post quem within the early Táng.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 3:988–989 (DZ 342).