Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo fǎzhú jīng 太上洞玄靈寶法燭經
Scripture of the Beacon of the Law, of the Most High Cavern-Mystery Numinous Treasure by 陸修靜
About the work
A ten-folio collection of ten short sermons composed by the great LiúSòng Daoist codifier Lù Xiūjìng 陸修靜 (406–477), designed to be read aloud before each major service of the Língbǎo Retreat (zhāi 齋) liturgy, beginning with the 宿啟 sùqǐ fǎ preparatory rite. Transmitted in the Dàozàng in a composite juàn (sān jīng tóng juàn 三經同卷) together with DZ 350 and DZ 351 (KR5b0034 and KR5b0035 here).
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source in the usual sense. Each of the ten sermons opens with the convention “Thus speaks the Dào…” (Dào yán 道言) — but these are not revealed words, rather, as Lù makes explicit at 2b, “words of the Dào” articulated by the officiant as a spiritual preparation before entering the sacred area.
Abstract
Lù Xiūjìng’s authorship is established by an explicit notice in DZ 524 Dòngxuán língbǎo zhāi shuō guāng zhújiè fǎdēng zhūyuàn yí 洞玄靈寶齋說光燭戒罰燈祝願儀, which further confirms that the Fǎzhú sermons were in fact read before each major performance of the Retreat. Schipper (Taoist Canon 1: 253, DZ 349) places the composition within Lù’s mature liturgical career, i.e. after his integration of the Língbǎo corpus in the catalogue of 437 (Língbǎo jīngmù 靈寶經目) and before his death in 477.
The ten sermons each approach the Retreat from a distinct hermeneutic angle — meditation, expiation, confession, vow, cosmological coordination, and so on — and each closes with a citation of the Dàodé jīng, a rhetorical device that anchors Lù’s reforming, “Three Caverns”-unified liturgy in the authority of the most venerable of all Daoist texts. Together with his better-known prefatory rituals (sùqǐ 宿啟, yánqǐ 言啟) and with the cognate DZ 524 and DZ 1278 Wǔgǎn wén 五感文, the Fǎzhú jīng forms the homiletic component of Lù’s integrated Língbǎo Retreat.
The work is a primary source for understanding the intellectual texture of Daoist monastic liturgy in the LiúSòng and for Lù Xiūjìng’s creative accommodation of Lǎozǐ to the mature Retreat-and-precept apparatus of the fifth century.
Translations and research
- Lagerwey, John. “Lu Xiujing and the Composition of Liturgical Daoism.” Various publications.
- Yamada Toshiaki 山田利明. Rikuchō dōkyō girei no kenkyū 六朝道教儀禮の研究. Tokyo: Tōhō shoten, 1999.
- Ōfuchi Ninji 大淵忍爾. Dōkyōshi no kenkyū 道教史の研究. 1964 — foundational for Lù’s role in the canon.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:253 (DZ 349), 1:454 (DZ 524), and 2:997 (DZ 1278).