Tàishàng língbǎo zhìhuì guānshēn jīng 太上靈寶智慧觀身經
Scripture on Wisdom and the Contemplation of the Body, of the Most High Numinous Treasure
About the work
A short two-folio early-Táng meditation manual on the contemplation of the body and its components, integrating heavily Buddhist vocabulary. Transmitted in the Dàozàng in a composite juàn with DZ 349 and DZ 351 (KR5b0033 and KR5b0035). The scripture’s variant title — under which it was inscribed on stone — is Qīngjìng zhìhuì guānshēn jīng 清靜智慧觀身經.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with the meditation of the Jìngguān zhēnrén 靜觀真人 and carries no author preface or transmission colophon.
Abstract
Dated to the first half of the Táng by Schmidt (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 2: 579–580, DZ 350). A firm terminus ante quem is supplied by the scripture’s engraving on stone in 771 at the Yǒngxiān guàn 永仙觀 near Cháng’ān, under the variant title Qīngjìng zhìhuì guānshēn jīng 清靜智慧觀身經 (see Chén Yuán 陳垣 et al., Dàojiā jīnshí lüè 道家金石略, 153–54).
The meditation-text’s theme is the contemplation (guān 觀) of the body and its constituents, shown in meditation to be wholly empty and illusory. The scheme is conspicuously Buddhist in vocabulary: the Four Great [Elements] (sìdà 四大), the Six Sense-bases and six vijñāna (liù zhǒng gēn shì 六種根識), the Five Aggregates (wǔjù yīn 五聚蔭 = pañca-skandha), the outer and inner saṃjñā, the arising-and-ceasing saṃjñā. Through their contemplation, one enters the “gate of no-characteristic” (wúxiāng mén 無相門), arrives at a consciousness no longer subject to suffering, and attains liberation (jiětuō 解脫). The three hymns to wisdom that conclude the text reappear in DZ 524 Dòngxuán língbǎo zhāi shuō guāng zhújiè fǎdēng zhūyuàn yí 7b–8a and in DZ 1364 Shàngqīng dòngzhēn zhìhuì guānshēn dàjiè wén 1a–b.
Translations and research
- Chén Yuán 陳垣 et al. Dàojiā jīnshí lüè 道家金石略. Beijing: Wénwù chūbǎnshè, 1988, 153–54.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:579–580 (DZ 350).