Dòngxuán língbǎo dàoyào jīng 洞玄靈寶道要經
Scripture of the Essentials of the Dào, of the Cavern-Mystery Numinous Treasure
About the work
An eight-folio Táng scripture of the Way of Filial Piety (Xiàodào 孝道) — a short-lived but textually productive Daoist filial-piety cult of the mid-Táng — and, along with DZ 66 Yuánshǐ dòngzhēn cí shàn xiàozǐ bào’ēn chéngdào jīng 元始洞真慈善孝子報恩成道經, one of the two basic scriptures of that movement. Transmitted in the Dàozàng in a composite juàn with DZ 378 and DZ 379 (KR5b0062, KR5b0063).
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with “the Dào says” (dào yán 道言) expounding the “vast, tenuous, still, and nameless” Great Dào, and carries no author preface or transmission colophon.
Abstract
Dated by Lagerwey (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 2: 567–569, DZ 380) to around 700 on the basis of the distinctive vocabulary of seventh-century Daoist scholasticism — “Real Dào” (zhēndào 真道, cf. DZ 66 Chéngdào jīng 4b), “Great Supreme Dào” (wúshàng dàdào 無上大道, cf. DZ 66 1a; present text 6a), and the term wújìn zàng 無盡藏 (“inexhaustible reservoir”; 7a), which Gernet (Buddhism in Chinese Society, 210–217) documents as rising to prominence around 700. The conceptual and linguistic proximity of the present text to DZ 66, and the identity of the closing sentence of the two works, suggest common authorship.
The scripture is programmatic: the Supreme Way (wúshàng dàdào) puts an end forever to the cycle of life and death, to suffering and karmic causality (6a), because filial piety never leaves the Gold Portal (the source of life) and thus closes off hermetically the way of death (7a). Filial piety is related to maturation (chéng 成) as the Dào is to birth (1a); those who are not grateful to their parents are worse than animals — they are sinful souls (2a). The compassion of a filial person is so great, however, that the True King of High Brightness (Gāomíng zhēnwáng 高明真王), on seeing such sinful souls in the eighteen hells, transforms himself, through the light of his filial heart, into the “cloud of an immortal” — a cloud that converts the entire universe and enables the sinful souls to receive forgiveness, to wash themselves in the mysterious ford, and to ascend the Phoenix Steps (3a). After confession, they return to their tombs, whence they appear to their descendants in dreams (tōngmèng 通夢) to exhort filial repayment; when the descendants oblige, the ancestors ascend to the Southern Palace.
In this way, the Dào concludes, “sinful souls receive forgiveness and go on to practice the Dào, while their descendants, enlightened by their dreams, practice filial piety.” The scripture is among the most distinctive mid-Táng adaptations of Mahāyāna filial-piety soteriology — in dialogue with the Buddhist Ullambana and Fùmǔ ēn zhòng jīng 父母恩重經 — into a specifically Daoist framework of stellar worship (three zhēnrén = three luminaries = Sun, Moon, Dipper) and ancestral reciprocity.
Translations and research
- Gernet, Jacques. Buddhism in Chinese Society: An Economic History from the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries. Translated by Franciscus Verellen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, 210–217 (on wújìn zàng).
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:567–569 (DZ 380); companion entries on DZ 66 and DZ 449 Xiàodào Wú Xǔ èr zhēnjūn zhuàn 孝道吳許二真君傳.