Língbǎo dàliàn nèizhǐ xíngchí jīyào 靈寶大鍊內旨行持機要
Essential Summary for the Practice of the Esoteric Instructions of the Great Língbǎo Sublimation Rite
About the work
A three-folio Southern-Sòng manual of the nèiliàn 內鍊 (“inner sublimation”) ritual — the great Língbǎo liàndù 鍊度 rite of mortuary salvation performed internally within the body of the Daoist master. Transmitted in the Dàozàng in a composite juàn with DZ 406 (KR5b0090).
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with the detailed stage-by-stage ritual instructions, with interlinear glosses throughout, and carries no author preface or transmission colophon.
Abstract
Dated to the Southern Sòng by Lagerwey (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 3: 1037–1038, DZ 407). A parallel recension of the same text is found in DZ 219 Língbǎo wúliàng dùrén shàngjīng dàfǎ 靈寶無量度人上經大法. A Nèiliàn dàzhǐ 內鍊大旨 is mentioned by Jiāng Shūyú 蔣叔輿 in DZ 508 Wúshàng huánglù dàzhāi lìchéng yí 24.11a, where the internal-sublimation rite is incorporated into the ritual for the destruction of hell (24.9b–11a). Boltz (A Survey of Taoist Literature, 29) suggests a Shénxiāo 神霄 origin for the text, but without supporting evidence.
The Dàliàn nèizhǐ describes the salvation of souls from the perspective of the transformations performed by the Daoist master within his own body — the process called “transformation in a gourd” (hú lǐ huà 壺裡化, 1a). Beginning with a mise-en-scène of the celestial assembly described in the opening of the Dùrén jīng 度人經 (DZ 1), the rite consists in:
- The transformation of hell — the region below the navel — into a Pure Land by two Jiùkǔ tiānzūn 救苦天尊 wrapped in the light of the Daoist’s eyes;
- The ascension of the souls in hell via the spinal column to the heart;
- The continued ascent up the twelve “stories” of the trachea to an audience before the Yuánshǐ tiānzūn;
- Along the way, as in the external version of the rite, the souls receive a “writ of pardon,” are bathed, cleanly dressed, and nourished with “sweet dew.”
The rite culminates in the fusion of the souls with Yuánshǐ tiānzūn in “the double forgetting of self and things” (shuāngwàng wǒ wù 雙忘我物).
Translations and research
- Boltz, Judith M. “Opening the Gates of Purgatory: A Twelfth-Century Taoist Meditation Technique for the Salvation of Lost Souls.” In Tantric and Taoist Studies in Honour of R. A. Stein, vol. 2, 487–511. Brussels: Institut belge des hautes études chinoises, 1983.
- Boltz, Judith M. A Survey of Taoist Literature, Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987, 29.
- Lagerwey, John. Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History. New York: Macmillan, 1987, 233–235.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 3:1037–1038 (DZ 407).