Dēngzhēn yǐnjué 登真隱訣
Secret Instructions for the Ascent as a Perfected compiled and annotated by 陶弘景 (注)
About the work
A practical Shàngqīng meditation and liturgy manual originally in seven main sections and probably twenty-four to twenty-five juàn, of which only three juàn survive in the Dàozàng. Compiled by Táo Hóngjǐng 陶弘景 (456–536) from his retreat at Máo shān 茅山, as the practical counterpart to his more documentary Zhēn’gào 真誥 (DZ 1016).
Prefaces
No preface survives in the received fragment proper. Táo’s interlinear commentary throughout the text is essentially his own ongoing preface-and-gloss. The Chóngwén zǒngmù records a sixteen-juàn version of the work (VDL 143); Táo’s nephew Táo Yì 陶翊 in the Huáyáng yǐnjū xiānshēng běnqǐ lù (cited in Yúnjí qīqiān 107.9b) gives twenty-four juàn; Sòng catalogues give twenty-five juàn.
Abstract
Dated by Robinet (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 1: 202–203, DZ 421) to 492–514. Táo Hóngjǐng began its compilation shortly after his retreat to Máo shān in 492 (3.25a bears the date 493); while the text was largely complete by 499, he continued to refine it into the second decade of the sixth century.
Táo’s sources were essentially the same as for his Zhēn’gào — the Shàngqīng revelations in the autographs of Yáng Xī 楊羲 (330–ca. 386) and the two Xǔ (Xǔ Mì 許謐 305–376 and Xǔ Huì 許翽 341–ca. 370) — but where the Zhēn’gào’s purpose was documentary, the Dēngzhēn yǐnjué is practical: a manual organised as a series of exercises, each furnished with Táo’s meticulous commentary. His materials come variously from the revelations recorded in the Zhēn’gào, from the methods of the zhēnrén of the Shàngqīng heavens recorded in the appendices to their biographies, and from the scriptures themselves.
The three surviving juàn comprise:
- Juàn 1 — parts of a technique for visualising the Nine Palaces in the human head, originally attached to the hagiography of Sū Lín 蘇林 (the first part of which survives in Yúnjí qīqiān 104.1a–4b).
- Juàn 2 — individual revelations orally transmitted by the various zhēnrén to Yáng and the Xǔs (cf. DZ 1016 Zhēn’gào 9, 10).
- Juàn 3 — instructions for reciting DZ 331 Huángtíng nèijǐng (3.1a–5b — a section whose authenticity Táo himself questions) and prescriptions concerning the liturgy of the Celestial-Master tradition, both of which originally formed part of the biography of Wèi Huácún 魏華存 (3.5b–27a).
The lost portions covered much else: comprehensive guidance for the preparation and use of drugs (Fúshí pǐn 服食品), techniques of corpse-deliverance (shījiě 尸解), rules and talismans (Fútú jué 符圖訣, originally juàn 6; Zūnjiè xū 尊戒序, originally juàn 2), and a chapter of advice for mountain hermits (Xúnshān dìngshì juàn 尋山定室卷, reflected in Dūnhuáng manuscript Stein 3750; Ōfuchi, Tonkō dōkyō, 721.18–20).
Táo Hóngjǐng was the key figure in the consolidation of the Máoshān Shàngqīng 茅山上清 tradition, and the Dēngzhēn yǐnjué — with the Zhēn’gào — stands at the heart of the medieval Shàngqīng documentary corpus.
Translations and research
- Strickmann, Michel. Le taoïsme du Mao Chan: Chronique d’une révélation. Paris: Collège de France, Institut des hautes études chinoises, 1981.
- Robinet, Isabelle. La révélation du Shangqing dans l’histoire du taoïsme. 2 vols. Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1984.
- Bokenkamp, Stephen R. “Time After Time: Taoist Apocalyptic History and the Founding of the T’ang Dynasty.” Asia Major (1994): 59–88 (on Táo’s historical-apocalyptic milieu).
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:202–203 (DZ 421).