Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo shòudù yí 太上洞玄靈寶授度儀
Liturgy of the Transmission and Salvation of the Great-High Dòngxuán Língbǎo
by 陸修靜 (撰)
About the work
The standard liturgy for the shòudù 授度 — the transmission of the Dòngxuán Língbǎo scriptural canon and the corresponding registers from master to disciple — composed by Lù Xiūjìng 陸修靜 (406–477). The work survives as a single fascicle, with the source rubric labelling it huà 9 (化九) in the Dòngxuán sequence. The opening uses a unique formula: Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo shòudù yí biǎo huà jiǔ 太上洞玄靈寳授度儀表化九 (with a biǎo 表 — memorial — function), and the text begins with Lù’s signature in the first person: 臣修靜依棲至道翹竚靈文造次弗忘 (“Your servant Xiūjìng, dwelling on the ultimate Way, longingly awaiting the numinous texts, has not forgotten them even in a moment of haste”).
Abstract
The opening section is Lù’s autobiographical memorial. He records that for seventeen years (一十七年) — i.e. since his first formal reception of the Língbǎo scriptures — he has “exhausted his sincerity and his thought, reverently observed and studied, played with the divine writings, and tasted the mysterious meaning” (竭誠盡思遵奉修研翫習神文耽味玄趣). He claims to have memorised the entire corpus, achieving a state where “the spirit opens and the meaning is understood; gradually I awakened to the principles that yì and miào are originally one.” The memorial then characterises the Língbǎo dàfǎ 靈寳大法 as “a method of universal salvation descended into the world” (下世度人), with a textual frame of “thirty-six juǎn of mysterious code-titles” (玄科舊目三十六卷) and accompanying fútú 符圖 (talismanic charts), the latter described as “self-arising from spontaneity, with hymns and explanations placed beside by the upper Perfected” (符圖則自然空生讃說皆上眞注筆). This passage — the Língbǎo dàfǎ xiàshì dùrén xuánkē jiùmù sānshíliù juǎn — is the earliest extant explicit statement of the Língbǎo “thirty-six juǎn” canon-list, anticipating the structure of Lù’s 437 Língbǎo jīngmù 靈寳經目.
The body of the work then gives the actual transmission rite: the master’s preparation; the disciple’s vows; the formal shòu (transmission) of the texts and the fú 符 (talismans) of the Dòngxuán canon, in canonical order; the huíxiàng dedication. Per Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 1: 246–247, John Lagerwey, DZ 528), this is the foundational document for the medieval Daoist understanding of the shòudù as both ritual moment and lineage-transmitting act, and the principal source for Lù’s reorganisation of the Língbǎo canon. The seventeen-year framework places composition c. 437–454 (counting from Lù’s 437 jīngmù) — but the catalog’s “406–477” lifedates window is the conservative bracket adopted here.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 1: 246–247 (DZ 528, entry by John Lagerwey).
- Yamada Toshiaki 山田利明. Rikuchō dōkyō girei no kenkyū 六朝道教儀礼の研究. Tokyo: Tōhō shoten, 1999.
- Bokenkamp, Stephen R. Early Daoist Scriptures. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997 — for the Língbǎo thirty-six juǎn schema.
- Ōfuchi Ninji 大淵忍爾. Dōkyōshi no kenkyū. Okayama: Okayama University, 1964 — the locus classicus for the dating of Lù’s liturgical œuvre.
Other points of interest
The opening biographical memorial is one of the few first-person passages by Lù Xiūjìng preserved in the Dàozàng and is the principal source for his account of his own seventeen-year discipline with the Língbǎo canon — corroborating, in his own voice, the framework presented externally by the Màoshān zhì and the Sòngshū.