Tàijí zhēnrén fū língbǎo zhāijiè wēiyí zhūjīng yàojué 太極真人敷靈寶齋戒威儀諸經要訣
The Tàijí Perfected’s Exposition of the Essential Instructions of the Various Scriptures on Língbǎo Fasts, Precepts, and Liturgical Standards
About the work
A single-fascicle compendium of the yàojué 要訣 (“essential instructions”) drawn by the Tàijí zhēnrén 太極眞人 (the Tàijí Perfected — i.e. Xú Láilè 徐來勒, the master of Gě Xuán 葛玄) from the various scriptures on Língbǎo fasts and liturgical standards. Numbered bèi 2 (被二) in the Dòngxuán sequence following the bèi 1 fascicle of KR5b0232–KR5b0234. The catalog dates the work to 六朝.
Abstract
The text opens with the Tàijí zhēnrén’s pronouncement: “For those who study the true immortal Way of ascending to heaven in broad daylight, the zhāijiè 齋戒 (fast-and-precepts) is the foundation of all virtue. The Língbǎo Scriptures have a great rule: the first, third, fifth, seventh, ninth, and eleventh months are the six fast-months of the year; the first, eighth, fourteenth, fifteenth, eighteenth, twenty-third, twenty-fourth, twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth days are the ten fast-days of the month. By keeping a long fast through extended visualisation, one may attain to the Way of soaring through the void.”
The instructions then continue with detailed liturgical directives. Sample: “The Tàijí Perfected said: when entering the fast-hall, face east, face the censer, and pronounce: …” The work supplies the yàojué — i.e. the abbreviated rubric — for the various ritual elements that the Língbǎo scriptures expound at length: entering the fast-hall, offering incense, summoning the body’s spirits, fālú, and so on. The work is therefore both a zhāi-calendar and a basic liturgical manual, and is one of the principal early-medieval witnesses to the liùzhāiyuè / shízhāirì schema that became normative in subsequent Daoist (and Buddhist) practice.
Per Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 1: 234, John Lagerwey, DZ 532), this is one of the earliest Língbǎo yàojué texts, plausibly composed in the immediate aftermath of the late-fourth-century revelations and prior to the consolidated Lù Xiūjìng synthesis.
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: 234 (DZ 532, entry by John Lagerwey).
- Bokenkamp, Stephen R. Early Daoist Scriptures. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997 — for the early Língbǎo precept-and-fast tradition.
- Maeda Shigeki 前田繁樹. “Reihō saikai gi shoki keitai” 霊宝齋戒儀初期形態. Tōhō shūkyō 80 (1992): 23–40.