Tàishàng língbǎo zhōngyuán dìguān xiāoqiān mièzuì chàn 太上靈寶中元地官消愆滅罪懺
Confession-Liturgy of the Middle Prime Earthly Bureau for the Effacement of Offences and Extinction of Faults in the Great-High Língbǎo
About the work
Middle member of the Sānguān chàn triad (cf. KR5b0236, KR5b0238); the three share one physical fascicle. The rite addresses the Zhōngyuán dìguān 中元地官 (Middle Prime Earthly Bureau), the second of the three Daoist bureaus charged with maintaining the moral record of beings.
Abstract
The text is framed as a discourse delivered by Yuánshǐ tiānzūn 元始天尊 in the Jiǔtǔ wújí shìjiè 九土無極世界 (Boundless Realm of the Nine Earths). In the discourse the Tiānzūn warns that “from this day forward, if the people of the world are unsettled, if the three calamities (sānzāi 三災) and five poisons (wǔdú 五毒) arise together, if bandits encroach and the innocent suffer unjustly the misery of mud and ashes, the people lose their livelihoods, their relatives are caught in fear, the prefectures, counties, and villages with fields and gardens lie waste, the living are starved into corpses, kin grow distant, and flesh-and-blood are separated, with death becoming widespread — this is the work of guǐbīng 鬼兵 and mówáng 魔王, calamities visited upon the people of the Middle Prime.” The Tiānzūn then dispatches the Zhōngyuán dìguān to receive the confession of the afflicted and to remove the karmic burden.
The body of the work is the confession addressed to the Earthly Bureau, to be performed on zhōngyuán 中元 (15th day of the 7th month), the canonical Earthly-Bureau day on which the bureau adjudicates the moral record of beings.
Per Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 2: 1024–1025, John Lagerwey, DZ 534), the work is the central member of the Sānguān chàn triad and stands behind the popular Tang-Sòng zhōngyuán observances.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 2: 1024–1025 (DZ 534, entry by John Lagerwey).
- Teiser, Stephen F. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988 — for the broader zhōng-yuán festival.