Tàishàng língbǎo shífāng yìnghào tiānzūn chàn 太上靈寶十方應號天尊懺
Confession of the Great-High Língbǎo Heavenly Worthies of the Ten Directions Who Respond to the Calling of Names
About the work
A Tang-era Língbǎo chàn originally in ten juǎn (one for each of the ten directions), now preserved only in two juǎn: the source rubric of the surviving fascicle reads Tàishàng língbǎo shífāng yìnghào tiānzūn chàn juǎn 2 with the interlinear note 原缺卷一卷三之九 (“the original is missing juǎn 1 and juǎn 3 to 9”). What survives, therefore, is juǎn 2 (likely the southern-direction confession) and juǎn 10 (likely the closing dedication). The catalog assigns the work to 唐.
Abstract
The opening of the surviving juǎn 2 sets the scene: “At that time, the Perfected Miàoxíng 妙行真人 heard the Tàishàng expound the matter of the karmic causes of good and evil; he completed his obeisance and praise, and with utmost sincerity and tribulation reported again to the Tàishàng: ‘Living beings are stupid and deluded, sunk in the net of the world, unable to be aware of themselves, unable to escape the realm of offence, drifting in birth-and-death and ever residing in the place of suffering. Looking up to the Compassionate Honoured-One, I beseech that you open their understanding, that future-life men and women may turn their hearts to the good Way and not fall into the sāntú 三塗.’ The Tàishàng said: All living beings, abandoning bodies and taking bodies through immeasurable kalpas, with body, heart, feelings, intentions, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, have constituted the various offences; sinking deeply, encountering the dharma…”
The body of the surviving text is the confessional litany for the direction in question, with stylized formulae for the listing and confession of accumulated faults. The text shows characteristic Tang-period Língbǎo vocabulary and probably belongs to the mid- to late-Tang period.
Per Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 1: 506, John Lagerwey, DZ 542), the heavy lacuna in the canonical recension is unfortunate; what remains is enough to identify the work as a major Tang-period yìnghào 應號 (name-responding) confession tradition.
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: 506 (DZ 542, entry by John Lagerwey).
Other points of interest
The work is one of the largest single-text lacunae in the Zhèngtǒng dàozàng: eight of the original ten juǎn (3 through 10, plus juǎn 1) are lost. The interlinear note alerting the reader to the loss is itself an editorial intervention of the Míng compilers.