Shàngqīng Tiānshūyuàn huíchē bìdào zhèngfǎ 上清天樞院回車畢道正法
Orthodox Method of Turning the Carriage and Completing the Way, of the Shàngqīng Heavenly-Pivot Bureau
About the work
A three-juǎn liturgical-administrative manual issued under the heading of the Tiānshūyuàn 天樞院 — the celestial “Heavenly Pivot Bureau”, the bureaucratic apex of the Jìngmíng 淨明 (Pure-Brilliance) tradition’s heavenly office. The work belongs to the cluster of Jìngmíng manuals that the Zhèngtǒng dàozàng groups together at DZ 549–DZ 561, prescribing the bureaucratic structure, the ritual codes, and the internal procedures by which the Jìngmíng officers serve the heavenly bureaucracy. The phrase huíchē bìdào 回車畢道 (“turning the carriage [back] and completing the Way”) is the technical name for the rite by which a deceased adept is escorted, through bureaucratic procedure, to final realisation.
Abstract
The work is anonymous and undated; Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 2: 1090, John Lagerwey) place it in the Southern-Sòng to Yuán Jìngmíng revival centred on the Xīshān 西山 lineage around Nánchāng 南昌, the Daoist cult of Xǔ Sūn 許遜 (Xǔzhēnjūn 許真君, “Lord Xǔ the Perfected”). The Jìngmíng tradition reorganised the Língbǎo and Shàngqīng heritage into an administratively-modelled celestial bureaucracy whose terrestrial mirror was the local liturgical hierarchy of the SòngYuán fǎshī 法師; the Tiānshūyuàn sat at the apex of that bureaucracy.
The text’s three juǎn collectively treat the zhèngfǎ 正法 (“orthodox method”) of the Bureau: the registers (籙) of officers and lieutenants, the rites of summoning and dismissal, the codes for internal discipline, and the huíchē bìdào protocol — a liàndù 鍊度 procedure (refining and ferrying the dead) executed under the imprimatur of the Heavenly-Pivot office. It is closely linked in tradition with the four shorter administrative manuals that immediately follow it in the Daozang: KR5b0254 (DZ 550), KR5b0255 (DZ 551), KR5b0256 (DZ 552), and KR5b0257 (DZ 553).
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Vol. 2: 1090–1092 (DZ 549, entry by John Lagerwey).
- Boltz, Judith M. A Survey of Taoist Literature: Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987 — chapter on the Jìng-míng tradition.
- Akizuki, Kan’ei 秋月觀暎. Chūgoku kinsei dōkyō no keisei: Jōmyō-dō no kisoteki kenkyū 中国近世道教の形成：浄明道の基礎的研究. Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1978 — the standard monograph on the Jìng-míng tradition.