Tàishàng língbǎo jìngmíng fēixiān dùrén jīngfǎ shìlì 太上靈寶淨明飛仙度人經法釋例
Exegetical Examples to the Língbǎo Jìng-míng Method-Scripture for the Flying-Immortal Deliverance of Humans attributed to 許遜 (許旌陽, 注)
About the work
A single-juǎn commentary on KR5b0268 (Tàishàng língbǎo jìngmíng fēixiān dùrén jīngfǎ) attributed in the Daoist canon to Xǔ Sūn (許遜) under his Daoist hagiographic title Gāomíng dàshǐ shéngōng miàojì zhēnjūn Xǔ Jīngyáng 高明大使神功妙濟真君許旌暘. The attribution is pseudepigraphic — the historical Xǔ Sūn was a fourth-century figure, while the Jìngmíng canon was redacted in the Southern Sòng to Yuán — but it transmits the lineage’s authorising claim that its scriptures descend from the patron-saint by direct revelation.
Abstract
The commentary proceeds chapter by chapter through the parent scripture, expounding each section’s cosmological-doctrinal meaning. The opening Zìrán yùzì zhāng 自然玉字章 sets the doctrinal terms: “Dàfàn zhī qì běn hū wúxíng ér néng shēng yǒuxíng, wúshù ér yù yǒushù, fā zìrán zhī hé, chǎn zìrán zhī miào…” 大梵之炁本乎無形而能生有形、無數而御有數，發自然之和，闡自然之妙 (“The qì of the Great Brahma is rooted in the formless yet can give birth to the formed; is rooted in number-less yet can govern numbers; it bursts forth the harmony of the self-so, and unfolds the marvel of the self-so…”). The commentary then explains how the natural patterns observed by the sages (the Lóngtú guīshū 龍圖龜書, Yellow-River and Luò-River charts) descend from this primordial qì, and how the Língbǎo dàdòng scripture issued from the same source as the supreme deliverance text.
The text moves through the parent’s structural divisions — Xùwēi 叙微, Xùjīng 叙經, Shì 釋 — explaining the author’s compositional logic: “shǒu yuē Xùwēi, yán qí dào bāohán suǒyǐ zhāngwēi zhě cǐ yě 首曰叙微，言其道包含所以彰微者此也” (“the opening is called Xùwēi — speaking of the Way’s inclusivity by which the subtle is manifested — this is it”). The commentary serves both to authorise the parent scripture’s authority by lineage-attribution and to provide a doctrinal-philological key for its operating procedures.
Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 2: 1097–1098, John Lagerwey) treat the Shìlì as the commentarial side of the Jīngfǎ package; the two together form the Jìngmíng canon’s most extensive Dùrén 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. Vol. 2: 1097–1098 (DZ 564, John Lagerwey).
- Akizuki, Kan’ei. Chūgoku kinsei dōkyō no keisei: Jōmyō-dō no kisoteki kenkyū. Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1978.