Língbǎo guīkōng jué 靈寶歸空訣
Língbǎo Formulae for Returning to the Void by 趙宜真 (編述)
About the work
A single-juǎn anthology of the guīkōng 歸空 (“returning to the void”) protocols — songs and instructional verses on the death-and-deliverance phase of inner-alchemical practice — compiled and reworked by the late-Yuán to early-Míng Daoist patriarch 趙宜真 (hào Yuányángzǐ 原陽子; d. 1382), one of the principal SòngYuán inheritors of the Qīngwēi 清微, Jìngmíng 淨明 and Quánzhēn 全真 lineages.
Abstract
The work is attributed in its preface to “Chóngwén guǎngdào chúndé fǎshī jiàomén gāoshì Yuányángzǐ Zhào Yízhēn biānshù” 崇文廣道純德法師教門高士原陽子趙宜真編述. The text opens with a set of gēkuò 歌括 (mnemonic songs): “Tāi yuán shénhuà yīngxióng hàn, tuō tǐ zìyóu wú jìdàn, xuérén jīngjìn liǎo wúshēng, xíngshí diǎnjiǎn xiū liáoluàn” 胎圓神化英雄漢，脫體自由無忌憚，學人精進了無生，行時點檢休撩亂 (“When the embryo is round and the spirit transforms, the heroic man casts off the body in free abandon; the student progresses to the no-birth — at the moment of departure, check carefully, do not be confused”).
The remainder of the verses proceed through the canonical signs of approaching death-and-deliverance in inner-alchemical doctrine: the dǐngmén tiāngǔ 頂門天鼓 (crown-gate’s heavenly drum) sounding like thunder; the Suìchú yè 歲除夜 (New Year’s Eve) night-vigil meditation in which the practitioner contemplates the crown of his head and hears the sound of “nǎoliè rúpīlì 腦裂如霹靂” (the skull splitting like a thunderbolt); the threefold sound counted as years until guīkōng; the comparison with the cicada’s 100 days and the earthworm’s 7 days as analogies for the bodily transformation; and many further verses on the alchemical recapitulation of the xíngshén 形神 (“form-and-spirit”) at the moment of liberation.
Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 3: 1184–1185, John Lagerwey) describe the work as Zhào Yízhēn’s editorial reworking of a text originally misattributed to Pútídámó 菩提達磨 (Bodhidharma); the Yuányángzǐ recension purges the Chan-Buddhist attribution and re-roots the protocols in the Língbǎo + nèidān 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. Vol. 3: 1184–1185 (DZ 568, John Lagerwey).
- Schipper, Kristofer. “Master Chao I-chen (?–1382) and the Ch’ing-wei School of Taoism.” In Dōkyō to shūkyō bunka 道教と宗教文化, edited by Akizuki Kan’ei 秋月観暎, 715–34. Tōkyō: Hirakawa, 1987.