太上老君說常清靜妙經

Tàishàng Lǎojūn shuō cháng qīngjìng miào jīng 太上老君說常清靜妙經

Wonderful Scripture on Perpetual Purity and Tranquility, Spoken by the Most High Lord Lǎo

anonymous Táng revealed scripture (jīng 經), one juàn of three folios, transmitted under the apocryphal authority of Tàishàng Lǎojūn 太上老君 (the deified Lǎozǐ) with an epilogue ascribed to Gě Xuán 葛玄 (164–244), preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 620 / CT 620, 洞神部本文類). In the Dàozàng jībǎn 道藏輯本 used by the Sānjiā edition it is bundled first among four short astral scriptures sharing a single fascicle (with KR5c0002, KR5c0003, and KR5c0004); the epilogue describing Gě Xuán’s reception of the scripture is copied verbatim into several related Sòng-era variants (the so-called “Northern-Dipper” scriptures).

About the work

The Qīngjìng jīng is one of the most widely recited short scriptures in the Daoist tradition. In fewer than four hundred characters it sets out a meditative-philosophical programme: the Dào is formless, feelingless, nameless, yet “generates and nurtures the ten-thousand things”; within the human being the shén 神 (spirit) is by nature pure but is disturbed by the xīn 心 (mind), and the xīn is by nature quiet but is pulled by yù 慾 (desire); by emptying desire and then emptying the very act of emptying (“observing the outside there is no form, observing the inside there is no mind, observing things there is no thing… the three having been realised, one sees only emptiness; observing emptiness with emptiness, emptiness has nothing to empty; the having-nothing-to-empty itself having no “nothing,” the wúwú 無無 is also absent…”), the adept attains zhēn jìng 眞靜 (“true quietude”) and then zhēn cháng 眞常 (“true constancy”). The epilogue (lines 43–57 of the Mandoku base text) has Gě Xuán declaring that he had received the scripture orally from the Dōnghuá Dìjūn 東華帝君, who received it from the Jīnquè Dìjūn 金闕帝君, who received it from the Xīwángmǔ 西王母, “and these all transmitted it mouth-to-mouth and made no record in writing; now I, in the world, have written and recorded it.” Two further zhēnrén notices are appended — the Zuǒxuán zhēnrén 左玄眞人 guaranteeing divine protection to the reciter, and the Zhèngyī zhēnrén 正一眞人 promising that householders who possess and comprehend the scripture will be delivered from calamity.

Prefaces

The text has no authorial preface in the strict sense; the three paragraphs at the end of the scripture (the Xiānwēng 仙翁 / Gě Xuán attribution; the Zuǒxuán zhēnrén notice; the Zhèngyī zhēnrén notice) together function as a revelatory lineage-statement and merit translation:

Gě Xiānwēng, the Immortal Lord, said: “Having attained the true Dào, I once chanted this scripture ten thousand times. This scripture is practised by the inhabitants of the heavens and is not to be handed down to men of low attainment. Of old I received it from the Dōnghuá Dìjūn; the Dōnghuá Dìjūn received it from the Jīnquè Dìjūn; the Jīnquè Dìjūn received it from the Xīwángmǔ. They all transmitted it orally and kept no written record. Now, in the world, I have set it down in writing. The superior adept who realises it ascends to the heavenly offices; the middling adept who attains it is enrolled among the immortals of the Southern Palace; the lowliest adept who cultivates it enjoys long life in the world, roams the Three Realms, and ascends through the Golden Gate.”

The Perfected of the Left Mystery (Zuǒxuán zhēnrén) said: “For the scholar of the Dào who holds and recites this scripture, the good spirits of the Ten Heavens will at once gather to protect him. Thereafter the Jade Talisman preserves his spirit, the Golden Liquor refines his form, and form and spirit are together wondrous — in perfect union with the Dào.”

The Perfected of Orthodox Unity (Zhèngyī zhēnrén) said: “In the household where this scripture is kept, one who grasps and understands it has no calamity or obstruction to touch him; the host of sages protect the door, the divinities ascend to the upper realms and do audience before the Most High. When his merit is fulfilled and his virtue complete, he is stirred into sympathy with the Thearchs; by ceaseless recitation his body rides the purple cloud [into ascension].”

Abstract

The attribution of the scripture to Gě Xuán is universally recognised as apocryphal (Gě Xuán died in 244 CE, before the formation of the Língbǎo and Shàngqīng corpora). Modern scholarship places the composition of the scripture in the first half of the Táng dynasty, as the catalog meta (dynasty: 唐前半) also indicates. Hans-Hermann Schmidt’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang (2004, 1:562–563, DZ 620, under 2.B.7 Língbǎo), anchors the terminus ante quem through a manuscript of the scripture in the hand of the monk Huáisù 懷素 dated to 785 (recorded in Bìdiàn zhūlín 秘殿珠林 16.3b), a second autograph by Liǔ Gōngquán 柳公權 dated 840 (recorded in Tūnyán guǒyǎn lù 吞煙裹眼錄 3.16b and later carved in stone at the Yǒngxiāng Guàn 永興觀 near Cháng’ān), and citations in the late-eighth-century Yǒngchéng jíxiān lù 墉城集仙錄 (by Dù Guāngtíng 杜光庭, 1.11b). A further commentary reportedly by Sīmǎ Chéngzhēn 司馬承禎 (647–735) is mentioned in the preface to DZ 757 Tàishàng Lǎojūn shuō cháng qīngjìng jīng zhù (23a) and another reportedly by Lǐ Sīmù 李思慕 is recorded in Nányuè zǒngshèng jí 南嶽總勝集 3.7a, but neither commentary survives — these references, if genuine, push the composition back to at least the early eighth century. Frontmatter notBefore/notAfter are accordingly set to 618/756 (the span of “first half of the Táng”).

The scripture was subsequently held in exceptionally high esteem by the Quánzhēn 全眞 tradition. The term qīngjìng is central to Wáng Zhé’s 王喆 (1113–1170, = Wáng Chóngyáng) doctrinal writing (see DZ 1156 Chóngyáng zhēnrén jīnguān yùsuǒ jué passim), and the Qīngjìng jīng is named in Wáng’s biographical stele (“Zhōngnán shān shénxiān Chóngyáng zhēnrén Quánzhēn jiàozǔ bēi”, recorded at Gānshuǐ xiānyuán lù 甘水仙源錄 1.8a) as one of the short scriptures he singled out for daily recitation. The text is also used in the Sòng-era Huánglù zhāi 黃籙齋 (Yellow Register Retreat) liturgy, as documented in Língbǎo wǔjīng tígāng 靈寶五經提綱 (DZ 1223). It attracts a long commentary tradition preserved in the Dàozàng, including DZ 755, DZ 756, DZ 757, DZ 758, DZ 759 (the “Dù Guāngtíng” commentary — actually a late-tenth- or eleventh-century compilation, cf. S-V 1:758–759), DZ 761, and DZ 974, among others.

Translations and research

• Kohn, Livia. “The Scripture of Constant Purity and Tranquility and the Search for Perfect Tranquility.” Taoist Resources 3, no. 2 (1992): 7–18.
• Kohn, Livia. The Taoist Experience: An Anthology. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993, §4 (“Scripture and Practice”). Complete English translation.
• Kohn, Livia, tr. “Clarity-and-Stillness Scripture.” In Livia Kohn in Conversation with the Qingjing jing. Three Pines Press / Journal of Daoist Studies, 2010.
• Legge, James, tr. “Khing Käng King, or ‘The Classic of Purity.‘” In The Texts of Taoism, Part II. Sacred Books of the East 40. Oxford: Clarendon, 1891, 247–254. First English rendering; dated but widely reprinted.
• Mitamura Keiko 三田村圭子. “Taijō rōkun setsu jō seijō kyō chū ni tsuite” 太上老君說常清靜經注について. Tōyō no shisō to shūkyō 東洋の思想と宗教 (1994).
• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:562–563 (DZ 620, Hans-Hermann Schmidt).
• Li Weiran 李偉然. “Sòng tà Qīngjìng jīng” 宋拓清靜經. In Zhōngguó shūfǎ 中國書法, editorial team, “Liǔ Gōngquán” 柳公權 volume, 2:201–205. Beijing: Zhōngguó shūfǎ zázhì shè.

Other points of interest

The epilogue’s claim to oral transmission from the Xīwángmǔ through the Jīnquè Dìjūn and the Dōnghuá Dìjūn to Gě Xuán is the template for the hagiographic lineage of several other short Táng–Sòng revealed scriptures, and it is the presence of exactly this transmission-frame rather than the body of the scripture that usually marks those texts as literarily dependent on the Qīngjìng jīng. The scripture’s short length (393 characters in the Mandoku base text) and rhythmic parallelism made it the preferred recitation-text for novices in late-imperial Daoist monastic instruction; it is still today the text regularly chanted at the evening office (wǎnkē 晚課) in Quánzhēn monasteries. Its fusion of Lǎo-Zhuāng cosmology, Mahāyāna “three-fold emptying” (reminiscent of the Mādhyamika’s dialectic of śūnyatā), and interior-alchemical quietism is the paradigm example of the Táng philosophical synthesis that would later be codified by Sīmǎ Chéngzhēn’s Zuòwàng lùn 坐忘論 and its descendants.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0001
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 1:562–563 — DZ 620 entry (Hans-Hermann Schmidt).
• Wikipedia: Qingjing Jing