太上老君說了心經

Tàishàng Lǎojūn shuō liǎoxīn jīng 太上老君說了心經

Scripture on the Total Comprehension of the Mind, Spoken by the Most High Lord Lǎo

anonymous short scripture in one juàn of one folio, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng (DZ 642 / CT 642, 洞神部本文類) and in the Dàozàng jíyào (JY064); second of the seven scriptures bundled together as “Qī jīng tóng juàn shāng bā” 七經同卷傷八 (the bundle KR5c0022–KR5c0028).

About the work

The Liǎoxīn jīng is a single-folio aphoristic distillation of the xīnxìng 心性 doctrine that organises the qī jīng bundle. Its argument runs in three short paragraphs. (1) “If one would cultivate the Way, first observe one’s mind. The mind is the master of the spirits; movement and stillness alike issue from it.” Movement-with-no-stillness and the not-acting-not-still — both are equally to be set aside; “true mind” (zhēnxīn 真心) is the mind that “has nowhere to abide, and the abiding has no mind” (xīn wú suǒ zhù, zhù wú suǒ xīn 心無所住住無所心), at which point “the zhēnkōng 真空 [true emptiness] turns through, and even the absence of emptiness becomes the true.” (2) Lǎojūn’s autobiographical aside: “From innumerable kalpas I have observed the mind and obtained the Way, even unto utter Voidness — what is there obtained? For the sake of the multitudinous beings I have provisionally named it ‘obtaining the Way.‘” (3) An exhortation: those who do not “comprehend the mind” (liǎo xīn 了心) toil in vain across great kalpas and “drown forever” — only the Sage’s teaching offers free wandering and the embrace of the True. The text closes after these three paragraphs.

Prefaces

No preface. The text opens directly with Lǎojūn’s exhortation.

Abstract

Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 2:771, DZ 642) summarises: “It mainly emphasizes the importance of ataraxy in the practice of meditation, an idea commonly encountered in texts such as the ‘Guānkōng piān 觀空篇’ or the ‘Tāixí piān 胎息篇’ (see DZ 1017 Dàoshū 10.10a and 14.8b).” Baldrian-Hussein establishes a terminus ante quem by noting that the Liǎoxīn jīng “is quoted in a collection of commentaries to the Lǎojūn qīngjìng jīng published during the Yuán (1279–1368) dynasty” — namely DZ 737 Tàishàng Lǎojūn shuō cháng qīngjìng jīng zhù 太上老君說常清靜經注 17a. The scripture is otherwise undated; the Sānjiābǎn and TC offer no dynasty, and the catalog meta likewise lists none. The pronounced xīnxìng idiom and the cluster of resonances with the Nèiguān jīng (DZ 641, KR5c0022) and the Cháng qīngjìng jīng (DZ 620, KR5c0001) — both early-Táng — suggest a Táng or early-Sòng date; its absorption into the late-Sòng / Yuán nèidān exegetical tradition (where it is quoted in DZ 1017 Dàoshū’s Guānkōng and Tāixí sections) gives the firm terminus ante quem of the late thirteenth century. Frontmatter notBefore/notAfter accordingly bracket 618–1279, with the understanding that the more probable narrower window is mid-Táng to early-Sòng. The catalog meta lists no author, consistent with the work’s brief, gnomic, and apocryphal character.

The use of vocabulary such as zhēnkōng 真空 and the wú suǒ zhù 無所住 / zhù wú suǒ xīn 住無所心 formula reflects the full integration of Buddhist (especially ChánMādhyamaka) idiom into the late-Táng / Sòng Daoist xīnxìng vocabulary: the latter formula is patently modelled on the Diamond Sūtra’s yìng wú suǒ zhù ér shēng qí xīn 應無所住而生其心. The Liǎoxīn jīng is one of the more compact instances of the genre of single-folio Daoist xīn 心 scriptures that proliferated in the late-Táng / Sòng meditation tradition (cf. KR5c0026 Tàishàng Lǎojūn nèi rìyòng miàojīng and KR5c0027 wài rìyòng miàojīng, both within the same qī jīng bundle).

Translations and research

• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:771 (DZ 642, F. Baldrian-Hussein).
• Kohn, Livia. “Taoist Insight Meditation: The Tang Practice of Neiguan.” In Livia Kohn ed., Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques, 191–222. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1989 — for the broader xīnxìng / nèiguān / liǎoxīn meditational cluster.
• Robinet, Isabelle. Introduction à l’alchimie intérieure taoïste: De l’unité et de la multiplicité. Paris: Cerf, 1995 — on the integration of Buddhist idiom into Sòng Daoist xīn discourse.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0023
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 2:771 — DZ 642 entry (F. Baldrian-Hussein).