太上內丹守一真定經

Tàishàng nèidān shǒuyī zhēndìng jīng 太上內丹守一真定經

Supreme Scripture of Inner Alchemy on True Concentration and Holding the One

anonymous short revelatory scripture of the Ziguang tianmu / Beidou 北斗 cult in one juàn of one folio, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng (DZ 644 / CT 644, 洞神部本文類) and in the Dàozàng jíyào (JY065); fourth of the seven scriptures bundled together as “Qī jīng tóng juàn shāng bā” 七經同卷傷八, transmitted by the goddess Nányuè Qījīnbǎoshān Qìnghuá Zǐguāng Tiānmǔ 南嶽七金寳山慶華紫光天母.

About the work

The text, hardly more than twenty lines in length, opens with a revelation-frame attributed to Yuánshǐ Shàngdì 元始上帝 addressed to an assembly of “newly learning true ones” (新學衆眞). The cosmology it presumes is conventional: “The Great Way, primally undifferentiated, first divides; division established, heaven and earth, sun and moon — warp and woof — couple and join; the yuánqì 元氣 and the essence of yīnyáng 陰陽 serve the Way in generating and preserving form and life.” The operative teaching follows in compressed gnomic form: dòng 動 (“motion”) makes the pair, i.e. yīn; jìng 靜 (“stillness”) makes the One, i.e. yáng; the pair changes, the One abides (二則有變，一則守常). To “know the abiding and awaken its clarity, to embrace the One and tally with the numinous” (知常悟明抱一契靈) is the initiatory key. The technical prescription is spelled out in a single line: “swallow the golden essence (fú jīnjīng 服金晶), fix the spirit (dìng shén 定神), govern the breath (yù qì 御氣), the true breathing fine and unbroken” (眞息綿綿綿綿). The fruit is the self-sustaining cycle of kǎnlí 坎離: yáng pure, yīn departed, the practitioner ascending at broad daylight (白日超昇). A closing aphorism from Yùchén Dàojūn 玉宸大道君 identifies this One as “the treasure of a single body, the mother of the myriad breaths” (一身之寳萬氣之母) from which the six sons (六子 — the remaining trigrams of the Bāguà) are born. The newly learning true ones withdraw to a quiet chamber, think concentratedly, and “reverting to their Tàichū 太初 primordial state, attain the Utmost True Way” (反其太初成至眞道).

Prefaces

No preface. The text opens directly with the Ziguang tianmu’s revelation-frame.

Abstract

Ursula-Angelika Cedzich’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 2:1233, DZ 644) translates the title as “Supreme Neidan Scripture on True Concentration and Holding the One” and locates the text within the cluster of brief revelatory scriptures transmitted by the goddess Zǐguāng tiānhòu 紫光天后 (on whom see DZ 45 Yùqīng wúshàng língbǎo zìrán Běidǒu běnshēng zhēnjīng 玉清無上靈寶自然北斗本生真經 — the cult’s foundational work, where Ziguang furen bathes in a lotus pool and gives birth to the Tianhuang and Ziwei emperors and the seven stars of the Northern Dipper). Cedzich observes that the present text “resembles DZ 64 Yùqīng wúshàng nèijǐng zhēnjīng 玉清無上內景真經, transmitted by the same goddess,” and that it “recommends and expounds dìngshén 定神, which together with yùqì 御氣 (respiratory regulation) enables the adept to hold the One (shǒuyī 守一), forming the basis for the nèidān 內丹 process.”

The Taoist Canon places this work in subsection 3.B.14.b “The Cult of the Northern Dipper” — a grouping of post-Táng scriptures documenting the Beidou-benming 本命 cult’s absorption of Buddhist (and specifically tantric) iconography of the seven-star deity under the figure of Zǐguāng tiānmǔ 紫光天母 (the Queen of Heaven of Purple Glow; see Cedzich’s entry at DZ 1434/1435 p.1235 on the goddess’s “Tantric provenance”). This cult becomes visible in the DZ only from the Northern Sòng onward, and the core cluster (DZ 45, 63, 64, 622, 644, and the related DZ 752 commentary of Fù Dòngzhēn 傅洞真) takes shape in the SòngYuán period, with terminus ante quem supplied by the printing of the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng (1445). The catalog meta of the present work gives no dynasty; the frontmatter accordingly brackets notBefore 960 (founding of the Sòng) and notAfter 1445 (Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng), following the TC’s placement of the Zǐguāng tiānmǔ cluster in its “Modern” (post-Táng) volume. The catalog meta lists no author, consistent with the text’s pseudo-revelatory frame.

The scripture is a schematic but lexically revealing witness to the Sòng-period synthesis that gave nèidān its definitive signature: the cultivational reading of the kǎnlí / qiāngǒng opposites, the doctrine of shǒuyī 守一 (originally a Tàipíng jīng / Bàopǔzǐ technical term) renewed as an inner-alchemical programme, and the Tantra-inflected Beidou revelation-frame. Together with the preceding KR5c0024 Nèidān jīng — a Táng precursor — and the companion KR5c0022 Nèiguān jīng (early Táng) and KR5c0023 Liǎoxīn jīng, it documents the progressive transit of cún sī 存思 and nèiguān 內觀 doctrine into the fully inner-alchemical shǒuyī programme of the Sòng.

Translations and research

• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:1233 (DZ 644, U.-A. Cedzich).
• Pregadio, Fabrizio, ed. The Encyclopedia of Taoism. London: Routledge, 2008 — entries “Beidou,” “Shouyi,” and “Ziguang furen” for the doctrinal and cult-historical context.
• Andersen, Poul. “The Practice of Bugang.” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 5 (1989): 15–53 — for the Beidou ritual substrate.
• Robinet, Isabelle. Introduction à l’alchimie intérieure taoïste: De l’unité et de la multiplicité. Paris: Cerf, 1995 — for the Sòng-era integration of shǒuyī into nèidān.
• Kohn, Livia, ed. Daoism Handbook. Leiden: Brill, 2000 — Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein’s chapter “Inner Alchemy: Notes on the Origin and Use of the Term Neidan” for the vocabulary-history of the present text’s title.

Other points of interest

The transmitter’s long title Nányuè Qījīnbǎoshān Qìnghuá Zǐguāng Tiānmǔ 南嶽七金寳山慶華紫光天母 (lit. “Celestial Mother of Purple Radiance of Qìnghuá in the Seven-Gold Jewel Mountain of the Southern Marchmount”) fixes the goddess not to her Beidou-cosmic aspect but to a local geography — Nányuè 南嶽 (Mt. Héng 衡山), the Southern of the Five Sacred Marchmounts. This localization, otherwise rare for Zǐguāng tiānmǔ, hints that the scripture may have circulated within a Nányuè-centred Daoist community before its inclusion in the DZ. No surviving preface, colophon, or citation allows this to be verified, but the title warrants the note.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0025
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 2:1233 — DZ 644 entry (U.-A. Cedzich).