玄天上帝說報父母恩重經

Xuántiān shàngdì shuō bào fùmǔ ēn zhòng jīng 玄天上帝說報父母恩重經

Scripture on the Recompense of the Grave Kindness of Father and Mother, Spoken by the Supreme Thearch of the Dark Heaven

by 趙宜真 (d. 1382)

Brief filial-piety scripture in one juàn (three folios), compiled and provided with an explanatory postface by the late-Yuán / early-Míng Qīngwēi 清微 patriarch Zhào Yízhēn 趙宜真 (d. 1382), preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng (DZ 663 / CT 663, 洞神部本文類) as the second of two scriptures bundled in the “èr jīng tóng juàn nǚ shí wǔ” 二經同卷女十五 female-series volume 15 (paired with [[KR5c0043|DZ 662 Tàishàng lǎojūn shuō bào fùmǔ ēn zhòng jīng]]). The text is a Xuántiān-shàngdì-school variant of the filial-piety scripture genre, notable for three closely-joined components: the scripture (jīng 經) proper, an invocatory litany of canonical titles (shèng hào 聖號) for Zhēnwǔ 真武 / Xuántiān Shàngdì 玄天上帝, and Zhào Yízhēn’s own postface setting out the devotional programme of the text.

About the work

The work is structured in three parts:

• Scripture proper (1a–1b): a brief revelatory sermon in philosophical register delivered by Xuántiān Shàngdì, exploiting the Mahāyāna doctrine of the three aspects of practice — miào xiū 妙修, miào xíng 妙行, miào yuán 妙緣 (sublime cultivation, sublime conduct, sublime conditioned-link) — and the corresponding paradox of wú 無 and yǒu 有 (non-being and being) in the generation of form. Thereupon the text applies this frame to the filial context: the son’s tuō xiàng wèi yǒu 託相爲有 (taking refuge in form for being-ness) is the coming-into-being that burdens the mother-and-father’s own xiàng 相 with the daily toil of raising him; the filial son’s resolve is therefore to extinguish his desires (tān chēn 貪瞋 — greed and hatred), cultivate equanimity, and by so doing “give rest to his parental forms” (lìng wǒ shǐ xiàng dà dé kuàilè 令我始相大得快樂 — cause my originating forms to attain great joy). This is a markedly philosophical reformulation of the classical Fùmǔ ēn zhòng jīng idiom, recasting the devotional recompense in the key of non-attachment (wúzhuó 無著).

• Xuándì bào’ēn shèng hào 玄帝報恩聖號 (1b–2a): the zhì xīn guī mìng lǐ 志心皈命禮 — “with sincere heart I take refuge, I prostrate” — formula, followed by the full invocatory title of the deity:

  Xuán yuán yìng huà Wǔqǔ fēn zhēn 玄元應化、武曲分眞； Dà shèng dà cí, dà rén dà xiào 大聖大慈、大仁大孝； Bā shí èr huà bào ēn jiào zhǔ 八十二化報恩教主； Yòu shèng Zhēnwǔ yě shì fú shén 佑聖真武、冶世福神； Yù Xū shī xiàng, Xuántiān shàngdì, Jīn què huà shēn tiān zūn 玉虛師相、玄天上帝、金闕化身天尊.

  This is the canonical invocatory liturgy of the Xuántiānshàngdì cult in its mature YuánMíng form.

• Zhào Yízhēn’s postface (2a–3a): Zhào explains that the scripture was proclaimed by Tàiqīng dàdì 太清大帝 in the 82nd of his physical transformations (bā shí èr cì huà shēn 八十二次化身), wherein he incarnated as a son of King Jìng lè 淨樂國王 and Queen Miàoxiáng tiānzhǔ 妙祥天主, renouncing the world at age seven, retiring to Tàihé shān 太和山 to practise the Dào for forty-two years, and ascending to the rank of Xuántiān Shàngdì in charge of the North. Moved by the weight of his parents’ grace, he proclaimed the present scripture. Zhào prescribes a specific devotional programme: chí zhāi sān nián 持齋三年 (observe a three-year vegetarian-fast corresponding to the infant-nursing period) and recite the Xuándì shèng hào 聖號 eighteen thousand times (yī wàn bā qiān biàn 一萬八千遍, corresponding to the number of piān mù 篇目 — section-divisions — in the complete Daoist canon), as recompense for the three years of maternal nursing. The postface closes with the epigraph: xiān jīng wàn juàn zhōng xiào wéi xiān 仙經萬卷忠孝爲先 (“among the ten thousand scrolls of the immortals’ canon, loyalty and filiality come first”), and yī zǐ xué dào zé jiǔ zǔ shēng tiān 一子學道則九祖生天 (“let one son study the Way and nine generations of ancestors will ascend to heaven”). The postface is signed Xuán mén sì jiào Xùnyí Zhào Yízhēn shū 玄門嗣教浚儀趙宜真書 (the successor-in-doctrine of the Mysterious Gate, Xùnyí [an alternative place-name for Zhào’s native place] Zhào Yízhēn wrote this).

Prefaces

No preface. The scripture opens directly, in characteristic scripture-style, with Xuántiān Shàngdì’s gnomic opening verse miào yuán wú xiū, miào xíng wú jī 妙緣無修，妙行無積. (Zhào Yízhēn’s postface, however, constitutes a substantial authorial bá 跋 at the close.)

Abstract

Hans-Hermann Schmidt’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 2:1201, DZ 663) classifies the text in section 3.B.10 The Bēidì and Xuántiān Shàngdì Cult and reads:

“The present text consists of the actual scripture (jīng), an invocatory formula with the canonical titles (shèng hào) for Zhēnwǔ 真武, and an explanatory postface by Zhào Yízhēn (for biographical details on Zhào, see DZ 1071 Yuányángzǐ fǎyǔ and Schipper, ‘Master Chao I-chen’). It is stated in this work that Tàiqīng dàdì 太清大帝 after his eighty-second physical transformation proclaimed this scripture as Xuántiān shàngdì 玄天上帝 to express gratitude to his parents. The 1224 Dàomén dìng zhì 5.9b prescribes the recitation of a Zhēnwǔ língyìng zhēn jūn bào fùmǔ ēndé jīng 真武靈應真君報父母恩德經 in one juan within the huáng lù zhāi 黃籙齋 Retreat, probably referring to the text of the present jīng. Concerning the shèng hào, Zhào explains a practice by pious sons and daughters, who during a three-year period of fasting (corresponding to the feeding period for infants) recite the litany of these titles 18,000 times (corresponding to the number of sections, piān mù, in the complete canon of Taoist scriptures).”

The terminus post quem is anchored by two convergent considerations: (1) the canonical-title formula for Xuántiān Shàngdì reaches its Yuán-era standard form under the imperial canonisation of 1303 CE (Yuán shèng rén wēi Xuántiān Shàngdì 元聖仁威玄天上帝), and (2) the author Zhào Yízhēn (d. 1382) belongs to the second half of the 14th century. The terminus ante quem is 1382 CE, Zhào’s death year. The frontmatter accordingly uses 1350–1382 with dynasty “元末”. The catalog meta lists no date, but names Zhào Yízhēn as author (with the correct death-date 1382) and lists him in the persons: field.

The catalog meta gives the author as 趙宜真 without function; per the postface, his function is biān 編 (compiler/editor) — he both arranges the scripture and provides the authorial postface, and this is the convention followed in the frontmatter.

The scripture’s doctrinal characteristic — the sophisticated wúyǒu / miào yuánmiào xíng philosophical opening — reflects Zhào’s own Qīngwēi-school theological inheritance and stands in notable contrast to the vivid popular-didactic register of the Lǎojūn version. Where the Lǎojūn version (DZ 662) offers a close narrative account of the mother’s labour, the Xuándì version (DZ 663) offers a compressed metaphysical sermon followed by a liturgical-devotional programme. The two are thus complementary and were bundled together in the Daozang’s tóng juàn arrangement for this reason.

The 18,000-times recitation linked by Zhào to the piān mù count of the complete Daoist canon is an important instance of Daoist numerological liturgics: the recitation of the shèng hào substitutes, by a theology of numerical equivalence, for the recitation of the entire Daoist canon, with each recitation representing one piān mù.

Translations and research

• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:1201 (DZ 663, H.-H. Schmidt). Primary reference.
• 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. The classical biographical study of Zhào Yízhēn.
• Grootaers, Willem. “The Hagiography of the Chinese God Chen-wu (Chen-wu, the Transmission of a Legend).” Folklore Studies 11, no. 2 (1952): 139–81. On the Xuántiān Shàngdì / Zhēnwǔ hagiographical tradition.
• Boltz, Judith M. A Survey of Taoist Literature, Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1987, 86–91 (on Zhào Yízhēn) and passim.
• de Bruyn, Pierre-Henry. “Daoism in the Míng (1368–1644).” In Daoism Handbook, edited by Livia Kohn, 594–622. Leiden: Brill, 2000. For the late-Yuán to Míng Daoist lineage context.

Other points of interest

The three-year fast plus 18,000-fold recitation prescription is of singular interest as an instance of the Daoist adaptation of what is essentially a Buddhist penitential-devotional arithmetic (the Buddhist sān nián fast and the wàn biàn 萬遍 mantra-recitation as merit-generation practices). The Daoist numerological re-keying — with 18,000 as the section-count of the Daoist canon — provides a distinctive theological framework that equates the scripture’s recitation with the comprehensive recitation of the entire corpus.

The scripture’s relationship to the 1224 Dàomén dìng zhì 5.9b entry — which prescribes a Zhēnwǔ língyìng zhēn jūn bào fùmǔ ēndé jīng 真武靈應真君報父母恩德經 within the huáng lù zhāi 黃籙齋 retreat — is an intriguing question. Schmidt considers the 1224 reference “probably” to be to our text, which would substantially move back the terminus post quem from the Zhào Yízhēn authorial postface to a pre-1224 date for the core scripture. If so, Zhào’s “authorship” is really a Yuán-era editorial recompilation of an earlier Sòng text. This is compatible with the catalog-meta ascription of Zhào as the responsible figure, given the text’s canonical form appears to be fixed by Zhào.

The 82 transformations of Tàiqīng dàdì (bā shí èr huà 八十二化) is an idiosyncratic variant of the classical Xuántiān hagiography. The standard count, as in DZ 958 Xuántiān shàngdì qǐ shèng lù 玄天上帝啓聖錄 and DZ 962 Wǔdāng fú dì zǒng zhēn jí 武當福地總真集, is 81 transformations; the 82nd, in the present scripture, is the bào ēn jiào zhǔ 報恩教主 (Teacher-of-the-Recompense) incarnation, added on the theological model of the supplementary final incarnation that brings the teaching to completion.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0044
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 2:1201 — DZ 663 entry (H.-H. Schmidt).
• Wikipedia: Xuantian Shangdi — the deity Xuántiān Shàngdì / Zhēnwǔ.
• DZ 1071 Yuányángzǐ fǎyǔ — Zhào Yízhēn’s collected teachings.