太上玄元道德經解

Tài shàng xuán yuán dào dé jīng jiě 太上玄元道德經解

Exposition of the Most-High Mysterious-Origin Way-and-Power Scripture

compiled by 柳守元 (Liǔ Shǒuyuán); joint commentary attributed to the Bā dòng xiān zǔ 八洞仙祖 (Eight-Cavern Immortal Patriarchs), the leading hand being 呂洞賓 (as 孚佑帝君); prefaces by 文昌帝君 and one Sū Lǎng of the Great Brilliance assembly

A two-juàn commentary on the Dào dé jīng 道德經 produced within the Qīng Lóngmén planchette milieu and gathered into the Dào zàng jí yào. The commentary is presented as a joint work of the Eight-Cavern Patriarchs (a planchette-pantheon led by Lǚ Dòngbīn under his cult-title Fúyòu dìjūn 孚佑帝君), redacted and prepared for the press by Liǔ Shǒuyuán. Three signed prefaces frame the work: by Wénchāng dìjūn 文昌帝君 (司祿文昌), by Sū Lǎng 蘇朗 of the Dàluó assembly, and by Liǔ Shǒuyuán himself; a colophon-poem (題詞) is also by Liǔ.

Prefaces

Preface (Wénchāng dìjūn). “The supreme man can produce supreme writing, and supreme writing lodges supreme principle. Most supreme indeed of men is our Tàishàng; most supreme indeed his honoured scripture. But its expounders have not found it easy: I am very much afraid the supreme principle has been finally obscured. Some have said: the Shén bǎo dào dé jīng has from Hàn down to today been annotated by hundreds of famous officials and great writers, all collected in the Dàozàng — each takes his own view, and all are supplements to the honoured scripture; though their arguments differ, none has not assisted the orthodox transmission. I replied: a supreme principle and supreme writing must have a supreme exposition. The various expounders’ explanations are ‘explanations’ enough, but none of them is supreme; they explain what they understand, and so they have not yet got to the root exposition of the Dào dé jīng; they are not what I would call supreme exposition. One day Yùqīng nèi xiàng Fúyòu dìjūn 玉清内相孚佑帝君 [Lǚ Dòngbīn] came to call on me and drew from his sleeve his annotated copy of the honoured scripture. I unrolled it and read it carefully, and recognised it for the work of the Eight-Cavern Patriarchs, expounding deep meaning, neither departing from the Dào nor stuck in the Dào — explaining sense by following the words, the shallow and near are nothing but lofty and deep. May it cause the readers of myriads of generations to grasp this honoured scripture: ordering oneself by it, one is compliant and auspicious; ordering others by it, one is loving and impartial; ordering empire-state-family by it, there is no situation to which it does not apply, and the mysterious threadlines and the immortal genealogies cannot ultimately go beyond its compass. This exposition is the supreme exposition. — I recall how, in former days, I joined Lǚdì in collating the heavenly scriptures and rectifying their errors; the brushwork was wholly Lǚdì’s, while I merely brought the work to its term, and so I knew Lǚdì truly to be a man of immortal talent. Now reading this commentary by the assembled talents, I am persuaded that the brush of immortal talent is not what dust-and-grain men can match… [Signed:] Jiǔtiān kāihuà sīlù Wénchāng 九天開化司祿文昌 respectfully prefaced.” (This preface bears no calendar date; the speaker is the literature-god Wénchāng dìjūn, here speaking as a fellow planchette-deity who had earlier collaborated with Lǚ Dòngbīn on textual collation.)

Preface (Sū Lǎng). Polemicises against two faulty modes of commentary: (i) those who “release their own private ‘pipe-views’ and call it explanation,” and (ii) those who claim to “make no explanation, taking non-explanation as their explanation” (a Buddhist-style apophatic stance Sū rejects as evasion). He briefly surveys the long line of Dào dé jīng commentators from the HànTáng down through the SòngMíng and concludes that the Eight-Cavern Patriarchs’ joint exposition, encountered “at the Purple-Cloud Belvedere” (紫雲觀), is the long-awaited 至解 (“supreme exposition”). Signed: 大羅班首同袍道弟蘇朗敬序 — “Sū Lǎng, fellow member of the Great Brilliance front rank, your dào-brother”. No date.

Preface (Liǔ Shǒuyuán). Frames the work in classical literary-critical terms: “The composer is called a sage; the transmitter is called clear-sighted.” Sketches the historiography of the Dào dé jīng’s reception, rebukes the Hàn-era Shēn–Hán 申韓 [legalists] for misreading Lǎo zǐ as a doctrine of “harshness and sparing-of-favour,” surveys the body of pre-Qīng commentary, and concludes that none has matched the original until “our Eight Patriarchs, fearing that men’s hearts would finally be obscured and the Tàishàng’s supreme Way permanently darkened, one day gathered at the Bìyún cavern 碧雲洞 and produced this joint commentary.” Signed: 玉樞右宰宏教眞君柳守元敬序 (“Yùshū yòuzǎi hóngjiào zhēnjūn Liǔ Shǒuyuán respectfully prefaces”).

Title-poem (題詞), by Liǔ Shǒuyuán notes that he had earlier prefaced the Eight Patriarchs’ joint commentary, and that “today his disciples are bringing it together with Fúyòu shàngdì’s [Lǚ Dòngbīn’s] Chǎn yì 闡義 to print as a single collection,” recognising it as “the supreme treasure of the Daoist order.” Signed 宏教弟子柳守元熏沐題詞.

The opening also quotes imperial zàn (eulogies) on the Dào dé jīng by Táng Sùzōng, Táng Xiànzōng, Sòng Zhēnzōng, Sòng Rénzōng, and Míng Tàizǔ — a standard front-matter ornament for Qīng Lóngmén editions of the Lǎo zǐ.

Abstract

The work is a Qīng fújī 扶乩-derived joint commentary on the Dào dé jīng, framed as a planchette revelation by the Eight-Cavern Patriarchs (八洞仙祖) — a stock pantheon of late-imperial Daoist mediumship led by Lǚ Dòngbīn — and edited for the press by Liǔ Shǒuyuán 柳守元 (cf. 柳守元), one of the most prolific compiler-editors of the early-eighteenth-century Lóngmén tradition. Internal evidence (Liǔ Shǒuyuán’s signature, the planchette pantheon, the absence from the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng, the inclusion in DZJY) places composition in the Yōngzhèng – Qiánlóng era, c. 1700–1750. The exegetical method is line-by-line gloss in plain literary Chinese, deliberately eschewing both philological pedantry and xuán xué abstraction, in favour of a moralising-soteriological reading directed at lay practitioners. The text is sometimes paired with the parallel Lǚzǔ Dào dé jīng chǎn yì 呂祖道德經闡義 (a separate Lǚ-attributed commentary, also DZJY); Liǔ’s title-poem indicates that some recensions print the two together as a 合注 / 合刻.

The pseudepigraphical attribution is conventional rather than fraudulent in the modern sense: the planchette ascription is itself the genre marker, signalling to readers that the commentary belongs to the trans-Quán-zhēn pantheon’s collective authorial persona.

Translations and research

• Esposito, Monica. Creative Daoism (Wil/Paris: UniversityMedia, 2013), and Facets of Qing Daoism (UniversityMedia, 2014) — fundamental on the Lóng-mén / DZJY milieu and Liǔ Shǒu-yuán’s circle.
• Mori Yuria 森由利亞. “Daozang jiyao and Quanzhen Daoism in the Qing Dynasty” (cited under KR5i0003) — context.
• For broader history of Dào dé jīng commentary: Liú Xiào-gǎn 劉笑敢, Lǎo zǐ gǔ jīn 老子古今 (北京: 中國社會科學出版社, 2006), 2 vols.

Other points of interest

The five imperial zàn on the Dào dé jīng preserved at the head of juàn 1 (after the prefaces) are valuable as a Qīng-era anthology of imperial Daoist eulogy from Táng to Míng — the same set is preserved in several other DZJY editions of Lǎo zǐ paratexts.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5i0005
• Compiler/editor: 柳守元.
• Spirit-writing co-authors: 呂洞賓, 文昌帝君.