Gāo shàng yù huáng xīn yìn jīng 高上玉皇心印經
The Lofty-Highest Jade Emperor’s Mind-Seal Scripture
base scripture: anonymous, TángSòng; commentary by 蜀抱真子 (Shǔ Bàozhēnzǐ — i.e., a Sichuan-based Daoist using the hào “Master Embracing-the-True”); preface by 空洞道人 (Kōngdòng dàorén) and read by 頤翁 (Yíwēng)
Yet another DZJY recension of the Yù huáng xīn yìn jīng (cf. KR5i0017 for the canonical text), this one with a single-voice running commentary by Shǔ Bàozhēnzǐ — distinct from the planchette joint commentary of KR5i0017 / KR5i0018 — and a literary preface by Kōngdòng dàorén. The pagination begins at sheet 18a, indicating that this commentary stood in the woodblock printing immediately following the preceding Yù huáng xīn yìn materials, perhaps continuously paginated with KR5i0018.
Prefaces
Preface (Kōngdòng dàorén, read by Yíwēng). “Kōngdòng dàorén having completed his commentary on the Xīn yìn jīng, Yíwēng read it three times and exclaimed: ‘Great indeed is the heart!’ The cosmos is its name, and the dwelling of the myriad numina; the empty-and-not-being is its valley, which arising-and-vanishing-cognition cannot grasp, and yet through which arising-and-vanishing wholly pass… Wonderful indeed the yìn (seal)! It is the term for tally and contract, the gate of exchange, the lineage of spirit-clarity, which holding-or-letting-go-cognition cannot calculate, and yet through which holding-or-letting-go wholly proceed… Confining one heart inwardly to embrace the jīngqìshén — jīngqìshén are nothing but heart. Casting one heart outwardly to gaze on Dipper-Sun-Moon — Dipper-Sun-Moon are nothing but heart. With Dipper-Sun-Moon close at hand, jīngqìshén are afar; with jīngqìshén afar, Dipper-Sun-Moon are close — without drawing them, as if drawn; without pushing them, as if pushed; inside, outside, above, below — vast as if to right and left, dimly as if opening doors and windows, in stillness it answers an echo, in clarity it streams light, in dimness it knows not its own ground. The yìn is here! It is by what the Lord-on-High coagulates spirit and unifies transformation, fashioning life and fixing nature for the myriad things… Kōngdòngzǐ has seen this; therefore he points directly to the secrecy of the water-cavity-light-spirit and lets the wind-and-wave intermixing carry his image. — When the moon reaches the heart of heaven and the wind comes to the face of the water — that is the climax of the cosmos’s spirit. Yáofū Shàozǐ found his pleasure in the same place; that is why his pleasure could reach the limit of wúkěnàihé (‘there is nothing one can do about it’). When pleasure reaches that limit, generation is born; pleasure that has reached wúkěnàihé generates without its own generation, and so cannot be killed. — Kōngdòngzǐ’s flower-holding gesture rests there. Reader, ponder.”
Abstract
A Míng or early-Qīng commentary on the Xīn yìn jīng by an unidentified Sichuan Daoist, signed only with the hào 蜀抱眞子 (“Master Bàozhēnzǐ of Shǔ”). The hào Bàozhēnzǐ is shared with several earlier commentators (e.g., the YuánSòng Lǚ of Sìmíng who commented on the Jiù kǔ jīng — see Schipper-Verellen II, on DZ 399, by Lagerwey), but the explicit Shǔ (= Sichuan) marker, together with the work’s transmission only via DZJY (which was compiled at the Èrxiānān in Chéngdū), strongly suggests an early-eighteenth-century Sichuan Lóngmén Daoist — perhaps internal to the same Liǔ Shǒuyuán circle (cf. 柳守元) but here writing as a single named exegete rather than as a planchette panel.
The companion preface by 空洞道人 (“Master of the Empty-Cavern”) and the additional reading-note by 頤翁 (“Aged-One of Sustenance”) are likewise pseudonymous; both names recur in Sichuan early-Qīng Lóngmén print culture but resist precise identification.
The dating bracket notBefore 1600 / notAfter 1750 is conservative.
Translations and research
- For the base Xīn yìn jīng see secondary literature cited under KR5i0017.
- No substantial secondary literature located on the present recension.