Yù qīng zàn huà jiǔ tiān yǎn zhèng xīn yìn bǎo chàn 玉清贊化九天演政心印寶懺
Precious Repentance for the Mind-Seal: Aiding the Transformation of Jade-Purity, Performing the Governance of the Nine Heavens
planchette-revealed Qīng repentance liturgy; preface attributed to 關帝 (Guān dì = Guān Yǔ deified, Guān shèng dì jūn)
The matching repentance liturgy (寶懺) for the Xīn yìn jí jīng at KR5i0021, following the standard pairing of jīng (scripture) and chàn (repentance) in late-imperial Daoist liturgical print culture. The text consists of a series of repentance verses and divine-name invocations, alternating with prose homilies, structured around the maxim jìng zhī jìng zhī, tiān wéi xiǎn sī 敬之敬之天維顯思 (“Be reverent! Be reverent! Heaven is manifestly thinking”), which Guān dì’s preface takes as the operative principle.
Prefaces
Preface (Guān dì). “The Great Bodhisattva (大士) said: ‘the superior gentleman repents in compassion, the middling gentleman repents from grief, the lower gentleman repents from fear.’ I would say: the superior takes Heaven as his model; the middling reverses and contemplates Heaven; the lower fears Heaven — this is according to whether or not he has constant reverence in everyday life. This chàn opens with ‘Be reverent! be reverent! Heaven is manifestly thinking’ — for if a man can constantly revere, then he can be gentle-and-warm, sincere-and-thick, and so found his ground and ascend to Heaven. Heaven is not merely the term for the empty-and-spacious-and-pure: it is the great source from which the Way emerges. If a man with his heart-seal seals the Way, dwelling in reverence and preserving sincerity, then there is no place that is not Heaven. Moreover this chàn — extracting the genuine pneuma of the Mean-and-Harmony, releasing the natural light of Heaven-and-Earth, borrowing the Shī-poetry to refine emotion and trusting in poetic recitation to wash righteousness — can make the six-sense-faculties pure-and-quiet and the five-pneuma circulating-around, so that ‘without recognising, without knowing, one accords with the Lord-on-High’s principle.’ This is to mould-and-cast these people in the centre of the Great Harmony’s primal pneuma. From this the seedlings of the Three Teachings all attain their hearts as bright as the morning star, each issues forth in literature, and xìng and Heavenly Way turn one another and lead one another. The breeze of humaneness pervades the universe, the breath of the Way fills Heaven — is this not all due to xīnyìnchàn nurturing men into spirit-transformation? In the world there are stiff-necked men who, when they unroll the volume, vent their wrong-headed views; therefore I have brought this meaning to light, to manifest the merit-and-use of this chàn and to enter our many-scholars into the Heaven of constant-reverence. Such is the preface.”
Abstract
A Wén-chāng-circle Qīng repentance liturgy paired with KR5i0021. The framing fiction — that Guān dì authorises the chàn with a literary preface — is generically distinct from the Wénchāng fújī of the companion jīng: this text foregrounds the parallel cult of Guān shèng dìjūn 關聖帝君, whose own scripture-corpus (cf. KR5i0088 Guān dì zhōng xiào zhōng yì jīng; KR5i0089 Guān shèng dì jūn běn zhuàn) was being aggressively expanded in the same DZJY-era planchette milieu. Composition between c. 1700 and 1809 (DZJY YPP edition).
The chàn takes the canonical Confucian Shū jīng phrase jìng zhī jìng zhī tiān wéi xiǎn sī (commanded to Bófēn 伯禽 in Shū jīng: Wénhóu zhī mìng) as its operative kernel — a deliberate Confucian-classical anchor for what is otherwise a Daoist liturgical text. This is characteristic of Wén-chāng-cult syncretism: the cult speaks in classical Confucian voice while delivering Daoist content.
Translations and research
- For the Wén-chāng fú-jī tradition see citations under KR5i0021.
- For the Guān-dì cult: Duara, “Superscribing Symbols: The Myth of Guandi” (1988); ter Haar, Guan Yu (Brill 2017).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5i0022
- Preface: 關帝.