Chàng dào zhēn yán 唱道真言
Chanting-the-Way True Sayings
planchette-revealed by the 南極天宮青華上帝 (Nánjí tiāngōng Qīnghuá shàngdì — the deified Qīnghuá paragon of the Léifǎ tradition), as transmitted to 鶴臞子 (Hèqúzǐ — disciple’s hào), with the Wénchāng planchette acting as the recording brush
A 50,000-character Yōng-zhèng-era planchette compendium of inner-alchemical sermons given over a three-year planchette ministration to Hèqúzǐ by the deified Qīnghuá shàngdì — the doctrinal hinge of the work being the two characters liàn xīn 鍊心 (“refining the heart”), which the speaker insists is the single key to xìngmìng cultivation against the contemporary obsession with “lead-and-mercury” jargon. The compendium is structured as conversational dialogue: at the Méitíng (plum-arbor) and Jiāoguǎn (banana-pavilion) altar-sites where the planchette sessions were held, Hèqúzǐ asks and Qīnghuá expounds.
Prefaces
Preface (Qīnghuá shàngdì). “I see how those of the world who study the Way often fall into specious transmission — speaking of lead and speaking of mercury, deluding the spirits of all souls with their crazy hope of long life. Tracing what they pretend to transmit, it is no more than the pointing-out of one or two technical methods… they then claim to be holding the dragon-pearl in their fist, demand wealth from men, accept ritual prostrations, and play the master-house — every time I see this, I cannot help crying out ‘A sin!‘… Cultivators must first illumine the heart-ground before being able to leap out beyond yīnyáng and the Five Phases and stand alone with Tàixū. That is why the perfected immortals, in delivering men, always teach men to do their work on the heart-ground, refining the inch-square space until it is like a single grain of crystal, like a vessel of liquid lapis-lazuli; then the boundless wonderful meaning will issue from one’s own heart-source and one will recite-recite-roundly-penetrating, the heart-heart luminously transparent, and the immortal-house’s hitherto-untransmitted secret thus completely revealed… On jǐyǒu spring, third month, jiǎchén day’s dawn (= 春三月甲辰之旦, Yōngzhèng 7 / 3 May 1729), the dharma-heir Hèqúzǐ received and was refined… The Wénchāng brush recorded. The Great-Dharma Old Man and Hèqúzǐ had a prior covenant from earlier kalpas; from the day the planchette descended now nearly three years have passed; what I have transmitted to Hèqúzǐ is no more than the two characters liàn xīn. A thousand words and ten thousand sayings are no more than the elucidation that liàn xīn is the great central path of the thousand sages and the great main road of the myriad perfected. In the great-Luó-Heaven on the Jade-Capital Mountain, none of the countless lofty perfected can ramble in the realm of true light without these two characters — for the disciples of the Yuánshǐ Heavenly King this has been verified one by one and never failed…”
Abstract
A major Qīng fújī compendium of inner-alchemical instruction, dated by the internal jǐyǒu spring reference to 3 May 1729 (Yōngzhèng 7), with the planchette ministration having begun three years earlier (c. 1726). The work occupies 5 juàn (50,000 + characters) and is the most extensive single planchette composition in the DZJY corpus. Its central insistence on liàn xīn — heart-refining — as the kernel of the xìngmìng tradition, and its explicit polemic against the technical-formula style of the lead-mercury alchemists, make it a clear restatement of the Quánzhēn / Lóngmén orthodoxy in spirit-writing form.
The “Qīnghuá shàngdì” speaker is the deified ritual patriarch of the Língbǎo / Léifǎ tradition (cf. Tài shàng jiǔ tiān yìng yuán léi shēng pǔ huà tiānzūn — the parent text of KR5i0035 Yù shū bǎo jīng). The book had been catalogued in Chinese-language Daoist surveys but has received no critical edition or translation outside Esposito’s surveys.
Translations and research
- Esposito, Monica. Facets of Qing Daoism (UniversityMedia 2014) — surveys the Lóng-mén planchette literature including Chàng dào zhēn yán.
- Mori Yuria, “Daozang jiyao and Quanzhen Daoism,” cited at KR5i0003.
- No critical edition or full translation located in any modern language.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5i0030
- Spirit-writing speaker: 青華上帝 (託名).