Yīn fú xuán jiě 陰符玄解
Mysterious Exposition of the YīnFú Scripture
by 范宜賓 (Fàn Yíbīn, hào 一中子; 瀋陽 native, fl. mid-Qián-lóng era), composed at his Zhígǔ Xuān 執古軒 study on 5 July 1772 (大淸乾隆壬辰仲夏月之望), as the matching extension of the earlier Yīnfú fāmì 陰符發祕 by 張清夜 (Zhāng Qīngyè, alias 自牧道人, abbot of the 紫陽洞 at Chéngdū)
A mid-Qián-lóng-era nèidān commentary on the Yīn fú jīng, thoroughly documented in its own self-preface. The commentator Fàn Yíbīn is a Liáo-níng-based lay Daoist scholar networked with the Chéngdū Daoist establishment; the work’s relation to Zhāng Qīngyè’s parallel commentary (also a Lóngmén product, transmitted via Sìchuān) is the matching half of a planned full-coverage Yīn fú jīng exegesis.
Prefaces
Self-preface (Fàn Yíbīn). “In the bǐngzǐ year I was studying the Lǐ jì in the Qīngxī mountains and put this scripture to my master Sōngshān xiānshēng, asking: ‘It is said that the Yellow Emperor authored it; another says that Zhū zǐ (Zhū Xī) thought it the work of a Way-perceiving man of the Warring States; some today take it as a treatise on nourishing-life, others as on royal-government and military strategy. Which is correct? — Please give me the full account.’ My master said: ‘*This scripture is an out-of-the-world book — a text from Kōngtóng’s transmission, the founding ancestor of the Three Teachings and the Hundred Schools’ classic literature. It is truly the great Way of returning-to-origin and reverting-to-end, expounding the secret-formula of pre-birth and post-birth, of stealing-and-snatching, the supreme-vehicle’s subtlety. Its words are sparing but comprehensive, its meaning deep, its action easy. It opens with the manifesting of the mechanism and inspecting of things; continues with knowing-the-motion and knowing-the-time, the prevention of conquest, the prevention of collapse — penetrating beginning and end. It takes the spontaneous-and-utterly-still as its work, and the observation of Heaven’s vigorous-action as its model. If a man has the heart of biting-through an iron mántóu, he can himself exhaust the mystery of cóngwúrùyǒu / zìyǒuhuánwú (from-no-into-yes, from-yes-back-to-no), and refining-to-spirit-transformation will smash the empty void itself. The Spring-and-Autumn or Warring-States dating is groundless; even the yǎngshēng / wángzhèng / bīngfǎ readings are largely deceptive — but let us not discuss them.’ My master had received [the lineage] from Èrwǔ dàorén; today he transmitted it to me. — I have read and pondered the scripture and gained for myself: it is no more than 447 characters, but its statement of the qiánkūn beginning-and-end, of the gāngróu motion-and-stillness — its purport returns to nothing other than the Yì. The Buddhists’ fēi kōng fēi sè, the Daoist’s bù yǒu bù wú, the Confucians’ wújí tàijí — all are threaded through it. Its phrasing is most peculiar and its words most steep, so the various commentators’ speculations have actually obscured the genuine meaning. — This spring my nephew Bǎoxiáng returned from Sìchuān and brought me the Yīnfú fāmì of Zǐyáng dòng zìmù dàorén Zhāng Qīngyè; I held it up reverently and read; saw at once that the secret formula was on a single road; in helpless joy I struck the desk and called out ‘Splendid!’ — Master Zhāng Qīngyè dwells in Sìchuān, well-known for the Nángōng arts; and yet his accomplishment is in inner-elixir Way-completion, and now his composition has fallen into my hand: this is just the saying that ‘when the gentleman dwells in his room and brings out his words, if they are good, then a thousand miles away one answers them.’ — Were it not for my nephew’s going to Sìchuān, how should I have come by this fugitive volume? Master Zhāng has shown me the raft for the management of the Way; I am only sad that he has shed-his-corpse and gone, and I cannot consult him face to face. Now where the master has already let the secret slip in front, the meaning he kept hidden and not yet expounded — I take the liberty of expounding it behind, completing it as a ‘fair tale of upper-and-lower talleys matched.’ Therefore taking the function of the wǔ zéi (Five Plunderers) and sān dào (Three Plunders), the secret of the shā jī (slaughter mechanism) and qí qì (strange tools), and the actual experience of the body-embodied practitioner, I have explained their mystery and written out their concord-of-heart. Title: Xuán jiě. Whoever views it must have the eyes that take the symbol and forget the speech, take the principle and forget the symbol; only then will he be able to round-and-pass without obstruction. — These ink-and-paper scattering go now to the engraving-knife. I do not fear men’s saying yes-or-no; I only fear that those who do not understand the formula take it for ridiculous-and-rambling talk and stain the great Way of the holy and the perfected ascending. Viewers, pray be lenient. Therefore the preface. — Dà Qīng Qiánlóng rénchén mid-summer month full-moon day, Shěnyáng Yīzhōngzǐ Fàn Yíbīn, written in the south window of his Zhígǔ Xuān.”
Abstract
A precisely-dated mid-Qián-lóng Yīn fú jīng commentary, 5 July 1772, by Fàn Yíbīn (Yīzhōngzǐ) of Shěnyáng (cf. 范宜賓). Significant for: (i) its explicit transmission-history (the Èrwǔ dàorén → Sōngshān xiānshēng → Fàn lineage on the Liáoníng side, and the Zhāng Qīngyè / Chéngdū Zǐyáng dòng lineage on the Sìchuān side, joined through Fàn’s nephew Bǎoxiáng); (ii) its programmatic argument that the Yīn fú jīng is fundamentally an Yì jīng-class cosmological text rather than a yǎngshēng or bīngfǎ manual; (iii) its self-positioning as the matching extension of Zhāng Qīngyè’s earlier Yīnfú fāmì. The text is one of the more textually self-aware Qīng commentaries on the Yīn fú jīng and is the best-documented witness in DZJY to the eighteenth-century Liáoníng / Sìchuān Lóngmén network.
Translations and research
- For the broader Yīn fú jīng tradition see citations under KR5i0031.
- For Zhāng Qīng-yè / 自牧道人 and the Chéng-dū Zǐ-yáng dòng abbacy: Esposito, Facets of Qing Daoism, ch. 3.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5i0033
- Annotator: 范宜賓; antecedent commentator: 張清夜.