Wù zhēn piān chǎn yōu 悟真篇闡幽
Bringing Out the Hidden Meaning of the Wùzhēnpiān
base text: 張伯端 (Zhāng Bóduān, c. 984–1082) — the Wù zhēn piān (DZ 263 etc., = KR5c0167); commentary: 朱元育 (Zhū Yuányù, hào 雲陽道人 Yúnyáng dàorén; fl. mid-late 17th c.)
A three-juàn early-Qīng commentary on Zhāng Bóduān’s Wù zhēn piān 悟真篇 — the foundational scripture of the SòngYuán Nán zōng (Southern Lineage) of Daoist inner-alchemy — by Zhū Yuányù (cf. 朱元育), the same exegete responsible for KR5i0037 Cān tóng qì chǎn yōu. The work completes Zhū’s Cāntóng / Wùzhēn commentary dyad, both grounded in the lineage Zhāng Bìxū → Língbǎo lǎorén that Zhū had received in the Zhōngnán mountains.
Prefaces
Preface (Zhū Yuányù), positioned at the head of juàn 上. “The Wù zhēn piān is by the Sòng Zǐyáng zhēn rén, Tiāntái Zhāng Píngshū. Zǐyáng emerges from Liú Hǎichán’s lineage, the southern-lineage’s first patriarch. In pity that worldly men did not know the great Way of the Jīndān and fell into side-doors, he specially made this book to make students exhaust principle, complete nature, and reach the mandate. — The book’s source comes from the Yīnfú jīng and the Dào dé jīng; its operational machinery roughly follows the Cān tóng qì. The reason is, fearing to leak the Heaven-mechanism, not daring to speak directly — therefore there are the medicine-substance, the furnace-tripod, the fire-phasing’s fǎxiàng; there are the qiánkūn / kǎnlí / lónghǔ / qiāngǒng metaphor-words. How is it that the more carefully one speaks, the more confused worldly men become? — Who realises that the real is the real-nature-and-mandate that every man originally has? — Nature-and-mandate are originally one body in the pre-cosmic, but in the post-cosmic they must be wholly cultivated. The work of yǒuwéi (with-action) is what fulfils the mìng (mandate); the Way of wúwéi is what fulfils the xìng (nature). When xìng and mìng are both fulfilled, one returns to the original-fullness; yǒuwéi is just wúwéi; the post-cosmic is just the pre-cosmic — this is what is called the supreme-perfected Way. — In the book, the various fǎxiàng and yù yán: if one is deluded, all are false; if one is awakened, all are true… The book is essentially divided into two clans: xìng zōng and mìng zōng. The xìng zōng is the no-saint-no-common, wonderful-awakening original-source — every man may be in on the hearing. The mìng zōng is super-common-enter-saint jīndān operation — without a true master nothing opens it. Compounded with the modern fakers’ added comments confounding later students, lower ones running into the lúhuǒ píjiā (other-house furnace), upper ones merely dú xiū yī wù (singly cultivating one thing) — the zǔyì (founder’s intent) has been long obscured. Heaven does not begrudge the Way; this fool dares fully to leak the master-transmitted true formula and bring out its hidden.”
Abstract
The most influential early-Qīng Wù zhēn piān commentary, by Zhū Yuányù — completing his Cāntóng / Wùzhēn dyad from the Lóngmén southern-school xìngmìng synthesis. The work’s distinctive feature is its programmatic re-collation of the Wù zhēn piān’s order of poems: “this book originally had a sequence; many later hands disordered it, so that it became chaotic and lost its original face. I have respectfully consulted the zàng recension, all in accordance with the jīnyè huándān operational sequence, and so corrected it.” The reordering is significant for the textual history of the Wù zhēn piān. Composition c. 1660–1670 (Zhū’s Cān tóng qì chǎn yōu was 1657; Wù zhēn piān chǎn yōu is presumably the immediately following work).
Translations and research
- Cleary, Thomas. Understanding Reality: A Taoist Alchemical Classic. Hawai’i 1987. — fundamental English translation of the Wù zhēn piān.
- Crowe, Paul. Awakening to Reality: A Taoist Classic of Internal Alchemy. Mountain View: Golden Elixir Press, 2009. — alternative translation.
- Pregadio, Fabrizio. The Way of the Golden Elixir (2012); Wù zhēn piān: Awakening to Reality (2009).
- For Zhū Yuán-yù’s commentary specifically: see Pregadio’s Cantong qi: Commentaries (2014).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5i0059
- Base text: 張伯端; commentary: 朱元育.