《太上升玄消灾护命妙经》

At that time, the Primordial Heavenly Worthy (Yuanshi Tianzun, a revered deity of Daoism) was in the Five-Brilliance Palace within the Forest of Seven Treasures, together with countless holy beings. He sent forth boundless light, illuminating boundless worlds, and saw innumerable sentient beings enduring endless suffering. They wandered and turned through the world, passing through the cycle of birth and death, adrift on the river of craving and desire and rising and falling with the sea of desire. Sunk in sights and sounds, they were lost in the distinctions between “being” and “non-being.” They took emptiness as an emptiness that exists and form as a form that exists; they took what is absent as present and what is present as absent. Ever benighted and unclear, unable to know themselves, they finally fell into delusion.

The Heavenly Worthy said: “You sentient beings take what originally lacks being and regard it as being, and what originally lacks non-being and regard it as non-being. You take what is inherently without form and regard it as form, and what is inherently empty and regard it as emptiness. You treat what is not truly existent as existent, and what is not truly nonexistent as nonexistent. You also cling to every distinction of phenomenal appearance and of being and non-being. Thus you remain ever benighted, unable to illumine yourselves, and finally fall into delusion.

“Emptiness is emptiness, yet emptiness has no fixed, unchanging appearance; form is form, yet form likewise has no fixed, unchanging appearance. As for phenomenal appearance, its essence is emptiness; as for emptiness, it in turn manifests as form. If one can understand emptiness without clinging to emptiness, and understand form without clinging to form, this is called clear illumination and insight, and one begins to penetrate subtle principle. Recognizing that emptiness is not a fixed dharma, one can observe thoroughly and without obstruction, enter the various wondrous gates, awaken naturally, leave doubt far behind, and not cling to the view of emptiness, purify the six faculties—eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind—and cut off perverse obstructions.

“I now expound for you this wondrous scripture, named the Scripture of Protecting Life (Huming Jing), in order to save and deliver sentient beings. It should be reverently kept on one’s person, transmitted so as to teach and transform the world, and widely circulated and recited. Thereupon the Divine Kings Who Fly through Heaven, the Vajra Beings Who Smash Perversity, the Numinous Lads Who Protect the Teaching, the Perfected Who Save from Suffering, the Fierce Beasts of Metal Essence, and others—each in hosts of hundreds of millions—will all come to guard this scripture. Wherever this scripture is reverently kept, they ward off calamity and support the weak, helping all sentient beings to escape every defiling attachment, that is, clinging to desire and to external things.”

At that time the Heavenly Worthy then spoke in verse:

“Look as one may, one cannot see me; listen as one may, one cannot hear my voice.”

Not falling into any one-sided, opposing, or fixed concept—this is called the wondrous Dao (the Way).

It sends forth boundless light, illuminating boundless worlds; the light is endless and inexhaustible, yet I can neither see it nor hear it.

Not falling into any one-sided, opposing, or fixed concept—this is called the wondrous Dao.

To be absorbed in sensory appearances such as sound and color is to be deluded by the notions of “being” and “non-being.” One must cling neither to emptiness nor to being, and cling neither to form nor to formlessness.

To generate being from “being,” to manifest non-being from “non-being”; to see form within form, to see emptiness within empty stillness—none of these statements can exhaust the wondrous Dao.

I therefore proclaim this wondrous scripture (Jing) for you.

This scripture should be carried on one’s person and venerated.

The whole assembly came forward together.

[Here the Dunhuang manuscript continues with the four characters “enter the gate of all wonders,” but lacks the following line, “At that time the Celestial Worthy then spoke in verse, saying.”]