《太上洞玄灵宝八仙王教诫经》

At the beginning, the two Zhongzhen on the left and the right—divine perfected beings, as Daoism calls them—took form through the condensation of Qi (vital energy) that issued forth in responsive transformation from the Primordial Supreme Great Dao (the Way), the origin of the cosmos. Conceived within the spiritual jade womb, they passed through ninety thousand great kalpas, dwelling for a long time in profound stillness and emptiness.

After ninety thousand kalpas, they appeared in the world in accordance with the Heavenly Dao. Their forms coalesced and their primordial Qi was harmonized, and they were born from the spiritual jade womb. At the moment of birth, thunder roared through the nine heavens and the nine earths split open. With the very first step, a celestial treasure rose beneath their feet to bear them up. Their bodies shed golden light like lotus blossoms, bright as the newly risen sun illuminating the morning sky, radiant and resplendent. Behind them the stars of the Dipper appeared, and upon their chests the image of the sun was manifest. Their hair was green, their teeth grew in pairs, and purple Qi shot straight up into the clouds.

Wherever they went, the Seven Pure Clouds—auspicious cloud-qi, as Daoism describes them—veiled the sky from morning until evening, and celestial thunder resounded. Round lotuses concealing the forms of dragons became their seats. Celestial lamps and celestial candles lit the paths among the clouds, and heavenly music sounded together with Brahma-chants. Dragons and phoenixes danced in time with the rhythm; songs praised Great Peace, the melodies harmonious and elegant, their radiance and music refreshing both eye and ear. There were sweet springs and honeyed wells; to drink of them could cure illness. Their bodies were firm as gold and jade and did not age. Through the Dao of Wuwei (non-action) they harmoniously transformed and nourished the myriad things, over the course of ninety thousand kalpas.

At that time, the three true divinities transformed into infants and were entrusted to the side of the True Mother. They gradually grew to adulthood and lived in accord with the ways of the world. The Celestial Worthy of Primordial Beginning (Yuanshi Tianzun) of the Unsurpassed Great Dao (the Way) conferred upon them the honored title “True Kings of Supreme Filial Piety.” They governed and instructed the Central Land, while also attending to the different peoples of the four quarters. All beings came to receive their teaching, learning kindness and filial obedience, revering the Celestial Worthy of Primordial Beginning, according with Heaven and Earth, guarding body and mind, settling life in peace, and showing compassion for the myriad things.

After three thousand three hundred years, they underwent a further renewal, as though impurity had been washed away, and were refined once more by water and fire. At this time the three Filial Kings governed, respectively, the sun, the moon, and the Northern Dipper. They held the sun, moon, and stars in their charge, so that even dark places grew bright. They commanded the mysterious Three Qi (vital energy)—the three fundamental energies of which Daoism speaks—and harmonized the nether darkness with the void. They transformed as the occasion required, swift and hard to fathom, arriving without being summoned. Their appearing was like a shadow following form, and did not depend on deliberate thought. Though they dwelt in the upper realms, they could respond and take form in the human world; above and below were not divided, and there was no boundary. Wherever they were, they taught according to circumstances and saved beings of every kind, bringing beings into accord with the Dao so that no doubt remained in their hearts.

The heart of filial piety is vast, lofty, and far-reaching, and its spiritual power is without equal. It can turn Heaven and Earth, regulate Yin-Yang, alter the longer and shorter measures of Heaven and Earth’s course, command hosts of spirits, and call forth auspicious signs. They could fly without wings, traveling ninety thousand li in the blink of an eye, and in a brief moment tour the myriad heavens—all of this arising from supreme filial piety. They were loving and obedient toward their parents and compassionate toward every living being. The Way of Filial Piety also means mercy, cherishing life, and loathing the taking of life. Eating meat and drinking wine does not accord with the Way of Filial Piety; impure and unrestrained conduct between men and women does not accord with it; the pollution that follows childbirth, the decay of corpses, and like conditions do not accord with it; injuring the body and shedding blood does not accord with it; theft and robbery do not accord with it; and taking pleasure in unwholesome deeds, or speaking of evil matters, likewise does not accord with it. To sink into filthy and base places pollutes both within and without; body and mind grow slack, and one does not cultivate the way of long life. When conviction is unsteady, one is flighty and unrestrained, pulled along by affairs. Though one may wish to guard the One, wisdom is lacking, and the Qi of mind and spirit scatters, bringing on birth, aging, sickness, death, and every kind of affliction. After death one falls further into hell, suffering for a long time and finding release hard to gain. If the causes and conditions are traced, it is because the Way of Filial Piety was lost that all these sufferings were incurred.

If men and women of later ages cultivate the Way of Filial Piety, they can share the same De (Virtue/Power) as the Dao. Sharing the same De as the Dao, they can share its light, its truth, its body, its Shen (spirit), its transformations, and its lifespan. They then share with the Dao both being and non-being: there is nothing that is not absent, and nothing that is not present. All is still and vast, yet able to respond as the mind moves.

Those who cultivate the Dao may become emperors, loyal ministers, worthy persons, filial sons and daughters, Daoist priests, or preceptors of the realm. They may also withdraw into mountains and forests, clearing the mind, observing fasts, practicing austerities and reciting scriptures, and accumulating merit. They may become able generals who prevail without fighting; or store grain and cloth to relieve those who hunger and suffer cold; or become enlightened teachers who free people from epidemics and other illnesses, benefiting living beings; or they may kindle lamps and candles to light the long night. They can contract ten thousand kalpas into a single kalpa, and stretch one kalpa into a hundred. Even the tip of a single hair can contain the great earth; a single pore can contain the nine great rivers and the four seas without harming the myriad things within them. They can even draw in the worlds of the ten directions and gather them upon the point of a needle. All beings before their eyes can see the luminous Dharma-body manifested by the Three True Ones, hear teachings of every kind, each coming to some understanding, and thereupon practice the Way of Filial Piety. To cultivate the Way of Filial Piety is to enter inconceivable realms and accomplish inconceivable things; to lose the Way of Filial Piety is to lack even the time to save oneself from one’s own suffering, and to go on turning through birth and death.

To practice the Way of Filial Piety is to obtain the fruits of fearlessness. The first is to leave behind the fear of birth and death and obtain the fruit of neither birth nor death. The second is to leave behind the fear of darkness and obstruction and obtain the fruit of light: by day there is divine radiance, and by night heavenly lamps shine; after long cultivation the body itself gives off light, unceasing through day and night. The third is to leave behind the fear of hunger and cold and obtain the fruit of the celestial kitchen providing food and celestial garments covering the body. The fourth is to leave behind the many trials and threats, so that demon kings and fierce beasts all come to take commands and serve as guards. The fifth is to leave behind the bondage of the formed body and obtain the fruit of entering the formless realm. What is called the formless does not mean annihilating life and reducing the body to nothing. It means that, by means of this ordinary body, one cultivates the body of the Dao: the body transforms into light and Qi, rises into the formless, and unites with empty space. It is therefore called the “fruit of the formless.” In this realm, rising or descending is one’s own to decide, gathering or dispersing follows the mind, form or formlessness is likewise settled by intention, and one’s actions are no longer limited by body and mind.

When the world is governed by the Way of Filial Piety, there is no need to weary oneself with laws and decrees. When the self is cultivated by the Way of Filial Piety, aspiration and character grow firm and upright. When the hundred illnesses are treated by the Way of Filial Piety, Heaven itself becomes the physician. When the myriad things are protected by the Way of Filial Piety, the many poisons and harms cannot injure people. When livelihood is managed by the Way of Filial Piety, the yields of farming and sericulture greatly increase. When the Way of Filial Piety reaches up to Heaven, wind and rain arrive in their seasons; when the Way of Filial Piety penetrates the earth, the myriad things are at peace. Numinous mushrooms and numinous trees display auspicious signs everywhere. When the Way of Filial Piety moves birds and beasts, dragons, qilin, luan, and phoenixes fly in and gather within the realm. When the Way of Filial Piety moves the waters, river gods offer pearls, fish and dragons leap, and the waves grow calm.

Simply to be filial and reverent toward one’s parents is to repay their profound kindness; the myriad spirits between Heaven and Earth also guard one day and night. Cultivating and guarding the One, one naturally attains the Dao. The Way of Filial Piety is vast without limit. It exists together with the Primordial Great Dao, governs the sun, moon, and stars, illuminates the places of darkness, and gives every living being a support forever.

At this time the spirit child kowtowed in formal salute and respectfully asked the Celestial Worthy: “If someone is born into the world yet, unhappily, loses both parents early, how should his filial devotion be expressed?”

The Celestial Worthy answered: “Revere Heaven and accord with Earth. Morning and evening, worship the sun, the moon, and the stars—the Three Luminaries—just as one shows filial reverence to one’s parents; the two are no different. Cultivating the Dao (the Way) in this manner brings attainment more quickly, and what the heart wishes can also be realized.

“What is meant by according with the earth is to accord with Wangqi, the sovereign Qi (vital energy) of Heaven and Earth bound up with the seasons and the directions; to pay homage to the Five Sacred Peaks, the mountain deities represented by the five great mountains; and to be mindful of daily life and repose. Do not offend Taisui, the spirit in Daoist teaching associated with the movement of the Year Star. Accord with the changes of the four seasons, and each day practice so as to renew one’s attainment in the Dao. At the Eight Nodes—the Beginning of Spring, the Spring Equinox, the Beginning of Summer, the Summer Solstice, the Beginning of Autumn, the Autumn Equinox, the Beginning of Winter, the Winter Solstice, and other such important seasonal junctures—maintain the practice of cultivating the Way. Pray that life be granted and repent of one’s offenses. Remain pure within and without, frank and concealing nothing; with a sincere heart offer incense and cultivate through its fragrance. Wash away defilement and distracting thoughts, so that one grows ever more refined and pure. Even then, one should still fault oneself for not being pure enough. The more one seeks what is true, the more one must stay alert that one is not yet true enough.

“If one does not seek the true, yet supposes that one has obtained the true Dao, evil spirits will answer and fall in with him, and in the end cause him to fall away and be ruined. While he lives he strays onto deviant paths; his hun and po souls are seized and held, and his mind grows frenzied, disordered, and confused. He further presumes to establish a set of methods of his own, corrupting and selling off the essentials of the Dao’s teachings solely in order to seek profit. Ill-gotten gains accumulate and his offenses grow grave. While still alive he is already subjected to judgment and punishment and suffers every kind of affliction; after death he falls into hell and undergoes in full the torments of boiling broth and raging fire, with never a day of release.

“Even if he is later able to be reborn, he may take birth among the six domestic animals—ox, horse, pig, sheep, chicken, dog, and the like—in circumstances far from what one would wish; or he may be born into a lowly and destitute household, blind in both eyes, deaf, mute and unable to speak, or maimed in hands or feet. Such a person can never see or hear the teachings of the Dao, and will moreover be shunned and abused by people and by livestock, hungry and cold, hard-pressed, his life frail. Once the Great Dao is lost, one sinks for a long time into wretched destinations, and the consequences are hard to imagine.”

A person of De (Virtue/Power), filial at heart and lofty in aspiration, acts in harmony with the Dao (the Way) of Heaven and Earth. Therefore Heaven cannot kill him, nor can the Dao destroy him. Even if the earth buries him, it cannot ruin him—just as when fine jade and frost and snow are buried, they will in the end still congeal into sarira (the firm crystals left after a practitioner’s remains are cremated), which cannot be destroyed. Whether he ascends to Heaven or enters the earth, he meets with no obstruction.

Long ago there was a man who did not understand the Great Dao (the fundamental principle of which Daoism speaks). Clinging to life and fearing death, he devoted himself to prayer morning and evening, and every day he worshipped a withered tree, hoping to live long and never die. He persisted for forty years. The Great Dao, pitying his diligent and unremitting hardship, helped him restore the Qi (vital energy) of the Dao. That withered tree suddenly flourished again. Seeing this, the man was overjoyed, and so he cultivated even more diligently, picking the flowers from the tree to eat, and at last attained the Dao. For those who cultivate the Dao, what matters is to persevere without ceasing and to accumulate merit and virtue, so that their thoughts and conduct are renewed day by day. Divine lamps, divine incense, divine light, and spiritual powers are all confirming signs of the Great Dao’s manifestation. So long as one’s resolve does not cease, the Great Dao will descend and transmit the true essential instructions; such a response will surely not fail.

The scripture further says: In later ages, certain depraved and worldly people, seeing that cultivating the Dao brings spiritual efficacy, wish to use this to seek profit. Under the pretext of raising funds for others, they appropriate the money for their own use. Deluded by wicked thoughts, such people can never attain the Dao. Stingy and greedy, unwilling to give, they have lost the way of compassion and have no filial heart. To revere the Dao for the sake of profit only makes their deceit and hypocrisy more severe. The offense of deceit and hypocrisy will not be pardoned by Heaven and Earth. Those who cultivate the Dao should not associate with people of this kind. They should rebuke them, point out their faults, expel them, and punish them according to the rules, and must not allow them to slip into the Daoist community by false words and deeds. The money they have obtained by fraud should be confiscated and used to relieve the poor and the sick. One must not take unclean money to make offerings to the deities or to sponsor the performance of rituals.

The scripture says in conclusion: One should order the halls of the Daoist monastery by the way of filial piety, properly adorn and repair the pure and quiet places of cultivation, and not allow the buildings to become damaged or to leak. Among worldly men and women, those of low station who give off a strange odor, who suffer from sores and warts or are filthy and unclean, who have squandered their family’s property through indulgence in wine and lust, or who eat fish and meat, scallions and garlic, and other meaty or pungent foods—all should be forbidden to enter. Do not draw close to them, and do not let them tend the zhai kitchen (the kitchen in a Daoist monastery where vegetarian meals are prepared).

The Dao (the Way) says: In later ages there are ten kinds of evil conduct—committing the Ten Evils and the Five Rebellions (the gravest crimes of impiety) and failing in filial duty to one’s parents; secretly harming people and slandering others; disparaging and undermining good deeds; envy, arrogance, and self-conceit; craving women and sinking into drink; delighting in fish and meat; hunting and killing; theft and robbery; following deviant ways; bearing in the heart no thought of kindness or filial reverence, and acting without fairness; abandoning poor kin and friends while drawing close to the rich and noble; taking pleasure in mocking and making sport of others; fighting over romantic attachment; habitually storing up weapons; lacking any heart of forbearance or yielding; and seeking only one’s own advantage while injuring others. All these are acts that the way of filial piety rejects and that both people and beasts dread. Such persons are unfit to hear the Great Dao; one should keep far from them and not draw near.

The supreme Great Dao proclaims these teachings so that wise rulers of later ages may govern the world by filial piety, and so that filial children may repay their parents’ kindness. They can serve as a standard for ordering the family and the state, bringing peace to the world and unity to the four quarters, so that everyone practices the highest filial piety. Whoever obtains this scripture should recite it morning and evening; without distinction of man or woman, noble or humble, all should study and recite it, in order to repay the profound great kindness of their parents. [At this point the scripture repeats and emphasizes the same teachings.]

When this scripture was proclaimed, wondrous lights appeared in the sky, bright in every place; heavenly bells and chimes, sacred chanting, and music sounded of themselves in the air; celestial incense and heavenly flowers drifted on the wind. People high and low throughout the realm came to venerate the scripture. One should grasp its purport, act according to its meaning, and exhort those who have not yet heard it. If one wishes to copy the scripture, one should prepare clean paper and brushes, bathe and purify the body, burn incense, and only then copy it. Copying it in a thousand scrolls or a hundred, spreading and venerating it widely, with incense and lamps never ceasing and the mind never slack, one will surely attain the Dao, and the merit is beyond conception.

The Dongxuan Lingbao Scripture of the Admonitions of the Eight Immortal Kings (Dongxuan Lingbao Baxian Wang Jiaojie Jing)