《太平經》Vol. 108

A Plain-Language Interpretation of “Nineteen Essential Precepts” in The Taiping Scripture, Scroll 108

This passage describes which essential precept—a key principle or method of verification—should guide action in nineteen situations, and how that precept can serve as Heaven’s warrant, a basis recognized and trusted by Heaven.

First: Cultivating the Dao in Seclusion

For those cultivating the Dao, the essential precept is whether the inside and outside of the seclusion chamber (a room for quiet cultivation) “accord” with one another and are complete. After a set number of days, open the door and inspect the room. If it has come into accord on its own, there is no need to enter again to check. If it has not, someone may be asked to go in and inspect it. Once the door is open, one may leave whenever one wishes.

Second: Writing on the Three Ways

For those writing about the Three Ways (Heaven, Earth, and humanity), the essential precept is deliberation by an assembly. This serves as Heaven’s warrant, and the person may then advance and establish themselves.

Third: Setting the Spirits Right

To set the spirits right, the essential precept is to understand the people in all their circumstances with penetrating clarity. This serves as Heaven’s warrant.

Fourth: Setting Ordinary Documents Right

To correct ordinary documents, the essential precept is to examine and check them line by line. This serves as Heaven’s warrant.

Fifth: Gladly Trusting the Daoist Scripture

For those who wish to learn about and put their trust in this scripture, the essential precept is to act diligently and swiftly, in accord with Heaven’s response: goodness should steadily increase and evil steadily diminish. This serves as Heaven’s warrant.

Sixth: Appointing Worthy People

To appoint worthy people appropriately, the essential precept is the nine people—whether this means deliberation by nine people or nine standards. This is the basis for appointment.

Seventh: Asking Whether Cultivation in Seclusion Has Succeeded

To determine whether cultivation in seclusion has succeeded, the essential precept is that all is clear and plain within and without; nothing in one’s conduct is concealed or pretentious. This serves as Heaven’s warrant.

Eighth: The Body Attaining Deathlessness

To know whether the body has attained the Dao and become deathless, the essential precept is that the body has become spirit through refinement, and can thereby transcend the world and attain longevity. This serves as Heaven’s warrant.

Ninth: Thoroughly Understanding the Text’s Meaning

To understand the principles of this scripture fully, read it through from beginning to end. Its meaning will become clear of itself, the heart and mind will open wide, and doubts and blockages will fall away. Once its meaning is grasped, it is difficult to let go of.

Tenth: Testing Whether the Scripture Is Genuine

To test whether this scripture is genuine and whether it can govern the state, the essential precept is that governance should steadily lead the world toward Great Peace. This serves as Heaven’s warrant.

Eleventh: Whether Longevity Can Be Attained

To determine whether longevity can be attained, the essential precept is to look to the time after Great Peace. Before peace has been achieved, calamities inherited from earlier generations and ongoing disasters make it difficult to judge the span of one’s life. This serves as Heaven’s warrant.

Twelfth: The Sun and Knowledge of Great Peace

As an image, the sun’s way of knowing whether Great Peace has arrived is to swear an unbreakable oath, as firm as cutting metal.

Thirteenth: Water and Fire Putting an End to Treacherous Ministers

For water and fire—which may symbolize Yin-Yang or affairs of state—to put an end to treacherous ministers and prevent false precepts from taking effect, the essential precept is to swear an unbreakable oath and to curb the drinking of wine at the market, an image of restraint and abstinence.

Fourteenth: The Great Flourishing of the Way of Heaven

For the great teachings of the Way of Heaven to flourish, the essential precept is to examine and check all writings, and combine them with the rules and formulas used among ordinary people.

Fifteenth: Obtaining Good Medicine

To obtain good medicine, the essential precept is to examine ordinary prescriptions and medical texts, then test their effects.

Sixteenth: Quickly Attaining Great Peace

To bring about Great Peace quickly, the essential precept is to bring forth all the genuine writings and completely eliminate false and misleading texts.

Note: In the transmitted editions, the entries and divisions of “Nineteen Essential Precepts” vary. This translation follows a common division and explains each passage in turn. Terms such as “cultivation in seclusion,” “becoming spirit,” “transcending the world,” “examination and checking,” and “Great Peace” are central to the Taiping movement’s cultivation practices and vision of governance. “Swearing an unbreakable oath” and “curbing the drinking of wine at the market” appear to symbolize oaths of alliance and prohibitions. The specific ritual details are difficult to reconstruct, so the translation retains these expressions and adds brief explanations.

A Plain-Language Reading of the Taiping Jing (Scripture of Great Peace)

(A passage before “Instructions on Auspicious Signs,” section 174)

If you wish to stop people from killing and harming one another, and let women each settle in their proper place, provide them with clothing and food according to their means, and do not make them return to sorrow over their parents and become rebellious, then take the essential teaching from each person dwelling in their proper place.

If you wish to eliminate illness and open the Dao (the Way) wide, then take the essential teaching from swallowing the characters of a cinnabar text—a method of practice in which one swallows the characters written on a cinnabar text.

To understand the instructions in the Book of Gathered Practices: follow the scripture’s words, give earnest reminders, and set good bounds. Put this into practice, and in a single day a hundred harms will disappear. Once a devious heart turns around, all will become upright; this is taken as proof of Heaven’s trust.

Instructions on Auspicious Signs, Section 174

Question: What does “auspicious sign” mean? Why, because of my foolishness, do I not dare persist in my folly? In truth, I do not understand. I hope the Celestial Master will not reject me, but will offer a word of instruction.

Answer: Walk and sit at ease. An auspicious sign means being clear, still, upright, correct, focused, and single-minded, with the heart in harmony with Heaven and Earth and without violating the seasons. May I ask how one can know what it means to be clear, still, upright, correct, focused, and single-minded?

Good, your question is well put. The nature of Heaven and Earth has been the same from ancient times to the present: goodness brings about goodness, evil brings about evil, what is upright brings about what is upright, and what is deviant brings about what is deviant. This is the natural way of things; there is nothing strange in it. So when a person’s heart is upright and still, and their utmost sincerity moves Heaven, with no evil intent, auspicious things appear in response. Do you wish to understand more fully the great truth of this? The great sages of antiquity all kept their hearts clear, still, and single-minded, and so they brought about auspicious responses. Those who were deviant used their hearts deceitfully and falsely, and none received a good response. This is a clear and evident sign from Heaven and Earth. Do you understand?

“I do.”

Can a response also be deviant?

“Yes. For what is deviant to bring about deviance is also a response. What is out of harmony brings about disharmony; what is in harmony brings about harmony. This is Heaven’s response, made plainly evident.”

“Good, good. This foolish student understands now.”

Instructions on Loyalty, Filial Devotion, and Presenting Rare Accounts, Section 175

Question: When people do good—when they are devoted children, loyal ministers, or obedient disciples—what should they present to their ruler, parent, or teacher? They should present rare and precious writings containing unusual accounts. That is what it means to make an offering. Loyal ministers, devoted children, and obedient disciples can always take pleasure in doing good. Why, then, should they not present accounts everyone already knows, rather than unusual ones? What everyone knows is already available; why present it again?

This foolish student does not understand the meaning. I will explain it so that you may know the matter clearly: everything that comes to the world and is prized there has never been seen before.

One who is able to present precious things to the ruler is the most loyal of ministers; yet such a person I have never seen. One who is able to offer fine food to his parents is the most filial of sons; such a person I have likewise never seen. One who presents precious things to his teacher is the kindest and most respectful of disciples. Do you understand this principle? “I understand, and I am willing to hear you continue.”

Why should one offer everything one has to one’s elders and superiors, and hold them in special regard besides? Because when these things suit their needs, they will naturally accept them. But if the elders and superiors do not care for these things, and refuse them when they are offered, why insist on presenting them? You ought to understand this: things that people commonly possess in daily life, and that everyone finds distasteful—why take them to offer? What elders and superiors reject, though it is said in name to be presented to them, in fact treats them lightly. Do you think this is fitting? “I understand now. Rare and auspicious things, precious and seldom seen, ought to be presented to the ruler, to one’s father, and to one’s teacher. As for things they already possess, one must be careful and not offer them again.”

Therefore, since ancient times, the great sages, in handling affairs, have always set aside what is the same and chosen what is different; only in this way can one grasp the intention of Heaven and Earth. This is precisely the principle being spoken of. Do you understand? “I understand. Excellent, truly excellent!”

Secret Teaching One Hundred Seventy-Six: Calamities and Illnesses as Certificates of the Will to Conceal

I ask the Celestial Master (Tianshi): How does one know that Heaven’s intention is for a certain thing to appear and be put into practice? And how does one know that Heaven’s intention is for it to be concealed and to withdraw? “Do you wish to understand? One must take calamity and illness as the proof. When a thing appears and people then fall ill, this shows that Heaven’s intention is that it be concealed; when a thing withdraws and people fall ill, this shows that Heaven’s intention is that it appear and be put into practice.”

How can this be understood more clearly? Heaven sets in motion the Qi (vital energy) of the four seasons, so that the myriad things grow and are nourished, all in accord with Heaven’s intention. If the myriad things ought to be glad to appear, yet instead flee and hide, this is an omen of great misfortune; if they ought to hide and withdraw, yet instead appear, this too is an omen of great misfortune. All of these go against Heaven’s mandate, and afterward they will bring on great disaster. Do you wish to understand the Dao (the Way) of Heaven more fully? The movement of Heaven favors proceeding in accordance with the seasons, and people may thereby divine and discern Heaven’s intention. Does the Perfected (Zhenren) understand this principle? “I understand.”

Therefore, from ancient times to the present, if people do not examine matters carefully and completely when they act, they lose the intention of the Dao of Heaven, and thus chengfu arises—the calamity brought about by faults accumulated by one’s forebears or by oneself. This casts the common people into a condition without the Dao, and also throws those who govern the world into disorder. The Dao of Heaven, the correct Dao, and the government and teaching of the human world each turn away from the others, and so the people and the myriad things constantly suffer injustice.

“I wish to ask: As for what is called being without the Dao, ought it not to be punished by severe laws that sentence one to death? Why does the Celestial Master not establish harsh punishments and the death penalty, but instead determine guilt according to the offense each person has committed? In the affairs of the world today, only determining guilt according to each person’s crime counts as just. Why does the Celestial Master not judge every matter of being without the Dao uniformly as a grave crime?” “It cannot be done this way. Why is that?”

The ancestors committed only a few minor transgressions, not enough to warrant punishment. Yet later generations must bear the burden of the wrongs their predecessors accumulated. Although some committed crimes punishable by death, those who acted wickedly and falsely were following the example of their ancestors. The ancestors did go against the Way of Heaven and govern without the Dao, but they passed these practices down from teacher to student and taught one another. The fault was not theirs alone, so they should not receive severe punishment.

I considered that the crimes of people in remote antiquity could all have warranted death. Yet the sacred law could not impose severe penalties all at once and wipe out humankind. So Heaven sent me down to help them mend their ways and be released from blame, not to punish them openly. Heaven, Earth, and humanity must also govern together, allowing the spirits to send down calamities and illness. When later generations see this, they will know that I have received Heaven’s instruction and that its effects are clear. Do you understand? The disciple replied, “Yes.” Once Heaven’s words have been spoken, the De of the teaching must be passed on without interruption. The ruler should simply answer, “Yes,” and act; there is no need to ask again. “Yes.”

The foregoing discussion of all the methods and auspicious signs concludes in the next section.

This passage comes from juan 108 of the Taiping Jing (Scripture of Great Peace) and expresses the idea of inherited responsibility: later generations bear the burden of their ancestors’ wrongdoing, while Heaven uses instruction to reform them and lessen their punishment rather than imposing severe penalties that would destroy the human world. “Heaven” and “I” refer to the sage entrusted with transmitting Heaven’s mandate. “Yes” is an expression of assent.