《上清靈寶大法(二)》Vol. 1

The Supreme Clarity Lingbao Great Rite, Volume One, Part Two: A Plain-Language Interpretation

The Precepts of This Rite

Ten Precepts

1. Hold an impartial mind and do not deceive yourself.

2. Serve your ruler and teacher loyally; honor and respect Heaven, Earth, and your parents.

3. Be compassionate and kind toward all things; live frugally and restrain yourself.

4. Be pure, calm, upright, and honest; do not form factions or curry favor.

5. Respect and follow the higher teachings, and have deep faith in self-cultivation.

6. Respect ghosts and spirits; do not slight or insult them.

7. All that you wear and eat comes from the primordial ancestral Qi; do not entertain thoughts of anything beyond it. Do not treat clothing and food as objects of greed.

8. Use ash and water to wash away filth; do not adorn yourself. Live simply, without ostentation.

9. Recite with the mouth and bow with the heart; do not wear out the body. Sincerity of heart is primary; do not exhaust the body in vain.

10. After seven days of deep stillness, the light of Shen will be limpid and clear, and you will behold the sacred realm of Jade Clarity.

Twelve Good Practices

Do not kill, harm, envy, feel jealousy, engage in sexual misconduct, steal, covet, indulge desire, hate, or grow angry. Let your words be free of ornament, and your mouth utter no harsh sounds.

Discussion of the Meaning (Editor’s Note)

The Right Assistant of the Golden Palace in the Office of the Beginning of Childhood, who compiled and explained this text, once asked: “Why should the practices expected of those who cultivate themselves and act with care be discussed only after one has ‘received the precepts and performed the liturgy,’ when the aim is to turn toward good and keep away from wrongdoing?”

The path of cultivating immortality does not stop at fully carrying out worldly duties. One must be inwardly steadfast and outwardly pure, transparent both inside and out, before one can step onto the ladder of Daoist practice. Even the highest Perfected Ones and sages of the upper realms observe purification rites and accumulate merit. Precepts therefore nurture De and discipline body and mind; students should give them their attention first.

When sages govern the world, they must begin by cultivating themselves and bringing order to their families. Only then can they govern the state and bring peace to all under Heaven. Everything proceeds from within to without. This text places the precepts of the rite in its first section: if one follows them without cultivating oneself, one cannot guide one’s spouse and children at home or earn the trust of friends outside. How, then, could one stand before the Supreme Emperor and commune with the spirits?

Precepts from Daoist scriptures appear throughout the revealed teachings, and there are too many to include them all. In the Lingbao rite, the precepts should be included alongside the scriptures.

One version of the Twelve Good Practices leaves out “Let your words be free of ornament, and your mouth utter no harsh sounds,” and counts the remaining practices, beginning with “Do not kill” and “Do not harm,” as the Ten Precepts. An older version adds explanations beneath every item, since these twelve practices were established for cultivating the Dao.

An Explanatory Reading of the Great Methods of the Numinous Treasure of Shangqing (II)

On Practicing the Rites and Visualizing the Texts

The practice of the rites should follow what is righteous, and what could be impermissible about it? There is no need to explain and debate every detail. When discussion strays even slightly from the original purpose, it confuses later readers. For this reason, the miscellaneous commentary has been removed, and only the original text is kept.

The Chapter on Distinguishing the Seven Matters

The seven matters to be clarified are as follows. First, from where the primordial ancestral qi (yuanshi zuqi) first transformed into the jade characters, and then gave birth to the myriad things. Second, the generation of chaos and the shaping and forging of all things. Third, the natural writings and diagrams of the Numinous Treasure, which encompass all phenomena and serve as the pivot of the Three Powers (heaven, earth, and humanity). Fourth, the Numinous Treasure as the ancestral teaching of the Three Caverns (sandong), from which all sages were born. Fifth, the human body, which takes the Primordial Beginning (Yuanshi) as its model, and through which the chaotic sacred embryo and the spiritual body are established. Sixth, what analogy the primordial ancestral qi bears before it had form; how, descending into substance, it transformed into qi and gave birth to all treasures; what its present bodily form is; and how this qi is gathered and refined into an elixir-food by which one ascends to perfection. Seventh, the attainment of the Dao of the Numinous Treasure: at the highest level, ascending in daylight to the morning heavens; at the next, long life and crossing beyond the world; or else attaining corpse liberation (shijie). The scriptures contain myriad methods in full, and their essentials must be studied closely.

Although the Numinous Treasure is classed as a Middle Vehicle (zhongcheng) Dao, in truth it penetrates the Three Caverns and comprehensively contains all methods. Students should understand its beginning and its end.

When the Dao Has Not Taken Form, Qi Becomes Script

Before the Dao took shape, the natural primordial qi, which existed before heaven and earth, transformed and gave birth to the myriad beings. When the qi gathered into patterns and the clouds condensed into seal-script, the diagrams and writings were established, the teachings were transmitted, and the liturgical codes for the salvation of humanity (keyi) came into being. In responding to things, method serves as the function, and method issues from the scriptures, which in turn contain the subtle Dao. How could it consist merely of fasting, purification, and incantation?

If one can penetrate the profound mysteries and glimpse the subtle depths, one must use method to know the scripture, hold fast to the scripture to awaken to the Dao. One who knows the "Dao within the Dao" will transcend the three realms and the six poles.

"This one spirit of mine is not benighted, and this one qi of mine naturally accords with the true Dao." Yet later reckless people have mostly propounded empty and deceptive doctrines, making them hard to fathom and deceiving in countless ways, confusing the people of the world and destroying their own true nature. How regrettable!

Therefore, I now begin with the precepts and discipline (jielü), then set forth the seven matters to make the body and function of the scriptures known in advance, and afterward examine the purport of the composition of the book through Four Translations as the gateway to the methods. This is the order in which the scriptural methods of the practice are arranged.

Chapter on the Composition through Four Translations (Outline)

(In the original text, this chapter directly follows the preceding passage and serves as a structural explanation of the whole work. It sets out the substance and function of the Numinous Treasure scriptural methods, and their order of entry, through the precepts, the seven matters, and the Four Translations. The specific items are developed in the volumes on the Four Translations.)

Note: Proper nouns such as Yuanshi (one of the highest deities of Daoism), Lingbao (the Numinous Treasure scriptural system of Shangqing), Three Caverns (Dongzhen, Dongxuan, Dongshen), Three Powers (sancai), sacred embryo and spiritual body (shengtai fashen), and corpse liberation (shijie, release from the body through transformation at death), as well as ascending in daylight (baiti shengchen, ascension in broad daylight), are retained here according to the sense of the scriptures.

On the Four Transmissions of the Lingbao Duren Jing

The first set, the "Jade Characters" (yuzi), is said to have arisen before the beginning of the void, its divine script hidden within chaos. When the Chixi era opened the diagrams, the Celestial Worthy of Original Beginning (Yuanshi Tianzun) proclaimed its secret names. This is called the First Transmission, the Great Brahma Jade Script.

Second, the Lord of the Dao (Daojun) set forth the secret names of the Jade Characters, and the Perfected Lord Tianzhen Huangren (Tianzhen Huangren) wrote out their text. This is the Second Transmission, known as the Scripture of the Eight Assemblies of All Heavens.

Third, the Lord of the Dao compiled and arranged the Lingbao scripture into its completed form. This is the Third Transmission, called the Chapter of Luminous Cloud Seals. The passages in which the Queen Mother of the West (Xiwangmu) transmitted the scripture down to the Yellow Emperor, and Longwei Zhangren bestowed the Lingbao Five Talismans on Da Yu, are all contained within the scripture. Since the body of the scripture itself was never altered, these are not called "translations." Likewise, when the Yellow Emperor asked about the Dao at Mount Emei and personally witnessed Huangren receive instruction a second time, and when Taiji Zhenren transmitted the Dao to Zuo Xianweng, these were not acts of translation, and so they are not called translations either.

Fourth, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month of the first year of the Yuanfeng era of the Han (110 BCE), the Queen Mother of the West handed this scripture down to Emperor Wu of Han. Since the Emperor did not understand the language of the Great Brahma, the Jade Characters were changed into the common script of the world. This is the Fourth Transmission.

Textual Study: The Lingbao Duren Jing in one fascicle has, since ancient times, been recorded in scriptural catalogues and biographical accounts as having been completed through four transmissions. The reasoning is quite clear and admits no speculative embellishment.

Before the void, there was no light and no form; after the Chixi era, the Jade Characters first became manifest. This is the First Transmission. Huangren's writing them down as the correct sound is the Second Transmission. The Lord of the Dao's compilation into a complete scripture is the Third Transmission. The Queen Mother's transmission to Emperor Wu, which changed the script into the common writing of the world, is the Fourth Transmission. From that point on, the scripture circulated among people without further additions or deletions.

Yet the Tiantai school alone holds a separate view. In the seventeenth chapter of its Jingwei Yifan (Patterns and Models of the Warp and Weft of Scripture), it adds five transmissions. It further claims that Miaoxing Zhenren gathered the talismans and diagrams into the scripture, and the Covenant Registers state that the Three Caverns Scripture of Miaoxing Zhenren is the Great Lingbao Method. Such claims are false.

Taiji Zhenren Xu Lai's transmission of the Lingbao Dao to Ge Xianweng is comparable to the Celestial Master's transmission of the Zhengyi liturgy, or to the Three Mao and Two Xu receiving the lineage of the Dongzhen scriptures. These are the founding masters of Three Caverns transmission, not a Fifth Transmission within the Duren Jing.

Moreover, the meaning of "translation" (yi) is to convey speech: to render one text into another's characters, as in...

[The original text continues here with a discussion of the meaning of "translation."]

On Translation and Compilation

Those who translated scriptures, distinguishing the languages of the four quarters, also held this principle. When the Scripture of Salvation (Duren Jing, a central Daoist scripture for delivering and saving the world) first appeared, five translated versions did not circulate. The compilers did not dare to lend casual support to embellished claims, so they arranged and narrated the material strictly according to the ancient books.

Preface Regulations of the Scripture

The first category concerns emperors who practice the Way and secure the fortune of the state, and it includes three items: burying gold and jade to suppress the Five Sacred Peaks, casting jade discs (longbi, dragon-patterned ritual jades) into the depths of the sea, and casting the Nine Tripods to pacify the Nine Provinces. These three are model rites for rulers who practice the Way, stabilize the realm, and guard its territory.

The second category concerns the averting of heavenly calamities and includes five items: the cycle of heaven and earth coming to an end, the stars deviating from their courses, the sun and moon losing their brightness, the four seasons losing their order, and yin and yang falling out of harmony. These five are models of petitioning the heavens above to dispel disaster.

The third category concerns the warding off of poison and harm and includes three items: curing illness so that body and mind are restored to harmony through the methods of the scripture, dispelling the baleful qi (breath or energy) of the allotted regions that brings harm, and liberating the dead (duoshi, corpse liberation), using the Nine Refinements to help the departed souls ascend. These three are models of averting harm from below.

The fourth category concerns ascent and salvation and includes thirteen items, among them ascending to the Vermilion Palace, soaring to the Golden Gate, ascending to the Southern Palace, feasting in the Jade Capital, travelling through the Great Void, delivering souls to the Southern Palace, ascending to Shangqing (Highest Clarity), roaming freely in Shangqing, delivering souls to the ranks of the Southern Palace, soaring into the Great Void, delivering the soul to the Vermilion Peak, and roaming the Three Realms. These thirteen are models of the ascent and salvation of souls and of feasting among the celestial realms.

The fifth category concerns the merit of cultivation and its responsive resonance and includes seventeen items: all attaining long life, each completing the full span of their allotted years, all attaining deliverance from the world, repelling death, the flourishing of one's household, a great-grandfather receiving salvation and immediately becoming an immortal, prolonging life and extending years, a corpse-liberated adept becoming a True Person of the Nine Palaces, the state's fortune becoming peaceful, one's rank rising to that of an Immortal Elder, demon kings respectfully yielding their forms, Taiyin (the Great Yin) refining the body until one becomes a minister of the sage lord at the Golden Gate, myriad spirits gathering to pay homage, and demon kings recommending one for office. These are models of the responsive signs that follow the practice of merit.

The sixth category concerns transmission and includes a single item: fasting, offering gold and treasures, pledging the heart, and swearing an oath to the Ten Heavens. This one item is the model for the formal transmission of the teaching and the taking of oaths.

Compilers' Note on the Rules of Transmission

The old books record that the teaching may be transmitted only after one fasts, offers gold and treasures, and swears an oath to Heaven with a sincere heart. They also state that, according to the Mysterious Liturgy (xuan ke, a secret Daoist ritual code), the teaching is transmitted only once in forty thousand kalpas. Even if a perfected person fasts, offers gold and treasures, and pledges the heart, the old standard still requires swearing an oath for ten days before transmission. The compilers have divided these accounts into three items.

In the preface of the scripture, it is said that what Heaven treasures is not passed down to the lower world, and that a sincere scholar must fast, offer gold and treasures, and swear to Heaven with a devoted heart before receiving the teaching. Recipients ought to follow this. The main text of the scripture, by contrast, states that according to the Mysterious Liturgy the teaching is transmitted once in forty thousand kalpas, and that where a perfected person fasts, offers gold and treasures, and pledges the heart, the transmission follows the old standard of a ten-day oath. Together these passages address the conditions under which the teaching may be transmitted and the manner in which the oath is sworn.

Glossary of Technical Terms

The Five Sacred Peaks, the Nine Tripods, and the Nine Provinces stand for the realm's territory and political authority. The jade disc (longbi) was a jade used in sacrifice to Heaven and in offerings cast into deep waters, often carved with dragon patterns. The Vermilion Palace, Golden Gate, Southern Palace, Jade Capital, Shangqing, Great Void, Vermilion Peak, and Three Realms are the names of celestial abodes, immortal mansions, and the realms through which the soul passes in ascent. Corpse liberation (shijie) refers to the transformation in which the body is left behind and the spirit ascends, while the True Person of the Nine Palaces is a rank among the celestial officials. Demon kings (mowang), in the scripture, usually denote venerable beings who test, protect, or govern the underworld. They are not ordinary "demons" in the everyday sense. Swearing to the Ten Heavens means pledging a covenant before the ten directional heavens, a matter of great weight in transmission. Forty thousand kalpas is an immense span of time, underscoring how rarely and cautiously the teaching was to be passed on.

Ordination Protocols and Examples of Offense

"Only once it is natural is it then bestowed" refers to the rules governing ordination transmission (chuándù, the conferral of ritual offices and ordination certificates). These rules should not have required separate articles, and today only one is retained. Violating them brings calamity upon oneself and extends to the nine generations of one's ancestors. Divulging the teachings or treating them with disrespect results in falling into the hells. These three provisions are the examples of offense cited in the scripture.

Scriptural Meaning and the Primordial Heaven

The scripture clarifies profound matters such as the Dao, the mother of primordial qi; the hidden names of the roots of life; and the Jade Maiden of Mystic Perfection. It also encompasses ritual and music, implements and tools, forms and names, measures and numbers, military affairs, and the Way of the Five Constants. All of these belong to the xiāntiān (Primordial Heaven), and were fully prepared by the Celestial Perfected Huangren in accordance with the body.

Later writers, in composing teachings for governing the age, caused the Great Dao to become concealed, and many people no longer knew that its origin lay in the Primordial Heaven.

The scripture's sixty-four lines of Great Brahma's esoteric language issued forth before Great Brahma opened the diagrams. The beginning of number and the breath of respiration correspond to the numbers of yin and yang breath. A single breath appears in the pulse, so one exhalation measures three cùn and one inhalation likewise measures three cùn. Extending this reckoning to zhàng and chǐ, the cùn accumulate into a chǐ and the chǐ accumulate, so that it becomes manifest in things. The laws of pitch and calendar, measures and weights, the Five Planets, the Seven Governors, the Eight Trigrams (Bāguà), the Nine Palaces, and the Twenty-Four Periods all arose from this. The sages took it as their model, which is why the way of making instruments holds that "the chǐ is based on the body's span and the cùn on the width of the finger."

The scripture also contains a full range of methods: the yin elixirs and yang elixirs, celestial patterns and prohibitions, auspicious and inauspicious signs and images, and techniques for divining the past and knowing the future. It likewise provides for aiding the dead and delivering the manifest, summoning perfected beings and bringing down numinous powers, securing the realm and tranquilizing households, sustaining the age and enriching creatures, guarding against calamities and preserving salvation, and repenting, thanking, and petitioning. Nothing is left out.

The divine tortoise mother of the Western Numen transmitted the secular records to Emperor Wu of the Han, which is why the scripture often follows Han institutions.

General Catalogue and Introductory Rules

The text carefully examines the general catalogue of the Great Methods of Numinous Treasure (Língbǎo Dàfǎ), in which its profound points and categories are fully recorded. Its structure does not depart from the scripture, and every single practice and secret transmission is concealed within it. What follows is a rough outline, offered as the foundation for establishing the methods.

The general discussion of the scripture's function that follows the introductory rules is brief. A certain lineage (the Tiantai school) has merely added its own words, rewriting the narrative word "Shun" as the forty-ninth section, "Secret Instructions from the Master." Since that lineage neither examined the meaning deeply nor consulted the many editions widely, it presumptuously called these "Secret Instructions from the Master." It did not recognize that "Shun" was simply a narrative term, and that the passage was not a transmitted technique of practice. Such people, having read little, regard their additions as rare and esoteric.

This commentary follows the scripture alone for its introductory rules and does not dare to invent "secret instructions" to deceive people. Readers may thereby grasp the general meaning of the scripture.

First, the general meaning should be made clear. Then we can study how the scripture (Jing) is actually applied in cultivation methods and ritual performance. This is the proper sequence for studying the Shangqing Lingbao Dafa (Great Method of Highest Clarity and Numinous Treasure).

(The single character pronounced "ěr" at the end of the text does not form a complete sentence under the current punctuation. It is probably a printing error or a fragment from a damaged manuscript, or it may connect to the next paragraph. In some usages it works as a particle meaning "thus" or "thereafter," but since it cannot be reliably joined to the preceding text here, it is not translated on its own.)