Wuzhen pian
The Wuzhen pian (Chinese: 悟真篇; pinyin: Wùzhēn piān; Wade–Giles: Wu-chen p'ien; lit. 'Folios on Awakening to Reality/Perfection') is a 1075 Taoist classic on Neidan-style internal alchemy. Its author Zhang Boduan (張伯端; 987?–1082) was a Song dynasty scholar of the Three teachings (Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism).
Title
[edit]Wuzhen pian combines three Chinese words.
- wu 悟 "realize; awaken; understand; perceive (esp. truth)", viz. Japanese satori
- zhen 真 "true, real, genuine; really, truly, clearly; (Daoist) true/authentic character of human beings"
- pian 篇 "piece of writing; strip of bamboo, sheet of paper; article, essay, chapter"
The Chinese character wu 悟 "awaken; realize", which is written with the "heart/mind radical" 忄and a phonetic of wu 吾 "I; my; we; our", has a literary variant Chinese character wu 寤 "awake; wake up" with the "roof radical" 宀, qiang 爿 "bed", and this wu 吾 phonetic. Compare the given name of Sun Wukong 孙悟空, the central character in Journey to the West, which literally means "Awaken to Emptiness".
The ambiguity of the Wuzhen pian title, and by extension the text itself, is illustrated by these English renderings:
- Essay on the Understanding of the Truth[1]
- Folios on the Apprehension of Perfection[2]
- Awakening to Perfection[3]
- Understanding Reality[4][5]
- Chapters on Awakening to the Real[6]
- Chapters on Awakening to Perfection[7]
- The Essay on Realizing the Truth[8]
- Awakening to Reality[9]
Author
[edit]Zhang Boduan, or Zhang Ziyang (張紫陽), was a native of Tiantai in present-day Zhejiang. After passing the Imperial examination, he began a career as a civil servant, but was banished to the frontier in Lingnan, where he served as a military commissioner. Zhang was later transferred to Guilin and Chengdu, where in 1069 he allegedly experienced sudden realization from a Taoist master who instructed him in Neidan internal alchemy. Zhang wrote the Wuzhen pian, its appendices, and a few other texts, including the Jindan sibai zi (Chinese: 金丹四百字; lit. 'Four hundred words on the Golden Elixir').[10] He was additionally an authority on Chan Buddhism.
Biographical sources agree that Zhang Boduan died in 1082 CE during the reign of Emperor Shenzong of Song, but disagree whether he was born in 983, 984, or 987. Zhang was honorifically called Ziyang Zhenren (紫陽真人), ranking him as a Taoist zhenren, a title that shares the word zhen (real/true/authentic) with Wuzhen pian.
The Quanzhen School of Taoism originated in the 12th century with the Five Northern Patriarchs (Wang Chongyang and his successors). In the 13th century, Zhang Boduan posthumously became the second of the Five Southern Patriarchs in the so-called Nanzong (南宗; 'Southern Lineage'), which Boltz refers to as "ex post facto".[11]
In Shaanxi, Hong Kong, and Singapore, there are Zhenren Gong (真人宮; 'Real/Perfected Person Temples') dedicated to Zhang Boduan.
Texts
[edit]The received Wuzhen pian text contains a preface dated 1075 and a postface dated 1078, both under the name Zhang Boduan. The Daozang "Taoist Canon" includes several textual editions of varying lengths.
The core of the Wuzhen pian comprises 81 poems: 16 heptasyllabic lüshi, 64 heptasyllabic jueju quatrains, and one pentasyllabic verse on the Taiyi (太一; 'Great Unity'). Both 16 (= 2 x 8) and 64 (= 8 x 8) have numerological significance, the former denotes two equal "8 ounce" measures of Yin and Yang (alchemical allusions for mercury and lead) totaling "16 ounces" (one catty), and the latter correlates with the 64 I Ching hexagrams.
Zhang later appended the Wuzhen pian text with 12 alchemical ci (i.e., lyrics) that numerologically correspond to the 12 months, and 5 verses related with the wuxing.
Baldrian-Hussein describes the text:
The verses of the Wuzhen pian are a work of literary craftsmanship and were probably intended to be sung or chanted. They teem with paradoxes, metaphors, and aphorisms, and their recondite style allows multiple interpretations. The verses are widely accepted as an elaboration of the Zhouyi cantong qi, but their philosophical basis is in the Daode jing and the Yinfu jing. Life, says Zhang Boduan, is like a bubble on floating water or a spark from a flint, and the search for wealth and fame only results in bodily degeneration; thus human beings should search for the Golden Elixir (jindan 金丹) to become celestial immortals (tianxian 天仙).[12]
The Wuzhen pian is one of the major scriptures of Taoist Neidan ("Inner Alchemy ") and metaphorically uses the vocabulary of Waidan ("External Alchemy"), which involved compounding elixirs from minerals and medicinal herbs. The text proposes that External Alchemy is unnecessary because the human body contains the essential components. These Three Treasures are jing, qi, and shen. Through alchemical refinement of bodily jing and qi, one can supposedly achieve integration with one's spiritual shen nature.
Commentaries
[edit]The intentionally abstruse and highly symbolic language of the Wuzhen pian is open to diverse interpretations. Many commentators, both Taoist and otherwise, have explicated the text.
The Taoist Canon includes a dozen commentaries (zhu 主) and sub-commentaries (shu 疏) to the Wuzhen pian.[13] Major commentaries are by Ye Shibiao (葉士表; dated 1161), Yuan Gongfu (遠公輔; dated 1202), and several (dated 1335 and 1337) by Weng Baoquang (翁葆光) and Dai Qizong (戴起宗).
In addition, there are numerous later commentaries to the text. Two notable examples are by Qiu Zhao'ao (仇兆鰲; dated 1713), who quotes from 25 commentaries, and by Liu Yiming (dated 1794), who was 11th patriarch of the Quanzhen Longmen "Dragon Gate" Lineage.
Translations
[edit]References
[edit]- Baldrian-Hussein, Farzeen (2007). "Wuzhen pian". In Fabrizio Pregadio (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Taoism. Routledge. pp. 1081–1084.
- Boltz, Judith M. (1987). A Survey of Taoist Literature, Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries. University of California.
- Cleary, Thomas (1987). Understanding Reality: A Taoist Alchemical Classic. University of Hawaii Press.
- Crowe, Paul (1997). An annotated translation and study of Chapters on Awakening to the Real: A Song Dynasty Classic of Inner Alchemy Attributed to Zhang Boduan (Thesis). University of British Columbia. doi:10.14288/1.0099267.
- Davis, Tenney L.; Chao, Yün-ts’ung (1939). "Chang Po-tuan of T'ien-t'ai, his Wu Chen P'ien, Essay on the Understanding of the Truth". Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 73 (5): 97–117. doi:10.2307/25130157. JSTOR 25130157.
- Kohn, Livia (1993). The Taoist Experience: An Anthology. State University of New York Press.
- Komjathy, Louis (2004). Daoist Texts in Translation (PDF).
- Pregadio, Fabrizio (2009). Awakening to Reality: The "Regulated Verses" of the Wuzhen pian, a Taoist Classic of Internal Alchemy. Golden Elixir Press. ISBN 9780984308217.
- Wong, Eva (1997). Teachings of the Tao. Shambhala.
- Bertschinger, Richard (2016). Written Upon Awakening to Reality. Tao Booklets. [2]
Footnotes
- ^ a b Davis & Chao 1939.
- ^ Boltz 1987.
- ^ Kohn 1993.
- ^ a b Cleary, 1997.[full citation needed]
- ^ Wong 1997.
- ^ Crowe 2000.[full citation needed]
- ^ Komjathy 2004.
- ^ a b Bertschinger, Richard. 2004. The Essay on Realizing the Truth by Chang Po-tuan. Tao Booklets, Montacute. An updated preview (2009- )can be found online.
- ^ a b Pregadio 2009.
- ^ Tr. Davis, Tenney L.; Chao, Yün-ts’ung (1940). "Four Hundred Word Chin Tan of Chang Po-tuan". Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 73 (13): 371–376. doi:10.2307/25130199. JSTOR 25130199.
- ^ Boltz 1987, p. 173.
- ^ Baldrian-Hussein 2007, p. 1082.
- ^ Baldrian-Hussein 2007, pp. 1082–3.
- ^ Crowe 1997.
- ^ Kohn 1993, pp. 314–9.
- ^ Wong 1997, pp. 87–94.
- ^ Komjathy 2004, pp. 7–9.
- ^ Davis & Chao 1939, pp. 103–4.
- ^ Cleary 1987, pp. 29–32.
- ^ Cleary 1987, p. 28.
- ^ a b Komjathy 2004, p. 8.
- ^ Komjathy 2004, pp. 8–9.
- ^ Crowe 1997, pp. 40–1.
- ^ Pregadio 2009, p. 27.
Further reading
[edit]- Robinet, Isabelle. 1995. Introduction à l’alchimie intérieure taoïste: De l’unité et de la multiplicité. Avec une traduction commentée des Versets de l’éveil à la Vérité. Paris: Éditions du Cerf. [Contains on pp. 205–54 an annotated translation of the Wuzhen pian.]