The Scriptures

the texts that carry it — language, era, and use Part of Stories & Scripture →

The Zhuangzi. Thirty-three chapters of stories, jokes and invented dialogues, including several in which Confucius is made to argue the Taoist side. It is funnier and stranger than the Daodejing and has done at least as much work: Chinese landscape painting, most of its poetry and a good deal of Chan Buddhism come out of this book. Language Classical Chinese, thirty-three surviving chaptersComposed Core chapters fourth century BCE; the received text edited by Guo Xiang around 300 CE Open the book — context →

The Tao Te Ching. Five thousand characters left at the western gate — the Way in eighty-one small chapters. Language Classical ChineseComposed c. fourth century BCE Open the book — context →

The Daozang. The canon — the 1445 Ming edition alone runs to 1,476 titles across more than five thousand volumes, containing liturgy, alchemy, pharmacology, geography, biography, meditation manuals and blank administrative forms for addressing heaven. Very little of it is read outside the priesthood, and whole sections have never been translated into any Western language. held by most Language Classical ChineseComposed Assembled from the fifth century; the surviving Ming edition of 1445 runs to 1,476 titles in over 5,000 volumes Open the book — context →

The Classic of Purity and Stillness. Around four hundred characters on stilling the mind: the Dao has no form and no name, the mind that is quiet lets the spirit clear, and desire is what stirs up the mud. It is recited every morning by Quanzhen clergy and known by heart by a great many laypeople, and it is short enough to say while walking. held by most Language Classical Chinese, about four hundred charactersComposed Tang dynasty or earlier Open the book — context →

The Yellow Court Classic. The body as an inhabited country — each organ with a resident spirit who has a name, a colour, a costume and an address, to be visualised and held in place. It is the foundation of Taoist visualisation practice, and Wang Xizhi's transcription of it is one of the monuments of Chinese calligraphy. ⚖ contested within Language Classical Chinese verse, deliberately obscureComposed Second to fourth century Open the book — context →

The Seal of the Unity of the Three. Alchemy written in the vocabulary of the Yijing so that the same verses read as furnace chemistry, as cosmology, and as instructions for a process inside the practitioner's own body. The ambiguity is deliberate, every commentator disagrees, and that is precisely why the tradition required living masters. ⚖ contested within Language Classical Chinese, in rhymed and heavily coded verseComposed Attributed to Wei Boyang, second century Open the book — context →

The Treatise on Action and Response. It opens by saying that calamity and blessing have no gate of their own — a person calls them in. Then it lists, concretely, what earns what. Printed and given away free for eight centuries in enormous quantities, read by Confucians and Buddhists as readily as by Taoists, and probably the most widely distributed Chinese religious text after the Daodejing. Language Classical Chinese, about 1,200 charactersComposed Song dynasty, eleventh or twelfth century Open the book — context & 1 source →