The () is a comprehensive Ming dynasty (1368-1644) text on ("internal alchemy") self-cultivation techniques, which syncretistically quotes sources from the Three teachings of Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism and is richly illustrated with over fifty illustrations that later texts widely copied. The classic has been republished for over four centuries, from its first woodblock edition in 1615 to digital versions in the present.
Title is the full title of the .(tr. Darga 2008: 1106) denotes the "joint cultivation" of ("inner nature") and ("vital force"), which is the objective of Neidan schools.(Esposito 2008: 906) Although the promulgates the of and , it does not attach much importance to physiological practices and emphasizes the spiritual aspects of inner transformation.(Darga 2008: 1107)
Both titles use the common Chinese word ,8.9 average occurrences per million characters of text, Bishop 2016 and the rare, if not nonce, word .
Xingming
Unlike , is found in Chinese dictionaries. For instance, the unabridged monolingual (Comprehensive Chinese Word Dictionary), which is lexicographically comparable to the Oxford English Dictionary, defines three meanings for :
.(Luo 1994 7: 477–478)
The English translation equivalents of the title's and are informative.
: Inborn; one's inborn nature, one's fundamental being. Native character, predisposition; one's endowment at birth; particular inherent quality; innate; inborn destiny. (Kroll 2017: 510; n.b., abridged henceforth)
: Call on one to do X; give orders to; bid; direct. Command, ordain; decree; injunction, mandate. Exhortation; advice, counsel. To name, call (as). Confer a title on, bestow a dignity. Heaven-ordained duration of life, life-span ... Heaven-ordained circumstances of life, fate, destiny; "calling," vocation, mission.(Kroll 2017: 311) As its title suggests, the is principally concerned with the "endowment" (, often translated as "nature") and "vitality" (, often translated as "life" or "life-span") of human life. Essentially, and together compose the most fundamental energy that animates the human body, and the purpose of this treatise is to return the secondary energies of the body to the primordial purity of this primary energy.(Little 2000: 348)
Guizhi
Compare the translation equivalents of and :
Jade tablet or scepter, square-bottomed and round or pointed at the top, given by ruler in early times to trusted ministers or vassals; ... (Kroll 2017: 145) The Qing scholar You Tong's preface to the 1670 says this character, composed of doubled, is a pun for the Inner Alchemical , see the Yellow Court Classic.(Needham and Lu 1983: 231, referring to the word's "Neo-Confucian cloak")
: Purport, aim; meaning, significance. Opinion, slant, viewpoint. [Medieval Chinese] Directive, imperial rescript. ... (Kroll 2017: 607) Most Chinese characters are classified as phono-semantic compound characters, which combine a radical that suggests word meaning and a phonetic that roughly indicates pronunciation. The first meanings of and above are illustrative. (written with the "jade" radical and phonetic), is an old variant character for . (, with the "hand" radical and phonetic)Kroll 2017: 606 is an interchangeable variant character for .
English Scholars have translated the Chinese title in many ways: A Pointer to the Meaning of Human Nature and the Life-Span(Needham and Lu 1983: 229) Directions for Endowment and Vitality(Little 2000: 348) Directions to the Balanced Cultivation of Inner Nature and Vital Energy(Kohn 2000: 545) Principles of Balanced Cultivation of Inner Nature and Vital Force(Darga 2008: 1106) Principles of the Innate Disposition and the Lifespan(Burton-Rose 2009: 2) Authoritative Decrees on Innate Nature and Life-destiny (Komjathy 2011: 90) Superior Pointers to Inner Nature and Destiny(Böck-Mobius 2012: 15) Directions on the Unity of Xing and Ming(Pregadio 2014: 160) Jade Guide to the Mind-nature and Life(Liu 2016: 78) Talismanic Directives to the Cultivation of Nature and Vitality(Yu 2016: 83) Principles of the Tablets on the Innate Nature and the Vital Force(Despeux 2019: 118) Pointers on Spiritual Nature and Bodily Life(Wellcome Collection 2022) These translations generally follow accepted philosophical meanings of (e.g., inner, human, spiritual nature) and (life, lifespan, vitality); while diverging on how to render (jade, talismanic, authoritative, superior, or untranslated) and (pointers , decrees, directions, principles). Kohn and Darga translate the full title .
Textual history The origins of the are obscure, but since it quotes several Ming dynasty writers, such as Luo Hongxian (1504-1564), it can be dated to the late 16th century.(Little 2000: 349)
After its first edition in 1615, the was frequently republished; notably 1622 during the Ming dynasty, 1669 and 1670 during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), in Ding Fubao's 1922 , and in the Beijing White Cloud Temple's 1989 edition.(Darga 2008: 1006) The text includes four prefaces, written by She Yongning (, fl. 16th-17th century, dated 1615), Zou Yuanbiao ( 1551–1624, estimated 1622), You Tong (, 1618–1704, dated 1669), and Li Pu (, ?- 1670, dated 1670).(Darga 2008: 1107)
The book's author remains unknown. These four early prefaces all say the text was written down by master Yin Zhenren's () : either literally () or the disciple's proper name Gao Di ( or ; compare other Gao Dis). The identities of both this master and his disciple are ambiguous.(Darga 2008: 1106)
The name Yin Zhenren ( combines the Chinese surname Yin with the standard Daoist ("Perfected Person") honorific term for a transcendent.
One authorial hypothesis is that Yin Zhenren conceivably dictated the through planchette writing or spirit writing. The Daoist Canon contains several texts supposedly produced from spirit-writing. Some examples are the , the , and the .(Despeux 2008: 428) If the was produced through spirit writing, two possible Daoist masters surnamed Yin are Yinxi (), a legendary gatekeeper who persuaded Laozi to write the before leaving China to travel West, and Yin Zhiping (, 1169–1251), the second patriarch of Quanzhen School Daoism.(Burton-Rose 2009: 11)
Besides the , another Neidan text retrospectively attributed to Yin Zhenren or Yin Pengtou ( is the . Min Yide () edited it around 1830 from a manuscript preserved in the Qingyang Daoist Temple in Chengdu.(Needham and Lu 1983: 224, 234)
's lexical components are , , and . and were sometimes used interchangeably.
She Yongming's first edition 1615 preface explicitly refers to ()—using the name Di () and . Both You Tong's 1669 () and Li Pu's 1670 () descriptions can alternatively be read as "high disciple" or as "Gao Di". Zuo Yuanbiao's 1622 forward () writes Gao's given name as instead of . Needham and Lu translate Gao Di () as a proper name.(Needham and Lu 1983: 231)
One scholar tentatively identifies the disciple Gao Di with a Ming dynasty scholar. The 1739 History of Ming ( 257) records that Gao Di () received a degree in 1589 and opposed the eunuch dictator Wei Zhongxian.(Skar 2002: 198)
Contents
The syncretistic is notable for comprehensive explanations, numerous woodcut illustrations, and explicit depictions of the nine stages of transformation. The wide-ranging is praised by the historians of Chinese science Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-djen as, "a treatise of substantial size which might be regarded as the of physiological alchemy []."((Needham and Lu 1983: 229)
The text is divided into four : , , and , which is a Classical Chinese allusion to the first sentence of the commentary on Hexagram 1 : "The Creative works sublime success, furthering through perseverance" .(tr. Wilhelm and Baynes 1967: 4) These four books present an overview of basic principles.
Book 1 has twenty-three that outline the foundations of Internal Alchemy. Books 2-4 give diverse that explain practices in more detail; each book contains three main chapters, organized in correspondence with the Quanzhen of internal alchemical transformation. All four books contain accompanied by short texts, frequently in the form of rhymed poems.(Darga 2008: 1107) The textual organization "outlines the adept's progress in four clear parts." Book 1 begins with defining basic concepts and clarifying terms; Book 2, called "nourishing the original source," deals with cultivating and strengthening one's physical energies; Book 3 establishes an active relationship between the physical and the heavenly, described as the "union of [the trigrams] (☰) and (☰)"; Book 4 describes liberation from the world, when the Sacred Embryo develops and grows, "goes beyond all, and merges with emptiness".(Kohn 2000: 545)
The quotes from Confucian, Lao-Zhuang, Daoist, and Buddhist sources. One of the main concerns of the is to lead the adept through the multitude of alchemical methods and writings to the core of the true path of . This core is to be sought at the basis of all phenomena and is proof of the undivided unity and the unchanging nature of the Dao. The author approaches this core from a variety of perspectives, employing a wealth of concepts but always returning to the central theme. He does not give any practical instructions for practicing inner alchemy, however; in fact, he dissociates himself from specific exercises, as these belong to the phenomenal domain from which he tries to lead away his readers. (Darga 2008: 1107)
In the Quanzhen lineages the is usually classified as belonging to the or the of Ming and Qing . Its ideas are mainly based on Zhang Boduan's (, 987?-1082) (Folios on Awakening to Reality / Perfection) and Li Daochun's (, fl. 1288–1292) , and are also closely related to other Quanzhen School texts.(Darga 2008: 1107)
Despite the 's detailed coverage of Daoist Internal Alchemy, such as a "wonderful list of the chief varieties of the 'three thousand six hundred' techniques " practiced by men and women adepts, many Western sinologists have misconstrued it. John Dudgeon (1895) mistook the text for a manual of gymnastics, while Richard Wilhelm and Carl Jung (1931) used it "iconographically without much understanding".(Needham and Lu 1983: 231) Wilhelm and Jung's The Secret of the Golden Flower used four illustrations— without citing the source—to depict the stages of meditation, for example, the uncredited illustration is on the first edition cover, although the book does not mention the Internal Alchemical ("sacred embryo, embryo of sagehood") concept.
Examples The following four sample illustrations demonstrate the text's comprehensive treatment of Internal Alchemy. Two examples depict alchemical reaction-vessels and culturally symbolic animals, and two others show Daoist "inner landscape" diagrams of the human body.
The first two examples, called the "Illustration of Bringing Together the Four Symbols" and "Illustration of the Marriage of the Dragon and the Tiger" both depict Chinese mythical animals and an alchemical cauldron, either round vessels with three legs or rectangular ones with four. In Outer Alchemy, the laboratory cauldron was originally used to heat elixir ingredients, while in later Outer Alchemy, Daoist practitioners semantically extended the word to mean the metaphorical cauldron allegedly located in the lower of the human body, wherein an adept cultivated the Three Treasures of Jing ("Essence"), Qi ("Breath"), and Shen ("Spirit").