Angol
Perfected Scripture of the Great Cavern Supernatant Clarity - Shàng Qīng Dà Dòng Zhēn Jīng 上清大洞真經Referred to as "Realized Scripture on the Great Grotto of the School of Highest Clarity" in "The Way of Highest Clarity: Nature, Vision and Revelation in Medieval Daoism" by James Miller, I heard about this scripture in a footnote in a paper that repeated a legend from the scripture, that if it is recited 10,000 times, the petitioner achieves salvation. Having translated other Daoist and Buddhist scriptures that are chanted and repeated daily, also about salvation, I had learned that the radically different perspective of immortality is what these scriptures provide, the daily repetition useful to counteract the world's predominating perspective of limitation, the finite, distress, and mortality. The concepts and imagery in this primary scripture of Shang Qing Daoism are similar to and build upon the concepts and imagery of Ling Bao Daoism that I had spent several years immersed in, so translating this scripture seemed like a natural extension of what I'd been doing previously. Endlessly beautiful and peaceful, it's a transformative text meant to develop the mental, physical, and spiritual health of the practitioner, a pointer into the sky, toward the sun and the moon as talismans beckoning the reader to emerge from the netherworld of the human mind into the surrounding Jade universe, as a flower, unsubmerged, to join with the spirits and ascend to blossom into the "highest clarity", the "cinnabar heights" beyond the top of the universe, allowing the "sun-and-moon bright purple Qi" to fill the body and develop it into perfection.The primary scripture of Shang Qing Daoism, The Great Cave Classic was banned during Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty and later banned again in the Yuan Dynasty. The classic, which belongs to the first volume of the Book of Shangqing, is said to be the most important one in the Book of Shangqing.
