Lingbao feeds

Constitution of the gun

The Lingbao gun was constituted by the gathering of alchemical texts, Shangqing, Maîtres celestial and of inspiration Bouddhiste around a principal text, the Writing crowned of the five talismans of the magic jewel or Wufujing . It was already mentioned in the gun of the school Taiping and could come from a text talismanic used by the Eastern magicians of Han, the Supreme magic Jewel .

The old taoism regards its crowned texts as forwarded by divine beings. the Five Talismans does not make exception. The Yunji qiqian claims that it was given on order of Laozi to Ge Xuan by three immortal, whereas it practiced CAD on the Tiantai mount. It would have transmitted it to its disciple Zheng Yin, who would have given it to Ge Hong, its own disciple, great nephew of Ge Xuan. But it is in fact probable that it circulated in the Royaume of Wu at the time of the Three kingdoms, and that it is Ge Chaofu, great nephew of Ge Hong, which in made promotion and gathered around him at the Eastern end of the Jin the first a Lingbao gun, composed of fifty-five booklets.

Under Liu-Song (Ve century), Lu Xiujing, reformer of the celestial Masters of the south, considered this corpus and remelted it, by preserving only thirty-five booklets, of which three are lost; Except the Five Talismans , the two texts most important are the Five Chapters of the red book ( Chishu wupian 赤書五篇) and the higher Chapters on the unlimited salvation ( Wuliang duren shangpin 無量渡人上品). With the Life century, Song Wenming wrote an important comment of the Lingbao texts of which it made the principal part of the Canon taoist. The Lingbao gun was glosé until XVe century.

Characteristics

During the first centuries of its existence, contrary to its “rival” Shangqing who proposes especially an individual practice based on the meditation, the gymnastic and the recitation of the gun, and recruits in majority in the easy mediums, Lingbao develops a broader base and attaches more importance to the collective rites and the community of the practitioners. It owes this characteristic partly with Lu Xiujing, which codified the ritual ones while taking as a starting point the reforms that it had recommended for the celestial Masters. Its goal was to make find at the various schools the discipline of the Five bushels of rice of Hanzhong, and its intervention gave a great impulse to the current. The school is of more known for its talismans. The influence of the Buddhism mahayana, visible in all the currents contemporary taoists, is particularly clear at Lingbao with, for example, the adoption of the concept of Réincarnation, or the names of divinities of which some come from the Sanscrit. Nevertheless, the majority of these loans are based on a surface or erroneous comprehension Buddhist concepts.

Ritual

Among the ritual collectives, most important is the zhai or “fasts”, ceremony actually preceded by a collective fast and a purification, which nowadays still carries the mark of the celestial Masters and Lingbao. The ritual ones comprise music, songs and dances; one distinguishes there a perceptible external aspect for the public, and an internal aspect which consists of the mental reproduction of the gestures by the Master taoist progressively of their execution. They were rangaient at the origin in three categories: celestial, terrestrial and human. The first includes/understands rites of the supposed the gold Register to prevent the calamities, very snuffed emperors and reserved for the imperial family until the end of the Tang. The rites of the yellow Register (Ground) are for the rest of deaths. The rites of the jade Register, for the salvation of mankind, were integrated later on in the gold Register.

Meditation

Lingbao is inspired for the meditation by Shangqing, in particular of the cunshen , visualization of the divinities contained inside the body, as well as the recitations of texts, but from the different point of view. Visualization does not form any more part of a process of alchemy internal, but becomes a means of driving out the impure thoughts, just like the recitation of the gun avoids of evil speech and the achievement of ritual the zhai avoids the ill deeds. To contribute to the community property and to help others are as important as personal sublimation.

Cosmology and eschatology

At the origin of the universe is a single breath which gives rise to Pure origins, the principal god of the school. From this last three entities called celestial Joyau emanate (Tianbaojun 天寶君), magic Joyau (Lingbaojun 靈寶君) and divine Jewel (Shenbaojun 神寶君). They are the sources of the three parts of the gun, divided following the example three baskets of the Buddhist gun: Dadong, Dongxuan and Dongshen. Under the influence of Buddhism, the number ten fact its appearance in the structure of the universe, at the same time as the staged skies, thirty-two. One distinguishes there the world from the desire, that of the form and the world without-form

Lingbao begins again on its account the topic apocalyptic cycles according to the succession of the five phases, known seems it of all the other Chinese religious movements (Taiping, Shangqing). At the end of each phase, the emperor correspondent appears, of cataclysms occur and only the faithful ones are saved, put at the shelter by Xiwangmu in its harbor of the mount Kunlun. At the end of the short eras, characterized by an excess of Yin, the moon causes floods, the nine puffed up ones are renewed and the 10.000 emperors change row. At the end of the long eras, characterized by an excess of yáng, the wild animals invade the ground, metal and the stones amalgamate, the sky and the ground exchanges their places.

Inspired by Buddhism, the followers of Lingbao added the ideal of a good reincarnation to that of the immortality. After death, the body undergoes an alchemical transformation in the Palate of the supreme darkness (northern) where the yin is refined, then in the southern Palate where the yang is in its turn.

Gods

The principal divinity of the school is the Vénérable Origins , which will become the first of the Pure Three. The Pantheon also comprises the Five emperors associated with the five elements, the Emperors of the three worlds (Human Sky, Ground and) the southern Lord of longevity the gods of the Hells, the King-dragons, the Ten immortal savers, the Thirty-two celestial emperors.

Evolution

From the Life century appear many branches whose principal ones are: Danyang, Dongming, Tongming, Yuyang, Yangjing, Donghua, Nanchang. Under Tang, Shangqing, established better in the aristocracy, is more influential at the court but borrows from Lingbao, involving a bringing together of the practices. From Song, the new current Quanzhen becomes prevalent in the north of the country, but Lingbao remains one of the three most important schools of the south. It will be linked under Yuan within the Zhengyi current, to which Linbao is always attached. On the island of Taiwan, the school is especially present in the county of Tainan.

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