Direct Guide to the One Truth 玄宗直指万法同归

Composed by Mu Changchao, a Quanzhen Taoist priest of the Yuan Dynasty, and compiled by Huang Benren.

It consists of seven volumes and is included in the Taixuan Section of The Daozang.

The book collects poems and essays by Mu Changchao, which can be generally divided into four categories:

First, discourses, including Preface to the Diagram of the Limitless and the Supreme Ultimate, Allegory of the Common Origin of the Three Teachings, Illustrated Explanation of the Return of Ten Thousand Dharmas to One, and so on, totaling thirty-five chapters. Second, questions and answers, including about eighty entries on the Golden Elixir, life and nature, and more than forty entries on the Supreme Ultimate. Third, poems and verses, including sixty-six poems on the Golden Elixir, thirty Chan Buddhist gong’an, and about three hundred miscellaneous odes, poems and lyrics. Fourth, exhortations and admonitions, including ten kindnesses owed to parents and ten human and heavenly virtues.

The main purpose of the whole book is to integrate the three teachings and unify all doctrines. It holds that the Mean, the True Constant, and the Perpetual Abiding are the ultimate principles of the three teachings, all referring to the unchanging eternal truth. Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism “share the same Supreme Ultimate and the same innate nature and principle, stand tripodally between Chinese and barbarian lands, and all take education as their core”.

The author advocates integrating the theories of nature and principle of the three teachings, and returning to the dual cultivation of life and nature. He holds that the “Limitless” is pure principle; only with this principle does this qi come into being. The confusion of principle and qi is called the “Supreme Ultimate”. The Supreme Ultimate gives birth to the Three Powers and establishes all things. Principle and qi are the foundation of life and nature, “existing together with the Three Powers and all things without end”.

He also states that the Limitless is the “true emptiness of the Supreme Ultimate”, and the Supreme Ultimate is the “wonderful being of the Limitless”; true emptiness is the beginning of nature and principle, wonderful being is the beginning of qi and life. The Great Dao takes non-being as its substance and being as its function; substance and function return to one, principle and qi depend on each other, and being and non-being, motion and stillness give rise to the Dao of transformation.

He also divides cultivation into two schools: nature and life. The school of nature takes purity, emptiness, stillness and tranquility as its foundation, forgetting emotions and eliminating desires as its core, and precepts, concentration and wisdom as the primary truth. The school of life takes non-action and naturalness as its foundation, focusing qi and embracing the one as its core, and essence, qi and spirit as the primary truth.

Yet precepts, concentration, wisdom, essence, qi and spirit are interdependent and inseparable. “Precepts nourish essence; concentration nourishes qi; wisdom nourishes spirit.” “Precepts, concentration and wisdom are established relying on essence, qi and spirit; essence, qi and spirit are perfected relying on precepts, concentration and wisdom.”

Therefore, practitioners should cultivate both life and nature.

The book also discusses the cultivation of the Golden Elixir, emphasizing purity and tranquility of body and mind. It holds that “the purity of the six senses and the clarity of the heart-mind are the true elixir”. Its elixir methods are divided into gradual and sudden: the gradual method begins with preserving spirit and nourishing life; the sudden method enters directly through cultivating nature via purity, emptiness and non-being. The practice of The Quanzhen Dao is the sudden method, similar to Buddhism.

The book strongly argues that Buddhism and Taoism share the same path: “Buddha-nature is no different from the Golden Elixir”; “The Dao of immortality is non-death; the Dao of Buddhism is non-birth. One death, one birth — this is delusion.”

In short, the unity of the three teachings, the fusion of principle and qi, the dual cultivation of life and nature, and the equal emphasis on precepts, concentration, wisdom, essence, qi and spirit are the main arguments of this book.