Jian Changchen’s Exposition of the Yin Fu Jing 黄帝阴符经解

Originally titled "Explained by Jian Changchen, Master Baoning, a Taoist Priest Bestowed with Purple Robes and Co-Administrator of Jianlong Guan (Jianlong Temple)".

According to Liu Shipei’s research in Notes on Reading the Daozang, Jian Changchen was a native of Chengdu at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty.

Tongzhi·Yiwen Lue (Comprehensive Records of Literature and Arts) cataloged the work as a one-volume text, and the surviving version is included in the Yujue (Jade Secrets) category of The Dongzhen Section in The Daozang.

Jian Changchen’s Exposition of the Yin Fu Jing

The volume opens with the author’s preface and an essay titled Records of the Yinfu Jing’s Origins. It states that in ancient times, the Queen Mother of the West sent the Mysterious Woman to bestow the Yinfu Jing (over 300 characters) upon the Yellow Emperor, who later expanded it with more than 100 additional characters as a supplement. Thus, this book adopts the over-400-character version of the scripture, divided into four chapters.

Each chapter begins with a paragraph summarizing its core purport, followed by sentence-by-sentence annotations. The main thrust of the annotations is based on Laozi’s theories of emptiness, tranquility, and naturalness, as well as the cultivation of a pure mind and reduction of desires. It is supplemented with Taoist discourse on health preservation, and occasionally cites the I Ching Commentary to discuss the mechanism of harmony between the Dao of heaven and human affairs.