Lingbao Scripture of Body-Contemplation 太上灵宝智慧观身经

The author is unknown. The Tang Dynasty Dunhuang Taoist manuscript P3282 cites the Scripture of the Great Precepts of Wisdom and Contemplating the Body, which appears in this work. Research shows that this text was presumably compiled by Taoist priests around the transition between the Sui and Tang dynasties, adapted from excerpts of the Southern and Northern Dynasties Taoist text The Great Precepts of Wisdom and Contemplating the Body from the Shangqing Dongzhen Scripture. It is included in the Ben Wen (Original Text) category of The Dongxuan Section in The Daozang.

Lingbao Scripture of Body-Contemplation

With only over 400 characters, the scripture expounds the method of cultivating quiet contemplation to attain enlightenment. It states that the True Person of Quiet Contemplation perceived the ultimate reality of the body through subtle reflection, realizing that wisdom originally arises from emptiness and non-being. The Four Great Elements (earth, water, fire, air), the Six Sense Faculties (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind), and the Five Marks of mundane existence are all "empty and still, entering the state of formlessness."

If good men and women in the world can diligently cultivate precepts, illuminate the emptiness of all phenomena, and especially eliminate the mind of arising and ceasing, the mind of arrogance, the mind of fear, and the mind of liking and disliking, they can be freed from all worldly sufferings, attain liberation, and gain boundless benefits. Its theories are derived from Mahayana Buddhism.