On Discernment and the Great Mystery 上清太玄鉴诫论

Originally titled Composed by the Supreme Mysterious Master of Shenju Grotto, Guye Mountain

The Supreme Mysterious Master refers to Hou Shanyuan, a Taoist monk at the end of the Jin Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty.

This work is a single volume and included in the Taiping Section of The Daozang.

It is a treatise of exhortations for Taoist practitioners, divided into eight sections. Each section opens with a five-character ode, followed by moral admonitions. The author holds that the most spiritual and noble pursuit among all things is to cultivate the true self and realize one’s innate nature, becoming a clear-minded person who is unbound by heaven and earth, untouched by ghosts and gods, and free and unfettered. The essential tenet of cultivation lies in absolute purity and tranquility, being serene and formless, abandoning falsity and returning to the true self, and recognizing the innate divine pearl of one’s original nature. One must transform their mortal body, cast off their turbid bones, make their physique as empty as the void, and align their nature with the sun and the moon.

The author admonishes Taoist practitioners to sever all mortal ties once and for all, renounce love and leave their kin, eliminate emotions and cast away desires, subdue wandering thoughts and let go of scheming, and dedicate their whole heart to the immortal Dao. They must accumulate merits and virtuous deeds, in the hope of uniting their Dao with the divine truth and transcending life and death. This doctrine is fundamentally based on the tenets of The Quanzhen Dao.