Pure Brightness Secret Canon 太上灵宝净明洞神上品经

This scripture is also known as The Secret Methods of Pure Brightness or The True Scripture of Pure Brightness.

According to legend, in the early Southern Song Dynasty, Perfect Lord Xu descended to West Mountain in Jiangxi (present-day Xinjian County) to transmit it, and it became the principal classic upheld by Taoist priests of the Pure Brightness Sect in the Southern Song Dynasty. The original work consists of two volumes and is included in the Taiping Section of the Daozang. It is divided into thirty-five chapters.

Pure Brightness Secret Canon

The first twelve chapters outline the doctrines of Pure Brightness Taoism, asserting that the Pure Brightness Dao regards filial piety and loyalty as the highest virtues and physical refinement and self-cultivation as the essential tenets. Those who practice filial piety worship the celestial deities, pray for blessings and longevity for the sovereign and their parents, summon gods and subdue ghosts with Taoist Talismans and incantations, heal the sick and deliver all beings, and thus can attain immortality.

The chapters from the thirteenth onward expound separately on the various Taoist methods of physical refinement and salvation of the Pure Brightness Sect. Among them, chapters twelve to seventeen elaborate on the method of reciting The Spiritual Scripture—a text written in Sanskrit (transliterated into Chinese characters) that contains the true names of various immortals as well as incantations and formulas; reciting these incantations with hidden names can summon and descend the immortal true beings.

Chapters eighteen to twenty-nine discuss Taoist methods such as wearing sacred diagrams and precious talismans, stepping on the mysterious nether veins, appearing before the Celestial Emperor, perceiving one’s past lives with profound insight, and raising the dead to life. Chapters thirty to thirty-five narrate the methods of curing illnesses, dispelling disasters for people, and delivering countless spirits from the underworld by means of talismans and incantations. Most of the talismans in these chapters have been lost, and their content can be supplemented by referring to The Supreme Lingbao Pure Brightness Secret Methods Chapter, which is included in the Methods category of the Dongxuan Section of the Daozang.