The Direct Interpretation of Dao De Jing 道德真经直解

Commentated by Shao Ruoyu.

Roughly completed in the 10th year of the Shaoxing reign period of Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty (1160), it consists of four volumes and is included in the Yujue (Jade Commentary) category of the Dongshen Section of the Daozang (Daoist Canon).

The Direct Interpretation of Dao De Jing

Prefaced with Narration of the Literal Commentary, it states that this work synthesizes the tenets of the Three Teachings. "The annotations compiled here—when discussing virtue, they relate to the school of Confucius; when expounding on the great Dao’s emptiness and tranquility, their principles align with the tenets of Buddhism. Taking Confucianism and Buddhism as evidence, it integrates Dao and De into a single system." It further asserts that the Laozi "contains, at its lowest level, techniques for retaining the physical form and living an immortal life in the world; at its middle level, methods for safeguarding the state and securing the family for long-term prosperity; at its highest level, the subtle wisdom for transcending life and death and achieving eternal existence".

The author did not follow the traditional convention of dividing the Laozi into the upper Dao Jing and lower De Jing sections, nor the eighty-one chapters. He argued: "Examining from the perspective of principle, Dao and De are discussed in an integrated manner, with no division into upper and lower sections". He regarded the division into eighty-one chapters as a "frivolous theory" based on "numerological symbolism of yang numbers", and even held that Heshi Gong’s division of chapters and creation of titles was "a narrow-minded approach and inappropriate in terms of philosophical reasoning"—thus, he abolished both divisions entirely.