The Numinous Treasure's Ascetic Code 太上洞玄灵宝法身制论

The author is unknown.

Judging from its content and literary style, it was presumably composed by a scholar of the Tang Dynasty. It is a single scroll, incorporated into the section of Precepts and Commandments under the Cavern Mystery Section of The Daozang.

The text records eight prohibitions formulated for the registered disciples and scholars of the Numinous Treasure School: prohibiting contention and strife, prohibiting drinking alcohol, prohibiting abusive and frivolous speech, prohibiting premeditated hunting and capturing of living beings (while advocating releasing them), prohibiting violations of fasting rituals, decorum, and kitchen merit regulations, prohibiting the consumption of five pungent herbs and animal meat, prohibiting angering the host of the fasting ceremony, and prohibiting lewd pleasures and foreign dances. Each prohibition is accompanied by penalty clauses for violations: minor offenses result in confinement for a hundred days, while serious offenses lead to punishment and erasure of one’s name from the Taoist register, embodying the rigorous disciplinary norms of The Dao.