佛祖歷代通載 9.30

9.30

(21) The "Treatise on Buddhism and Daoism" in the Book of Wei states: The origin of the Daoist school stems from Laozi. As he himself said, he was born before Heaven and Earth to nourish the myriad kinds. Above, he resides in the Jade Capital as the ancestor of divine kings; below, he dwells in the Purple Tenuity as the master of flying immortals. With thousands of transformations, possessing virtue or non-virtue, he responds to things according to capacity, his traces ever unpredictable. He instructed Xuanyuan on Mount Emei, taught Emperor Ku at Mode, Great Yu received from him the secret of longevity, and Yin Xi received the principles of the Dao and its virtue. As for scriptures of cinnabar writings, purple characters, ascending to the abstruse, and flying strides, and discourses on the five stones, golden radiance, wondrous being, and numinous caves, they cannot be fully recorded. As for its teachings: they all remove defiling burdens and cleanse the spirit, accumulate practices, establish merit, gather virtue, and increase goodness, even unto ascending to heaven in broad daylight and living long in the world. For this reason, the First Emperor of Qin and Emperor Wu of Han were insatiably devoted, exhausting their hearts and minds, seeking it everywhere, yet in the end never attained it, regretting it thereafter; hence there were the executions of Luan Da and the Xu clan. Yet that Dao deluded people, and those who imitated it were many. Emperor Ling placed a canopy at Zhuolong and set up an altar to perform rituals. When Zhang Ling received the Dao at Heming, he transmitted one thousand two hundred petitions to the celestial palace; disciples transmitted them to one another, and their practices spread widely. Purifications, offerings, kneelings, and prostrations each had their established methods. Thereupon the Three Primes, Nine Offices, and One Hundred and Twenty Palaces, and all the gods were governed by them. They also spoke of kalpa numbers, stealing quite a bit from Buddhist scriptures, claiming that when a kalpa ends, heaven and earth are both destroyed. Their books contain many esoteric prohibitions; those who are not their followers may not view them arbitrarily. As for transforming into gold, smelting jade, executing talismans, commanding water, and wondrous methods and arcane arts of thousands of sorts: the highest claim transformation into feathered beings flying to heaven, and the lesser claim the dispelling of disasters and reduction of calamities. Thus those fond of the strange frequently venerated and served it. Early on, when Emperor Wendi surrendered to the Jin, his attendants said he had ascended as an immortal at Yique. Emperor Taizu was fond of the sayings of Laozi and recited them untiringly. During the Tianxing reign, the Director of Ceremonies Dong Mi presented several dozen scrolls of immortal scriptures on ingestion; thereupon erudites of immortals were established, workshops for immortals were set up to boil and refine the hundred medicines, and the Western Mountains were sequestered to supply firewood, while convicts under death sentences were made to ingest them. Most died with no efficacy. After a long time, Taizu's interest waned somewhat, and it was halted.