Pivot of the Dao (Daoshu)道枢

Period

Southern Song · Compiled by Zeng Zao (d. 1155), completed around the Shaoxing era (mid-12th century).

Canon division

Taixuan Section

Collected in

Zhengtong Daozang, Taixuan Section.

Category

Encyclopedic Compendia (Leishu)

Fascicles

In forty-two scrolls, one hundred eight chapters.

Synopsis

The Daoshu (Pivot of the Dao) is a Daoist encyclopedic compilation of cultivation methods compiled by Zeng Zao of the Southern Song, in forty-two juan and 108 chapters, broadly gathering the teachings of various schools on nourishing life, ingesting qi, daoyin, and internal and external alchemy from the Tang and Song and earlier; each chapter is headed with its own title and given an abridged, rewritten summary, and the collection includes such pieces as the Xuangang, the Zuowang, the Cantong qi, the Dadan, the Jinbi longhu, the Huayang, the Xiuzhen, and the Zhongmiao, drawing on several hundred authors. Material on the Song-dynasty internal-alchemy masters Zhongli Quan, Lü Dongbin, Chen Tuan, Zhang Boduan and Liu Haichan is especially rich, much of it text otherwise lost elsewhere. Zeng Zao also compiled the Jixian zhuan and the Leishuo, and was a noted bibliographer of the Southern Song. This work has done a great service in preserving source material from the formative period of Tang- and Song-dynasty internal alchemy, and is required reading for the study of the Zhong-Lü alchemical tradition and the school of Chen Tuan.

Key Ideas

• A classified compilation of Tang- and Song-dynasty cultivation material
• Historical sources for the Zhong-Lü and Chen Tuan lineages of internal alchemy
• Each chapter abridged and rewritten for readability
• Both ingestion/daoyin methods and internal/external alchemy recorded together

Structure

Forty-two juan, 108 chapters, each on a single theme.

Editions

• Zhengtong Daozang edition
• Zhonghua Daozang, vol. 23

Full Text & Online Resources

• Wikipedia: Zeng Zao
• CTEXT search

Related scriptures

Related figures