Dharma Words of the Primordial Sovereign Sun Bu'er孙不二元君法语

Also known as

Secret Book of the Way of the Elixir as Transmitted by the Primordial Sovereign Sun Bu'er, Sequence of Practice for the Way of Kun (Female Cultivation)

Author / transmission

Sun Bu'er

Period

Jin (current edition Qing) · Attributed to Sun Bu'er (1119–1182), one of the Seven Perfected of Quanzhen; the present text's fourteen poems of the Dharma Words and The Sequence of the Woman's Practice were mostly composed by Qing-dynasty writers on female alchemy under her name, and are included in the Collected Texts on Female Alchemy.

Canon division

Outside the Canon

Collected in

Outside the Canon (included in the Collected Texts on Female Alchemy and the Essentials of the Daoist Canon)

Category

Alchemical Texts

Fascicles

1 scroll (fourteen poems and a sequence of practice)

Synopsis

The Dharma Words of the Primordial Sovereign Sun Bu'er is attributed to Sun Bu'er, patriarch of the Quanzhen Qingjing (Clarity and Stillness) Lineage, and contains fourteen poems titled The Sequence of the Woman's Practice (gathering the mind, nourishing qi, carrying out the work, slaying the dragon, nourishing the elixir, embryonic breathing, talismanic firing, receiving the medicine, refining the spirit, ingesting, abstaining from grain, facing the wall, emerging of the spirit, and ascension), together with regulated verses titled Female Internal Alchemy, briefly setting out the sequence of female internal-alchemical practice from gathering the mind and refining the self, through slaying the Red Dragon, to the emergence of the spirit and ascension. Sun Bu'er was the wife of Ma Yu; her deeds are recorded in the Record of the Orthodox Lineage of the Golden Lotus, but her own writings have not survived, and the present text is a product of Qing-dynasty female-alchemy literature composed under her name; nonetheless, because of its clear systematic structure it has become a representative work of "female alchemy," and Chen Yingning once wrote an Annotated Commentary on Sun Bu'er's Poems on the Sequence of Female Internal Alchemy to explicate it.

Key Ideas

• The fourteen-stage sequence of female alchemy
• Slaying the Red Dragon as the foundation-laying practice of female cultivation
• A scripture of female alchemy attributed to one of the Seven Perfected

Structure

Structured around fourteen five-character regulated verses, with appended seven-character regulated verses and commentary.

Editions

• Collected Texts on Female Alchemy edition
• Essentials of the Daoist Canon edition
• Chen Yingning, Annotated Commentary on Sun Bu'er's Poems on the Sequence of Female Internal Alchemy

Commentaries

• Chen Yingning, Annotated Commentary on Sun Bu'er's Poems on the Sequence of Female Internal Alchemy

Translations

• English translation by Thomas Cleary, Immortal Sisters (1989)

Full Text & Online Resources

• Wikipedia: Sun Bu'er
• CTEXT search

Related scriptures

Related figures