Direct Pointers to Awakening to Reality悟真直指

Also known as

Direct Pointers to Awakening to Reality, Liu Yiming's Direct Pointers to Awakening to Reality

Author / transmission

Liu Yiming

Period

Qing · Written by Liu Yiming (1734–1821), composed around the end of the Qianlong reign (around 1790), included in the Twelve Daoist Books.

Canon division

Outside the Canon

Collected in

Outside the Canon (in the Twelve Daoist Books)

Category

Alchemical Texts

Fascicles

Four fascicles

Synopsis

Direct Pointers to Awakening to Reality (Wuzhen zhizhi) is the Longmen-Lineage alchemist Liu Yiming's (sobriquet Wuyuanzi) commentary on Zhang Boduan's Awakening to Reality (Wuzhen pian), and one of his Twelve Daoist Books. Liu Yiming takes 'the dual cultivation of nature and life' and 'the pre-celestial true and unitary qi' as his guiding thread, explaining the poems one by one, and holds that the medicine, cauldron and furnace, and fire phasing spoken of in the Wuzhen pian are all figurative language, that 'the golden elixir is simply a person's own original pre-celestial true and unitary qi,' opposing interpretations of the alchemical teaching in terms of sexual techniques, external furnaces, or fixation on parts of the body, and advocating 'return' as the essential principle and 'firmness and softness held to the correct center' as the practical work, corroborating his reading with the Confucian principle of the Mean and the Buddhist principle of illuminating the mind. His commentary is clear and fluent, and together with his Direct Pointers to the Cantong qi, Commentary on the Yinfu jing, and Elucidating the Truth of the Book of Changes it forms a consistent system of alchemical teaching, and is one of the most influential Qing-dynasty commentaries on Internal Alchemy.

Key Ideas

• The golden elixir is the pre-celestial true and unitary qi
• The medicine and the cauldron and furnace are figurative language; attachment to outward forms is rejected
• The work of return through firmness and softness held to the correct center
• The Three Teachings share a single principle

Structure

Four scrolls, providing commentary poem by poem on the regulated verses, quatrains, lyrics, and songs of the Wuzhen pian.

Editions

• The Qing-dynasty woodblock edition of the Twelve Daoist Books
• Zang wai dao shu, volume 8
• Yuzhe and others' annotated edition of the Twelve Daoist Books (Shumu Wenxian Chubanshe, 1996)

Translations

• Thomas Cleary, Understanding Reality (1987), which also translates Liu Yiming's commentary

Full Text & Online Resources

• Wikipedia: Liu Yiming
• CTEXT (Chinese Text Project) search

Related scriptures

Related figures