Deng Yougong邓有功

Style & Daoist names

Deng Yougong, disciple of Jingming (Pure Brightness) Daoism

Period

Southern Song

Dates

? — ?

School

Jingming (Pure and Bright) Daoism, Tianxin Zhengfa (Correct Method of the Celestial Heart)

Role

Daoshi (Daoist Priest)Compiler of Daoist Ritual Texts

Birthplace

the Nanchang area (present-day Nanchang, Jiangxi)

Places of activity

Wanshou Palace of Xishan (Yulong Wanshou Palace)

Life

Deng Yougong was a Southern Song Daoist priest from Jiangxi, credited as the compiler of the five-fascicle Correct Rites of the Celestial Heart of Shangqing (Shangqing tianxin zhengfa, included in the Daoist Canon of the Zhengtong Era), and closely connected to the Jingming Zhongxiao (Pure Brightness, Loyalty and Filial Piety) Daoist tradition of Xishan. The Correct Rites of the Celestial Heart of Shangqing gathers together ritual forms for the Three Luminaries' Correct Method, summoning and interrogation, exorcism, healing, and the submission of memorials, and belongs, together with Yuan Miaozong's Secret Essentials of the Assembled Perfected for Aiding the State and Saving the People, to the core textual corpus of the Tianxin Zhengfa tradition — the two works are mutually complementary and constitute the basic material for reconstructing Song-dynasty Tianxin ritual method. The text stresses that ritual practice must be grounded in "loyalty and filial piety" and "rectifying the mind," and that the ritual master must first purify himself before he may command the spirits — an orientation strongly consistent with the ideas that He Zhengong put forward when he revived Xu Xun's teaching of "Pure Brightness, Loyalty and Filial Piety" at Xishan during the Shaoxing era of the Southern Song, reflecting the overlap in doctrine and personnel between the Tianxin Zhengfa tradition and Jingming Daoism in the Jiangxi region. No historical record survives of Deng Yougong's native place, teachers, or dates of birth and death; scholars have inferred, chiefly from the attribution in the Daoist Canon and the account of lineage transmission given in the text itself, that he was a man of the Southern Song active in the Xishan area of Jiangxi. Any account purporting to give further detail of his life is a later fabrication and should not be cited.

Contributions & Influence

• Compiled the Correct Rites of the Celestial Heart of Shangqing, preserving the complete ritual forms of Song-dynasty Tianxin Zhengfa
• Made "loyalty, filial piety and rectifying the mind" a precondition for ritual practice, reflecting the fusion of Jingming Daoism with talismanic ritual Daoism
• Provides a key text for the study of the relationship between Xishan Daoism in Jiangxi and the Tianxin lineage

Works

• Correct Rites of the Celestial Heart of Shangqing