Lü Zu Xin Jing — Spoken by Chunyang, Patriarch Lü

This is a short Daoist scripture attributed to the immortal Lü Dongbin (呂洞賓, styled Chunyang, "Pure Yang"), one of the Eight Immortals and, within Quanzhen Daoism, the third of its Five Patriarchs — hence the title "Patriarch Lü's Heart-Mind Scripture." Its language belongs with the exhortatory scriptures and spirit-writing revelations that gathered around Lü Dongbin's cult from the Ming dynasty onward; no firm date or textual pedigree can honestly be given, and it does not appear to carry a numbered place in the Ming-dynasty Zhengtong Daozang.

The scripture opens in four-character prose declaring that mind, not body, is what makes a person "numinous," and that all self-cultivation comes down to governing this one thing. It then becomes a catalogue: thirty-six pairs, each naming a virtue of mind set to govern a corresponding vice of mind — honoring elders against unfiliality, generosity against miserliness, holding the whole in view against getting lost in petty affairs — before closing with three similes of things that need working (tangled thread, an unpolished mirror, an unbroken horse) and a four-line closing verse.

A note on the title word 心, xin, kept throughout as "mind": it is heart and mind in one word, and the text's method — "use mind to govern mind," 即心治心 — depends on holding both at once. The catalogue reaches freely into Confucian ethical vocabulary inside its Daoist frame (良知良能, "innate knowledge, innate capacity," is Mencius's own phrase), typical of the popular morality literature spoken in Lü Dongbin's voice. Translated for the Good Works Library directly from the classical Chinese, printed in full below. To our knowledge, this is the scripture's first complete published English translation.

Translation

Chunyang, Patriarch Lü, said:

Heaven gives birth to the ten thousand things,
and of them all, man alone is most numinous.
It is not that man himself is numinous —
it is truly the mind that is numinous.

The mind is sovereign,
ruler of the whole body;
it commands the hundred bones
and directs the host of feelings.

Objects are not objects in themselves;
forms are not forms in themselves.
It is endowed by Heaven —
innate knowledge, innate capacity.

Bound by material force and beclouded by desire,
day by day it loses its truth.
Once this mind is lost,
this body too topples.

To make the body good, first govern the mind.
How does one govern the mind?
By using mind itself to govern mind.

With a mind that honors elders, govern the unfilial mind.
With a mind that defers to seniors, govern the mind that fails brotherly duty.
With a mind wholly devoted, govern the disloyal mind.
With a mind sincere and reverent, govern the untrustworthy mind.
With a mind reverent and respectful, govern the mind without propriety.
With a mind that follows principle, govern the mind without righteousness.
With a mind pure and unyielding, govern the mind without integrity.
With a mind that respects itself, govern the shameless mind.
With a mind that accumulates virtue, govern the mind bent on evil.
With a mind that benefits and aids others, govern the cruel, predatory mind.
With a mind that upholds and supports, govern the mind that undermines and entraps.
With a mind benevolent and compassionate, govern the violent, tyrannical mind.
With a humble mind, govern the arrogant mind.
With a mind that lessens and restrains itself, govern the mind swollen with fullness.
With a mind frugal and restrained, govern the proud and extravagant mind.
With a mind careful and cautious, govern the negligent mind.
With a mind level and straightforward, govern the treacherous mind.
With a mind loyal and generous, govern the harsh, mean-spirited mind.
With a mind at peace, govern the wrathful mind.
With a mind broad and expansive, govern the narrow, grudging mind.
With a mind mindful of harm to the body, govern the mind sunk in drink.
With a mind mindful of one's own wife and daughters, govern the licentious mind.
With a mind mindful of karmic recompense, govern the mind that schemes to seize.
With a mind mindful of misfortune, govern the mind bent on violent strife.
With a mind of the true teaching, govern the mind of heterodoxy.
With a mind of utmost faith, govern the mind of great doubt.
With a mind that endures long, govern the inconstant mind.
With a mind constant from beginning to end, govern the fickle mind.
With a mind that gives freely, govern the miserly mind.
With a mind natural and unforced, govern the strained, grudging mind.
With a mind content with its portion, govern the mind of wild imagining.
With a mind that endures, govern the mind of complaint and blame.
With a mind that extends sincerity to others, govern the mind of suspicion and envy.
With a mind calm and settled, govern the wavering, bewildered mind.
With a mind centered and correct, govern the partial, favoring mind.
With a mind fixed on the whole, govern the mind lost in petty matters.

Alas, the mind of man —
ungoverned, it is not pure.
Like a skein of tangled thread:
unless untangled, it is not clear.
Like an old mirror:
unless polished, it does not shine.
Like an unruly horse:
unless reined in, it is not tamed.

Therefore I speak this scripture,
wishing to govern the mind of man.
When the mind of man attains its governance,
Heaven and Earth are clear and at peace.

A verse:

All is mind alone, and mind is most precarious;
it molds the Heavens and encompasses the Earth, radiant with light.
Heaven's mind is seen within the human mind itself;
when man accords with Heaven's mind, Heaven does not turn against him.

Colophon

This Good Works Translation was prepared for the Lü Dongbin and the Immortals' Teachings shelf of the Good Works Library. The English was translated independently from the classical Chinese text printed below. The opening declaration and the closing exhortation-with-similes keep the four-character parallelism of the original as short verse lines; the central catalogue of thirty-six virtue-against-vice pairings is kept as thirty-six single lines, one pairing per line, following the source's own unbroken recitation; the closing gatha (偈) is kept as a four-line verse.

Before the claim below was written, a genuine translation-status check was performed. Komjathy's Daoist Texts in Translation and the 2023 Purple Cloud update to it were both searched under this scripture's Chinese title, its pinyin, and the names Lü Dongbin and Chunyang; neither records a translation of this text, though both record other works attributed to Lü Dongbin (the Taiyi jinhua zongzhi, the Xiwangmu nüxiu zhengtu shize, and others). A live web search was also completed, run under the Chinese title and under the pinyin title; it returned no genuine hit. One page surveying Lü Dongbin's scriptures was checked directly and does not contain this text; a same-named Xin Jing anthologized by the Song scholar Zhen Dexiu proved, on inspection, to be an unrelated Confucian mind-cultivation text and not a translation of this scripture. To our knowledge, this is the first complete published English translation of the Lü Zu Xin Jing. We state this as the limit of our knowledge, not as a certainty.

A note on two points. The couplet 物無其物，形無其形 ("objects are not objects in themselves; forms are not forms in themselves") is compressed and gnomic in the original; the translation gives its plainest reading rather than a padded paraphrase. And 以妻女心，治姦淫心 ("with a mind mindful of one's own wife and daughters, govern the licentious mind") reflects a common trope of this literature — restraining lust by imagining one's own family in another's place — rendered here without further gloss.

Prepared for the Good Work Library by the Tianmu Anglican Church with AI-assisted translation and editorial work.

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Source Text: 呂祖心經

Classical Chinese text of the Daoist textual tradition, in the Chinese Wikisource transcription. Presented complete for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above.

呂祖心經

純陽呂祖曰：

天生萬物，惟人最靈。非人能靈，實心是靈。心為主宰，一身之君。役使百骸，區處群情。物無其物，形無其形。稟受于天，良知良能。氣拘欲蔽，日失其真。此心既失，此身亦傾。欲善其身，先治其心。治心如何，即心治心。以老老心，治不孝心。以長長心，治不悌心。以委致心，治不忠心。以誠恪心，治不信心。以恭敬心，治無禮心。以循理心，治無義心。以清介心，治無廉心。以自愛心，治無恥心。以積德心，治為惡心。以利濟心，治殘賊心。以匡扶心，治傾陷心。以仁慈心，治暴戾心。以謙遜心，治傲慢心。以損抑心，治盈滿心。以儉約心，治驕奢心。以謹慎心，治怠忽心。以坦夷心，治危險心。以忠厚心，治刻薄心。以和平心，治忿恚心。以寬洪心，治褊窄心。以傷身心，治沉酒心。以妻女心，治姦淫心。以果報心，治謀奪心。以禍患心，治鬥狠心。以正教心，治異端心。以至信心，治大疑心。以悠久心，治無恒心。以始終心，治反覆心。以施與心，治慳吝心。以自然心，治勉強心。以安分心，治妄想心。以忍受心，治怨尤心。以推誠心，治猜忌心。以鎮定心，治搖惑心。以中正心，治偏袒心。以大體心，治細務心。 嗟呼人心，不治不純。如彼亂絲，不理不清。如彼古鏡，不磨不明。如彼劣馬，不勒不馴。 我故說經，欲治人心。人心得治，天地清寧。 偈曰： 一切惟心心最危，範天圍地發光輝。 天心即在人心見，人合天心天弗違。

Source Colophon

The Chinese text follows the Chinese Wikisource transcription of this scripture (article 呂祖心經, revision of 15 November 2025), inspected from a witness copy captured on 8 August 2026. Chinese Wikisource transcriptions are published under CC BY-SA 4.0 and the GFDL; the text itself is traditional and in the public domain. The wiki header and license templates have been removed; the text is otherwise complete and unaltered.

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