Taishang Dongxuan Lingbao Tianzun Shuo Jiuku Bazui Miaojing — Spoken by the Most High Celestial Worthy of Cavern-Mystery Numinous Treasure

This is a short Daoist liturgical scripture from the great Lingbao (靈寶, "Numinous Treasure") family of salvation scriptures — texts in which a Celestial Worthy vows to empty the hells and rescue the dead. Its speaker, introduced in the first line as the Celestial Worthy Who Rescues from Suffering (救苦天尊), is very probably the deity more fully titled Taiyi Jiuku Tianzun, the Celestial Worthy of Great Unity Who Rescues from Suffering, one of the most widely invoked gods of Daoist funerary ritual. No secure date or Daoist Canon catalog number survives with the witness text behind this translation; its vocabulary of the Ten Directions, the Three Realms, and the Thirty-Six Heavens places it within the broad current of Tang-and-Song-era Lingbao liturgy, alongside the great Scripture of Salvation (度人經), though this particular text does not appear to have been closely studied.

In form it moves through several registers without pause: first a dense hymn of some two dozen five-character lines, spoken in the Celestial Worthy's own voice, describing his power to save the deluded and to transform the torments of hell; then a roll call of the ten Celestial Worthies who preside over the ten quarters of the cosmos, one to each direction; then a further passage in the Dao's own voice describing the fruits of reciting this scripture; and finally an eight-line hymn sung by a chorus of flying spirit-kings.

Scriptures of this kind were recited in Daoist rites for the dead, where the recitation itself — and the naming of the Celestial Worthy — was held to convert hellfire into cool lodging and empty the underworld of its cries, the merit of the recitation transferred to souls in need of it.

One pairing of words carries the whole scripture and gives this room of the Good Works Library its name: jiùkǔ 救苦, "rescue from suffering," and bázuì 拔罪, "uproot sin" — the same verb bá 拔, "to uproot" or "pull free," used of the Celestial Worthy Who Uproots Sin from the Nine Darknesses. Translated for the Good Works Library directly from the classical Chinese printed in full below. To our knowledge, this is the first complete published English translation of this scripture.

Translation

At that time the Celestial Worthy Who Rescues from Suffering
filled the ten directions entirely.

Ever by his awesome, numinous power
he rescues and delivers all living beings,
winning them free of the paths of delusion.
Living beings, unaware, unknowing,
are like the blind before the sun and moon.
I myself abide within the Great Non-Being,
drawing all beings forth beyond every bound and border.
Auspicious clouds throw open the gate of life;
propitious mists seal shut the door of death.
First arising from Mystery, from Origin, from the Beginning,
opening thereby the workings of blessed response,
I rescue from every sin,
I deliver from every calamity.
Vast and far, transcending the wellspring of the immortals;
boundless and free, naturally clear;
all upheld by the power of the great Dao,
so as to subdue every demon-essence.
In the emptiness, how bright it blazes!
Its name is called the Niwan Immortal.
Purple clouds cover the Yellow Elder —
this is called the Lords of the Three Treasures.
And taking further the qi of highest heaven
to govern the souls of the nine heavens —
the wondrous spirits of rescue-from-suffering
clearly perceive the hour of salvation:
heaven above, merged and undivided;
heaven's qi returned to a single body;
all become people of naturalness,
though naturalness still keeps its separate bodies.

Originally within the Empty Cavern,
the Empty Cavern's trace is no trace;
the whole of its substance is Void entire.

First, the deposited qi stands established;
second, the compliant qi is born;
third, the ten thousand dharmas take form;
fourth, light and brightness are born.
Heaven above holds its thirty-six; earth below holds its thirty-six;
the Great Mystery has no bound or border —
wondrous indeed, the Great Cavern Scripture!
I take refuge in the Most High Worthy,
who is able to dissolve every sin.

In the East: the Celestial Worthy, Sovereign of Jade Treasure.
In the South: the Celestial Worthy of Mystery and Truth, of Myriad Blessings.
In the West: the Celestial Worthy of Great Wonder, Utmost Ultimate.
In the North: the Celestial Worthy of Supreme Mystery, Jade Asterism.
In the Northeast: the Celestial Worthy, Upper Sage Who Ferries Immortals.
In the Southeast: the Celestial Worthy Who Cherishes Life and Delivers Fate.
In the Southwest: the Celestial Worthy, Sovereign of Great Numinous Emptiness.
In the Northwest: the Celestial Worthy of Measureless Great Splendor.
Above: the Celestial Worthy, Bright Sovereign of Jade Emptiness.
Below: the Celestial Worthy, Perfected Sovereign of Cavern Spirit.

The Dao says:

The Celestial Worthies of the ten directions,
their number like grains of sand and dust,
transform their forms throughout the ten directions,
universally aiding and delivering gods and men.
Consigning their qi, gathering merit and virtue,
with one voice they rescue sinners —
sinners who are truly to be pitied.
I now speak this wondrous scripture;
recite it without ceasing;
give the body no moment's rest.
Heaven enjoys great blessing;
hell has no sound of suffering.
Hellfire's pall is transformed into clear dwellings;
the sword-trees are transformed into soaring heights.
Above, one ascends to the Palace of the Vermilion Mound (Zhuling);
below, one enters the Gate of Opened Light.
Delivered beyond the tribulations of the Three Realms,
one goes straight up to the Heaven of Primordial Beginning.

Thereupon the Flying Spirit-Kings of Heaven, and their multitudes beyond number, gazed up in reverence at the Worthy's countenance, and made this hymn, saying:

The Celestial Worthy speaks the scripture's teaching,
welcoming and guiding this floating life.
Diligently cultivating the study of non-action,
one awakens to the true Dao, complete of itself.
Not deluded, and not dissolute;
without self, and without name;
chanting clearly these verses of sin and blessing,
ten thousand times over, the heart-mind's stain grows clear.

At that time, the Flying Spirit-Kings of Heaven, and all the multitudes of celestial immortals, having finished this recitation, bowed their heads to the Celestial Worthy, and reverently withdrew.

Colophon

This Good Works Translation was prepared for the Lingbao Salvation Scriptures room of the Good Works Library's Daoist shelf. The English was translated independently from the classical Chinese text printed in full below; no other translation was consulted in producing it. The scripture moves between a dense five-character hymn, a roll-call list of the ten directional Celestial Worthies, plain narrative prose, and a closing five-character hymn sung by a chorus of spirit-kings; each register is kept distinct in the English, and the verse-like passages are broken into lines to show their phrase-by-phrase parallelism, since the source itself runs these clauses together without line breaks.

Before the claim below was written, a bounded translation-status check was performed. Both local bibliographies of Daoist texts in Western-language translation (Komjathy's Daoist Texts in Translation and the 2023 Purple Cloud survey) were searched for this scripture's Chinese title, its pinyin, and the wider 救苦 (jiùkǔ, "rescue from suffering") family of titles associated with Taiyi Jiuku Tianzun, and returned no entries. Two web searches were run, for the Chinese title and for the pinyin title, each together with "translation." Neither surfaced a published English translation of this scripture; the one related hit was an amateur forum translation of a differently titled text, the Taiyi Jiuku Hushen Miaojing (太乙救苦護身妙經), a related but distinct scripture in the same devotional family. We know of no complete published English translation of this specific scripture. To our knowledge, this is its first complete published English translation. We state this as the limit of our search, not as a certainty: the text also circulates under closely related titles (太上洞玄靈寶救苦妙經, 太上救苦經), and we did not attempt to establish whether any of those variant titles has been separately translated.

A note on the text and its transmission. Two points in the witness text resist full confidence. 清署, rendered here as "clear dwellings," follows the sense in which this scripture's central trope — hellfire transformed into cool lodging — is elsewhere described. And 骞 in 劍樹化為骞 ("the sword-trees are transformed"), a less common character meaning "to soar" or "to be diminished," is rendered here as "soaring heights" to preserve the line's parallel with "clear dwellings"; a variant recension may read differently at this point. No Daoist Canon catalog (DZ) number was found for this text in the materials consulted.

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

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Source Text: 太上洞玄灵宝天尊说救苦拔罪妙经

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

尔时，救苦天尊，遍满十方界。常以威神力，救拔诸众生，得离于迷途，众生不知觉，如盲见日月，我本太无中，拔领无边际，庆云开生门，祥烟塞死户，初发玄元始，以通祥感机，救一切罪，度一切厄，渺渺超仙源，荡荡自然清，皆承大道力，以伏诸魔精，空中何灼灼，名曰泥丸仙，紫云覆黄老，是名三宝君，还将上天炁，以制九天魂，救苦诸妙神，善见救苦时，天上混无分，天炁归一身，皆成自然人，自然有别体。本在空洞中，空洞迹非迹，遍体皆虚空。第一委炁立，第二顺炁生，第三成万法，第四生光明，天上三十六，地下三十六，太玄无边际，妙哉大洞经。皈命太上尊，能消一切罪。

　　东方玉宝皇上天尊，南方玄真万福天尊，西方太妙至极天尊，北方玄上玉辰天尊，东北方度仙上圣天尊，东南方好生度命天尊，西南方太灵虚皇天尊，西北方无量太华天尊，上方玉虚明皇天尊，下方真皇洞神天尊。

　　道言：十方诸天尊，其数如沙尘，化形十方界，普济度天人，委炁聚功德，同声救罪人，罪人实可哀，我今说妙经，念诵无休息 ，归身不暂停，天堂享大福，地狱无苦声，火翳成清署，剑树化为骞，上登朱陵府，下入开光门，超度三界难，迳上元始天，于是飞天神王，无鞅数众，瞻仰尊颜　而作颂曰，天尊说经教，接引于浮生，勤修学无为，悟真道自成，不迷亦不荒，无我亦无名，朗诵罪福句，万遍心垢清。

尔时，飞天神王，及诸天仙众，说是诵毕，稽首天尊，奉辞而退。

Source Colophon

The Chinese text follows the Chinese Wikisource transcription of the Daoist Canon edition of this text (article 太上洞玄灵宝天尊说救苦拔罪妙经, revision of 10 July 2009), 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 ancient 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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