Taishang Shengxuan Xiaozai Huming Miaojing — Spoken by the Celestial Worthy of Primordial Beginning

This is a short scripture of the Daoist Canon, preserved in the Zhengtong Daozang, the Ming-dynasty printing of 1445. Its title places it among the "Ascending to the Mystery" (昇玄, Shengxuan) family of Daoist revelation, one of several currents that absorbed the vocabulary of Buddhist emptiness philosophy into Daoist scripture during the Six Dynasties and Tang. The scripture's own textual notes cite a Dunhuang manuscript witness, so some version of it was already circulating by the Tang dynasty at the latest; no more precise date is known to us.

It opens as a frame narrative: the Celestial Worthy of Primordial Beginning, surrounded by a limitless host, surveys a world of beings lost in the confusion of being and non-being, form and emptiness. He then teaches — in language that echoes the Buddhist Heart Sutra's "form is emptiness, emptiness is form" — that no such category holds fixed, and that to see this clearly is itself the gate of understanding. He names the teaching "Protecting Life," promises it a retinue of guardian spirits, and closes with a single four-line verse recalling the Daodejing's own "looked at and not seen, listened for and not heard." The whole is prose but for that closing quatrain.

Under this or a closely related title, the scripture became one of the two core scriptures of the Daoist Daily Recitation Liturgy (功課經) — paired at the Morning Altar with the Scripture of Constant Purity and Stillness (清靜經) — and has been chanted daily in Daoist monasteries, including those of the Complete Perfection (全真) school, since at least the Qing dynasty and probably earlier.

A note on terms: the text's key vocabulary — 有/無 (being/non-being) and 色/空 (form/emptiness) — is Buddhist logical vocabulary absorbed wholesale into Daoist scripture, and is kept in matching English pairs throughout. Translated for the Good Works Library directly and independently from the classical Chinese of the Daoist Canon, printed in full below. A published English translation of this scripture is known to us — see the colophon — so this translation makes no claim to be the first.

Translation

At that time, the Celestial Worthy of Primordial Beginning was in the Grove of Seven Treasures, within the Palace of Five Lights, together with the limitless sacred host. Together they sent forth limitless light, illuminating limitless worlds, beholding limitless beings, who suffer limitless torment — winding through the world, turning the wheel of birth and death, adrift on the river of craving, swept on the sea of desire, mired in sound and form, confused between being and non-being. Where there is no emptiness, they see emptiness; where there is no form, they see form; where there is no non-being, they see non-being; where there is being, they see non-being. From beginning to end they remain in darkness, unable to enlighten themselves — utterly confused.

The Celestial Worthy said: You beings — from what is not being, you bring forth being; from what is not non-being, you bring forth non-being; from what is not form, you bring forth form; from what is not emptiness, you bring forth emptiness. What is not being, you take as being; what is not non-being, you take as non-being; what is not form, you take as form; what is not emptiness, you take as emptiness.

Emptiness truly is emptiness — yet there is no fixed emptiness. Form truly is form — yet there is no fixed form. That very form is emptiness; that very emptiness is form. If you can know emptiness as not merely empty, and know form as not merely form, this is called illumined understanding — only then do you reach the wondrous sound.

Understand that no thing is fixedly empty; see through all things without hindrance; enter the gate of the myriad wonders, and understanding comes of itself. Leave behind every net of doubt; do not cling to the view of emptiness. Purify the six roots, and cut away every deviant hindrance.

I now speak for you this wondrous scripture (the Dunhuang manuscript reads instead: "I therefore speak this wondrous scripture for you, the fourfold assembly"), called Protecting Life, to ferry across and deliver all beings. Carried on the body and venerated (three redactions lack this clause), let it be handed down and taught throughout the world, circulated, read, and chanted. Then Flying Heaven Spirit Kings, Vajras Who Smash Evil, Numinous Lads Who Guard the Dharma, Perfected Ones Who Rescue from Suffering, and Fierce Beasts of Golden Essence — each a company a hundred million myriad strong — all come (the Daozang edition omits "come") to guard and attend this scripture. Wherever it is venerated, they ward off calamity and sustain the failing, delivering all beings and freeing them from every defilement.

At that time the Celestial Worthy then spoke a verse, saying (the Dunhuang manuscript repeats "enter the gate of the myriad wonders" at this point, and lacks this transition):

Looked at, I am not seen;
listened for, I am not heard.
Departed from every extreme —
this is called the Wondrous Way.

Colophon

This Good Works Translation was prepared for the Lingbao Salvation Scriptures shelf of the Good Works Library. The English was translated independently from the classical Chinese text printed below. The scripture's frame narrative and teaching are rendered as prose; its single closing quatrain is kept as four verse lines. The source carries five small-type notes: four are collation notes (校) citing a Dunhuang manuscript, the Daozang printed edition, and unnamed "three redactions," and one is an alternate-character note (另作). The four collation notes are carried into the translation as brief italicized asides at the point where they occur; the alternate-character note, which records only a synonym swap (為 for 曰, both "called") with no change of sense, is omitted from the translation body as the brief allows, though it remains in the Chinese text below.

Before the claim below was written, a genuine translation-status check was performed. The two local bibliographies of Daoist texts in English translation — Komjathy's Daoist Texts in Translation and the 2023 Purple Cloud update — were searched under this scripture's Chinese title, its romanizations, and its short name Huming jing, and record no entry for it. A web search then located Lai Chi Tim's Daoist Liturgy of the Most High for Daily Recitation (Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2026), a bilingual edition of the Daoist Daily Recitation Liturgy; its table of contents lists, in the Morning Altar section immediately after the Scripture of Constant Purity and Stillness, a scripture titled in English "Wondrous Scripture for Ascending to the Mysterious, Averting Calamities, and Protecting Lives" — to all appearances this same scripture, given its paired position, its shared themes, and its shared opening formula. Only the translator's introduction and table of contents were consulted, never the translated scripture itself, so that this translation would not see or be shaped by that rendering. Given this finding, no claim of firstness is made: to our knowledge, this Good Works Translation is independent of, and was not checked against, Lai Chi Tim's.

A note on terms. 六根, "the six roots," are the six sense faculties — eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind — whose purification the scripture asks of the reader. 金剛, "vajra," is kept as the loanword English already uses for these adamantine guardian-warriors, matching the term's own status as a loanword within the Chinese. The scripture's central pair, 色 "form" and 空 "emptiness," echoes the Buddhist Heart Sutra closely enough that the echo is almost certainly deliberate, and the translation keeps that echo rather than smoothing it into purely Daoist vocabulary.

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

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Source Text: 太上昇玄消灾護命妙經

Classical Chinese text of the Daoist Canon, in the Chinese Wikisource transcription. Presented complete for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above. 〔 〕 marks small-type notes — collation notes and one alternate reading — as formatted in the transcription.

爾時元始天尊在七寶林中，五明宮內，與無極聖衆，俱放無極光明，照無極世界，觀無極衆生，受無極苦惱；宛轉世間，輪迴生死，漂浪愛河，流吹欲海，沉滯聲色，迷惑有無；無空有空，無色有色，無無有無，有有無有，終始暗昧，不能自明，畢竟迷惑。

天尊告曰：汝等衆生，從不有中有，不無中無，不色中色，不空中空；非有為有，非無為無，非色為色，非空為空。空即是空，空無定空；色即是色，色無定色；即色是空，即空是色。若能知空不空，知色不色，名為照了，始達妙音。識無空法，洞觀無礙，入衆妙門，自然解悟，離諸疑網，不著空見，清静六根，斷除邪障。我即為汝說是妙經〔校：敦煌本作『我故為汝四輩說是妙經』〕，名為〔另作：曰〕護命，濟度衆生，隨身供養〔校：三家本無此四字〕傳教世間，流通讀誦。即有飛天神王、破邪金剛、護法靈童、救苦真人、金精猛獸，各百億萬衆，俱來〔校：《道藏》本無『來』字〕侍衛是經，隨所供養，捍厄扶衰，度一切衆生，離諸染著。爾時天尊即說偈曰〔校：敦煌本有『入衆妙門』四字，但無『爾時天尊即說偈曰』〕：

視不見我，聽不得聞。
離種種邊，名曰妙道。

Source Colophon

The Chinese text follows the Chinese Wikisource transcription of the Zhengtong Daozang edition of this scripture (article 太上昇玄消灾護命妙經, revision of 21 July 2018), 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 scripture 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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