Taishang Haoyuan Jing — Spoken by the Most High Lord Lao
This is a short, undated scripture of the Daoist Canon, printed without named author in the Ming-dynasty Zhengtong Daozang of 1445. It is spoken throughout in the voice of the deified Laozi, the Most High Lord Lao, and its imagery and technical vocabulary place it within the same broad tradition of body-visualization verse as the celebrated Yellow Court Scripture (黃庭經, Huangting jing): the body is mapped as an inner court of chambers, gates, and pools, each with its resident spirit, and the practitioner is taught to cultivate breath, essence, and spirit until the body's own geography and the wider cosmos come into alignment.
The whole scripture is continuous rhymed verse — four-character lines at the opening, then seven-character lines for most of its length, the meter of a chant meant to be memorized and recited rather than merely read. It descends from the Cavern Chamber and the Bright Hall of the head, through the Yellow Court where a Child-spirit of the Upper Origin dwells under the watch of the Old Man of the South Pole, to a lower court where "Valley Origin," the Perfected of the North Pole, sits enthroned among his own ministers — and closes on a plain promise: whoever can truly practice this stands level with Heaven and Earth.
A note on the title. The scripture's own heading calls it 浩元經, "the Scripture of the Vast Origin" (hào yuán, written with 元, "origin"); its opening line instead calls the cultivated body 浩源太眞, "the Vast Source, the Great Reality," using the near-homophone 源, "source," in place of the title's 元. Both are kept here exactly as the transmitted text has them.
Translated for the Good Works Library directly from the classical Chinese of the Daoist Canon, printed in full below the translation. To our knowledge, this is the scripture's first complete published English translation.
Translation
Lord Lao said:
The Vast Source, the Great Reality —
this is the body of the noble one.
Above and below, the Three Palaces
guard and nurture essence and spirit.
Bright and at ease are the eyes and the breath;
exhaling and inhaling, the old gives way to new.
Cultivate the real, and it stands firm forever;
one's place becomes that of an immortal.
The Cavern Chamber, delicate and clear as carved jade —
above and below, all things interconnect.
A golden censer and a jade table anchor its center;
withdrawing three inches within, one feeds the Primal Vault;
then dwelling in the Middle Field, one shifts to the Crimson Palace.
Firmly guard the Numinous Pass, where spring and abyss flow as one;
cultivate these three, and life grows ever more vigorous.
Crimson-robed spirit-guests, radiant and soaring —
if you can cultivate this, your life will be without limit.
A kerchief of gold, a canopy of white, grows firm and strong;
below, it enriches the Pool of Origin, moistening the Chamber of the Po-soul.
In the center rises the Numinous Terrace, firming the Bright Hall;
regulating and healing with spirit's own effect, it cultivates the Great Granary.
Essence and breath circle all around; the Five Spirits grow strong;
breath unceasing, rising to the boundless blue.
The Child of the Upper Origin is the essence of spirit;
robed in crimson, capped in red, he dwells in the Yellow Court.
The Old Man of the South Pole — cultivate and tend him;
preserve the spirit, calm the nature, and gain long life.
The spirit of the Lower Origin is named Valley Origin,
the Perfected of the North Pole, foremost in the Way.
He guards the Sovereign — the Metal Spirit, King of the Five Viscera —
forever holding a jade spoon, seated on a golden couch.
He stirs the essence and feeds the One, engendering gold and yellow;
the Numinous Tortoise and the Jade Maiden dwell at the center.
The Recorder of the Left and the Governor of Life of the Right flank him on either side;
he commands the Six Ding to drive off a hundred calamities.
He strikes names from the register of death, and the lifespan is extended;
the sweet spring may be drunk, brimming as jade nectar.
Tranquil and free of striving, the will does not fail;
a jade fan, a golden bolt — its many doors held quiet.
Breath, centered and harmonious, brings forth the fine and subtle;
return to the real, revert to the plain — the pivot of the infant.
Cut off attachment, abandon desire, and the spirit returns of itself;
smooth and lustrous, the vital fluid shines with unfailing radiance.
Transmute the breath, transmute the marrow, and above, fullness grows;
the Way accomplished, the form transfigured, the body soars on high.
The heart-spirit, in an instant, passes beyond the nine bounds of the world;
settle the spirit, still the po-soul — cultivate this Way.
Refine the thought and let the spirit soar — this is my treasure;
the spirit-elixir of the Great Reality has long since been complete.
Numinous features, a youthful hue, ever fresh and fine;
the Three-and-One (sānyī) trains the breath, firming the numinous root.
Regulate and open — reach through to the Honored Ones of the Seven Spirits;
broaden and widen the hidden pass, the manifold source of the Way.
Mighty, mighty — the breath surges like a sheer peak, and Kunlun is cultivated;
the Upper Palace, wrapped in crimson, is fittingly lined with soft wadding.
The Middle Palace, in a red headscarf, stands solemn and abiding;
the Lower Palace, in cinnabar robes, guards the Gate of Essence —
if one can truly practice this, one stands level with Heaven and Earth.
Colophon
This Good Works Translation was prepared for the Daoist shelf of the Good Works Library. The English was translated independently from the classical Chinese text printed below. The scripture is continuous rhymed verse, opening in four-character lines and settling for most of its length into seven-character lines; it is presented here as English stanzas, one stanza for each sentence-unit of the source text, with line breaks kept at the source's own four- and seven-character phrase divisions.
Before the claim below was written, a translation-status check was performed within the bounds set for this pass: the two standing bibliographies of Daoist texts in Western-language translation kept for this project (Komjathy's Daoist Texts in Translation and Purple Cloud Press's 2023 survey of Daoist texts in Western languages) were searched for the scripture's Chinese title and its pinyin romanization, and returned no entry under either; two further web searches, for the Chinese title and for the pinyin title, surfaced no published translation in English or any other Western language, and no scholarly discussion of the text under any of its names. To our knowledge, this is the first complete published English translation of the Haoyuan jing. This is stated as the limit of a bounded search — the standard scholarly catalogues (Schipper and Verellen's Taoist Canon, WorldCat) were not reachable in this pass — not as a certainty.
A note on a few points. The scripture's heading names it 浩元經 but its opening line calls the body 浩源太眞, using the near-homophone 源 in place of the title's 元; both are kept as the transmitted text has them rather than silently harmonized. Several lines compress two or three titles into very few characters, in the manner of a chant meant for memory rather than grammatical clarity — among them the line naming Valley Origin as "the Sovereign, the Metal Spirit, King of the Five Viscera," and a line reading 調通通七神之尊, where a doubled 通 (confirmed present in the underlying Wikisource witness, not an artifact of this working copy) is read here as two verbs in sequence rather than as a copying slip. These and a small number of other dense lines were rendered as literally as English allows; a specialist reading of the source may improve on some of these choices.
Prepared for the Good Work Library by the Tianmu Anglican Church with AI-assisted translation and editorial work.
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Source Text: 太上浩元經
Classical Chinese text of the Zhengtong Daozang, in the Chinese Wikisource transcription. Presented complete for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above.
老君曰：浩源太眞，君子之身。上下三宮，保營精神。熙融視息，吐吸新陳。修實永固，位爲仙人。洞房玲瓏，上下相通。金鑪玉几鎭其中，郤入三寸哺元穹，還居中田移綘宮。堅守靈關泉淵融，修此三者長雄雄。朱衣靈賓熙且冲，子能修之命無窮。巾金素蓋成堅剛，下益元池漬魄房。中起靈臺堅明堂，調治神効修太倉。精氣周遊五神强，呼吸不輟昇蒼蒼。上元童子神之精，綘衣赤幘居黃庭。南極老人爾修營，存神安性得長生。下元之神名谷元，北極眞人道之先。守帝金神五藏王，常持玉匕坐金牀。攪精哺一生金黃，靈龜玉女居中央。左錄右命挾兩傍，役使六丁驅百殃。削去死籍命延長，醴泉可飲盛玉漿。恬淡無爲志不衰，玉扇金籥靜多扉。呼吸中和生細微，還眞反朴幼子機。絶愛棄欲神自歸，滑澤精液輝常輝。易氣易髓上生肥，道成形化身高飛。心靈倐忽過九圍，安神定魄修此道。鍊思冲神是吾寶，太眞神丹成已久。靈顔幼色常鮮好，三一習氣固靈根。調通通七神之尊，恢廓幽關道眾源。雄雄氣崿修崑崙，上宮朱裹宜以緼。中宮赤幘儼而存，下宮丹衣守精門，審能行之齊乾坤。
Source Colophon
The Chinese text follows the Chinese Wikisource transcription of the Zhengtong Daozang edition of this scripture (article 太上浩元經, revision of 13 January 2017), 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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