Buddhist apocrypha: 佛說壽生經 The Scripture on Longevity and Life spoken by the Buddha (1)

偽造. 佛說壽生經 

The Scripture on Longevity and Life spoken by the Buddha - APOCRYPHAL 

This scripture is one of a genre of books regarding the 'incarnation money', a concept that exists in some forms of buddhism and Daoism. Briefly, there is a concept that in the spiritual world, everyone has a literal karmic bank account, or 'coffer'. Per Daoist scriptures like 靈寶天尊說祿庫受生經"Scripture spoken by the Lingbao Heaveny Worthy on rank-coffers and incarnation"  and 太上老君說五斗金章受生經 The Scripture Spoken by Taishang Laojun on the Golden Seals of the Five Dippers and Incarnation. Per the former scriptures, this karmic bank account is credited or debited according to one's good or bad deeds. At the same time, one must also draw into this bank account in order to reincarnate into a human body- the 'incarnation debt'. as such no ordinary person is free from a certain amount of debt. If one's debt is not paid- or worse still, increased through bad deeds- then all manner of disasters will strike a person. The converse is true if a person manages to repay his debt, and the scriptures provide instructions on how to do so. 

The present scripture, when compared to the above mentioned Daoist scriptures, does not give a detailed account of how the debt works, or indeed, how it can be cleared. It merely states that such a debt exists, there are negative consequences to not repaying it, and recitation of this scripture- and, it seems the Diamond Sutra, clears the debt. However we are not given detailed instructions on how much debt a recitation clears, or indeed, how much incarnation debt a person has in the first place.

However, tables that are circulated with the scripture do provide these details, as for example this copy of the Scripture, published by the Xuanang Cultural Printing Company 玄奘印刷文化有限公司. Briefly, the amount of incarnation debt one owes depends on the year of birth in the sexagenary cycle. The exact amount of debt for each year is stated in guan (a chinese unit of 1000 coins), and the number of recitations of the Scripture of longevity and life this corresponds to. The table also states the number of the 'coffer' from which the debt was withdrawn, as well as the official who is in charge of said coffer. These details are used to fill in a petition that  is subsequently burnt, to send it to the relevant officials. This seems to be accompanied with burning a special kind of ritual paper that physically represents the money, although the book does not describe what the paper looks like, here are some images of 'incarnation money' that is used in a daoist ritual to repay the incarnation debt-- a ritual that I incidentally have participated in. Soemetimes paper ingots are used instead. 

The table and petition are transmitted separately- but in close proximity- to this apocryphon. This copy of the Zen Daily Recitations contains the Scripture in one part of the book, and the table of debts (with the text of the petition) in another. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_pMqJbJsDt4C&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=%E7%A6%85%E9%97%A8%E6%97%A5%E8%AF%B5&pg=PP247#v=onepage&q&f=false 

_______

It is one thing to say that this scripture is a buddhist apocryphon; but it is perhaps more valuable to see this scripture as an example of the syncretism between buddhism and daoism in times past; buddhists appropriating daoist theurgy (such as the sexagenery cycle and perhaps the concept of incarnation debt itself).

One of the Daoist Scriptures on incarnation debts, the 上老君說五斗金章受生經 The Scripture Spoken by Taishang Laojun on the Golden Seals of the Five Dippers and Incarnation has been translated by Schafer and Paynter under the title of The Perfected Scripture of the Life Receiving Golden Seals of the Five Dippers as Spoken by Taishang Laojun. it is available here. https://www.amazon.com/Perfected-Scripture-Receiving-Dippers-Taishang/dp/B0CW9L1R2W/ref=pd_vtp_h_pd_vtp_h_d_sccl_2/141-9748089-1902138 I hope to translate the other scripture in due course. 

There is additionally an anthropological article on the practise of repaying the coffers, by Rostislav Berezkin  entitled Paying for Salvation: the Ritual of ‘Repaying the Loan for Life’ and Telling Scriptures in Changshu, China. https://www.academia.edu/41612226/Paying_for_Salvation_the_Ritual_of_Repaying_the_Loan_for_Life_and_Telling_Scriptures_in_Changshu_China

***

In the interests of time and space, I will only post the text of the Scripture of Longevity and life here.  The table of incarnation debts, as well as the petition, will be translated in a separate post.  

My translation is based on these source texts: 

https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/zh/X0024  The Sutra in the Manji Tripitaka sequel  I used this as my base text. It has some errors in words and punctuation which I have corrected against the Zen Daily Recitations, below. For a PDF of the original see https://books.google.com/books?id=aLtFAQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=%E4%BD%9B%E8%AA%AA%E5%A3%BD%E7%94%9F%E7%B6%93&pg=PP1586#v=onepage&q=%E4%BD%9B%E8%AA%AA%E5%A3%BD%E7%94%9F%E7%B6%93&f=false 

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qObnAAAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&pg=PP329#v=onepage&q&f=false A copy of the scripture in a 1930s edn of the Zen daily recitations. The table of incarnation debts in this scripture is here https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qObnAAAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&pg=PP301#v=onepage&q&f=false 

https://archive.org/details/20251124_20251124_1749/mode/2up The copy of the sutra from the Xuanzang Cultural Printing Company alluded to above; it has the tables of debts owed. 

The ghost-feeing hymn in the Yuqie Yankou 瑜伽焰口

In this post I will translate the hymn of feeding ghosts from the 瑜伽焰口 YujiaYyankou/Yuqie Yankou 

 Hun Yeow Lye in his PHD thesis, entitled Feeding Ghosts (https://library.victoria.ac.nz/ebooks/UMIthesis_Lye_FeedingGhosts.pdf)  has translated the hymn. Although literal and detailed, I feel it does not fully capture the moving simplicity of the hymn itself. 

There are actually two hymns in the liturgy. The first- and more commonly recited one- is translated here. A second, slightly shorter hymn was also provided by the editor of the Yankou, and was stated as being 'used only by our temple' . The author hopes to translate it soon 

In some ways this hymn is the ritual and emotional climax of the rite: By the time this hymn is sung, the rite would've gone on for about an hour and a half. In that time, mandalas were offered, mantras chanted, and the ghosts invited. At this stage, the chief celebrant- dressed in a glorious scarlet robe, with the imposing 'crown of the five buddhas' on his head, tosses the consecrated food-- sweets, biscuits, rice and so on, in front of him (or sometimes to the side); food consecrated so the starving ghosts can consume it. An old custom is for the crowd to take the sweets thus thrown, as they are percieved to be blessed; in this almost carnivaleqsue atmosphere, this hymn is sung. 

This hymn about the transience of all mortal achievements-- The ghosts of kings and their consorts are first called up-- their glories all turning to dust. Then the ghosts of ministers and warriors, servants of the state, cruelly abandoned by the nation that they served. The hymn then proceeds to more ordinanary people-- filial sons, sage daughters, who died for their parents; scholars who failed in their dreams; merchants who died far from home. Then it goes on to the detested; the abandoned. The disabled, abandoned by society; others who died terribly-- their bodies smashed by walls, drowned in floods. Finally the detested dead-- the depraved souls who rebelled against parents, attacked buddhism-- those wretched souls are also fed. 

When I go to a Yankou, i always tear up a bit when they sing this hymn. How many people do I know fill these categories? How narrowly, have perhaps I avoided those fates myself? 

***

The practise of scattering the food is nowadays seldom done in the bigger buddhist monasteries (not least because of the chaos it creates).Rather, in modern the chief celebrant scatters the food to his side, or else into a cordoned off area. In the daoist equivalent of the rite eg (青玄济炼铁罐施食) , scattering food for the public is still done as a matter of course.

___

There are a variety of tunes used to sing this hymn to. This one,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5KHPXC9x68 is in my opinion the most pleasant and moving. This, however, seems to have been replaced in recent years with an incongruously cheerful tune:  Another video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW6KQ9UpE4c and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BfjDPTM_K0 

You can find a copy of the liturgy here https://archive.org/details/20221202_20221202_1542/page/n125/mode/2up 

Chinese astrology: interpretations of shooting stars

Chinese Divination on shooting stars

自《陶朱公致富奇書》

From Tao Zhugong's Wonder book bettering wealth

Tao Zhugong's Wonderbook for Bettering wealth- is a ming-dynasty compendium of agricultural knowledge. It is highly heterogeneous, containing advice to grow various kinds of plants, animal husbandry, and agricultural poems. One of the entries is this is a short divinatory text, showing what will happen if you see a shooting star - or meteor, travel in a particular direction. The interpretations concern weather (eg drought, flood, wind), but one deals with human catastrophes- robbers.A final section gives predictions based on the meteor's general appearance

I have chosen to base my translation on this copy: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b90064365/f92.item; an image of the full text (spliced together from 2 images) is shown above.

 【占流星】

On Shooting Stars or Meteors

東向西移主來日有雨。

東向南移主來日火災。

東向北移主境內有賊。

If the Shooting Star moves from the East to the west: Rain in the coming days

East to South: Disaster by fire in the coming days

East to north: robbers nearby

西向東移主三日內有雨。

西向南移主當年水旱災傷。

西向北移主來日風雨大作。

W-E: Rain in three days

W-S: Drought, flood in the year; harmful

W-N: Great wind and rain

南向東移主旱。

南向西移主秋霜行雪。

南向北移主來日有霧。

S-E:Drought

S-W:Frost& snow in autumn

S-N Fog the next day

北向東移主連日雨不斷。

北向西移主水渰田禾。

北向南移來日陰而不雨

N-E: Continuous rain for many days

N-W:Water submerges the fields and rice

N-S: Cloudy in coming days but no rain

星碎碎散火而行，當年蝗蟲生。

星大而帶黑暈行，人民災厄。

星昏而行，江河泛漲。

If the shooting stars come in fragments [and resemble] scattered flames; there will be locusts that year

If the stars are big and bear a black halo, Disaster amongst the people

If the stars are foggy 昏 the rivers will burst and flood 泛漲

Alan Leo's Centiloquy

Tucked in the very back of Alan Leo's How to judge a nativity, (1928) is his "centiloquy" , or collection of 100 short astrological aphorisms. The most famous are the centiloquies of of Ptolemy, Hermes, and Bethem. The tradition continued well into the 18thc. The astrologer John Partridge wrote a 'centiloquy' of 102 aphorisms  and a collection of 80 astrological aphorisms . More generally Nicholas Culpeper wrote a whole series of aphorisms, which are scattered all across my blog. You can find one part here 

Leo's Centiloquy is less well known, and as such I felt it is proper to reproduce it here. The centiloquy usually concentrates on natal astrology.

The text has been transcribed from this copy of how to judge a nativity https://archive.org/details/howtojudgenativi00leoa/page/330/mode/2up . Page numbers are left in brackets 

***

A CENTILOQUY

The 'Centiloquies' of Claudius Ptolemy and others are famous for containing in a short and pithy form the fruit of many years of study. The present Centiloquy is intended simply as a help to the student by which he may fix in his mind the gist of the teachings given in this book, in the form of a hundred brief aphorisms. To each aphorism is added the page on which more detailed information can be found.

---

I. The ‘squares’ denote opposition and discord, the ‘triangles’ peace and harmony (4).

II. Astrological symbology conceals within itself the history of the earth as a planet (6).

III. The Ascendant corresponds to sunrise, and suggests spirit made subject to matter; the Meridian corresponds to noon, and suggests balance between spirit and matter; the Descendant corresponds to sunset and suggests the triumph of spirit over matter; the Imum Coeli is the great mystery, the occult centre (7).

IV. The Cardinal Houses indicate physical matters connected with the external life; the Fixed Houses indicate matters connected with feelings and emotions, not yet ripe, but maturing; the Mutable Houses indicate matters latent in the mind, and affairs brought over from past lives (8).

V. The Cadent, Succedent and Cardinal divisions represent thought, speech and action, or spirit, soul and body (6).

VI. The six houses above the horizon (xii, xi, x, ix, viii, vii) correspond to the ‘life’ side of the universe, the six below (vi, v, iv, iii, ii, i) correspond to its ‘form’ side (6).

VII. There exists an intimate correspondence between the Signs and the Houses (10).

VIII. The Houses relate to physical and etheric matter, and the Signs to astral matter (10).

IX. The influence of the Signs is greater than that of the Houses, and the former will ‘overbear’ the latter (p. 10).

X. The Houses are like transparent vessels, each having its own pattern; the Signs supply the contents of such vessels, giving a special substance, colour and quality to each house (12).

[332]

XI. The four triplicities are Fire, Air, Water, Earth; or Spirit, Space, Time and Matter. The three qualities are Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable (14).

The wondrous Oracles of the the God of Travellers 水陸總管公靈籤

The wondrous Oracles of Shui Lu Tsung Kwan Kung.

水陸總管公靈籤

ShuiLu Zhongguan gong Lingqian

The Numinous Lots of the God of Water and Land 

 

I have taken this interesting text from Doolittle’s Vocabulary and Handbook of the Chinese Language. This is a translation by one C.F.R. Allen of a lot oracle through Jiaobei, taken from a Temple near Fuzhou. I have already translated a similar lot oracle—under the patronage of Gyuanyin on this blog, and for more about how the lot oracle works.

In brief, the querent throws a pair of “moon blocks” thrice, and notes the pattern in which they fall (both up, both down or one up and on down), and looks up at the relevant entry. There are 27 entries, plus one more for when the blocks stand up on end 側 thrice. They make 28, the number of Chinese xiu or constellations. Accordingly, each of the lots has the name of a xiu, but they are not in order: 1-14 are the odd-numbered xiu, whilst 15-28 are the even numbered ones (I suspect this is because Allen had a copy where the lots were arranged in two rows on a page, and Allen translated across the page rather than vertically: I have made a similar mistake too in the past!) 

The names of each of the 28 xiu are usually the first character of each poem; accordingly I have set them in bold. Sometimes the names are used semantically (eg lot 26 below, the Willow) whilst other poems use characters that are graphically similar to constellations (eg lot no. 2) However, one constellation 危 is missing (it should be lot no. 20). I am not sure why this is the case, or why its name has been substituted with 龍- dragon.

It is worth noting that In some modern Chinese almanacs, there is a lot oracle called 土地杯- The God of Earth’s Jiaobei. This oracle is very similar to the one translated below. However there is a key difference: Whilst all oracles in The Numinous Lots of the God of Water and Land are written as four lines of five-characters each, the lots in the The God of Earth’s Jiaobei are irregular: some are written as couplets; others are written in lines of three characters each. The Numinous Lots of the God of Water and Land may thus represent an earlier version of the The God of Earth’s Jiaobei. I hope to post a translation of the God of Earth’s Jiaobei on this blog soon. 

~ Notes on the text~ 

I have transcribed the text form this copy in Google books. https://books.google.com/books?id=KTsOAAAAIAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&pg=PA504#v=onepage&q&f=false  Some entries have comments by Allen, either explaining obscure terms or the import of the lot. I have added “Allen” to the end of each. I have added some comments of my own. These are prefaced by “ed” 

玉樞經髓 - The Marrow of the Scripture of the Jade Pivot, translated by James Legge

玉樞經髓 

The Marrow of the Scripture of the Jade Pivot, 

translated by James Legge in his The Texts of Taoism (1891) 

***********

In this post I will republish James Legge's translation of the 玉樞經髓 - The Marrow of the Scripture of the Jade Pivot, reuniting with its Chinese text. As its name implies, it is an extract of the玉樞經   Scripture of the Jade Pivot, a much longer daoist scripture. 

The scripture is extremely short. These pages (source 3 below) contain the whole scripture. 

In this respect it is not alone. There is the Gashing Yuhuang Benxing Jijing 高上玉皇本行集經 Scripture of the Lofty Deeds of the Jade Emperor, and the much shorter "Marrow of the Scripture of the Lofty Deeds of the Jade Emperor"高上玉皇本行集經髓

Legge quotes another author, Wylie, who stated that the scripture was regularly chanted by Daoist monks. This is true; a version of this Scripture is indeed found as part of the morning service in the 清微玄範道門功課 Qingwei Hongfan daomen Gongke. However, the Marrow found in this particular service differs from the version Legge was using. This and other textual differences are discussed below. It should also be noted the version of the morning service currently chanted by Quanzhen Daoists does not include this scripture. 

The Scripture in the Qingwei Hongfan daomen Gongke. (source 4 below) 

Whilst Legge's translation was done in 1891, The translation of the full Scripture of the Jade Pivot had to wait over a century. A certain "Daoist Liu" recently published it as Treasured Scripture of the Jade Pivot, and it is available on Amazon, a large (almost A4 sized) but thin booklet. To my knowledge, despite its prominence in contemporary daoist practise, the Scripture of the Jade Pivot lacks academic discussion or indeed, a scholarly translation. 

To my knowledge, here is one other translation of the Marrow of the Scripture of the Jade Pivot.  It is by Stuart Olson, in his bilingual Taoist chanting & recitation: At-home cultivator's practice guide. He calls it 天尊玉樞寶經; The Heavenly Worthy's Jade Pivot Treasure Scripture . The Chinese text which Olson uses is slightly different from the two chinese texts mentioned below, and the one used by Legge: It has a short preface describing the retinue of gods when the scripture was first preached. 

Sources and Texts consulted 

I have taken Legge's translation from here: 

(1) https://sacred-texts.com/tao/sbe40/sbe4021.htm

You can access a copy on google books here 

(1a) https://books.google.com/books?id=h2dRAAAAYAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&pg=PA265#v=onepage&q&f=false

I have taken the chinese original from here:  

(2) https://gd4166.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/玉樞經髓/

A woodblock edition (origin unknown) of the Chinese text is available here: 

(3) https://taolibrary.com/category/category107/c1070144.htm

The Morning service in the Qingwei Hongfan daomen Gongke 清微玄範道門功課 may be found here. The scripture starts at page 7 of this file. 

(4) http://www.ctcwri.idv.tw/CTCW-DZJY/CTDZJY26/NewDZJY26/DZJY2601002.pdf ;  

The text in the Qingwei Hongfan daomen Gongke differs from sources (2) and (3) in two ways. Firstly, a slight change of phrase in the early part of the scripture, and secondly, has a short appendix. This appendix is not translated by Legge, and is not included in Olson's translation either.

 I have chosen not to translate the appendix for now (not least because of missing characters and difficulties of punctuation), but this is a summary of its contents: The Heavenly Worthy commands the various generals of the Thunder Division to search and destroy all evil spirits, hetrodox sorcerers and their spells. The Heavenly Worthy then adds that this scripture penetrates through heaven and earth, and reciting this scripture soothes spirits and delivers ancestors.

Finally, If any of my readers spot errors either in the transcription or the translation, or have further insights and comments may they inform me of them; I would be most glad. 

Di Zi Gui 弟子規 Rules for children-- Two English translations

in this post I will present two nineteenth century English translations of the the book called 

弟子規

CR: Rules for Sons and Younger Brothers 

H: Rules of behaviour for children 

https://www.google.com/books/edition/%E5%BC%9F%E5%AD%90%E8%A6%8F/PzZqH5F7hPwC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%E5%BC%9F%E5%AD%90%E8%A6%8F&pg=PP1&printsec=frontcover 

This book is one of the more popular primers that is still in circulation today. aside from teaching children the language, it also teaches them tradtional standards of conduct. The language of this text is simple; tit is written in rhyming verse, each line being 3 characters long