Over the past months, we have featured translations of several famous popular Chinese morality books on. The first such book was 關聖帝君覺世真經-- The Sage Therach Guan's true Scripture to Awaken the world: the second was 文昌帝君陰騭文 -- . Wenchang's Treatise on Secret Merit Now we finally the last of this trilogy, the Taishang Ganying pian-- The treatise of the Highest One on Ganying.
In the Carus and Suzuki translation of the text. it is stated that this was one of the most widely distributed books of all China. Whilst this is no longer true, the Taishang Ganying Pian is still republished now and then by Chinese religious presses; in fact it is one of the very few regularly distributed religious books that is not a buddhist sutra of some form. Still, it nonetheless is published by Buddhist presses, because the morality espoused in the book should be generally promoted.
The Taishang Ganying Pian- as are the Sage Thearch Guan and Wenchang Texts- is about Ganying. Generally the term refers to a kind of associateve resonance; a kind of relationship between two objects that are related to each other, and can interact from a distance. In the context of this text, the interactions are between good or bad deeds, and quality of life. If one does good things, good things would come to you; the converse if one does bad things. In a way it resembles popular notions of karma. However, some aspects of the doctrine may strike modern as strange. For one, the mechanism by which this is done, is by omnipresent spirits. These spirits report acts to the gods, who would correspondingly send good or bad luck to a person. For another, it is taken as a matter of course that retribution can devolve on people other than the sinner. The text explicitly states that Wives and children can die as a consequence of the man's sins; in turn, numerous other miracle tales attest to people's children suffering good (or bad) fortune owing to the deeds of their ancestors.
Whilst Wenchang's treatise on secret merit is positive-- a series of injunctions on what to do, Taishang Laojun's treatise is negative-- For the most part it is a long list of sins. There are some 137 in total.
The list of sins may strike the modern reader as strange. It struck some of the translators as strange as well. Extremely egregious sins (murder, rebellion) are condemned in the same terms as one that are relatively minor (killing snakes, pointing at stars). The reason why this is so may be seen from the wider context of Ganying. The consequence of evil deeds is worldy misfortune. If only significant evils were prohibited, every instance of misfortune occurring to a person would be seen as evidence of secret murder, adultery etc. However, by mixing in relatively minor transgressions like pointing at the luminaries, the unfortunate is given the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, this very treatise condemns the practise: "見他失便，便說他過； on seeing others have misadventures, Speaks of them as committing faults".
