Page 268 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

BIANH UA 229

cording to the benming. The rite involves the recitation of texts such as the
Beidou benming yansheng zhenjing ~t4*iP}[j:JU~ (Authentic Scripture
of the Natal Destiny of the Northern Dipper for Extending Life; CT 622; see
under *Wudou jing).
MARUYAMA Hiroshi

W Hou Ching-Iang 1975, 106-26; Little 2000b, 248; Ofuchi Ninji 1983, 678-702
* beidou

bianhua

metamorphosis; transformation

The idea of bianhua (metamorphosis, or "change and transformation"), that
the certainty that the world is in flux leaves open the possibility that things
may transform from one type to another, can be traced from the *Zhuangzi
through the *Shangqing tradition.
The "transformation of things" (wuhua !Jo/.Jit) and bianhua were pivotal con-
cepts in the cosmology of the Warring States classic Zhuangzi, and became part
of the Taoist worldview beginning with man tic texts of the Han dynasty. In the
Zhuangzi, bianhua refers to the ability of things to change from one category to
another and is taken as a core argument in favor of the text's particular brand
of skepticism. It is also important in the description of human growth in Liu
An's E1~ '!i: (179?-122) *Huainan zi (ca. 139 BeE), which emphasizes the role of
the basic dualism of Heaven and Earth. After going through the ten months
of fetal development, the text relates how each of the five viscera (*wuzang)
govern a particular sense organ, and concludes: "Therefore the roundness of
the head is the image of Heaven, and the squareness of the feet is the image
of Earth" (see also under *BIRTH). In the early period, discussions of bianhua
tend to emphasize the way in which it applies to human beings in the same
way it does to the natural world (Sivin 1991). Some later texts also find bianhua
used to describe natural contexts such the transformation inside the chrysalis,
and the transition to an afterlife.
Another approach to bianhua stresses the potential for the adept to control
it. Many extant fragments of a second text related to Liu An, the Huainan
wanbi 1li¥r~. (Myriad Endings of Huainan), deal with the use of bianhua
in daily life (Kusuyama Haruki 1987). The Heshang gong fPJ 1:.z,; commen-
tary to the Daode jing (see *Laozi Heshang gong zhangju) also uses the term in