Page 360 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

DAOJI AO YISH U 321

rebels, folklore, dreams, natural disasters, epigraphy, geography, salt wells,
graves, childbirth, and the like- that is not available elsewhere.
Du Guangting also compiled two other works on miracles that have survived
in part: the Luyi ji ~ Jf, ~c. (Records of the Extraordinary; 92I / 925; CT 59I;
Verellen I989, I7I-77) and the Shenxian ganyu zhuan ;f$1LlJ ~ JJ!i 11 (Biographies
of Those who Encountered the Immortals; after 904; CT 592).
Charles D. BENN

m Verellen 1989, I39-40 and 206-7; Verellen I992
* Du Guangting

Daojiao yishu

Pivot of Meaning of the Taoist Teaching

This doctrinal compendium in ten chapters (CT II29; part of the fifth and
all of the sixth chapter are lost) was put together by Meng Anpai Jfu3(f-IF, of
whom we only know that he was in 699 in receipt of the patronage of the
Empress Wu at a monastery on Blue Brook Mountain (Qingxi shan W r~ ill )
in Hubei. Earlier attempts by Yoshioka Yoshitoyo and Kamata Shigeo to pin
down his era without this information by means of the contents of his book
had reached significantly different conclusions. Meng's stated aim of producing
a compendium of greater concision than the *Xuanmen dayi (Great Meaning
of the School of Mysteries) also allowed him scope for producing a summary
more suited to his time (the reign of the Empress Wu, whose chief legitimation
derived from Buddhism; see under *Zhenzheng lun) and place (an area where
Taoists and Buddhists had long been living in close proximity and exploring
their rival doctrines). In fact this was the very same environment that had earlier
produced the redoubtable Buddhist polemicist Falin #;: m 072- 640), author of
the *Bianzheng lun (Essays of Disputation and Correction). Meng's link with
the Empress seems to have been the result of her father's governorship of
the area, although her interests in provincial religion were considerable, and
not confined to Buddhism.
Even so, Meng probably considered a Buddhist emphasiS in his work as
expedient, and one result was his articulation of the implications of the con-
cept of Dao-nature (daoxing :l:Qtl:) for the spiritual destiny of the inanimate
world, which appears to have anticipated- if not prompted-the parallel
and uniquely East Asian Buddhist conception of "trees and plants achieving