Page 705 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

LINGBAO

Lingbao

Numinous Treasure; Numinous Gem; Spiritual Treasure

The name lingbao (Numinous Treasure) was originally a description of a
medium or sacred object (bao ~, "treasure") into which a spirit (ling~) had
descended (see *lingbao). Seemingly, the first scripture to use the name, thus
indicating its own status as spiritual treasure, was the Lingbao wufu jing ll:t ~ li
rf ~~ (Scripture of Five Talismans of the Numinous Treasure), the surviving
edition of which, the *Lingbao wufu xu (Prolegomena to the Five Talismans of
the Numinous Treasure), contains passages which were cited by *Ge Hong in
his *Baopu zi. At the end of the fourth and into the early fifth century, a uni-
fied corpus of new scriptures appeared in Jiangnan, near present-day Nanjing,
under the name Lingbao. The success of these scriptures, particularly in the
realm of communal ritual, led to imitations and expanded versions. The pres-
ent entry will focus on the earliest corpus of Lingbao texts, as listed by *Lu
Xiujing (406-77) in his catalogue of 437 (see below).
The Lingbao scriptures drew upon the prevailing religious traditions of the
day-*fangshi practice, Han-period apocrypha, southern practices known to
Ge Hong such as those found in the Lingbao wufu jing itself, Celestial Master
Taoism (*Tianshi dao), *Shangqing Taoism, and Buddhism-sometimes
copying entire sections of text and presenting them so as to accord with its
central doctrines in order to fashion a new, universal religion for all of China.
This goal proved elusive. Scholarly Buddhists, in particular, were not slow to
point out the ways in which Lingbao texts adapted and reconfigured Buddhist
tenets. In the court-sponsored Buddho-Taoist debates of the fifth and sixth
centuries, the charge of plagiarism was often levelled at the original Lingbao
texts. Some Taoists, such as *Tao Hongjing (456-536), made the same charge
with regard to Lingbao incorporation of the earlier Taoist scriptures.
Despite the failure of their central mission, the Lingbao scriptures did
foster a new unity of Taoist thought and practice. The Three Caverns (*SAN-
DONG) division of Taoist scriptures, first outlined in the Lingbao texts as the
celestial ordering of scriptures, became the primary organizational rubric for
all subsequent Taoist canons. The communal liturgies presented in the texts
became the basis for later Taoist ritual and, in modified forms, are still practiced
among Taoists today. Lu Xiujing, who was responsible for collecting, editing,
and cataloguing the early Lingbao scriptures, was also the first to produce