Texts
The received Wuzhen pian text contains a preface dated 1075 and a postface dated 1078, both under the name Zhang Boduan. The Daozang "Daoist Canon" includes several textual editions of varying lengths.
The core of the Wuzhen pian comprises 81 poems: 16 heptasyllabic lüshi 律詩 "regulated poems", 64 heptasyllabic jueju 絕句 "stopped-short line" quatrains, and one pentasyllabic verse on the Taiyi 太一 "Great Unity". Both 16 (= 2 x 8) and 64 (= 8 x 8) have numerological significance, the former denotes two equal "8 ounce" measures of Yin and Yang (alchemical allusions for mercury and lead) totaling "16 ounces" (one jin 斤 "catty"), and the latter correlates with the 64 Yijing hexagrams.
Zhang later appended the Wuzhen pian text with 12 alchemical ci 詞 "lyrics" that numerologically correspond to the 12 months, and 5 verses related with the Wu Xing 五行 "Five Phases".
Baldrian-Hussein describes the text.
The verses of the Wuzhen pian are a work of literary craftsmanship and were probably intended to be sung or chanted. They teem with paradoxes, metaphors, and aphorisms, and their recondite style allows multiple interpretations. The verses are widely accepted as an elaboration of the Zhouyi cantong qi, but their philosophical basis is in the Daode jing and the Yinfu jing. Life, says Zhang Boduan, is like a bubble on floating water or a spark from a flint, and the search for wealth and fame only results in bodily degeneration; thus human beings should search for the Golden Elixir (jindan 金丹) to become celestial immortals (tianxian 天仙). (2007:1082)
The Wuzhen pian is one of the major scriptures of Daoist Neidan "Inner Alchemy " and metaphorically uses the vocabulary of Waidan "External Alchemy", which involved compounding elixirs from minerals and medicinal herbs. The text proposes that External Alchemy is unnecessary because the human body contains the essential components. These Three Treasures are jing 精 "essence; refined, perfected; extract; sperm, seed", qi 氣 "vitality, energy, force; vapor; breath", and shen 神 "spirit; soul, mind; god, deity". Through alchemical refinement of bodily jing and qi, one can supposedly achieve integration with one's spiritual shen nature.
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