Lingbao dafa, also known as “靈寶大法”, “Duren dafa 度人大法”
Creators: name: Chang, Chaojan
name: Bian, Bingxia
Publisher: name: Database of Religious History (DRH)
Year: 2021

description: Lingbao dafa 靈寶大法, the Great Rites of Numinous Treasure, also known as Duren dafa度人大法, the Great Rites of Salvation, is an aggregate of Daoist ritual practices. In the Daoist Canon, certain scriptures, such as the Great Rites of Shangqing Lingbao (Shangqing Lingbao dafa上清靈寶大法), classified into the Lingbao Daoist tradition have comprehensive descriptions and instructions for the practice. By using series of techniques like methods (fa 法), incantations (zhou 呪/咒), talisman (fu 符), and statements (shu 疏), it first applied to self-promotion to accommodate the body and mind with the Dao; and then, it was put to use in public ritual performance for universal salvation and expel demonic forces. The Lingbao dafa is a production of a combination of many new exorcisms and therapeutic methods in the Song-Yuan time (12th-14th century). Continuing the mediation practices in Shangqing 上清 [Supreme Purity] revelation, the Lingbao dafa used meditation techniques like visualization, concentration, and inner observation for the inner body promotion. The Shenxiao 神霄 [Divine Empyrean] tradition was borrowed by the Lingbao dafa in terms of its exorcism through the Thunder Rites (leifa 雷法). Attached to the view of deliverance in the Scripture on Salvation (Duren jing 度人經), it built on the traditional Daoist Retreat ritual (zhaiyi 齋儀) to formulate many salvation approaches, mainly practiced in the Yellow Register Retreat (Huanglu zhai 黃籙 齋).In the Lingbao dafa, the most distinctive ritual performed in the Yellow Register Retreat is the Liturgy of Salvation of the Deceased through the Alchemical Refinement (liandu 鍊度儀). Because the Lingbao dafa featured in absorbing and transforming rituals from different branches of Daoism, Buddhism, and popular religions, it is hard for scholars to identify the exact relationship between the Lingbao dafa and other SongYuan new methods. Although the movement of Lingbao Daoism appeared as early as the 4th century CE, the organized practice of Lingbao dafa was not formed until the 12th century. It was popularized in Southern Song China in the lower Yangzi River Basin, however, its spreading was not limited to Zhejiang 浙 江, Jiangxi 江西, and Jiangsu 江蘇, but also as south as Guangdong 廣東. The Lingbao dafa, unlike many conservative religious ritual performances, was a very popular practice among both religious specialists and non-religious. All people without caring for their social, political, and economic background could be a practitioner of the Lingbao dafa, even when they still kept their other beliefs with them in Buddhism, Confucianism, local beliefs, etc. Ritual masters well known for their practice or compilation in the Lingbao dafa trace back to the Ning Quanzhen 寧全真 (1101-81, also known as Ning Benli寧本立), 王契真 (fl. ca. 1250), 金允中 (fl. 1224-1225), 林靈真 (1239-1303, also known as Lin Weifu 林偉夫) and so forth. Moreover, the Daoist master Lu Xiujing陸修靜 (406-477), due to his contribution in the composition of liturgical texts and normalization of early Daoist Retreat, his work on the early Lingbao tradition is a fundamental source when examining the Lingbao dafa. All in all, the Lingbao dafa was a medley of many new Song-Yuan Daoist methods; it witnessed the rapid growth of Daoism in the aspect of self-cultivation practice and public ritual service, thus, a valuable material concerning the Daoist ritual history.