Daoism, Meditation, and the Wonders of Serenity by Stephen Eskildsen

Author:Stephen Eskildsen
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2015-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

THE WUCHU JING 五廚經 (THE FIVE KITCHENS)

The Five Kitchens (Wuchu jing 五廚經; Scripture of the Five Kitchens) is a Tang period text ascribed to Laozi, which is preserved in the Daoist Canon in two slightly varying versions accompanied by a preface (bearing the date of 735 in one of the versions) and commentary by the prominent Daoist abbot Yin Yin 尹愔 (these two versions shall subsequently be referred to as versions A21 and B22). The scripture’s short main text in twenty verses, along with the preface and commentary by Yin Yin 尹愔, has been fully translated by Livia Kohn.23 The main text of The Five Kitchens can also be found quoted in full in the version of Sima Chengzhen’s Fuqi jingyi lun 服氣精義論 (Treatise on the Subtle Meanings of the Imbibing of Energy) contained in the Yunji qiqian.24 There its twenty verses, which are divided into five sets of four verses each, are referred to by the alternative title Wuling xindan zhang 五靈心丹章 (Chapter of the Five Holy Heart Elixirs), and are accompanied by a description of a method by which you can recite the verses in a manner that can variously enable you to harmonize your qi, satisfy your hunger, cool yourself off, warm yourself up and quench your thirst.25 The twenty verses of The Five Kitchens can also be found incorporated into an eighth-century Buddhist scripture entitled Foshuo sanchu jing 佛說三廚經 (The Scripture of the Three Kitchens Preached by the Buddha).26 There the verses are embedded within a much more elaborate description of a technique of recitation and visualization—allegedly preached by Śākyamuni Buddha—by which you are supposed to be able to overcome hunger.27 In his well-known collection of Daoist miracle stories, the Daojiao lingyan ji 道教靈驗記 (Record of Daoist Miracles), the eminent late Tang Daoist cleric Du Guangting 杜光庭 (850–933) tells the story of how a Buddhist monk named Xingduan 行端 plagiarized The Five Kitchens to produce this text, and then received his bloody and fatal comeuppance at the hands of a Divine Person (shenren 神人).28 This fascinating Buddhist apocrypha and the controversy surrounding it and The Five Kitchens have been discussed masterfully by Christine Mollier.29

Yin Yin’s commentary to The Five Kitchens starts off by glossing the scripture’s title with the following statement:

夫存一炁和泰和 則五藏充滿五神靜正 五藏充則滋味足 五神靜則嗜欲除 此經是五藏之所取給 如求食於厨 故云五厨爾

If you can preserve the harmony of the qi of the One [that brings about] peaceful harmony, your five viscera will be completely full and your five spirits will be calm and rectified. If the five viscera are full, flavors will be sufficient. If the five spirits are calm, your cravings will be eliminated. This scripture is what is taken and supplied by (or to?) the five viscera, in the manner in which one seeks food in a kitchen. Thus [this scripture] is called the “five kitchens.” (A 1a; B 6b [i.e., Yunji qiqian 61/6b])

What Yin Yin alludes to in the first sentence here is the first five-character line of the main text of The Five Kitchens, which reads, “If the qi of the One is harmonious, there is peaceful harmony” 一氣和泰和.

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