Read, reflect, pray

Taishang Ganying Pian

A Daoist moral text about actions and their consequences, traditionally associated with the Most High Lord Lao. It contains both care for others and historical prohibitions and beliefs about divine retribution.

This reader provides English renderings of the Japanese reader’s 24 sections. Historical claims and the site’s explanatory notes are kept separate. Illness, abuse and disaster are not grounds for blaming the person who suffers them.

1. 01 · Actions and their consequences
2. 02 · The gods who record faults
3. 03 · The Gengshen day and the hearth god
4. 04 · Honesty even when unseen
5. 05 · Sharing another’s joy and pain
6. 06 · The hopes attached to good deeds
7. 07 · Warnings against deceit and arrogance
8. 08 · Not using power to harm
9. 09 · Small lives and their homes
10. 10 · Not profiting from another’s loss
11. 11 · Taking responsibility and preserving livelihoods
12. 12 · Not making envy or difference a weapon
13. 13 · Warnings against coercion and conflict
14. 14 · Speech without lies or slander
15. 15 · Honesty in gifts and trade
16. 16 · Conduct toward family and close relations
17. 17 · Old prohibitions about body, home and calendar
18. 18 · Reverence for sky, earth and fire
19. 19 · The text’s account of consequences
20. 20 · A warning against unjust taking
21. 21 · Not sacrificing life for immediate gain
22. 22 · The mind before action
23. 23 · Beginning again after a wrong
24. 24 · Words, attention and action

The 24 divisions are editorial. National Diet Library bibliographic source · Classical source edition