64 Classics of the Tradition

[Le Professeur]

The Da Xuan tradition has been passed down since its origins through a collection of texts whose structure reflects the very logic of the Way. Nothing has been added to it over the centuries, and nothing has been taken away: the entirety of the teaching, as it is transmitted today, comes entirely from an ancient corpus whose structure is as precise as it is inexhaustible.

At the centre of this collection is the original text, a revealed doctrinal source that founded the school and gave it its primary orientation. It is not a commentary or a synthesis, but a point of emergence from which everything else derives. It is in this text, unique and specific to Da Xuan, that the intention of the Way appears in its purest form, like the initial breath that sets the entire tradition in motion.

Around this primary source, the four great books that give shape to the internal arts have unfolded. They describe the work of the body and energy, alchemical transformations, the refinement of the mind, as well as the operations that enable one to act correctly in the world, including in confrontation, ritual or combat. These works constitute the very structure of the practice, like the foundations of a building: they organise the domains, define their essential movements and show how each one participates in the overall transformation of the being.

The 12 treatises, for their part, illuminate the Way. They explain the meaning of the methods, reveal the invisible principles, and highlight the internal architecture that connects all the practices together. They do not seek to add new doctrines, but to unfold what is already contained in the source. Their role is to preserve the unity of the tradition by guiding the practitioner in their understanding, so that they never confuse the means and the end, and so that they advance without straying from the path.

Finally, the most extensive collection brings together 48 texts on daily life, showing how practice takes shape in the ordinary. Here we find the right way to stand, breathe, walk, speak, eat, go through the seasons, respond to the influences of the world, and live in society without losing clarity. These texts help us understand that the Way is not something reserved for times of solitude or places of retreat, but a way of living each moment with simplicity and accuracy.

The Da Xuan tradition, as it is transmitted today, is rooted in more than fifteen centuries of continuous history. As with the great currents of ancient Taoism - whether the revelations of Lingbao that descended to organise the ritual order of the world, or the visions of Shangqing's high purity that arose in the mountains of the South — Da Xuan has never been built on modern interpretations or later reformulations. It is based entirely on a corpus of sixty-four books, established and transmitted since the first masters, preserved as a closed set from which successive masters have neither removed nor added a single line.

Even today, everything taught in the school—whether internal work, alchemy, conduct, meditation, combat, or ritual operations—comes directly from these ancient texts. Contemporary courses, explanations given to practitioners, demonstrations, pedagogical progressions and fundamental principles are merely the living expression of a heritage whose written form has long been fixed. Nothing has been invented, nothing has been modernised, and the transmission has never followed what other traditions call "adaptation to the times ." What is transmitted today was already transmitted a thousand years ago, because everything was already written down.

The sixty-four books that make up the entire Da Xuan tradition thus constitute a complete architecture: a founding text as the origin, four major books establishing the arts, twelve treatises illuminating understanding, and forty-eight practical texts organising daily life. Together they form an indivisible whole, transmitted without interruption for more than fifteen centuries.

The continuity of this transmission is one of the most remarkable features of Da Xuan: as in the great ritual schools, but with a focus entirely on human transformation, the tradition has been maintained not through innovation but through absolute fidelity to the ancient deposit. The masters never sought to “reinvent” the Way: they embodied it, explained it, and made it accessible without ever deviating from what had been established since the earliest times.

Thus, when we study Da Xuan today, we do not encounter a modern reconstruction or a contemporary adaptation: we enter a tradition in which everything that is taught today was already written long ago, and in which oral teaching, far from innovating, serves only to reveal what is already present in the 64 books that constitute the ancient treasure of the school.

When we approach the doctrinal heart of Da Xuan, it becomes clear that the tradition is not based on successive inventions or improvised reformulations over the centuries, but on a body of knowledge established since its origins. This heart consists of a collection of ancient books which, from the moment they appeared, served to organise the Way into coherent domains. The impression given by these works is not that of a system built up gradually, but rather of a structure that was already complete, ordered according to an internal architecture that generations have simply studied, deepened and updated in their own experience.

In the history of Taoism, this phenomenon is well known: the Lingbao revelation, for example, did not introduce a multitude of divergent texts but a total structure, governing ritual, cosmology, the relationship with the gods and the economy of breaths. Similarly, the Heavenly Masters tradition did not simply offer inspired visions, but an articulated set of exercises, visualisations, rules of purity, celestial hierarchies and methods of transformation. In the Da Xuan lineage, this founding coherence is just as marked: the major books of the tradition form a stable core, from which the entire practice unfolds.

These works first define the internal art of the body and energy. Where other schools have developed fragmentary methods or methods linked to specific historical contexts, Da Xuan transmits a teaching whose form is integral. The gestures, postures, breathing patterns, subtle balances between structure and mobility, as well as the stages of breath development, are described in the ancient books with surprising precision. Contemporary practitioners immediately recognise, when reading these texts, what is being transmitted to them today: breathing that lengthens effortlessly, verticality that is created from within, the way the body reorganises itself around a living centre. Nothing has been added, and the masters have simply made legible processes that have already been explained for over a thousand years.

These books also expound the teaching of internal alchemy, not as metaphorical speculation, but as a lived reality, structured by stages, cycles and successive transformations. In the manner of the great alchemical treatises of ancient antiquity, Da Xuan's writings describe the relationships between essence, breath and spirit, the internal permutations of yin and yang influences, and the silent reversals through which the practitioner approaches primordial simplicity. The current courses therefore merely explain what is already formulated in these texts. The images, symbols, analogies, rules and warnings have always been there, and modern teaching simply adds the clarity of a living transmission.

Another set of texts, equally ancient, expounds on the work of transforming the mind. We find echoes of this in the contemplative traditions of India, but Da Xuan develops it within his own framework. Clarity, unwavering presence, the ability to perceive without contracting, the reduction of internal movements of intention and the emergence of an unfragmented vision: all this is described with a sobriety reminiscent of the most ancient mystical dialogues of Taoism. Here again, nothing in contemporary teaching is an innovation. What the masters show practitioners today was already written in black and white, as if the text preceded the experience and made it possible.

The major books also include a dimension that other traditions have sometimes separated: the art of acting in the world. Just as the masters of the Five Bushels of Rice taught ritual procedures designed to protect, harmonise and transform, or as certain shamanic lineages transmitted methods for influencing the breath or restoring disturbed balances, Da Xuan possesses ancient operative knowledge. This is not presented as external ‘magic,’ but as a natural consequence of internal work. The texts explain how right intention transforms into right action, how internal balance allows disruptive influences to be undone, how a clear heart can act with strength without violence. Practitioners who discover these passages quickly realise that modernity has changed nothing: the contemporary tools are the same, the principles are identical, and the operational structures are those described more than a millennium ago.

Finally, none of the major books ever completely separates internal practice from the art of combat. Where other lineages have dissociated martial arts, meditation or alchemy, Da Xuan remains faithful to a unified vision: the way one stands, breathes, perceives, moves and acts stems from the same principle. The ancient texts describe this link so clearly that the instructions given in modern classes appear simply as a living explanation of the lines in the manuscripts. Structural balance, availability, stability in movement, peripheral vision, the relationship to weight, to the ground, to the centre – all this can be found in the books, and the current transmission adds nothing to it.

This explains the uniqueness of Da Xuan: a tradition in which current classes, however lively they may be, are never more than the putting into motion of perfectly structured ancient texts; a school where the words of the masters add nothing but reveal what is already written; a Way where study does not lead to accumulation but to the recognition of what has long been simply waiting to be experienced.

Beyond the major books that organise the traditional arts, Da Xuan possesses a collection of ancient treatises that accompany a deep understanding of the Way. While the former works provide form, techniques, processes and transformations, these treatises reveal their meaning, orientation and hidden logic. They form a bridge between practice and vision, between daily exercise and understanding of the Dao. Here again, nothing that is transmitted today is new: everything is already written in these texts, which were composed at a time when Taoist practice was still entirely unified, when the distinctions between meditation, alchemy, conduct, ritual and observation of the world had not yet been separated.

In the history of Taoism, these treatises play a role similar to that of the great Longmen commentaries, which defined the practitioner's position in the cosmology of breaths, or the Taixuan teachings, which taught how inner vision should enlighten outer actions. Similarly, in certain ancient branches of Great Purity or the Way of Perfection, there were writings intended to guide the right attitude, the inner posture, and the orientation of the heart. But the Da Xuan tradition maintains a particular balance: its treatises are never works of speculation and do not seek to produce an abstract doctrine. They are addressed to the practitioner, so that their practice may become knowledge and their knowledge may become transformation.

These treatises first describe the fundamental attitude of the practitioner. They explain how a heart committed to the Way should be: neither tense, nor scattered, nor eager for results, nor lost in the idea of progress. They remind us that transformation does not come through addition, but through simplification. They warn against the pitfalls inherent in any path: the agitation produced by the desire to understand, the tensions aroused by the expectation of change, the confusion between right effort and forced effort. Over the centuries, each master has simply explained these ancient passages when instructing their disciples. When tradition today teaches how to focus attention, how to let the mind settle, or how to maintain the balance between intention and non-intention, it conveys nothing other than the exact content of these ancient treatises.

Another set of texts sheds light on the cycles of internal transformation. Where the major books describe the alchemical processes and the concrete stages of the work, the treatises explain what is really at stake in these transformations, what they mean, the precautions they require, and the errors they expose. They place each stage in a broader vision, reminding us that the practice is a performance but a return, that each change in breath or structure supports a change in being, and that every inner movement is part of the economy of the breaths of Heaven and Earth. This way of integrating microcosm and macrocosm is deeply Taoist, and evokes the great syntheses found in certain currents of Lingbao or in the classical traditions of alchemical cosmology.

Other treatises focus on the practitioner's relationship with the world. Contrary to the sometimes widespread idea that the Way is an escape from reality, the ancient texts of Da Xuan teach precisely how to remain engaged in ordinary situations without losing presence, how to live in society without hiding, how to act without being disturbed. This is reminiscent of the broad outlines of the Non-Dual tradition, for which purity was not a withdrawal but an orientation of the heart in every gesture. Da Xuan's treatises thus teach how to maintain stability in the midst of change, how to recognise the influences that arise and respond to them without distortion, how to remain simple even when going through the complexities of existence.

Finally, all of these treatises bear witness to an essential fact: the Da Xuan tradition never considered understanding to be separate from practice. All knowledge must become lived experience, all principles must become movement. The treatises are therefore not external discourses, but instruments of internal adjustment. They help to recognise what needs to be refined in practice; they make perceptible what might otherwise remain obscure; they give direction to what might otherwise become scattered. This is why they remain one of the main axes of training to this day: they make visible the meaning that animates each method and allow the practitioner to never lose themselves in technique.

While the major books structure the arts and the treatises shed light on inner understanding, there is an even broader field in the Da Xuan tradition that touches on how the practice is lived in everyday life. This domain consists of practical texts, an ancient collection that describes in detail how a practitioner should live, move, eat, work, attune themselves to the seasons, human relationships, the cycles of the world, and visible and invisible influences. Where other traditions have separated spiritual disciplines from everyday life, Da Xuan brings them together in a single movement, as if the Way could only truly take shape by permeating every gesture of daily life.

In the history of Taoism, clan traditions had already expressed something similar when they emphasised daily purity, seasonal orientations, rules of conduct to harmonise the community and the home, and gestures that protect the breath and those that disperse it. The masters of ancient times taught that inner vision should be extended into simple actions, that right conduct arises from a heart clarified by contemplation. But Da Xuan goes even further: he places daily life at the centre of practice, as if it were the true crucible where transformation becomes real.

Da Xuan's practical texts do not seek to describe an abstract ideal; they address life as it is, with its frustrations, rhythms, constraints and demands. They teach how to keep your breath steady when the world becomes pressing, how to maintain clarity when emotions rise, how to act rightly in the midst of complexity, how to slowly transform what seems immutable. Every modern instruction, whether it concerns health, clarity of mind, or relationships at work or with family, comes directly from these texts, sometimes word for word. What seems contemporary is only the living expression of ancient formulas, whose power has never diminished.

These texts speak of the body, not as an object to be corrected, but as a living house that should be inhabited with care. They explain how to walk so as not to get lost in tension, how to sit without crushing the breath, how to stand so that the heart does not become heavy. They provide guidance on sleep, food, climatic influences, and energy management during both effort and rest. Far from a hygienist approach or external moralism, these guidelines express the subtle logic of the Dao at work in everyday life. Today, the masters of Da Xuan simply take up these guidelines, embody them, and adjust them to the sensibilities of practitioners, without ever adding anything extraneous.

Other writings deal more specifically with relationships with others: how to express oneself without being scattered, how to listen without tensing up, how to act without creating unnecessary disturbance. They offer a subtle understanding of human nature, emotions, feelings and the illusions of the ego that is every bit as good as that offered by modern psychological schools. Yet all this was already there, written down in texts composed centuries ago. Contemporary practitioners recognise, sometimes with surprise, the relevance of these ancient passages: they describe psychological dynamics that modern approaches are only now rediscovering in a different form.

The practical texts also explain how to live in harmony with the seasons. They show how winter calls for contemplation without torpor, how spring calls for momentum without excess, how summer calls for openness without distraction, and how autumn calls for clarification without harshness. These themes resonate with ancient ritual-cosmic calendars, but in Da Xuan they take on an immediately practical dimension: it is not the external season that matters, but the way in which the body, mind and behaviour respond to it. Here again, everything that masters teach today – sleeping more at certain times, producing more movement at others, adjusting diet according to cycles – is already perfectly described in these texts.

Certain passages in these writings touch on the relationship with subtle influences, those that modern language would describe as emotional, relational or energetic. They teach how to recognise when an influence crosses the inner field, how not to identify with it, how to let it dissipate without struggle. They also explain how to welcome what elevates, how to cultivate what strengthens, how not to feed what weakens. The practitioner then discovers that Da Xuan does not dialogue with states, but with their dynamics: the ancient texts show that what is important is not what appears, but how we respond to it.

This vast collection also includes more profound insights concerning the integration of practice during periods of transition: illness, bereavement, life changes, breakups, and decisive encounters. The ancient authors knew that practice reveals itself especially in those moments when the world seems to be faltering. Their words carry a wisdom that does not judge or impose, but subtly guides us towards simplicity, presence, patience and lucidity. Today's masters are simply breathing new life into these passages, rediscovering in their own experiences what the ancients had already described.

This is why Da Xuan asserts that nothing taught today is new: everything is contained in these texts, which form the living soil of tradition. Practitioners who put them into practice discover that their daily lives become a veritable laboratory of transformation, and that every situation, however simple, becomes an opportunity to taste the Dao as it appears in the ordinary.

When we contemplate the entirety of Da Xuan's ancient texts, from the original text to the major books, treatises and practical writings, a question naturally arises: how has such a vast tradition remained intact for more than fifteen centuries? How have the words survived the passage of time without losing their breath? How has understanding been protected from distortions, personal interpretations, the seductions of the times, or the illusions of progress?

The answer lies in what the tradition simply calls transmission, not in the sense of a formal gesture, but as an inner movement by which a master, having himself unified what he has received, makes the meaning of the texts visible without ever altering them. Here again, Da Xuan stands out not for her innovation but for her total fidelity to what the great schools of Taoism had done before her.

In the Taoist clan tradition, the masters were the guardians of a revelation that was not to be altered. Their role was not to invent, but to preserve, clarify and bring to life the rituals and scriptures, allowing the original spirit to shine through. In our tradition, the master was the one who had passed through the layers of inner vision and, having encountered the luminous purity described in the texts, could guide the student not through explanations but through the way in which his own heart remained stable.

Da Xuan is fully in line with this continuity. Transmission is not an administrative act, nor a privilege, nor a system of power. It is the way in which meaning comes alive. The master does not transmit his opinion: he transmits the possibility of seeing what the texts show. He does not impose an interpretation: he unfolds the understanding that lies dormant in the ancient lines. He never replaces books: he makes them transparent.

The master does not transmit a body of knowledge, but an inner orientation. He shows how to inhabit the practice without agitation, how to return to the centre, how to let transformations happen without forcing them. He reveals that the most important thing is not what one does, but from where one acts. He shows that true understanding does not come from analysis, but from the fact that something arises, calms down, becomes clear.

This too is written in the texts. In some ancient passages, we read that the practitioner must learn to listen to the Dao, and that the guide is only the preserved echo of this listening. Other passages explain that transmission is a mirror: it does not give form, it reveals transparency. There is also the subtle idea that the master does not open a new path, but points out the shadows where the practitioner already believes they can see. He does not make anything appear; he removes what prevents seeing.

This way of transmitting explains the remarkable stability of Da Xuan. Because no master sought to innovate, the tradition never needed to defend itself against excessive interpretation. Because no master wished to transform the texts, they were able to remain alive. Because transmission was never intended to produce a new school, a dominant personality or a system adapted to the times, the tradition has survived the centuries without losing its focus.

Thus, transmission is what unites all the texts, what links the past to the present, what allows contemporary practitioners to walk in the footsteps of a tradition from which nothing has been lost. It is the space where ancient words come alive, where ancient gestures become right, where ancient meaning settles in a new heart.

It is through transmission that Da Xuan remains a path, not a monument; a living Way, not a frozen legacy; a transmitted breath, not a repeated doctrine.

As transmission unfolds, tradition naturally takes on a collective form. What initially appears to be a heart-to-heart relationship between a master and a student sooner or later reveals itself to be the manifestation of a larger structure, encompassing past generations, the living, and those who will come after. The community is not an organisation added to tradition: it is its visible expression, the way in which texts, practices, and transmission come together to form a space where the Way can be lived in a stable manner.

In Da Xuan, this community was never conceived as an institution separate from practice, nor as an external authority. It is simply the place where beings engaged in transformation meet, reflect, correct and support each other. It has no social ambition or conversion project; nor does it seek to legitimise itself in the eyes of the world. It exists for a single reason: to enable the Way to be lived without distortion, generation after generation.

Ancient texts already describe the community in this way. They evoke groups of practitioners gathered around the master, places where one practises daily, moments of shared silence where presence is strengthened. They speak of a common rhythm, where each person becomes a witness to the others, not to judge or correct, but to maintain a clear direction. They show that living the tradition cannot be a solitary endeavour, because even if inner transformations are always a personal journey, the stability that makes them possible is often built in the presence of other practitioners.

When Da Xuan teaches today, she remains faithful to this ancient intuition. Groups, classes, meetings and training sessions are not contemporary innovations but the exact realisation of what was already described centuries ago. Community is not a framework that is imposed: it is the natural resonance that arises when several beings walk in the same direction. It requires neither ideological adherence nor emotional loyalty. It is not based on fusion or collective identity, but on the inner harmony that arises when each person strives to become simpler, clearer and more available.

In ancient times, other Taoist traditions had similar community structures. The masters of heaven gathered circles of officiants and practitioners around them, not to establish centralised authority, but to create a space where ritual could be transmitted without alteration. Shamanic lineages organised communities of visionaries and contemplatives, who shared not only practices but a common inner atmosphere of purity and silence. The movements that emerged from the Great Purity or Quanzhen structured circles of disciples whose cohesion was not social, but derived from a shared spiritual orientation.

Da Xuan joins this continuity: the community is never a fixed entity. It changes, transforms and renews itself. Some enter, others leave, some stay for a long time, others walk the Way for as long as they need to. This movement is natural, and ancient texts already describe it. They emphasise that the community does not need to be large to be just, and that a small group driven by a clear intention is better than a multitude without inner direction. This way of seeing explains why Da Xuan has never sought to grow, expand or become visible. Its strength does not depend on numbers, but on the inner harmony between its members.

In this community, each person carries a part of the tradition. The master is not the sole repository of the Way; he is simply its guarantor. Through their daily practice, their fidelity to the texts and their sincerity, the students also participate in this continuity. A group in which everyone progresses becomes, in ancient terms, a “field of right influence”, where the efforts of some stimulate those of others, where mistakes are corrected more quickly and where illusions dissipate more easily. Masters of the past and present emphasise that the presence of others is sometimes what reveals our blind spots, our resistance, our tensions; not through confrontation, but through simple contrast.

What makes the Da Xuan community unique is undoubtedly its discretion. Ancient texts already describe a Way that is meant to be lived in simplicity, far from noise, far from spiritual or social ambitions, far from the search for recognition. Practitioners come together not to show off their progress, but to deepen their practice. They support each other, not with words, but with their stability. They pass on, not ideas, but a way of being. And what is thus woven between beings is a rare form of friendship, made up of silent depth and quiet confidence.

The community is therefore not a backdrop to the Way: it is one of its most powerful instruments. It protects the texts by preventing them from becoming objects of solitary interpretation. It protects transmission by preventing it from becoming personal. It protects the practitioner by offering them living references, examples, reflections and points of support. It protects the tradition by keeping it human, not abstract.

Thus, the Da Xuan tradition is neither a group, nor a school, nor an institution. It is the living continuity of the Way itself. It flows through the centuries like a discreet current, preserving what must be preserved, offering those who commit to it a space where transformation can become real. In its simplicity, it reflects what the texts have affirmed since the beginning: that the Way is not transmitted only through books, nor only through the master, but also through the silent presence of beings walking together.

[Henrik]

Thank you teacher!

[Anne Lise]

Thank you teacher!

[Henning]

Thank you Teacher!