Bodhidharma
Sinew-Changing Classic (Yijin jing)
Traditional attribution
Sinew-Changing Classic (Yijin jing)
易筋經
A manual of physical and breathing exercises to strengthen muscles and sinews, presented as Bodhidharma's legacy to the Shaolin monks. Its circulation from the seventeenth century created the legend that the patriarch founded the Shaolin martial arts.
No edition of this work is currently on sale in a store we have been able to verify.
Authorship note
Apocryphal: Meir Shahar has shown that it was composed in the early seventeenth century by a Daoist (the preface is dated 1624) and falsely attributed to Bodhidharma; no earlier source links the patriarch to the martial arts.
Editions and translations
Editions in your language first, without hiding the others. Each with its cover and its store.
Chino clásico · 文言
Bodhidharma
Zhen ben Yi jin jing, Xi sui jing he bian
The Conscious LibraryZhen ben Yi jin jing, Xi sui jing he bian
Zhen shan mei chu ban she, 1981
Edición conjunta con el Xisui jing.
Other works by Bodhidharma
- Treatise on the Two Entrances and the Four Practices
- The 'Long Scroll': Dunhuang Compilation around the Two Entrances · 700
- The Bloodstream Sermon (Xuemai lun) · 1100
- The Wake-up Sermon (Wuxing lun) · 1100
- The Breakthrough Sermon (Poxiang lun) · 700
- The Dharma Gate of Pacifying the Mind (Anxin famen)
- Verses on the Heart Sūtra (Xinjing song)
- The Six Gates of Shaoshi (Shaoshi liumen)
- Marrow-Washing Classic (Xisui jing) · 1650
Sources
- Shahar, Meir. The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008.
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