What is the name of the Taoist text on internal alchemy by Zhang Boduan?

The Taoist text on internal alchemy by Zhang Boduan is the Wuzhen pian, often translated as Awakening to Reality or Understanding Reality.

The Wuzhen pian is a major classic of Neidan, or inner alchemy, a Taoist tradition that describes spiritual transformation through symbolic work with the body, breath, mind, and vital energies. Rather than giving a simple laboratory recipe, the text uses the language of alchemical ingredients such as lead, mercury, the Golden Elixir, and the five agents as metaphors for inner cultivation.

It is generally associated with Zhang Boduan, a Song-dynasty scholar and Taoist thinker who lived approximately from the late tenth to the early eleventh century. The received text has a preface dated 1075 and a postface dated 1078. Its core includes 81 poems, whose highly compressed imagery inspired numerous commentaries.

Wuzhen pian is sometimes confused with the Cantong qi, another foundational alchemical work. The Cantong qi predates Zhang Boduan and is traditionally attributed to Wei Boyang. Qingjing jing and Zuowang lun are also Taoist texts, but they are not Zhang Boduan’s signature internal-alchemy classic.