和睦五行 The Five Phases In Concord
有詩為證。詩曰：有诗为证。诗曰：
逐句解 Line by line
There is a poem in witness of it. The poem says:
Two announcing formulas in sequence before one poem — 有詩為證, there is a poem in witness, and 詩曰, the poem says. Both were absent from the previous chapter altogether. 為 takes the reading this edition rules for the pair, wéi.
The Way rises a chǐ and the demon a thousand zhàng; the ingenious mind-ape subdues him by main strength.
The proverb everyone knows, turned inside out. The usual form has the Way rise a chǐ and the demon a zhàng — the obstacle always a little ahead of the progress. Here the demon outgrows the Way a hundredfold, which is exactly the arithmetic of the two bodies in the prose above. 降 is xiáng, to subdue, not the jiàng of descending that the same character correctly takes twenty lines later at 諸神下降.
If the mountain of fire is to have no raging flame, the precious fan must first give up its coolness.
The couplet restates the chapter's whole problem in fourteen characters, and states it as a condition: no fan, no passage. 若得 takes 得 at dé. 清涼 is both physical coolness and the standing Buddhist figure for relief from the burning of the passions.
The Yellow Dame is sworn to uphold the Primal Elder; the Wood Mother, with feeling to spare, sweeps the fiends away.
黃婆 and 木母 are the alchemical names the novel gives its characters: the Yellow Dame is earth, the mediating phase, and the Wood Mother is Eight Rules. The line credits the sweeping of the cave to Eight Rules, which is what he reports having done in the very next passage. This is the line of the quatrain that stands outside the rhyme, as the third line of such a poem does.
The Five Phases in concord return to the true fruit; refine the demon, wash the filth away, and go up to the West.
煉魔滌垢 looks forward as well as back. The next chapter is titled 滌垢洗心惟掃塔 · 縛魔歸主乃修身, so both halves of this line — washing the filth and subduing the demon — are the two halves of the title that follows. 五行 takes 行 at xíng. 和睦 answers the 三家刑剋 of the second poem: conquest there, concord here.
The chapter's fourth verse is its first regulated quatrain, and the change of form matters. The three showcases were long, loose and spoken from inside the fight; this is four lines of seven characters, rhymed on the first, second and fourth, and spoken from outside it. Two formulas introduce it — 有詩為證 and 詩曰 — and both had been absent from the previous chapter entirely.
道高一尺魔千丈 turns a proverb everyone knows inside out. The usual form has the Way rise a chǐ and the demon a zhàng — the obstacle always just ahead of the progress. Here the demon outgrows the Way a hundredfold, and the exaggeration is not rhetorical: the reader has just been given the ox's measurements, and a thousand zhàng is what he actually is.
The middle couplet assigns credit by alchemy rather than by narrative. The Yellow Dame is earth and the Wood Mother is Eight Rules, and it is the Wood Mother who is said to sweep the fiends away — which is precisely what Eight Rules reports having done, off the page, in the passage that follows.
煉魔滌垢上西方 closes by looking past the chapter. The next one is titled 滌垢洗心惟掃塔 · 縛魔歸主乃修身, so washing the filth and subduing the demon are already the two halves of a title not yet reached. And 和睦五行 answers the 三家刑剋 of the alchemical poem five passages back: conquest there, concord here, and the same five phases doing both.