Canonical Classics ← 第六十五回
第六十五回
yāoxiéjiǎshèxiǎoléiyīn
zhòngjiēzāoènàn

A Fiend Falsely Sets Up a Lesser Thunderclap · The Four Pilgrims All Fall into Great Calamity

五行枯
模式 Mode Read Study
拼音 Pinyin Off
字體 Script
原文 Original text 繁體 Traditional Reader's edition 含詞賦 With rhapsody

五行枯 The Five Phases Withered

zhèngshìzhèngshì

xiāndàowèichéngyuánsànxīnshénzhǔxíngxiāndàowèichéngyuánsànxīnshénzhǔxíng

逐句解 Line by line

zhèngshì zhèngshì

And it was just this:

Two graphs of bare cue, the same shape that opened the battle poem. What follows is a single couplet — the shortest verse showcase in the chapter, and the last thing in it.

xiāndàowèichéngyuánsànxīnshénzhǔxíng xiāndàowèichéngyuánsànxīnshénzhǔxíng

The immortal Way not yet achieved, the ape and the horse are scattered; the heart-spirit without a master, the five phases wither.

猿馬 is the mind-monkey and the will-horse taken together, the pair of restless things that inner-alchemy writing is always trying to tie down, and 五行 is the five phases. reads xíng: the fifty-sixth and last occurrence of the graph in the chapter and, like every one of the others, not háng. is sàn, scattered.


總評 Commentary

One couplet to close on, and it says nothing about demons at all. The Way unachieved, the ape and horse scattered, the heart-spirit with nobody at the centre, the five phases dried out — the whole chapter restated in the vocabulary of internal alchemy, with the pilgrims as parts of a body that has come apart.

It also answers the poem the chapter opened with. That one promised that a man who pierced the three passes and filled the black sea would ride the phoenix and the crane to Utmost Bliss. This one leaves him with his five phases withered and nobody at the centre.