原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
含詞賦 With rhapsody
五行枯 The Five Phases Withered
正是:正是:
仙道未成猿馬散,心神無主五行枯。仙道未成猿马散,心神无主五行枯。
逐句解 Line by line
正是:
正是:
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.
仙道未成猿馬散,心神無主五行枯。
仙道未成猿马散,心神无主五行枯。
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. 行 reads xíng: the fifty-sixth and last occurrence of the graph in the chapter and, like every one of the others, not háng. 散 is sàn, scattered.
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.