Wake Forest University
Patrick Edwin Moran
Traditional:
土無定位，故今曆家以四季之月十八日為土，分得七十二
日。若說播五行於四時，以十干推之，亦得七十二日。方
子。
高同。
Simplified
土无定位，故今□家以四季之月十八日为土，分得七十二
日。若说播五行於四时，以十干推之，亦得七十二日。方
子。
高同。
big5:
gLwAGaH|uQK鬰gAoCQG CY|ɡAHQzAoCQGC
lCPC
GB:
λʽļ֮ʮΪֵʮ
ա˵ʱʮ֮ʮա
ӡͬ
Translation:
Earth (soil) does not have a definite position. Therefore the present-day makers of
calendars take eighteen days of the months of [each of] the four seasons to be Earth
(soil). By so doing [an aggregate of] seventy-two days is obtained. If the Five Components
of Activity are distributed among the four seasons by means of calculations using the
ten Stems, one also gets seventy-two days.
Fang Zi, Gao has the same record.
Commentary:
365/5=73 and 73/4=18.25. To make a year of five seasons, each of the four seasons as ordinarily defined is shortened by 18 days, and those 18 days are added together to form the fifth, distributed, season. The Chinese fifth season may be the first instance of a single entity being defined as consisting of several non-contiguous parts.
There is an odd anticipation of modern physical chemistry in some of the numerological speculations such as the one currently under discussion here. Sometimes we can see that certain significant numbers keep coming up in physics, but we are unable to figure out why it is those particular numbers that seem to help structure our reality. At other times we can conceive numerical relationships that are interesting but which seem to have no physical relevance. And in a third category we find numerical relationships for which we can find a clear rationale. Such is the case when we learn about the powers that bind certain elements together into chemical combinations. Electrons are attracted to the nucleus of every atom, and there are two things that determine the cloud of electrons that make up the outer part of the atom. One is that the number of electrons that can be held by an atom is equal to the number of protons in its nucleus. The other is that each "shell" around the nucleus can hold only a limited number of electrons. If the outer shells of two atoms are both filled with the maximum number of electrons, those two atoms will not bind to each other. But if, for instance, the outer shell of one atom has an empty position, and the outer shell of another atom has an electron without any companions, that electron tends to be drawn into the gap in the shell of the first atom, and the second atom is drawn thereby into connection with the first. Now, with that very rough description, let us take a look at the picture that the Tai-ji Diagram paints of the Five Components of Activity.
The Tai-ji Diagram shows one of the Five Components at each corner of a square, and Earth (soil) at the middle. The four at the corners are said to correspond to the four seasons of the year. The entity at the center is called a fifth season, and yet it is formed of days "borrowed" from the four ordinary season. Now imagine that the entities on the four corners of the square are atoms, the electron shells of each of which have vacancies, and that the entity in the center is another atom, one that happens to have enough electrons in its outer shell to share and thereby to fill the gaps in the shells of the outer atoms.
There are two competing systems of explanation about what happens just beyond the level of Yin-Yang on the way to greater complexity and specifity. The system under current consideration speaks of how the Five Components of Activity are superimposed on the two- phase Yin-Yang cycle. But another system, one that flows from the divination text called the Yi Jing, speaks of a four-phase vibration that is formed on top of the two- phase fundamental vibration, Yin and Yang. (Remember that whether one speaks of Yin-Yang or Yin and Yang, it is really the same thing. There is no discontinuity between Yin and Yang, and they can only be separated mentally.)
In other texts, ones that center on the Yi Jing, we will see arrangements of the "Eight Trigrams" along the perimeter of a square. Each trigram is a set of three broken and/or unbroken lines. The unbroken lines are said to be rigid or hard, and the broken lines are said to be flexible or soft. The two kinds of lines can also be describedas masculine and feminine, or yin and yang. One traditional arrangement of these eight diagrams is such that on each level if a line is "hard" on one side of the diagram then its "mirror" on the other side of the diagram will be "soft". One could describe the "hard" lines as +1 and the "soft" lines as -1, and then the rule for making the traditional alignment would be that the sums for each level and its "mirror" must always be zero. One can also think of these lines as being schematic components for a diagram of sexual intercourse. A third way of thinking about them is to equate a broken line to a zero and an unbroken line to a 1, and to look at each trigram as a binary number. Then if 000 is on one side of the diagram, 111 must be on the other side. If 101 is on one side of the diagram then it must be matched with 010 on the other side. In all cases the sum of opposite sides will always be 111.
If we expand on this idea a little bit, we will come into the realm of more complicated magic squares:
| 111 | ||||
| 011 | 110 | |||
| 101 | 010 | |||
| 001 | 100 | |||
| 000 |
or
| 7 | ||||
| 3 | 6 | |||
| 5 | 2 | |||
| 1 | 4 | |||
| 0 |
| 1111 | |||
| 0110 | 0001 | 0010 | |
| 0111 | 0101 | 0011 | 1111 |
| 1000 | 1001 | 0110 | |
| 1111 | 1111 |
or
| 15 | |||
| 6 | 1 | 2 | |
| 7 | 5 | 3 | 15 |
| 8 | 9 | 4 | |
| 15 | 15 |
The significance of all of these kinds of schemas, to the Chinese, appears to have been in the reduction of difference to non-difference, or a sense that each is completed by its opposite. That is structurally similar, at least, to some of the things that were discovered in the twentieth century about the reasons that certain combinations of atoms bond with each other. (See the first chapter of The Nature of the Chemical Bond, by Linus Pauling.)
If you trace back from all of the great multitude of phenomena in the world, you will find that they are subsumable under the 64 hexagrams. The 64 hexagrams are all formed out of the 8 trigrams. The 8 trigrams are all formed out of the 4 Prefigurations (si xiang, |H, usually translated as the "Four Images"). The Four Prefigurations are formed by Yin and Yang. And Yin and Yang exist because of the Tai-ji.
Unity differentiated level upon level until what we take to be concrete individuals take form. We know from experience that some concrete individuals are nicely formed and some concrete individuals are severely flawed. What can one do about a severely flawed entity that one wants to improve? Consider the following analogy. Bringing a concrete entity into existence is somewhat like knitting a garment out of yarn of eight different colors. Suppose someone knitted a sweater and discovered that the peacock that was supposed to adorn its back looked more like a dyspeptic chicken. To fix the problem, one would have to unravel the knitting, and reknit using the original yarn. So to fix a psychologically "dyspeptic" human being, for instance, one might have to unravel that person, at least part way, and then reknit that person in accord with a better pattern.
Yin is "negative", and Yang is "positive." Put them back the way they were before the "big bang" brought the universe into existence, and you have a zero, in other words, you have a "non-phenomenal" ground for being and pattern. That seems to be the reason that the trigrams are frequently put into arrangements such that the hard lines and soft lines are matched, level for level. Again, what is phenomenally "positive" and what is phenomenally "negative" join together leaving nothing to be experienced. Or perhaps it would be a better analogy to say that they complement each other the way that a free electron finds its way to an ionized atom that is one electron short of its normal number.
Perhaps one more analogy will help. Imagine that someone had a computer screen that was transparent but consisted of thousands of pixels. Each pixel could be turned either white, by striking it with energy of one polarity, or black, by striking it with energy of the opposite polarity. If someone composed a picture by lightening and darkening pixels, and then discovered imperfections in the picture, it would be necessary to switch the polarities of some of the pixels. But in order to do that one would have to reduce the energy of one polarity to zero before one could supply energy of the other polarity. One cannot get from +9 volts to -9 volts without passing through 0 volts.
The task of changing the character structure of a human being is performed by "unravelling" the individual to be changed and then to "reknit" that individual, or one could think of it as being like purifying salt by crystalizing sea water, collecting the crystals and discarding the remaining solution with its impurities, dissolving the crystals in pure water, recrystallizing, discarding the dirty water with its remaining impurities, and so on.
-- PEM