Suwen · Showing Ease and Measure

The text

The Yellow Emperor sat at ease, summoned Lei Gong, and asked: You who have received the arts and recited the books — if you can look through mixed learning, reach comparing of kinds, and join them through to the pattern of the Dao, tell me what you are good at. The five zang and six fu, the gallbladder, the stomach, the large and small intestine, the spleen, the womb, the bladder, brain and marrow, tears and spit, weeping and sorrow, the roads water follows — these are all that by which a person is born, and where putting in order misses. Make it your work to see them clearly, and you can be complete in ten. If you cannot know them, the age will resent you. Lei Gong said: Let me recite the upper and lower chapters of the Pulse Classic — they are already very many. Distinguishing the strange and comparing kinds, I still cannot be complete in ten. How then would I be enough to make them clear? The Emperor said: Try, apart, to pass through the faults of the five zang, the disharmony of the six fu, what needle and stone have ruined, what toxic herbs find fitting, the flavors of decoctions — speak their signs in full, answer in full, and ask of what you do not know. Lei Gong said: A vacant liver, a vacant kidney, a vacant spleen — all make a person heavy in the body and oppressed in the heart. One should give toxic herbs, needling, moxa, stone, and decoctions — sometimes it ends, sometimes it does not. I wish to hear the explanation. The Emperor said: How old you are, and how young the question. I truly asked, and have mistaken myself. I asked you of the dim and far; you answered with the upper and lower chapters. Why? A vacant spleen floats and resembles the lung; a small floating kidney resembles the spleen; a tight, sunken, scattered liver resembles the kidney. These are all what the worker at times confuses — yet by ease and measure one obtains them. As for the three zang, wood, soil, and water dwelling together — this a child knows. Why ask it? Lei Gong said: Here is a person: headache, cramped sinews, heavy bone, timid and of little qi, retching, belching, a full belly, at times startle, no love of lying down. From which zang does this arise? The pulse is floating and string-like; press it, and it is stone-hard. I do not know the explanation. I ask again of the three zang, so as to know the comparing of kinds. The Emperor said: This is what is called ease and measure. In the old, seek it in the fu; in the young, seek it in the channels; in the full-grown, seek it in the zang. What you now speak of has all missed the packed heat of the eight winds, the melting of the five zang, and the passing of the stray from one to another. What floats and is string-like: the kidney is insufficient. What is sunken and stone-like: kidney qi is lodged within. Timid and of little qi: the water-roads do not travel; form and qi are melted and scattered. Cough and oppressed restlessness: kidney qi going against. One person's qi: the illness is in one zang. To say the three zang all travel is not in the method. Lei Gong said: Here is a person: the four limbs slack and fallen, panting, cough, blood leaking. I in my dullness examined it and took it as injury to the lung. The pulse I pressed was floating, large, and tight. I did not dare put it in order. A coarse worker applied the stone; the illness recovered; there was much blood; when the blood stopped, the body was light. What thing is this? The Emperor said: What you can put in order, you know in many things — and in this illness you have missed. It is like a wild goose flying: it too can strike the sky. The sage putting illness in order follows the method and keeps the measure, draws things and compares kinds, transforms them in the dim. Follow above and reach below — why must one keep only to the classic? Now a pulse floating, large, and vacant: this is spleen qi cut off without, leaving the stomach and returning outward to yangming. The two fires cannot dominate the three waters; therefore the pulse is disordered and has no constant. The four limbs slack and fallen: this is spleen-jing not traveling. Panting and cough: water-qi joining yangming. Blood leaking: the pulse is urgent, and blood has no road to travel. To take it as injury to the lung is to have missed and gone wild. Not to draw a comparing of kinds is to know without clarity. As for injury to the lung: spleen qi does not keep its post; stomach qi is not clear; channel-qi will not be sent; the true zang is ruined and broken; the channel vessels are cut off at the side; the five zang leak. If it is not a nosebleed, it is vomiting. These two are not of one kind. It is like Heaven without form, Earth without pattern — white and black are far apart. This miss is my fault. Because I thought you knew, I did not tell you. To draw a comparing of kinds with ease and measure — this is why it is named light examination. This is called the utmost Dao.

The line

The Yellow Emperor sat at ease, summoned Lei Gong, and asked: You who have received the arts and recited the books — if you can look through mixed learning, reach comparing of kinds, and join them through to the pattern of the Dao, tell me what you are good at.

The note

Ease and measure is the width that comes after comparing kinds. Showing ease and measure teaches a person not to seize one pulse and hold it — set the near ones side by side and look.