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Chapter 5 of 5
大六壬探原
Modern scholars have indulged in a convoluted, verbose, and overly ornate writing style, producing reams of text that nonetheless fail to convey their core message—nearly akin to someone explaining the phrase "In ancient times, the Emperor Yao..." in tens of thousands of words. Mr. Yuan Shushan, a scholar of vast erudition with a personal library of ten thousand volumes, compiled Liu Ren Tan Yuan (Exploring the Origins of Six Ren), and remarkably achieved what can only be described as concise yet comprehensive, refined yet thorough.
Beyond incorporating the concepts of Po (Breaker), Hai (Harm), Xing (Punishment), Chong (Clash), Tian Yue De (Heavenly and Lunar Virtues), Yue Jiang (General of the Month), and the twelve divine generals including Guiren (Nobleman) from the Wu Xing Da Yi (Great Meaning of the Five Elements), all other extraneous and tangential omens and deities have been deliberately excluded. This approach is truly akin to Lord Pao's butchering of an ox—moving the blade along the natural seams and spaces, the knife's edge never dulling. Is this merely an exemplary model that students of Liu Ren ought to revere? In my humble view, those who study the classics and history would also do well to emulate this meticulous craft of selection and omission. Written at the Summer Solstice Festival of the Yichou Year, respectfully inscribed by Bao Ding of Dantu, calligraphy by Xiang Zheng.
The essence of Bao Ding's postscript reveals a methodology of scholarship: governing complexity with simplicity, and bounding vastness with focus. He criticizes the prevailing academic climate of his time—one that favored "winded, ornate, and prolix" prose, piling up grandiloquent phrases while obscuring the true guiding principles. What makes Yuan Shushan's Da Liu Ren Tan Yuan commendable lies precisely in his discriminating power of selection and his ability to seize the essentials and establish a clear framework.
The system of Liu Ren is notoriously vast; its pantheon of omens and dignitaries is so extensive as to overwhelm the faint-hearted student. Yuan Shushan deliberately limits himself to the core elements directly relevant to judgment of auspiciousness and inauspiciousness as found in the Wu Xing Da Yi—Po, Hai, Xing, Chong, Tian Yue De, Yue Jiang, and the twelve divine generals—while excising all else, whatever he calls "the branched and bestrewed spirits." This editorial vision of grasping the trunk while pruning the foliage is precisely what Bao Ding acclaims as "concise yet comprehensive, refined yet thorough."
The simile of "Lord Pao adeptly dissecting an ox" carries profound resonance. The knife of Lord Pao remained sharp for nineteen years because he followed the inherent structure of the creature, never colliding with hard bone. Similarly, Yuan Shushan's editing was guided by the intrinsic principles of Liu Ren—a deliberate and informed selection—not a whimsical deletion or compilation inspired by personal preference.
Viewed from a contemporary perspective, this postscript illuminates a problem of universal, cross-era relevance. In today's era of rampant information explosion, the tension between information overload and scarcest attention is far more intense than in the twilight of the Qing Dynasty or early Republican era. The verbose, spiraling writing that Bao Ding decries—is it not the very portrait of today's internet content landscape? A vast glut of low-density, repetitive information clutters our vision, while truly structural and principled high-quality content remains subsumed within the noise.
Yuan Shushan's approach, in essence, reflects a strategy of knowledge management: within a chaotic domain of expertise, he identifies core variables and critical pathways, strategically filtering out secondary superfluity. This capability is known as feature selection in data science, critical success factors (CSF) in management theory, and in philosophy finds its echo with Occam's Razor— when unnecessary, do not add entities.
For the modern student of esoteric philosophical systems, this essay is also akin to a waking bell: to accomplish mastery over any system of teknik maximization chiefly involves erecting an essentials-first roadmap, not lapsing into unchecked piling-up of gods and astrological signs. Should one sink into an undocumented bog of myriads of subtle complexities, failing to distinguish principal from peripheral, one will end up "entangled by technique, strangling insight."
In the context of the modern study and works, at least three practical derivations from this inscription flower.
| Application & Scenario | Concrete Method |
|---|---|
| Academic Research | Begin the work of wrestling with a massive literature mountain by careful lodging of key concepts and the paradigm scaffolding in clear residence, then—and only then—supplement intensively. Avoid "padding for reference's sake," mimicking hollowness itself producing mimic-hollow treatises. |
| Skill Mastery | On exploring uncharted knowledge ground, establish rightful command first of that domain’s "structural essence"—namely the underlayer wiring of rationale and the chief instrumentalities—await attending lesser fuzzier trivia. |
| Knowledge Curation | Carry into creation one's era-tinged personal "Epitome Original" note system: shelving into dedicated bounds only the founding, battle-threshed models reflective of deep reality, discarding cleanly the dross zones born of insufficient verification, blots unexplained. |
To the devotee of Liu Ren, moreover, Yuan Shushan’s organizational guidelines function substantially as a true-school tactical manual for divination: each of those analytic scend-first are these factors listed previously—[Po, Hai, Xing, Chong; compounded magics of two yird measures on four elements forming both calendario graces—tian yue de and yue shing—“the Nobleman-Guiding Highness King and His sixteen throneships awaiting seal`(what we would gloss ‘the ensemble twelve major.’)—reads then with near-topological, gauge-quality exactness even before contextual refinements,]— auxiliary complex “stars-in-murky-alloy” chaff lodes of chart reading must assume but subordinate pose truly, decidedly lest one gild the reins mishift.
Bao Ding's postscript touches upon a deep philosophical question: what is the "primal origin" of knowledge? The book is entitled Tan Yuan, "Exploring Origins,"—an endeavor taking root at the corpus from whence thinking grows, the fabric founded over which structures emerge. In light of knowledge infinite but her holder a mammal, our shell-circuit; "the Simpleness-Caraw-thin vein fine,” is (spite incontrivo) not a whim-skin-flavo-coat), yet effectively ontlogical basis-axion placekeeping ance —evidence-based trust for reasoning stands underlying structured arrangement that given canopy density nature offers extractable organizing grace universal underneath.If they fit shall
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