Where Does 鄙薄貪懦 Return? 局回 and the 局 That Does Not Close

獨行篇 (Dokhaeng-pyeon) × 反誠箴 (Banseong-jam) · the 局·面·局回 cycle · Part Three 〔局回 — The Single Revolution〕

Introduction

Part One looked at the hardened 局 (guk—the configuration each person already stands in as a force) from within; Part Two looked at the 面 (myeon—the contact membrane where two 局 meet) that it forms upon touching another. In Part One, 鄙薄貪懦 (bibaktamna—the four names of moral self-abandonment: the mean [鄙], the shallow [薄], the greedy [貪], the cowardly [懦]) proved to be not one of great desire but one sealed off from seeing his own mind-will (闇辨, eumbyeon—the darkening of discernment). In Part Two that sealing leaked out at the membrane as the encroachments of domination, toppling, predation, and eclipsing (凌·傾·賊·掩). Yet Part Two closed on this: the encroachment does not pile up in one direction only. A flowing 局 that ceaselessly cultivates (益修, iksu) stands opposite, and their mutual constitution (互爲, howi) never permits either side to reach completion.

This third part looks at the place where that 互爲 draws a full revolution—the 局回 (gukhoe—the single turning of the 局). In the 局/場/面 fluid ontology, 局回 is the third site: neither the inside where a 局 stands (Part One) nor the membrane where two 局 touch (Part Two), but the configuration in which what was given and taken at the membrane travels through time, turns once, and returns to its origin. If Part One was the space of the 局 and Part Two the contact of the membrane, Part Three is the time of the 局. The thesis stands in a single line: the one revolution of 局回 never closes, and that not-closing is what at last redeems the proposition Part One left open—that the 局 has not closed.

1. What 局回 Is

For 局回 to be a full revolution, what is received at the membrane must have a path back. 東武 (Dongmu, Yi Je-ma’s sobriquet) draws that path in two places.

The first is the schema of the 反誠箴 (Banseong-jam, the “Admonition on Returning to Sincerity,” a chapter of the 格致藁, Gyeokchigo). Modeled on the images of the Yijing, it sets up eight admonitions (乾兌坤艮离震坎巽) and divides their direction into two.

乾坤离坎箴之情僞 我必行欺詐於人之機勢也 存心之戒也 艮兌震巽箴之情僞 人必行欺詐於我之機勢也 守身之戒也 The 乾·坤·离·坎 admonitions concern the disposition by which I will surely work deceit upon others—the caution for preserving the mind; the 艮·兌·震·巽 admonitions concern the disposition by which others will surely work deceit upon me—the caution for guarding the self.

The four 乾坤离坎 admonitions are the force by which I deceive others (我必行欺詐於人); the four 艮兌震巽, the force by which others deceive me (人必行欺詐於我). On one and the same membrane, deceit (欺詐) flows both from me-to-others and from others-to-me. The 局 on the membrane is at once the one who strikes and the one who is struck. The path by which what is received returns is already built into the structure of the 面. Moreover, deceit is by nature relational and cannot settle in a single direction: the disposition by which I deceive others shares the very same membrane with the disposition by which others deceive me, so any one-directional deceit always calls up its reverse. Not only is the path present—return along it is structurally necessary.

The second is the trading of places through order and disorder (治亂). The 獨行篇 (Dokhaeng-pyeon, the earliest-composed text of the Gyeokchigo) records:

天下治則此輩畏正人而隱伏 天下不治則正人畏此輩而隱伏 When all-under-heaven is well governed, this sort—the hardened 局—fear the upright and go into hiding; when it is ill governed, the upright fear this sort and go into hiding.

When the world is ordered, the hardened 局 (此輩) hides in fear of the upright; when disordered, the upright hides in fear of the hardened. On the same membrane the two 局 trade places, passing one knot at a time through ages of order and disorder. The advance-and-retreat of 互爲 from Part Two—as one 局 advances, the opposing one retreats—does not occur once and vanish but accumulates: the piling-up of countless single advances and retreats, until one 局 has long advanced and the other long retreated, is what appears as the epochal joints of order and disorder, and riding those joints, advance-and-retreat turns a full circle. This is 局回. The domination, toppling, and predation given and taken at the membrane travel through time and return to the place where the striker is struck and the struck one strikes. Yet this “return” is no physical recirculation of the same blow given back; it is a symmetrical re-distribution in which the positions of striker and struck, never fixed, reverse with order and disorder—the rotation of who strikes and who is struck. Part Two already recorded that this trading of places is not merely positional. The hardened 局 rages against the honored and eminent (恣橫肆毒) yet swallows insult before the low and base (隱忍含垢)—the granting-and-seizing (予奪之權) whose posture flips entirely with strength and weakness. So when order and disorder invert strength and weakness, yesterday’s one who bowed turns fierce today, and yesterday’s fierce one bows. The single revolution of 局回 rotates not only the positions of who strikes and who is struck, but the very postures of striking and bowing; with the variable of strength and weakness entering the direction of giving and requiting (the eight admonitions), the turn becomes not a flat circle but a three-dimensional rotation in which posture itself tumbles.

2. The Revolution Does Not Close

Does that single revolution reach completion on one side? It does not. As we saw at the membrane, not only deceit but resentment (怨) too runs both ways. The 巽箴 records—君子之怨恒在小人 小人之怨恒在君子 (the resentment of the noble always lies with the small man, the resentment of the small man always with the noble). So long as both deceit and resentment run in both directions, no one-sided advantage can pile up to the end in a single direction. An asymmetry tilted one way must reverse at the joint of order-and-disorder, and at the reversed position it tilts again. 局回 is not a closing circle but a rotation that does not close.

This meets Part One’s final proposition, which left the hardened 局 unclosed with a line from the 四端論 (Sadan-ron):

鄙薄貪懦之淸濁濶狹萬殊之中有一同 衆人所以希聖也 Amid the myriad differences of clarity and turbidity, breadth and narrowness, within 鄙薄貪懦 there is one sameness—this is why the common many may aspire to sagehood (希聖).

Though the clarity and breadth of 鄙薄貪懦 differ ten thousand ways, within them lies one sameness—the possibility of 希聖 (aspiring to sagehood). Part One saw this opening from inside the 局, Part Two in the membrane’s 益修. Part Three sees it in the rotation of 局回: that the revolution never reaches completion is but another name for the 局’s not having closed. The 局 has hardened, yet even after a full turn, it does not close.

3. One Caution — Do Not Take the Way of Requital

Here one thing must be made clear. That 局回 is a rotation in which striker and struck trade places must not be read as: requite what you received and overturn the position. For requital—what is commonly called 報復 (bobok, retaliation)—can never close the revolution. The 觀仁 (Gwan-in) gives the reason:

眞智不驕然後忮者讎者莫之凌也 眞義不伐然後軋者傾者莫之凌也 Only when true wisdom is without arrogance can the envious and the enemy fail to dominate one; only when true rightness is without boasting can the grinding and the toppling fail to dominate one.

Only after true wisdom does not grow arrogant can the enemy (讎者) fail to dominate; only after true rightness does not boast can the toppler fail to dominate. The way to stop an enemy is not greater force but the virtue of non-arrogance and non-boasting. Requital cannot end domination—greater force calls up greater resentment, and the membrane turns one more revolution. Far from severing 局回, 報復 widens its turning: greater resentment breeds greater asymmetry, and only the radius of the next revolution grows. Even if one wins the fight, that 局 only hardens further; and when a 局 hardens, there is neither victor nor vanquished—only oneself, harmed.

What 局回 points to, therefore, is not struggle against the other. It is, at the very place of receiving, to turn inward rather than drive the membrane one more turn. So 東武 writes in the 反誠箴:

詐心便發 未及行詐而反誠則學問也 學問之道無他 求其放心而已矣 When the deceitful mind has just arisen, to return to sincerity before deceit is acted out—this is learning. The way of learning is nothing else than to seek the lost mind (求其放心).

When the deceitful mind has just stirred, to turn back to sincerity before acting it out is itself learning; and the way of learning is nothing but to recover the lost mind (求其放心). At the moment resentment rises to be requited, rather than turning the membrane once more, one recovers that mind within—this 東武 calls 克己復禮 (subduing the self and returning to propriety), and for what runs contrary to propriety he held 勿視勿聽勿言勿動 (do not look, do not listen, do not speak, do not move) the best policy. What stops the one revolution of 局回 is not a greater requital but a single step of turning back toward oneself.

Why must it be a turning inward? Because repaying from without hardens the 局 further on the spot. Repay once, and the other hardens and so do I. Yet the hardened 局 is of one body with the loosened one—just as the same 局 becomes 忠 when it keeps 禮 alive and flows, and 鄙 when it discards 禮 and sets, 鄙薄貪懦 and 忠信廉解 are not two kinds but the set side and the flowing side of one 局. The flowing side, 忠信廉解, is not a state to be reached and halted at but the very movement of hardening come undone. To harden the 局, then, is to block one’s own way of flowing toward that side. Win by repaying, and the 局 only sets the harder, the flow only the further off. This is why the way to close 局回 cannot be requital.

This division is folded into the two paths of medicine. One posits the illness as a single cause outside the body and seeks to restore order by striking it down—the root of the disorder placed without, corrected from without. The other holds that the upright springs are already present and merely veiled, and undoes the veiling from within so that they revive of their own force—order not erected from without but recovered from within. 報復 is the former path, 反誠 the latter. That 東武’s medicine stands less on correcting each person’s inborn visceral balance from without than on turning it back along that person’s own power of recovery, and that 局回 closes not by requital but by turning inward, are one and the same direction.

And this turning does not end with a single step. The 東武 of the 反誠箴, at fifty-seven still unable to forget the deceitful mind, turns back to sincerity on the spot each time it arises, again and again—屢復屢失, losing again and again and regaining again and again. Completion is not a state reached once and dwelt in but the endless accumulation of minute returnings, each added in the instant the deceitful mind stirs. Because 局回 in the end does not close, a place remains to add that returning anew at every turn. Not-closing, then, is not a flaw of incompletion but the open condition that turning-back remains forever possible.

In Closing — 局·面·局回

Looking back over the three parts: Part One, seeing the 局 from within, found 鄙薄貪懦 to be a mind-ground that seems closed yet is not; Part Two found that 局, colliding at the membrane through domination, toppling, predation, and eclipsing, blocked by the cultivating 局 opposite from closing to one side; Part Three found that collision turning a full revolution through order-and-disorder as 局回, and that revolution, never reaching completion, opening onto the place of turning back toward oneself (反誠, banseong).

The not-closing across the three parts is not the repetition of one phrase but an accumulation of strata. Part One’s not-closing is an incompleteness of the mind-ground—the eye that sees oneself never fully shuts; Part Two’s, an incompleteness of relation—one side’s encroachment, blocked by the cultivating 局 opposite, never reaching completion; Part Three’s, an incompleteness of time—the openness of a rotation that never completes its turn. The 局 has not closed within, nor at the membrane, nor in time. That not-closing is the one sameness amid the myriad differences of 鄙薄貪懦—the possibility of 希聖. What 局回 says last is therefore not who defeated whom, but the single step of loosening one’s own 局 again, there at the place that in the end did not close. 局回 is not a motion of returning, but a motion that returns and yet, in the end, does not close.

Yet 局回 does not always succeed in closing. 反誠 is not achieved at once—東武 himself confessed that at fifty-seven he had still not forgotten the deceitful mind; the turning-back is 屢復屢失, losing again and again and regaining again and again. Then where does the place that in the end fails to turn back—the place of 行己不誠, of conducting oneself without sincerity—go? When the 暴傷, the violent wounding dealt to another across the membrane, fails to turn back toward oneself and returns instead into one’s own interior, it ceases to be a matter of relation and becomes a matter of one’s own body. Anger wounds the liver, joy the spleen, sorrow the kidneys, pleasure the lungs—the unclosed revolution of 局回 closes, in the end, into one’s own viscera. That place where the medicine of relation passes into the medicine of the body is where this single revolution of 局·面·局回 halts and where the next begins. Having gone once around the outside of the 局 and returned again to the 局, the question that remains is the illness the closed revolution inscribes on the body—the meeting of the 暴傷 of 鄙薄貪懦 with the pathology of the Dongui Suse Bowon.

References

1. Yi Je-ma (李濟馬), Gyeokchigo (格致藁; Banseong-jam, Sonjam [巽箴], Gwan-in, Dokhaeng-pyeon), ed. Han Du-jeong, Hamheung: Deokheung Printing, 1940.
2. Yi Je-ma, Dongui Suse Bowon (東醫壽世保元, Sinchuk ed.; Sadan-ron).
3. Yi Je-ma, Dongui Sasang Chobon-gwon (東醫四象初本卷).
4. Bae Yeong-sun, “Yi Je-ma’s Anthropology: On the Typology of the Common Many,” Journal of the Studies of Korean National Culture 50, 2012, 323–357.
5. Yun Deok-yeong & Go Byeong-hui, “A Study on the 鄙薄貪懦者 in the Dokhaeng-pyeon,” Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine 8(1), 1996, 57–74.
6. Yi Su-gyeong, Go Byeong-hui & Song Il-byeong, “A Literature Review on the Formation of Sasang Medicine,” Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine 10(1), 1998, 41–54.