This is the journal-format version (Original Article, IMRAD) of Part Three of the 局·面·局回 cycle, restructured from the essay edition (June 28, 2026) according to the submission guidelines of the Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine. Essay edition: Where Does 鄙薄貪懦 Return?
Title Page
Title — A Study on Gukhoe and the Guk That Does Not Close: Focusing on the Bidirectionality of Deceit in the Banseong-jam of Gyeokchigo and Banseong Rather Than Requital
Article type — Original Article
Author — Choi, Jang-hyuk (Dongjedang Korean Medicine Clinic)
Corresponding author — Choi, Jang-hyuk. Dongjedang Korean Medicine Clinic, 88 Dongsan-ro, Dong-gu, Incheon, Republic of Korea. Tel: +82-32-765-7733. Fax: +82-32-773-7734. E-mail: [email protected]
Running head — Gukhoe and the Guk That Does Not Close
Disclosure — This paper is not a dissertation; no funding was received; the author declares no conflict of interest.
Abstract
Objectives: To clarify the nature of gukhoe (局回, the single revolution), the third site of the guk–jang–myeon (局場面) fluid ontology in which the encroachment given and taken at the contact membrane returns through time, and to argue why it points to banseong (反誠, returning to sincerity) rather than bobok (報復, requital).
Methods: The Banseong-jam (反誠箴), Sonjam (巽箴), Gwan-in (觀仁), and Dokhaeng-pyeon (獨行篇) of Gyeokchigo (格致藁, 1940 first edition), the Sadan-ron (四端論) of Dongui Suse Bowon (東醫壽世保元, Sinchuk edition), and Dongui Sasang Chobon-gwon (東醫四象初本卷) were collated and analyzed through the fluid ontology, focusing on gukhoe as the temporal stratum.
Results: First, 局回 has a structural path of return: the Banseong-jam's eight-trigram schema renders deceit (欺詐) bidirectional (我必行欺詐 / 人必行欺詐), and order-and-disorder (治亂) trades the positions of striker and struck; with the posture-flip of 予奪 the turn becomes a three-dimensional rotation. Second, since both deceit and resentment (怨) run both ways, no one-sided advantage reaches completion; the revolution does not close, redeeming the 希聖 of the first part. Third, 局回 does not counsel requital: 報復 hardens the guk and widens the turn, so 局回 points to 反誠—turning inward (求其放心)—aligned with 忠信廉解 as the movement of flowing rather than a fixed state, and with a medicine that recovers order from within rather than correcting from without.
Conclusions: 局回 is a rotation that returns yet never closes; this not-closing is the open condition of 反誠, and the violent wounding (暴傷) that fails to turn back closes into one's own viscera, bridging to the pathology of the Dongui Suse Bowon.
Key words: Medicine, Korean Traditional; Sasang Constitutional Medicine; Philosophy, Medical; Personality; Self-Control; Interpersonal Relations
Ⅰ. Introduction
This study, as Part Three of the 局·面·局回 cycle treating 鄙薄貪懦 (bibaktamna) in the Gyeokchigo (格致藁), examines 局回 (gukhoe), the configuration in which the encroachment given and taken at the contact membrane travels through time, turns once, and returns to its origin. Part One looked at the hardened 局 (guk) from within and found 鄙薄貪懦 to be not one of great desire but one sealed off from seeing his own mind-will (闇辨)2); Part Two found that sealing leaking out at the 面 (myeon) as the encroachments of domination, toppling, predation, and eclipsing (凌·傾·賊·掩), which do not pile up in one direction only, since a flowing 局 that cultivates (益修) stands opposite and their mutual constitution (互爲) permits no completion3).
In the 局/場/面 fluid ontology, 局回 is the third site: neither the inside where a 局 stands nor the membrane where two 局 touch, but the configuration in which what was given and taken at the membrane turns once through time and returns (the fluid ontology is a modern analytic frame established in two prior studies4,5)). If Part One was the space of the 局 and Part Two the contact of the membrane, this study is the time of the 局.
Scholarship on the Gyeokchigo has been led by the yeokhak line from Kim Man-san6) to Lim Byeong-hak7); on 鄙薄貪懦, Yun Deok-yeong and Go Byeong-hui8) and Bae Yeong-sun9) examined it philologically. Prior research, however, has concentrated on the type and attribution of 鄙薄貪懦 and on the metaphysical meaning of the trigrams, leaving untreated where that 局 returns as it rotates through time—the relational dynamics of the temporal stratum, 局回. The thesis stands in a single line: the one revolution of 局回 never closes, and that not-closing at last redeems the proposition Part One left open, that the 局 has not closed; and 局回 counsels not requital in equal measure but 反誠 (banseong, returning to sincerity)—the loosening of one's own 局—as argued from the 反誠箴, 觀仁, and 巽箴.
Ⅱ. Materials and Methods
1. Materials
The Gyeokchigo was read in the 1940 first edition compiled by Han Du-jeong1), with the 反誠箴 (Banseong-jam), 巽箴 (Sonjam), 觀仁 (Gwan-in), and 獨行篇 (Dokhaeng-pyeon) as the chapters analyzed; the 獨行篇 is taken as the earliest-composed text of the Gyeokchigo following the philological finding to that effect12). The 四端論 (Sadan-ron) of the Sinchuk-edition Dongui Suse Bowon (東醫壽世保元, 1901)10) and, for constitutional attribution, the Dongui Sasang Chobon-gwon (東醫四象初本卷)13) were also used.
2. Analytic Frame — the Fluid Ontology and 局回
The 局/場/面 fluid ontology is a modern analytic frame established in two prior studies4,5), not a concept of the source texts. 局回 is its third site, the temporal stratum in which what was given and taken at the membrane turns once through time. This study asks whether that rotation completes on one side, and argues its non-completion through the bidirectionality of deceit (欺詐) in the 反誠箴 and the trading of places through order-and-disorder (治亂).
3. Method
The analysis proceeded in three steps: (1) establishing and directly translating the 反誠箴, 獨行篇, 巽箴, and 觀仁 passages; (2) arranging by argument the bidirectionality of deceit (存心·守身), the trading of places through 治亂, and the contrast of 報復 and 反誠; (3) reinterpreting 局回 through the fluid ontology. This is a literature-based, theoretical study.
Ⅲ. Results
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 two1).
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) records1):
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 positional3). 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)1). 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)10):
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. Banseong Rather Than 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 reason1):
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1):
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.
Ⅳ. Discussion
1. Synthesis — The Not-Closing across the Three Parts as an Accumulation of Strata
Taken together, the not-closing of the 局 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; this study'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; and 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 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 does not close.
2. Comparison with Prior Research
The yeokhak line6,7) has read the eight trigrams of the 反誠箴 through the Fuxi trigram and Supreme-Ultimate diagrams, clarifying their metaphysical and cosmological meaning. This study reads the same trigrams not as cosmology but as the relational dynamics of the bidirectionality of deceit (欺詐), taking as its axis that this bidirectionality rotates through the time of order-and-disorder yet never completes. Where Yun Deok-yeong and Go Byeong-hui8) and Bae Yeong-sun9) organized 鄙薄貪懦 at the stratum of philology and typology, this study shows, through the 反誠箴 and 巽箴, the phase of 局回 in which that 鄙薄貪懦 rotates through time and in the end does not close. Further, this study folds the division of 報復 and 反誠 into Sasang medicine's orientation toward inner recovery, arguing that the 反誠 of the Gyeokchigo is of one direction with the methodology of the Dongui Suse Bowon.
3. Limitations and Further Work
The limitations of this study are as follows. First, the constitutional attribution (鄙 as 太陽人, and so on) rests on the Dongui Sasang Chobon-gwon13) and cannot be treated as a fixed value. Second, the fluid ontology and 局回 are not concepts of the source texts but a modern frame established in prior studies4,5), and the reinterpretation depends on its validity. Third, this study, as the completion of the cycle, is confined to the relational dynamics up to 局回. The place where 反誠 fails—the 行己不誠 (conducting oneself without sincerity) in which the violent wounding (暴傷) dealt to another fails to turn back and closes into one's own viscera (anger→liver, joy→spleen, sorrow→kidneys, pleasure→lungs)—is where the medicine of relation passes into the medicine of the body; following the prior study linking the 事心身物 of the Gyeokchigo with the 天人性命 of the Dongui Suse Bowon11), this is taken up in a subsequent study on the meeting of the 暴傷 of 鄙薄貪懦 with the pathology of the Dongui Suse Bowon.
Ⅴ. Conclusion
From an examination of the 反誠箴, 巽箴, 觀仁, and 獨行篇 of the Gyeokchigo and the 四端論 of the Dongui Suse Bowon at the stratum of 局回, the conclusions are as follows.
First, 局回 is the configuration in which the encroachment given and taken at the membrane turns once through time and returns; its path of return is already built structurally into the bidirectional deceit of the 反誠箴's eight trigrams (存心·守身) and the trading of places through 治亂. With the variable of strength and weakness (予奪), the rotation becomes three-dimensional.
Second, since both deceit and resentment (巽箴) run both ways, no one-sided advantage completes. 局回 is not a closing circle but a rotation that does not close, and this non-completion redeems the 希聖 of Part One.
Third, 局回 does not point to requital. 報復 only hardens the 局 and widens the turn; what 局回 points to is 反誠—turning inward (求其放心). This is of one direction with 忠信廉解 as the movement of flowing rather than a state to be reached, and with a medicine that recovers order from within rather than erecting it from without.
Fourth, 局回 is a motion that returns yet in the end does not close, and this not-closing is the open condition of 反誠. The 暴傷 in which 反誠 fails closes into one's own viscera and passes over into the medicine of the body.
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