The Lost Chapter: River Diagram in the Hermit's Cave
Manage episode 431648915 series 3530325
This is one of the "lost chapters" intended to appear earlier in the series but was skipped over.
Xiaoyao loses his way at evening in the deep mountains, but a chance meeting saves him from a freezing overnight sojourn.
The hermit takes the opportunity to try and teach Xiaoyao the arcane secrets of the River Diagram--the 河圖--which communicates its crucial message symbolically, using a structured pattern of black and white dots. The structure itself is based upon a magic square of fifteen.
This can be confusing unless you have the diagram in front of you (and maybe even then) so there are several options.
You can download the original pdf article with all the illustrations from this URL:
https://thefatmonk.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/9-2_river_diagram.pdf
You can refer to this wikipedia article for the illustration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_River_Map
or if you want more deeper reference for the relationship of the River Diagram and the verses quoted from the book "Understanding Reality" see this link (in Chinese):
https://wapbaike.baidu.com/tashuo/browse/content?id=9ecbf4e3de00c2d59ec0e147
SHOW NOTES:
Xiaoyao Xingzhe, the self-styled carefree pilgrim, has lived and worked all over the world, having crossed the Gobi in a decrepit jeep, lived with a solitary monk in the mountains of Korea, dined with the family of the last emperor of China, and helped police with their enquiries in Amarillo, Texas.
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Visit the Fat Monk Website: https://thefatmonk.net/
for pdfs of all recorded chapters and a few more, as well as other bits of interest on Daoism, Buddhism and Neidan, with an emphasis (but not a limitation) on pre-twentieth century authors such as Huang Yuanji and Li Daochun.
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