Takashima & the Yilin · A short read
The hole gets deeper. There is still no jade.
The digger has jade in mind. The task under their hands is a well. Before the short verse ends, the search has brought disgrace and no treasure. In the middle sits a name an early reader might have recognised: Bian, the finder of a famous jade.
Meng to Lin, 4 to 19
鑿井求玉，非卞氏寶。名困身辱，勞無所得。
Digging a well in search of jade; this is no treasure of Bian’s. A damaged name, personal disgrace; the labour brings nothing.
English translation: DaYan. The opening combines the ordinary work of digging a well with a search for something precious. The poem gives us no reason for the digger’s confidence.
The treasure in the name
The name points towards the story of Bian He and his uncut jade. The Hanfeizi’s “He Shi” chapter tells of a man from Chu who found rough jade in the mountains and presented it to a ruler. The ruler’s expert called it stone, and the finder suffered punishment.
That story gives us someone with a treasure others fail to recognise. The Yilin poem refuses its digger that comparison: 非卞氏寶, “no treasure of Bian’s”. The hard work and the humiliation do not establish that jade lies at the bottom.
Stay with the empty hole
The last phrase, 勞無所得, leaves the worker with labour and nothing gained. It is a terse ending after the grand association with a famous treasure. We never get an explanation of why the search began.
Meng, the first hexagram in this pair, often appears as “Youthful Folly” in English. Its I Ching text discusses learning and being taught. Read it beside the poem if you wish, keeping the digger in view: a person can put a great deal of effort into a question before finding out what would count as an answer.
Sources & translation
Jiaoshi Yilin, Meng to Lin (蒙之臨), received text via Chinese Text Project. The jade story is told in Hanfeizi, “He Shi” (和氏). English translation and reading notes: DaYan.
Chinese Text Project: Jiaoshi Yilin ↗Hanfeizi, “He Shi”: the rough jade and the ruler ↗