Each entry gives the term in traditional and simplified form, its pinyin, the senses it carries in the classical corpus, the passages where it does real work, and how published translations have rendered it.
bèi huà
Earth in its even state, and the phase whose even name is the name of its own work. 土曰備化 — earth is called complete transformation — and its 紀 runs: 備化之紀，氣恊天休，德流四政，五化齊脩，其氣平，其性順，其用高下，其化豐滿，其類土，其政安靜，其候溽蒸，其令濕，其藏脾，脾其畏風，其主口，其榖稷，其果棗，其實肉，其應長夏，其蟲倮，其畜牛，其色黄，其養肉，其病否，其味甘，其音宫，其物膚，其數五. Its opening pair is the largest claim any of the five makes: 氣恊天休，德流四政 — its qi answers to the bounty of heaven, and its virtue runs through the governance of all four quarters. Its five transformations are not merely level or even but 齊脩, all of them ordered together, which is why the year-rites of the earth are the ones that hold the other four. Its viscus is the spleen, its season the long summer, its number five, the number of the centre; when it falls short it is 卑監, low and confined (called 減化, the diminishing transformation), and when it goes to excess 敦阜, mounded high (called 廣化, the widening one).
píng dàn
The chapter's first rule, and the one a modern reader is most likely to skip past: take the pulse at 平旦, at dawn. The reason given is entirely negative — the yin has not stirred, the yang has not dispersed, no food has been taken, the conduits are not yet full, the network vessels are even, the qi and blood are undisturbed. Diagnosis wants the baseline. It is the same instinct behind asking a patient to sit quietly before the examination begins, stated as a rule about the hour of day.
dé
Not moral goodness in the English sense. De is what something has and does by being itself — and when heaven 'stores' it (藏德), the point is that its efficacy is invisible rather than displayed.
zāi
The disaster itself, and the sixth of the six terms by which this chapter sets out each of the five directions: 德 virtue, 化 transformation, 政 governance, 令 command, 變 change, 災 disaster. It is the only one of the six the chapter names by instance rather than by kind — what the disaster does, not what disaster is: in the east things scatter and fall, in the south they burn, in the centre the rain soaks and collapses, in the west the green falls, in the north there is ice, snow, frost and hail. It is paired with 眚 throughout, and the pair divides the one event into the thing and the place: 災 is what happens, 眚 is where it lands.
chóng yáng chóng yīn
The chapter's verdict on a colour that has crossed to the wrong side: 易重陽死，重陰死. The chapter has just said that colour above is rebellion and below compliance, and that the sides are reversed for men and women; when a case crosses that rule, what you get is one of the two piled on itself, and no pairing left to live on. Chapter 7 already used the same figure in 生陽死陰 and in its 重陰必陽，重陽必陰 — there it is a law of change, here it is a death sentence.
hé liú
Water falling short. 水曰涸流 — water is called dried stream — and its 紀 is 反陽: 涸流之紀，是謂反陽。藏令不舉，化氣乃昌，長氣宣布，蟄蟲不藏，土潤，水泉減，草木條茂，榮秀滿盛. The command of storing is not raised; the transforming qi is the one that prospers; the growing qi is spread abroad; the hibernating creatures do not hide; the earth is moist; the springs fall; the plants put out branches and are full of bloom. It is a mild and generous-looking year with the water gone out of it, and the chapter calls that 反陽 because the yang that should have gone under for the winter has come back up in its place. Its 從 is earth, 從土化也; its harm falls on the kidney, and its 眚 on the north. 靜順 is water storing and keeping low; 涸流 is the same water with nothing left to store.
tǔ
Earth, the phase to which the spleen belongs, and in chapter 29 the premise of an argument rather than a mere correspondence. The chapter's reasoning runs: the spleen is earth; earth rules the centre; earth grows the ten thousand things and takes heaven and earth as its law; therefore the spleen reaches from the head to the feet and can no more be confined to one season than earth can be confined to one quarter. Everything the chapter concludes about the spleen — that it rules no season, that it is delegated eighteen days in each, that it is what carries the stomach's fluids outward — follows from this.
tǔ wù mù
The chapter's explanation of why the sound of wood alarms a patient with Yangming disease. Yangming is the vessel of the stomach, the stomach belongs to earth, and earth is the phase that wood conquers; so the sound that belongs to wood reaches a body already disposed against it. The proof offered within the chapter is the contrast: metal, which does not conquer earth, leaves the patient unmoved. The phrase is the shortest form of a rule that runs through the whole book — that a phase answers to whatever conquers it.
shěn píng
Metal in its even state, and the one of the five named for a judgement. 金曰審平 — metal is called even judgement — and its 紀 runs: 審平之紀，收而不爭，殺而無犯，五化宣明，其氣潔，其性剛，其用散落，其化堅斂，其類金，其政勁肅，其候清切，其令燥，其藏肺，肺其畏熱，其主鼻，其榖稻，其果桃，其實殻，其應秋，其蟲介，其畜雞，其色白，其養皮毛，其病欬，其味辛，其音商，其物外堅，其數九. Metal's work is the autumn's: it gathers in and it cuts down. The chapter says what makes that even — 收而不爭，殺而無犯 — and the two words are the whole ethic of the autumn: the reaping takes what is due and does not strive for more, the killing falls where it must and nothing is injured beyond it. Its five transformations come out 宣明, spread and clear, and its qi is 潔, clean. Its viscus is the lung, its creature the shelled, its number nine; when it fails it is 從革, following change, and when it goes too far 堅成, hard completion.
tài guò bù jí
The chapter's two ways of being wrong, and both of them are about timing rather than amount. Qi that comes before its season is 太過: it presses on the quarter it cannot overcome and rides over the quarter it can, and that is 氣淫. Qi that fails to come when its season comes is 不及: what it would have overcome runs wild, what it would have generated falls ill. Between them stands 平氣 — 無過者也, that which does not go past.
fán xiù
The name Suwen 2 gives to the three months of summer. Heaven and earth have come together, and things are at their thickest and in flower. The rule drawn from it is the rule for summer: sleep at night and rise early, do not weary of the long days, keep the will free of anger, and let the qi find its way out — as though what you loved were outside you. Breaking it harms the heart, autumn brings jie malaria, and the illness is grave at the winter solstice.
cóng gé
Metal falling short. 金曰從革 — metal is called following change — and its 紀 is 折收: 從革之紀，是謂折收。收氣乃後，生氣乃揚，長化合德，火政乃宣，庶類以蕃. The gathering comes late; the qi that gives birth is the one that spreads; growing and transforming join their work; fire's governance is the one that is proclaimed; and every kind comes up thick. It reads like a good year, and the chapter lets it read so — a metal that has given up its own work lets fire's work through. Then the attributes: 其氣揚，其用躁切，其動鏗禁瞀厥，其發欬喘…其病嚏、欬、鼽、衄. Its 從 is fire, 從火化也; its harm falls on the lung, and its 眚 on the west. 審平 is metal weighing and reaping; 從革 is metal that has handed the reaping over.