That said, because it’s important to say things so that people aren’t allowed to clutch too strongly to their wrong ideas, it is true that you can learn things from the Yi without knowing much about it. I know this because I did. However, I saw the sense of improving these ideas as time went on and I learnt more. Such that most of the ideas I had ten or twenty years ago I have discarded. I think it’s a useful thing to overturn your view of the Yi completely at least several times, because if you cling to old understandings the new ones don’t come. And boy, isn’t it true that those who know the least cling to their ideas the strongest?

People who carve wood all day, who can’t read or write, probably learn the dao of their art after a few decades. The trouble with many who follow the Yi, I find, is that their mouths are often too big and they think too much. It takes years to alter those kinds of habits. But when they do, if they do, then they too may be more in touch with the dao of Yi than when they thought they knew everything.

But still. The Yi remains a text. And if you want to be sure you are hearing what it’s really saying, then the least you should do is attempt to discover the most accurate reading of it. And revise your views constantly, as you discover more. To rest content with any understanding is a recipe for stagnation. Hence, better to be less sure you have it, better to create a little space in which the Yi can _really_ speak.

I don’t read Chinese. It’s one of the many things I don’t know, so I can’t take you up on the reference. But here’s another bit I noticed:

“Anyone can have a reading that “speaks to them”, true. But whether it is what the Yi is saying is another matter altogether.”

It’s an old argument about whether black velvet paintings are really beautiful just because somebody thinks so and hangs one on the wall next to the three ducks flying up to ceiling with the fluorescent light in it. Some people would argue that sort of art isn’t really beautiful. Hmm… Anyway, I’d say that if someone has a reading that ’speaks to them’, in other words if it helps their insight or heart quality, then they’re at least on the right track, even if they’re not familiar with the Yi. See, as for ‘what the Yi is really saying’ is by no means an objective quantity. Symbols impact on different people in different ways. Conclusion: you don’t necessarily need to be familiar with the Yi for it to work for you. Conclusion: familiarity with the Yi doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for you better than for the uninitiated. As for me, I don’t believe in ‘what the Yi is really saying. What I want is this: I want to be familiar with the oracle, and I want it to work for me. By ‘work for me’, I mean that interacting with it helps me to see my life more clearly. I have this fond belief that if I see my life more clearly, I’ll live more harmoniously and make fewer mistakes. What do you think?

People who talk about the Yijing are often stupid. It was terrible when they made it available to anyone. Would have been better to just keep handing it around among the elite.

As for constancy of mind and the ability to divine, take a look at Analects 13.22. Best if you look at the Chinese, the available translations haven’t done this passage great justice.

Maybe. I’ve always thought that ability to divine had to do with ability to divine, not any one trait. You can put hours and years and a lifetime into the Yi and still be a ninny. You can point at me for evidence of this if you like. You can do your first consultation and the message can jump out at you and endorse a decision that you just needed some support for.

I think generally the Yi is like anything else:

1 the more you put into it, the more you get out of it

2 the deeper you are as a person, the more you get out of it

But that’s only a rule of thumb. The timescale thing is no guarantee. At university I knew lots of professors who were experts in their field who were boring, and foolish at life.

When I had only studied the Yi for two years I thought I already knew quite a lot. It’s inevitable. Who in their twenties can conceive of a basic apprenticeship lasting ten years if you are lucky, and another few decades or more to feel like you may be getting somewhere? Of course, once you’ve put a ridiculous amount of years into the thing, you may as well say so. But then some fool comes along who has a ten-year advance on you and you think, well if he’s still an idiot then what do years matter? And you wean yourself off mentioning it. It’s only taken you thirty years to learn this much.