...life can be translucent

38.K'uei / Opposition

Trojina

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(hmm your dragon got fat and lazy Luis, mellow though )
 

charly

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... I'll pay attention to the parsing in the received work I mentioned. But, that's me. Other can, and will, play as they wish... And yes, Dobro is a parsing libertine ...

Luis:

The learned collective was so committed with centuries of confucian philosophy that although they didn't change the words, they could have put the dots according with their social, political and philosophical interests.

It was hard to change the words, the text was memorized by too much learned people. But the original text was not parsed, adding alternatives of reading to the polysemics of the words.

There was no single message, thus the text didn't need more accuracy than the provided by the use of parallellisms.

I encourage you to try alternative parsing and observe the results. Maybe this parser tool can be useful for the task:

RUS08051.jpg


«Blood will fall as rain»

Un abrazo,

Carlos
 

charly

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Moooving along...

Luis:

Please, analyze this:

見輿曳其牛掣其人。
See charriage pulling its ox, snatching its man.

Something like the apprentice of sorcerer, things get life, the customary order is subverted. the ox before the cart, the passenger kidnaped...

天且劓。
Heaven, moreove, nose cut-off.
... moreover, abandoned by the heavens
... moreover, heaven punished [him]
... moreover, heaven [has his] nose cut-off → has the face of Death (1)


:confused:

abrazo,


Charly
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(1) «la Ñata» = The Death , «la quinta 'el Ñato» = Cementery
 

Sparhawk

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The learned collective was so committed with centuries of confucian philosophy that although they didn't change the words, they could have put the dots according with their social, political and philosophical interests.

It was hard to change the words, the text was memorized by too much learned people. But the original text was not parsed, adding alternatives of reading to the polysemics of the words.

Carlos,

It really tickles me to death the ongoing effort of stripping Confucius and his school from the Yijing, like some kind of taint soiling the work. As if one should wash the mouth after uttering his name... As it is, the Yijing IS a Confucian Classic. The Zhouyi is another story. From whatever old extant exegesis we have available, that school has been commenting the Yi (Zhouyi) from a time earlier than the oldest version of the Yi found thus far (Mawangdui). There is no Yijing without the Confucian School. Furthermore, what we have received is the Yijing, not the Zhouyi proper, which remains a mystery other than a few quotes found in old history records like the Zuo Zhuan. We do have a proposed separation of the Zhouyi text, what it perhaps looked like, within the received YIJING itself, which comes from what classical school?? Yes, the Confucian School. So, if we follow that train of thought, how do we know the whole thing, all the text received and attributed to the original Zhouyi--and we are talking about the text here--, isn't a Confucian fabrication in its entirety? Can we trust them to tell us that the Tuan Ci and Yao Ci is the original Zhouyi part of the Yijing but distrust them in the parsing of the text?

So, my point is, dismissing the received parsing of the text because of the possibility of it being a biased pipe-dream of a bunch of Neo-Confucians under the orders of the Kangxi Emperor, is in itself a biased, non-objective view, in the opposite direction, of their work.

As I've said, or at least implied, I'm not a revisionist regarding the received Chinese text of the Yijing. And I'm not because if we are going to revise the text, then we have to revise the whole classic, not only the attributed Zhouyi part of it. At that point we may as well realize to be holding water in our hands as the reality of the Yijing itself will shift. Mind you, I'm the first one in line to bury my head in obscure books, searching for the historical origins of the text, however, at some point I realized that I had to separate the material studied from the received text as they are, although related, completely separate entities.

On the other hand, anyone is free to play with the text. Just don't expect serious arguments of interpretation based on the free-handling of it as it will be only a game... :D

chinese-scrabble.jpg


Un abrazo,
 

dobro p

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And yes, Dobro is a parsing libertine... :rofl:

Now, now, Sparhawk - you KNOW that the original Zhou oracle didn't have punctuation and you KNOW that the H-Y version is simply and only one version of how to do it. And you also KNOW that God gave us our brains in order that we use them. :pompom: Or is this becoming a religious discussion again?

I've got a lot of respect for the H-Y version, but I see no reason why I should believe they've got the parsing right when none of us on this board believe that *anybody* has the translation right. If there can be variations of translations, why not of parsing as well? Or should we follow the Confucian tradition no matter what our onboard intelligence tells us? :lalala:
 

charly

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... It really tickles me to death the ongoing effort of stripping Confucius and his school from the Yijing,...

Luis:

First the first: I'm not trying to purge Confucius from the Yijing. Maybe Confucius didn't like the YI, I don't see him as a diviner but a person prone to think about civil rights and duties. Neither the sort of persons that wrote the YI nor the sort of persons that used it.

Much of the things that later confucianist presented as universal principles were only contingent points of view, not valid for all the times, not valid for all the places, not valid for all the peoples. One of it, the place of women in society.

The Kangxi editors made a layered book. Any confucian wrote the book from the begining, any confucian pretend having done this. All of them presented the core text as a very earlier book.They never pretend to amend this book, only to comment it.

By way of interpretations and commentaries and, maybe, some changes of words, they got a message according whith their own opinions.

But nobody challenged the old book. We have the right to read this book, and to know what it says, not what we are told that it says.

...

Are you shure that the KangXi edition has all the little funny circles? If I remember well, I have seen bookprints from KangXi times without any punctuation mark. I'm not sure.

For moving a dot the sky doesn't go to fall over your head. Worse things has been made with the YI.

Un abrazo,

Charly
 
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Trojina

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So what is 38.3 all about then.
 

Trojina

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or shall we just head on to 38.4
 

martin

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Whatever the Chinese, Confucians or not, wrote about the hexagrams and lines, it's only their interpretation and their (necessarily imperfect) wording of the meaning of the hexagrams and lines.
So it's okay to try to discover what they actually wrote, but it's not holy bible, isn't it?

The word, the name, Chinese or English, is not the thing, the hexagram or the line.
If you want to know what the 'thing' really means, well, you can only discover that through experience with it.
Analyzing the Chinese text, although it might be fun, is not going to help beyond a certain point.

:)
 

Sparhawk

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Now, now, Sparhawk - you KNOW that the original Zhou oracle didn't have punctuation and you KNOW that the H-Y version is simply and only one version of how to do it. And you also KNOW that God gave us our brains in order that we use them. :pompom: Or is this becoming a religious discussion again?

For some odd reason, I still think the "libertine" adjective applies to you (in a good way, of course). I'll buy you a beer and bring some singles to spread some cheer around the floor... :rofl:

But see my reasoning above:

So, if we follow that train of thought, how do we know the whole thing, all the text received and attributed to the original Zhouyi--and we are talking about the text here--, isn't a Confucian fabrication in its entirety? Can we trust them to tell us that the Tuan Ci and Yao Ci is the original Zhouyi part of the Yijing but distrust them in the parsing of the text?

The H-Y is pretty much based on the Kangxi Edition (more a well researched compilation than an original work). This is the reason I went back to it and not to the mere H-Y.

Now, please tell me what Chinese text are you using, or used before finding the H-Y. The fact that ancient Classical Chinese didn't have punctuation doesn't mean the text had no defined structure and thus one is free to parse it any way one desires...

I'm not fan of James Legge's translation but what he wrote in his preface makes a lot of sense to me and should be a lesson for us, more than a hundred years later, trying to approach the text with a minimalist vision and thus risking missing the forest for the trees:

When I made my first translation of it in 1854, I endeavored to be as concise in my English as the original Chinese was. Much of what I wrote was made up, in consequence, of so many English words, with little or no mark of syntactical connexion. I followed in this the example of P. Regis and his coadjutors in their Latin version. But their version is all but unintelligible, and mine was not less so. How to surmount this difficulty occurred to me after I had found the clue to the interpretation; --in a fact which I had unconsciously acted on in all my translations of other classics, namely, that the written characters of the Chinese are not representations of words, but symbols of ideas, and that the combination of them in composition is not a representation of what the writer would say, but of what he thinks. It is vain therefore for a translator to attempt a literal version. When the symbolic characters have brought his mind en rapport with that of his author, he is free to render the ideas in his own or any other speech in the best manner that he can attain to. This is the rule which Mencius followed in interpreting the old poems of his country:--'We must try with our thoughts to meet the scope of a sentence, and then we shall apprehend it.' In the study of a Chinese classical book there is no so much an interpretation of the characters employed by the writer as a participation of his thoughts;-- there is the seeing of mind to mind


Dobro said:
I've got a lot of respect for the H-Y version, but I see no reason why I should believe they've got the parsing right when none of us on this board believe that *anybody* has the translation right. If there can be variations of translations, why not of parsing as well?

Fair enough, but I don't believe that a lack of an "ideal and/or universal" translation is due to any issue of proper text structure or parsing but us not been able to properly wrap our minds around its real meaning in a digestible and communicable way for others to share alike. Furthermore, I would venture to share the private thought that the real reason to learn Chinese, prompted by a serious study of the Yi, is not for us to translate the text but to understand it, sans limitations, in its original form. Easier said that done, of course... :D
 

Sparhawk

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If you want to know what the 'thing' really means, well, you can only discover that through experience with it.
Analyzing the Chinese text, although it might be fun, is not going to help beyond a certain point.

:)

I digress... I believe is the other way around: we can only go so far using translations... :)
 

Sparhawk

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Charly,

The Kangxi editors made a layered book. Any confucian wrote the book from the begining, any confucian pretend having done this. All of them presented the core text as a very earlier book.They never pretend to amend this book, only to comment it.

How do you know this with any certainty?

Charly said:
But nobody challenged the old book. We have the right to read this book, and to know what it says, not what we are told that it says.

How do we know we are holding and unchallenged 'old book'?
...

Charly said:
Are you shure that the KangXi edition has all the little funny circles? If I remember well, I have seen bookprints from KangXi times without any punctuation mark. I'm not sure.

I have a copy of the Kangxi edition (a modern reprint of more than a thousand pages) and they even replaced the cute circles with 'commas and periods'... :eek: So, the parsing was done, as presented, both in the Kangxi Edition and, by default, in the H-Y.

Charly said:
For moving a dot the sky doesn't go to fall over your head. Worse things has been made with the YI.

That wasn't my argument, Charly... We can play all we want and move commas and periods around and have fun with it. What we should not do is to impart such games any sort of brainy authority for which we are not fully qualified to attest.

Un abrazo,
 

dobro p

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For some odd reason, I still think the "libertine" adjective applies to you (in a good way, of course).

Actually I'm not so much a libertine as a knee-jerk rebel ('don't tell ME what to do').

I don't believe that a lack of an "ideal and/or universal" translation is due to any issue of proper text structure or parsing but us not been able to properly wrap our minds around its real meaning in a digestible and communicable way for others to share alike.

I agree. But I also think that if you can come up with good reasons and a tight argument for parsing it this way rather than that way, or translating a term this way rather than that way, that it should at least be considered as a possible way of viewing it, if not actually accepted. One reason I feel I have the legitimate right to alter 'standard' parsing if I can show that it fits and has real meaning is because of something Brad said once in answer to a question I put to him about parsing and punctuation - as I recall, he said something like 'there is no single definitive parsing of the original Zhou oracle'. (So you see, it's all Brad's fault. Take it up with him. :)) Now, I don't think that gives anybody the license to parse it however they want to. But if you can make a good case for parsing it differently than the H-Y version, then I think it should be taken seriously.

(Side note: I think that idea that occurred to me about Hex 2 is one of those 'good cases'. I think it hangs together well, and I think it makes more sense than the way it's parsed in the H-Y version. And if you want to return to that thread and discuss it like the gentlemen we are, I'll demonstrate a level of refinement and taste not often seen on this board.) :cool:
 
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Sparhawk

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if I can show that it fits and has real meaning is because of something Brad said once in answer to a question I put to him about parsing and punctuation - as I recall, he said something like 'there is no single definitive parsing of the original Zhou oracle'. (So you see, it's all Brad's fault. Take it up with him. :)) Now, I don't think that gives anybody the license to parse it however they want to. But if you can make a good case for parsing it differently than the H-Y version, then I think it should be taken seriously.

See, I also agree with what Brad said. I'm just breaking a lance for the judgment and vision of the Kangxi Emperor and his army of court diviners. My point being that I cannot presume, in all honesty, to know better than they did and accommodate things around so that the text makes more sense to me.

Dobro said:
(Side note: I think that idea that occurred to me about Hex 2 is one of those 'good cases'. I think it hangs together well, and I think it makes more sense than the way it's parsed in the H-Y version. And if you want to return to that thread and discuss it like the gentlemen we are, I'll demonstrate a level of refinement and taste not often seen on this board.)

Sure, why not. Besides, you are too far away to slap you in the face with my steel gauntlet (or for you to insert a dirk between my ribs)... :rofl:
 

hilary

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So what is 38.3 all about then.
Now that's a valiant post.

'Seeing the cart dragged back,
The oxen stopped
Your men shaved and their noses cut off
With no beginning, there is an end.'

(Or some other form of words to that effect... ;) )

Important word in this hexagram: Seeing. Or maybe 'See!', an imperative. Perhaps you're invited to envisage a future where this could happen, or see how it's happening already.

What's happening is literally that your progress is stopped and you're disgraced, criminalised, maybe because of what your associates have done. I remember one reading where that was a very precise description - though normally I'd expect it to describe a more general sense of being stopped and humiliated/disgraced/injured.

I normally find it easier to remember lines through their associations with the zhi gua. This one points to hexagram 14, which makes this unusually tricky. Still... I'd see it as having something great in mind - maybe a co-operative venture, in the spirit of 14, maybe something like the prince in 14.3. You are rich in resources and ideas (after all, you come from 37.4), and set out accordingly with your cart, oxen and men. Since you're in a time and place of 38, when small affairs do better (provoking less reaction from those who see differently from you), this does not get off to a good start. However, you can still carry it through.

Another memory-cue: this is the third line, so you are just setting out to travel from inside to outside. In a hexagram for seeing differently and divining for the coming week, naturally you should be imagining what you might encounter out there.
 

Trojina

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Whatever the Chinese, Confucians or not, wrote about the hexagrams and lines, it's only their interpretation and their (necessarily imperfect) wording of the meaning of the hexagrams and lines.
So it's okay to try to discover what they actually wrote, but it's not holy bible, isn't it?

The word, the name, Chinese or English, is not the thing, the hexagram or the line.
If you want to know what the 'thing' really means, well, you can only discover that through experience with it.
Analyzing the Chinese text, although it might be fun, is not going to help beyond a certain point.

:)

Amen :bows: but i see to an extent Luis point you can only go so far with some translations too

If Rosada were here she might point out we have here (possibly) in the conversation between Luis and Martin, 38 exemplified. I have always seen this big split here between scholars who analyse words but never really want to say much about practical application of meaning, and non scholars who know nothing about Chinese but have alot to say about how they perceive meanings. I tend to feel us who have alot to say about meanings and don't know anything about Chinese are almost ;) looked down upon by the scholars though not in a nasty way, lol, more in a hexagram 10ish kind of way but also in a 38ish way. We are seeing things from a very different angle but dwell alongside one another more or less peacably because we don't actually cross paths much. So i can't argue much with Luis for example because I have to take his word on things I don't know much about -so i generally just talk to him about suspenders and so on. Thats really 38ish isn't it ?

Of course a few people do both things here, the scholarly bit and the practical applications like Hilary and others, but by and large there is a split isn't there ?

With Charlys unusual interpretive twists I just want to know has he applied these to his life or anyones life ? Like Martin said I think you can only travel so far with word play alone. Most long term users of the Yi have all sorts of memories, journals and records, whether formally recorded or not that have shown them how certain answers have played out in their lives. They may have been consulting for many many years. So when somone comes along and says actually 'a' doesn't mean 'a' it means 'b' because they have a chinese dictionary well it doesn't mean everything. I think its very interesting and we are very lucky to have the benefits of undertandings of those who have learned Chinese - but its strange it gets so polarised on these memorising threads. Its as if we talk at cross purposes - no not cross purposes - different agendas. Scholarly precision v how it feels to live it .
 
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Trojina

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Oh and thanks for sharing your ideas on 38.3 Hilary i thought there weren't going to be any. It looks painful somehow
 

Sparhawk

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If Rosada were here she might point out we have here (possibly) in the conversation between Luis and Martin, 38 exemplified. I have always seen this big split here between scholars who analyse words but never really want to say much about practical application of meaning, and non scholars who know nothing about Chinese but have alot to say about how they perceive meanings. I tend to feel us who have alot to say about meanings and don't know anything about Chinese are almost ;) looked down upon by the scholars though not in a nasty way, lol, more in a hexagram 10ish kind of way but also in a 38ish way. We are seeing things from a very different angle but dwell alongside one another more or less peacably because we don't actually cross paths much. So i can't argue much with Luis for example because I have to take his word on things I don't know much about -so i generally just talk to him about suspenders and so on. Thats really 38ish isn't it ?

Of course a few people do both things here, the scholarly bit and the practical applications like Hilary and others, but by and large there is a split isn't there?


Oh my... Although flattering, please don't put the "scholar" hat on my head. I have no credentials other than what's available to all: books to read and form an educated opinion. As for Martin and me, we've only exchanged two posts here in a very civilized manner... :D I've been sparring with Charly for quite a few posts and then Dobro... (who remains as much a mystery to me as the first time I read his posts... :D)

I see no split here, otherwise, if I considered myself a "scholar", I would keep my peace and snicker privately at whatever crossed my screen as wrong or misguided. I believe I have a long record of messages saying, even when I occasionally disagree, that I want to get closer to others as opposed to distancing myself in an arrogant attitude.

But, you pose a interesting issue that deserves to be discussed: the number of interpretive opinions I, and others that share my "reading habits", may have to share in comparison to "non scholars who know nothing about Chinese but have alot to say about how they perceive meanings". (your words and "scholars" being a misnomer in the context of a public forum like this one, IMO)

My very personal opinion on this matter is that "perceived meaning" is like:
dali02.jpg

and historical, philological, semantical (add appropriate prefix to more "-al's" here) meaning is more like:
Storck%2C_Four_Days_Battle.jpg


While "perceived meaning" can be very abstract and travel different paths in our minds, the other "meanings" can be very concrete and focused and disagreements in those areas are on more solid ground than the others.

I'm also of the opinion that, even though the push of "perceived meaning" and "interpretive opinion" discussions is to reach some kind "generic consensus" and "package" said consensus for others, perhaps newbies, to consume, and although I DO have lots of "interpretive opinions", I came to the conclusion, long ago, that context is everything. No matter how good we are in our efforts, our personal conclusions and interpretations are shifty, mutating beings that run through our fingers like water. Even in our own personal queries to the oracle we seem to avoid rigidity of opinion and "standard" interpretations, so, why impose rigidity on others when we shun it ourselves? So yes, I do have a tendency to keep those to myself, for the reasons I share here. However, that has nothing to do with my "reading habits" but being pragmatic on the issue of shared interpretations. I also believe the "use" of the Yi, as opposed to the background study of the wealth of material available about it, is a personal and private journey.
 

Sparhawk

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BTW, Trojan, that may be your perception, but, personally, I've never looked down on anybody or even feel I have to. There are all kinds of areas of discussion regarding the Yi; that I prefer some and not others is no reflection of my knowledge (or lack thereof...) but a matter of personal taste and based on what I explained above... :)
 

Sparhawk

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Important word in this hexagram: Seeing. Or maybe 'See!', an imperative. Perhaps you're invited to envisage a future where this could happen, or see how it's happening already.

What's happening is literally that your progress is stopped and you're disgraced, criminalised, maybe because of what your associates have done. I remember one reading where that was a very precise description - though normally I'd expect it to describe a more general sense of being stopped and humiliated/disgraced/injured.

I have to agree with most of it, generally speaking. Also, and the reason I pointed to the discussion between Bernie and Harmen the other day, we should consider the remote possibility of the character being used instead of . I think the possibility adds some interesting dimensions to the reading of this line.
 

hilary

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Sparhawk said:
context is everything. No matter how good we are in our efforts, our personal conclusions and interpretations are shifty, mutating beings that run through our fingers like water.
Absolutely. And that becomes even clearer when you're reading for different people. I had the good fortune to interpret the same set of hexagrams and lines twice within a week of one another, for different people, on utterly unrelated subjects. And no, the reading was not recyclable - every relationship within it (between hexagrams, lines, line pathways, you name it) took on new meaning.

So I'm relieved that you only agree with most of my ideas on 38.3, generally speaking.

Your dragon was winking at me the other day. Now it appears to be asleep. I'm not sure whether to feel more secure.
 

Sparhawk

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Your dragon was winking at me the other day. Now it appears to be asleep. I'm not sure whether to feel more secure.


He's alive, I tell you. You may not be a virgin (ermm, stepping out of boundaries here... :rofl:) but you are still a damsel. Dragons love damsels... You are safe. :D
 

Sparhawk

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So I'm relieved that you only agree with most of my ideas on 38.3, generally speaking.

See, the "generally speaking" is a just disclaimer a lawyer would love... Never closes a door... :rofl:
 

Trojina

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I'm also of the opinion that, even though the push of "perceived meaning" and "interpretive opinion" discussions is to reach some kind "generic consensus" and "package" said consensus for others, perhaps newbies, to consume, and although I DO have lots of "interpretive opinions", I came to the conclusion, long ago, that context is everything. No matter how good we are in our efforts, our personal conclusions and interpretations are shifty, mutating beings that run through our fingers like water. Even in our own personal queries to the oracle we seem to avoid rigidity of opinion and "standard" interpretations, so, why impose rigidity on others when we shun it ourselves? .

Well i think we rarely do reach any kind of consensus so I don't see that much rigidity. I agree yes context is everything.

About the other stuff, yes I wasn't implying any kind of divisive split, I was writing partly tongue in cheek and picked out your and Martins conversation as illustrative (for me) of a kind of division I see here. I don't see that division as a problem - infact division is the wrong word becuase its not devisive just a different way of looking at the same thing - the Yi. And this being hex 38 thread i felt it approriate (for me) to express my thought here. :)

(Oh BTW i don't use 'scholar' as a flattering term but just to designate a type of approach)
 
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martin

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Wow, nice paintings, Luis. I know the first one, not the second though. But wait, Dutch flags, these are Dutch warships? :)
Anyway, the second painting, with the ships, is still only a painting, an image of what happened, not what actually happened.
That was what I was trying to say about the Yi. However original the text, it is already interpretation. Or commentary if you like. It says what the authors saw in the hexagrams and lines. There is a subjective element there and apart from that, nobody can be completely accurate when he or she tries to translate perceived meanings into words.

So the 'original' text is, in a way, not only already interpretation or commentary, it is also already translation!
In other words, the text is not so original or factual as it may seem to be.
That doesn't mean that the text is useless, of course, or that we can do without it. But when we get into discussions about this or that character and that it is really character A and not B and so on and so forth we are on thin ice, imo. Because, who knows, maybe THEY used the wrong character, maybe they were inaccurate!

38? Well, only if the (imo after all not so) original text is taken as bible and I don't remember that you ever did that. And I agree with what you said about context.
But if you ever become fundamentalistic .. well, then I will tell your dragon that he shouldn't allow any virgins to come near you anymore. :mischief:
Your future will be bleak, Luis. :rofl:
 
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luz

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Dutch war ships? :rolleyes:

If they are Dutch, don't you think they must be Pirate ships? :D
 

Sparhawk

One of those men your mother warned you about...
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Thin ice, indeed, but we were on it the moment we stepped into the realm of Yi... :D Should we chuck the text and work only with the images?
 

Sparhawk

One of those men your mother warned you about...
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Nine in the fourth place means:
Isolated through opposition,
One meets a like-minded man
With whom one can associate in good faith.
Despite the danger, no blame.

九四 睽孤。遇元夫。交孚。厲旡咎。
jiu3 si4 kui2 gu1 yu4 yuan2 fu1 jiao1 fu2 li4 wu2 jiu4
If a man finds himself in a company of people from whom he is separated by an inner opposition, he becomes isolated. But if in such a situation a man meets someone who fundamentally by the very law of his being, is kin to him, and whom he can trust completely, he overcomes all the dangers of isolation. His will achieves its aim, and he becomes free of faults.​
 

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