An email from Quinn in New Zealand, about I Ching translations:
“I have been throwing the I-ching for years, My father taught me how, and I have to say I nearly drove myself crazy.
It’s almost unintelligible, sometimes I get the sense that by the time you understood it in its entirety you wouldn’t need it any more, and if you had the right view of things, you wouldn’t need it at all, or any oracle for that matter.
The Richard Wilhelm version is quite terrible for someone like me who is already quite self judgemental, and can make you feel really worthless. I know in a sense it’s your ego resisting, but would it not make more sense to write an interpretation of the hexagrams that would not fire up the ego, aggravating the problem, and would be compassionate of the fact that none of us can really expect to be truly enlightened. We do our best. I have read somewhere that the Willhelm version is strongly coloured by a Hell fire and brimstone type Christian Religosity.
I could go into this in more depth but I’m not even sure you’ll read this… but a book with the Wilhelm version and a few ways of looking at the hexagram, new commentaries, would be great.
I used to have a much ‘kinder’ version called “The dragon and tiger oracle, a woman’s integration of the i-ching”. Have also read other versions, new interpretations that were very judgemental and full of things like “why should things go according to your limited perceptions?” etc this can be a terrible thing to read if you are feeling terrible or depressed or in love etc…
How about “although things are not going the way you might wish, it is possible that there are aspects of the situation you are not seeing that might change your feelings about events”
Much more compassionate I think…
Does this make any sense? Do you know of any versions like this?
Cheers,
Quinn Shaw-Williams,
New Zealand.”
Thanks, Quinn, for the excellent question. It fits with things I’ve been thinking about of late, about the difference a translation can make to people’s perception.
First – I find the oracle is always compassionate to me, but not always kind. But then there are situations where what I need is not kindness, but a slap round the head: if I’m being death-defyingly stupid, I’d just as soon someone told me so. Sometimes when reading for other people I have wished Yi would beat round a few more bushes – but in fact I’ve found it only uses the brutally direct approach with people who can take it.
So I don’t think that a ‘softened’ version of the Yijing would be a help to anyone in the long run. On the other hand, ‘moralised’ versions are also less than helpful. So I think what you need is a version as open as possible to the oracle without added extras. (See my previous post on I Ching and business.)
Not that there can really be a version without ‘added extras’: certainly not for anyone less than fluent in ancient Chinese, and probably not even for them. Even in the words of the text, the translator’s personality and prejudices are bound to come through, and this is what the querent will hear as the oracle’s own ‘voice’. Is this about being the ‘superior man’? (Women, you understand, are just one of the things he has to learn to handle – see Wilhelm’s translation and commentary on 4, line 2) Or the ‘noble one’? The ‘noble young one’? The ‘wise disciple’? The ‘realising person’?
So how – short of becoming a Zhou diviner – to open the possibilities that translators’ agendas close off?
First and simplest, read from two books, as different as you can find, instead of just the one. Combine Wilhelm with Wu Jing Nuan or LiSe’s (as many do), or Balkin with Stephen Karcher’s Total I Ching.
(I’ve been trying to think, recently, about what I owe to Stephen’s work, and I realised that the biggest gift of the lot has become completely invisible to me. He has utterly deflated all these monolithic-morality-monster oracles. I think LiSe’s site has a similar effect. Either would be good places to go for a more compassionate reading that doesn’t bowdlerise the original.)
Another way is to find a version that is only half-translated, like the I Ching with concordance by Ritsema and Karcher. Or, online, Bradford Hatcher‘s ‘matrix’ version.
The oracular voice that’s freed from all this is truly ‘like a parent at one’s side’: that’s a direct quotation from the Dazhuan. It’s not necessarily ‘kind’, in the same way that a mother’s first priority as her toddler starts wandering into the road is not to be ‘kind’. It may be dark or frightening, or make me ashamed, but I never feel it stands in judgement over me. The Dazhuan says it best (and casts some doubt on rigid, hierarchical interpretations of line positions as it does so…):
‘Yi is a document that should not be set at a distance.
Its dao is ever-changing,
alternating and moving without rest,
flowing through the six vacant places,
moving up and down without rule.
Whole and broken lines change places,
with no consistent principle:
alternation is all that happens.
Going and coming within limits
gives warning without and within,
shedding light on trouble and its causes,
not as a guide or teacher,
but like a parent at one’s side.’
(Dazhuan II, 8, from Richard Rutt‘s translation)
This has been my experience with the kindness/compassion differentiation as well. I must belong in the camp of those that can take it, a hard head. (or is that thick!) Also, I notice the Yi to be FAIR. One time a group of friends deserted me when I was helping an ailing elderly man; I was shocked that they left me with a man who could have died. After he was in the hospital, I went to the Yi and complained, and got a sharp rebuke for not having been there for THEM when THEY went through something. Ouch. And on the other side, once a friend was VERY hard on me, and the Yi agreed that the friend was out of line, too harsh, but the Yi stood by her good qualities, in another reading designating her as a person one could go to in a conflict, hex 6 line 5.
Hilary,
absolutely fantastic.
Theodorus
Quinn said: “sometimes I get the sense that by the time you understood it in its entirety you wouldn’t need it any more, and if you had the right view of things, you wouldn’t need it at all, or any oracle for that matter.”
Actually, I think that is the point of the Yi. Wang Bi said “since the words are the means to express the images, once one gets the images, he forgets the words, and, since the images are the means to allow us to concentrate on the ideas, once one gets the ideas, he forgets the images.â€
‘Great person transforms as a tiger.
Even before the oracle signs, there is trust.’
Yes – oracles are for all those times when we’re less than tigers.
Thanks Hilary and all the best to the Yi community I could not agree more…The Yi is not a catechism it is a conversation in an old park in Pittsburgh on an overcast Sunday afternoon in late August with the Locusts buzzing away in the trees…Sitting on a weathered old park bench enjoy a safe and quiet time between two imperfect people.
aren’t you all confusing various ‘interpretations’ with a ‘translation’? this is not a distinction without a difference.
one of the reasons I like the Willhelm collection so much is that it seems a bit on the scholarly side and more ‘translation’ than ‘interpretation’.
it seems to me that the sage said what the sage said and that ‘interpretation’ on top of ‘translation’ can be risky and unreliable.
Thanks for the provocative comment, Nelson! As you can see, you’ve set me off again with a new post.
Hi Hilary,
Many who have been working with one translation for years often become confused when they see another translation which differs quite from theirs, but is more true to the original Chinese text. What to do? Still use your old book with which you were comfortable for all these years but which now has breaches in its outer layer of perfection? Or use the new translation which fits like new shoes – uncomfortable yet, but walking probably makes it better? If you choose the latter, how about all these years and the answers you got from your first book? Should the answers you got through all these years have been better if you used this new translation instead? Doubts arise.
But the problem is not the book, it is what you do with it. In the end it doesn’t really matter if the book you use is close to the original Yi or not. If you value the book, if it enriches your life, if you draw inspiration from it, if it helps you and you are not concerned about the Yi and its history and origin – then what does it matter if it is THE Yi or something entirely different? As an ordinary user you shouldn’t be bothered by questions about origin and originality – you should be selfish and think about your own concern only. If a new translation doesn’t give you what you need, and you have walked all possible ways to comprehend it, then stop punishing yourself and use what you are familiar with.
However, if it is important to you that you use a book which is as close to the original Yi as possible, in other words you want to use the Yi as an oracle and not any other book, then you will have to get used to using a new translation every now and then. You will have to learn to cope with doubts, and integrate them in your learning process.
“People who do not doubt simply have not devoted themselves to concrete practice. If they have concretely practiced, there must be some doubts. Something must be impractible, and that raises doubts. (…) The student must first of all know how to doubt. (…) Combine the internal and the external into one and regard things and the self as equal. This is the way to see the fundamenal point of the Way.”
– Jin-si Lu: ‘Reflections on things at hand’
Use doubt to your advantage. There is no difference between You and the book you use. After all, every book can be used as an oracle. What matters is how the book fits you. The Yi does not serve everybody.
Harmen.
Once again, I Ching, Bhagavad Gita, both ancient texts. World wide Universities recognise A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupadas’ versions as being the most authorised version, therefore they are the ones they stock mostly on their shelves for the students to read.
But go into any Cosmic book shop and there may be over a couple of thousand translations of the Bhagavad Gita. But in the core of my heart, I read so many of those different translations (despite my Gurudevs’ wishes) just to see if one of them came close to Prabhupadas. Guess what?
The World Universities are right. A million translations are not worht one original. I suppose with the I Ching for me, that would have to then be the Richard Wilhelm version that I first came by and its deep and metaphysical aspects. It was that that leaad me to study it so far and more deeply than if it had have just been a paperback novel version. I also think, with Prabhupadas’ Bhagavad Gita, most people sense that this book is the most paramount version and spiritually therefore makes it belong on the mantelpiece, or in some other equally special place. A novel version could just as easily find itself in a magazine rack on the loungeroom floor and it wouldn’t matter.
I also liked the idea of wrapping the I Ching in the white silk cloth in accordance with the method in the John Blofield version. With such awe and reverance, surely the Tao will speak to us freely and open up its’ answers, but to handle her roughly, or with disrespect its not surprising some people find no answers forthcoming from the well.
Although, I have found some great paperback I Ching versions which share the ‘top shelf’ but I don’t wrap them in silk. But I would never put them directly on the floor.
Nandalal
ADELAIDE / AUSTRALIA
This has turned into a very interesting thread.
With reference to the translation verses interpretation argument, I would say that given what little I know of the nature and origins of the chinese language, any translation from a pictographic, symbolic language, with many meanings atributable to any “word” or ideogram, into a comparatively linear and less flexible language like english, is going to be an interpretaion.
Therefore subject to all of the filters and belief systems of the “translator”.
What do you think?
In terms of moralism, there was one version I’ve read that Im thinking of which is particularly guilty of this. It was written by a nun and recomended to me by my uncle, it was very damaging for me really, in retrospect, at the time, and reffered often to all that seventies self flagelating “its your evil ego” crap. I was just a young man in love a girl who didnt love me, pretty normal really.
Anybody out there got such a large ego they think they can have no ego?
Anyways, the internal war this kind of thinking inspired had unhealthy results not least a lot of egotistical self obsession.
The Wilhelm version I believe is vastly superior to this version and others touted by zen trustafarians I have had the misfortune to encounter in my soul searching, but still subject to the interpretation of its author.
My point is, that any book, based on the I-ching should endeavour to raise consciousness. This is not achieved by a holier than thou tone, which is in itself egotistical, now, what is that passage about fighting evil, something like, ” evil when branded, takes to weapons”… pigs and fishes? The best way to combat evil is to actively seek the good… can’t remember off hand, and dont have a book with me, the upshot was that branding evil and attacking it only strengthens it, therefore anyone thinking to “translate” the i-ching or add interpretations which may one day find there way to book shelves, and therefore young searchers minds, would do well to
meditate on compassion.
Thanks everyone for you insightfull contributions…
Quinn
how imperfect can the two people be? isn’t that a cop-out, or a romanticized version that denies the possibility of one person being a user?
When you stray too far from the cards, it becomes a sham, a means to make them say anything you want to hear, a sorry way to lie to your yourself.