One of the things we Westerners need to learn when divining with the Yijing is a certain flexibility about gender. Women need to be able to identify with a series of male kings and heroes (Kings Wen and Wu, Yu the Great, King Hai…), to say nothing of finding a peaceful co-existence with the popular ‘superior man’ translation of junzi. And men need, on occasion, to be like a mare, or like a young girl marrying.
This might actually have been easier in traditional China; perhaps the importance of social hierarchy diluted the importance of gender, enabling men to relate imagery of ‘wife and husband’ fluently to their roles as ministers to the ruler. This doesn’t come so naturally to us – and even if it did, we need to find a larger and subtler understanding.
Take Hexagram 37, for instance:
‘People in the Home.
Harvest in a woman’s constancy.’
That’s an interesting challenge when it comes as advice to a man. What kind of ‘woman’s constancy’ can he develop? Stephen Karcher points the way in Total I Ching:
‘Profit and insight come through the woman and through a flexible, nourishing attitude. Dwell in the yin.’
If you follow this advice and look at the purest yin hexagram – 2, Earth – you can see how its qualities are the stuff relationships are built on. A woman’s constancy might be mare-like, swift and powerful but acutely responsive; it might be earth-like, providing a wide-open space for everything/everyone to grow into their own nature.
I came across another perspective on this one while reading about masculine and feminine ‘paradigms’ – and the idea of a ‘paradigm’ is not unrelated to the idea of zhen, constancy: divination, and the constancy of action that stays loyal to its insight.
The ‘masculine paradigm’ is characterised (or caricatured?) as competitive, win-lose, us-them: we can win while they lose. If we once realise that ‘they’ are actually us, we need a new paradigm. This is in the realm of Hexagram 37, People in the Home. People in the home are inside, Opposing (Hexagram 38) is outside, but are we quite sure where to draw the boundaries?
These two hexagrams stir up all kinds of questions about what you imagine you can leave outside – starting with the simple assertion of 37.1 that ‘With barriers, there is a home,’ culminating in the marriage story of 38.6, where you relax your defence of those barriers. (You finally release the tension in your bowstring as you recognise that the figures emerging from all your surreal visions are not robbers, but matrimonial allies. This is key: the people who approach from ‘outside’ are not coming to steal from you, but to increase you.)
People in the Home are inside; the woman’s right place (according to the commentary on the Judgement) is inside. With our ideas of ‘inside’ stretched (hopefully) by images of earth seen from space, what might a modern ‘woman’s constancy’ look like?
The biologist Joel de Rosnay wrote:
‘The masculine values were necessary to conquer the world. These are warlike values, adapted to the early stages of humanity. Women stayed at home. But in the 21st century, the world no longer needs to be conquered. It has become our home for all. And we need to give top priority to the values which will enable us to organize this home, in other words feminine values: the transmission of knowledge and practices… complementarity, intuition, a more holistic view of the interdependence of the various elements of a whole, harmonisation, coordination and synchronization.’
By sheer accident or design,this one has been a constant reading for me low these past 7 years; although I normally read it dumbly.I do however understand the manny faceted aspects of a relationship as you explicate #37.often i am able to c differences between my close spouse as lill biity differing desire systems.My theory is that commited couples constantly challenge false self when one boils down the bickering.Thanks for the affirmation and insight.P.S couples and all……..Its the arguments we get through which allows the trust for love to do its thing,In my attempt at an opinion.