Two pieces of excellent news for ‘Yi people’:
Steve Marshall is updating his blog again at http://www.biroco.com/journal.htm. On April 2nd (scroll down!) he wrote about hexagram 25, line 2 – something I’ve been wondering and speculating on for years.
‘A cup, a drink, and a plate,
Using earthenware,
Letting them in on ropes from the window.
In the end, no mistake.’
Someone is confined in the Pit – someone reaches them in simple ways. I’ve seen this often enough as advice on how to keep a relationship alive through impossible times… the connection always felt like the one ray of light. But now I have a reading that makes me see an alternative perspective.
Nelson commented on the ‘Kinder I Ching’ page: “Aren’t you all confusing various ‘interpretations’ with a ‘translation’?”
Well – yes, we are. But then they are already inextricably confused.
Yes, occasionally there are good reasons for asking Yi the same question again.
But here is what usually happens with repeated questions:
ICC: Light on the Dark Bird Freeman Crouch, he of the remarkable Chameleon Book, has revived this topic. Light is being cast on the character and the trials of Jizi.
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.
There is an old Chinese story – I haven’t been able to find out for sure where it comes from or how old it really is (anyone?) – known as Sai Weng shi ma: the old man of the border loses his horse. You probably know it…
The old man has a horse and a son, and the neighbours think him very fortunate. Then one day his horse runs away, and the neighbours commiserate. ‘What bad luck!’ they say. ‘Maybe,’ says he.
