I Ching Gets It Right! Feb 2020

Over a year ago, in February, Jim’s Book was ready to go and we had our first book reading at Chapter 1 Bookstore in Hamilton, Montana. It turns out the second one has not happened. The group had read the news, COVID was coming.

After reading a few passages, we did a group cast. Everyone wanted to know what was going to happen. We cast the coins and got:

____ ____

____ ____ Hexagram 24

____ ____ Return/Turning Point

____ ____

____ ____

__________

THE JUDGMENT

RETURN. Success

Going out and coming in without error.

Friends come without blame.

To and fro goes away. --- A lockdown in Montana was coming

On the seventh day comes return. --- This is the yin-yang cycle of the 6 line

It furthers to have somewhere to go. Hexagrams suggesting a return after a

cycle completes “return to normal” I suppose.

THE IMAGE

Thunder within the earth --- Bottom trigram Thunder

The image of THE TURNING POINT. inside Earth, top trigram

Thus the kings of antiquity closed the passes --- And so the new kings closed the passes

At the time of solstice.

Merchants and strangers did not go about, --- Got that right

And the ruler

Did not travel through the provinces

SIX AT THE TOP --- Been awhile. I think we got a changing line

Missing the return. Misfortune. if I remember right

Misfortune from within and without.

If the armies are set motion in this way,

One will in the end suffer a great defeat,

Disastrous for the ruler of the country.

For ten years. --- ten years = a long time

It will not be possible to attack again.

The Confucian commentary on this line is:

The misfortune in missing the return lies in opposing the way of the superior man.

I will leave it to the reader to contemplate this, especially the SIX AT THE TOP, as we are on the cusp of entering the next stage of a COVID-19 response.

Wilhelm Translation.

Rupert Spira Commentary on Nature

When I saw this it reminded by of Zhuangzi’s mind-bending chapter from the book named for him, Enjoyment in Untroubled Ease:

It was separation that led to completion; from completion ensued dissolution. But all things, without regard to their completion and dissolution, may again be comprehended in their unity;--it is only reaching beyond thought who know how to comprehend them in this unity.

This being so, let us give up our devotion to our own views, and occupy ourselves with the ordinary views. These ordinary views are grounded on the use of things. Realizing this, we are near to our goal, and there we stop. When we stop, and yet we do not know how it is so, we have what is called the Dao.

The Dao, Yin-Yang, Chi, and Synchronicity

The Dao (or Tao) is The Way or more concretely the path. The Daodejing (Tao te Ching), written in around 530 BC, attributed to Laozi (Lao Tzu) is considered the founding text for Daoism as a philosophy. The first verso of the Daodejing (Using Legge's and Muller's translation):

The Dao that can be trodden

is not the enduring and unchanging Dao.

The name that can be named

is not the enduring and unchanging name.

If we perceive it as having no name,

     it is the Originator of heaven and earth;

If we give it a name,

     it is the Mother of all things.

Always without desire

    we see the mystery,

But we desire,

   Only the outer fringe we shall see.

These two aspects, really the same;

  though we give it different names.

This sameness is the mystery,

A mystery within mystery;

The door to all marvels.

It is mysterious, but still, at least until we examine it. Then it becomes the Mother of all things. As the idea of Yin and Yang developed, it becomes the Mother of all things changing, in a Yin-Yang cycle, each according to its nature.

As the Yin-Yang of nature was observed and the Yin-Yang exhibited as a life-force, this was called Qi (Chi, Ch'i).​

---

This manifests itself in the Yin-Yang symbol, where the light, energetic, creative, force has a small dark dot, the potential within it for change. The dark, passive, receptive force which draws the light to it, to grow, but retains the light dot, the potential for the creative. This is the Law of Change manifests in the I Ching.

The unbroken, light, yang lines combined with the broken, dark, yin lines to make up the 8 Trigrams and 64 Hexagrams. As they interact and change, it becomes a model of the dynamics of the Universe and of human interactions

The Law of Change leads to what Carl Yung calls synchronicity. Things do affect each other, even when there is no apparent cause and effect relationship. So, when you cast the coins or manipulate the yarrow stalks, this idea of the Dao from which all things arise, yin-yang manifests itself, the cycles of nature work in synchronicity, it is said that you are participating in this very cycle as the coins fall and the stalks are laid down in carefully counted piles.