Playing with Hx 4

[cheiron]

Anyone wanna play with this one with me?

Meng Youthful Folly ? A much maligned Hx. I think!

This Hx. has two very distinct meanings.

We all know the ?Confucian? version ? The image of a foolish seeker bothering the sage. Which can of course be advice on how to deal with a foolish person as well as a rap on the knuckles from the Yi when we are being foolish.

I have had this hexagram many times for the above and many times for another meaning too:

Lower trigram a stream ushering forth from under a mountain ? A spring or new beginning. Oh, how Ilove those times of finding that new path that new beginning.

So here I am going to play with it a little and see what I can find using different approaches.

If you wanna play ? then post away ? I am doing this in split posts ? Starting with a good look at the name and the original figure.

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

--Kevin

[rhett]

Hi Kevin,

Another view of Meng is in its pictorial image from the various character elements present in its name. It fun to play with these images and find other instances in literature that resonate with them. In Homer?s classic, The Odyssey, the imagery of the Chinese picture character for Meng--a boar beneath a woody covering--is beautifully evoked when the youthful Prince Odysseus is hunting a boar hunt in a wooded mountain glen...

?Odysseus out in front now, pressing the dogs, brandishing high his spear with its long shadow waving. Then and there a great boar lay in wait, in a thicket lair so dense that the sodden gusty winds could never pierce it, nor could the sun's sharp rays invade its depths nor a downpour drench it through and through, so dense, so dark, and piled with fallen leaves.?

The encounter with this boar was a seminal event for Odysseus, for the scar he received, later was proof to Penelope his wife and others that he was who he said he was when he finally found his way home at the conclusion of the Odyssey.

Enjoy,

Rhett

[cheiron]

Hi Rhett

Nice one

Checked out your website - guess you found Honolulu second time round right?

Meng! ;)

Loved your post

Cheers

--Kevin

[cheiron]

The Name ? Meng

Ritserma Karcher 1994 give (amongst others) ?Meng? as meaning Cover, pull over, over, hide, conceal, clouded awareness, ignorance, immaturity, UNSEEN BEGINNINGS.
A plant covered ? unseen growth [under the soil)]

Alfred Huang 1998 gives:

?Originally it was the name of a twining plant known as dodder, which grows easily and spreads everywhere. The ancients saw dodder growing and spreading on the roofs of huts and so created the ideograph of
Meng covering the roof of a house. Later on Meng came to mean covering??

He goes on to say that Meng was extended to include Wisdom. That the nature of children is like uncarved Jade? its brilliance is hidden. Children were referred to as Tong Men (The person whose brilliance is hidden or not yet uncovered.

Finally he refers to the image of the lower hex. Water under Mountain symbolising pure transparent water, not yet sullied with sediment? the pureness of a child?s mind.

LiSe
http://www.anton-heyboer.org/i_ching/hex_1-16/hex_e_04.htm
Makes references similar to Huang but adds that the word can also mean to cheat or deceive.

Her explanation of the ideogram is of a pig in a house covered in dodder. I seem to remember pigs were meant to be representative of bright intelligence.

Already we might have more than the folly of youth? but perhaps something leading toward the side of hidden potential a beginning.

Next I am going to have a look at this Hx. as a pair with Hx03

--Kevin

Rhett ? Was Odysseus perhaps wounded by some unseen intelligence, knowledge, or insight which took him by some surprise? ? Not sure how far one can push Greek symbolism.

[hilary]

Rhett! Hello!

Kevin - Rhett is hiding his boar under a bushel here. Have you seen his Yijing poetry site (http://www.iris.iris.edu/rhett/hi/index.html)? You should.

[portakal]

Kevin,
Pardon my lack of imagination.
What is hex 4 ? 62 (1.) by 55.

I believe it says, "hex 4 is fully the Preponderance of the Small" a warning.

Because:
a) The image of the upper trigram, Kên, is the mountain, that of the big,
b) the spring rising at the foot of the mountain, the image of inexperienced youth, that of the small.

[cheiron]

Great

http://www.iris.iris.edu/rhett/hi/

Hi Rhett

--Kevin

[cheiron]

Hi Portakal

Yup, That reading sums it up pretty well for me.

?A time of 'small having' which has not yet really begun but which could lead to Abundance and fertile profusion??

I suppose I should be saying that my experience of the Yijing is that it is a communications method between me and (fill in the blank).

Like all languages one can move beyond the simple statement and find a more complex set of communication images.

Again staying with my own experience? I find the more complex my understanding of the image the more articulate the communications become.

This is my assumption of the value of moving away from the text, for a moment, to take a different view.

But take a look at that upper trigram ?big? Ken? Mountain. It is in the North East? at a time before spring has begun? balanced perfectly between the Bright and the Dark it is the boundary and end stop. The next trigram is Thunder or Shake? the stirring up of things in the spring.

So our young spring is issuing forth from the balance point between the end of one year and the beginning of the next cycle.

This is why I call it ?playing with Hx. 4?

--Kevin

[dobro]

Hi Cheiron

I've never been able to decide if 4 was more 'ignorance' or 'inexperience'. I've never been able to decide if the reason I can't decide is more because of my ignorance, or my inexperience.

For instance, you can 'know' what an orgasm is - a convulsion of the parasympathetic nervous system - but that still isn't the same as having actually experienced an orgasm. (At least, that's what I've been told...)

Anyway, because 4's paired with 3, the meaning of 4 is probably more along the lines of inexperience, which is more in line with youth and beginnings.

[cheiron]

Chuckles Dobro

Was writing this when your post came up? Hey that?s the punchline! http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

Yup, I would rather experience one than intellectualise about it!

Guess what I am doing here is to try and open up images rather than tie the hexagram down? Agree with your view. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

?Meng in sequence?

After the pair of Hx.1 and Hx.2 The bright creative spark and the dark gestating womb came their progeny? Hx.3 The Sprouting seed. And Hx.4 the Immature being or time.

Hx.3 is the reverse of Hx.4 it is Water over Thunder? or the arousing power (coming out of the egg) rising through K?an ? Difficult times of labour and toil.

Thoughts? Rice pushing up through water in the paddy?

The growing child in the watery womb?

The nuclear Hx. for 3, the potential, is Splitting Apart? One is tempted to think of birth (physical) and birth Spiritual. The latter being the separation from the first creative/gustative energy.

Hx.3 sits as a pair with young Meng who follows and sheds some more light on its nature and time.

I?ve already mentioned the trigrams inHx.4 ? So what about looking at the inner Hx?

--Kevin

[bradford_h]

Hi all-
(and Rhett- I didn't know you were lurking here- howdy.)
Just sharing my glossary entry for Meng2:
I lean towards "inexperience" for the primary Y meaning

meng2 4437 1181a 140+10 04.0 (a, the) inexperience, immaturity, innocence, darkness, obscurity, cover, ignorance, insensibility, foolishness, deception, folly, stupidity, fool, halfwit, (tangled, untrained) green vines; (to) cover, conceal, hide, cheat, dupe, deceive, darken, stun, receive, suffer, undergo (s, ed, ing); (to be) inexperienced, uncultivated, rudimentary, rude, crude; passive, subjected to; entangled, obscure, immature, young, ignorant, foolish, dull, green, blind, in the dark, darkened, enveloped, uninformed, shrouded, unenlightened, unconscious, insensible, foolish; the small of a thing; go with covered eyes

[cheiron]

Hi Brad

Ermmm... Well that surely openned it up! Lol

Do you have any experience of this HX. representing Entanglement; hide; dupe;decieve;obscure?

--Kevin

[portakal]

62.1: "At first we ought to put up with traditional ways as long as possible; otherwise we exhaust ourselves and our energy and still achieve nothing."

I am totally open to any idea free, sincere, unhypocritical, unmilitantly scholar and unknowing-all about anything.

If you mean "Yijing is ...is a communications method between me and (fill in the blank)." dont get in between, that's okay, i did not intend to anyway.

If not, in MY experience, meeting the wood (wind) up and fire down first time, i saw a fire in the woods in my mind but the text says it is a caldron !

However, if the "book" is indicating (emphasizing)the change, then the small is nothing but the emryo of the big, thus, i agree with you.

[rhett]

Hi Hilary, Bradford, and my many Yi friends,

I joined Clarity some time ago, but have been in a 'Receptive' mood. Spring is now in the air here in Washington, my current abode, and change is coming.

Last weekend, I saw the 'Tun', that first blossom of spring. It is a moment beyond poetic expression.

Meng appears in Hermann Hesse?s classic, Das Glasperlenspie (The Glass Bead Game). The youthful Joseph Knecht, the future Game Master, is introduced to Chinese thought by Elder Brother, who consults the Yi Jing with yarrow stalks on Knecht?s request to study with him as his disciple.

?The sage sat crosslegged on the floor of reed matting, for a long time silently examining the result of the augury on the sheet of paper. ?It is the sign Meng,? he said. ?This sign bears the name: youthful folly. Above the mountain, below the water; above Gan, below Kan. At the foot of the mountain a spring bubbles forth, the symbol of youth.??

Das Glasperlenspiel, which was published in 1943, is the earliest instance of the Yi that I know of in western literature (a novel or story). Does anyone of an earlier instance?

Rhett

[cheiron]

Hi Portakal

No, I did not mean "don't but in" Your post taght me something and was well received.

I was keeping my statements small - that is only talking from my experience and avoiding trying to state global truths.

Yes I see what you mean, "62.1: "At first we ought to put up with traditional ways as long as possible; otherwise we exhaust ourselves and our energy and still achieve nothing." ...But haven't you changed the question here? ;)

I guess it could be exhausting... and without the 'Book' there is a danger of creating something which bears little resemblance to that text which many wise people eventually began to settle on.

The other view is that images such as your fire above wood can also give us an evocative image which we can relate back to the concept of a Cauldron... So that one might see fire feeding off wood giving clarity...Does that add to our understanding of the nature of the Cauldron / Ting?

I don't think there are right or wrongs here... I suspect that there are as many ways to work with the Yijing as there are people.

Peace

--Kevin

[portakal]

"I don't think there are right or wrongs here... I suspect that there are as many ways to work with the Yijing as there are people."

Especially and spectacularly so if we are talking to our retreated selves.

Thank you.

p.s. I have come to know so many ppl who have passed so many years expertising ! on certain fields in my life that are empty and legs upside down... So intuition and ability, evocating images not "books" - "essays" -"articles" here.

[cheiron]

Portakal

I will not trade implicit insults with you.

You seem to need to keep your one position? Though of which particular version of the Yi Jing 'Book' you refer, I am unsure.

I cite analytic psychology as a proven method of understanding and Stephen Karcher as an authority on this approach to the Yi Jing. It is also a traditional approach which you will find represented in the Xiangzhuan.

As before I get the impression that you did not consider my last words much... so be it.

I answered my view in relation to yours... if you still don't like my view... tough... you are welcome to differ? Preferably without insult which henceforth I shall ignore.

--Kevin

[bradford_h]

Hi Kevin-
More to be duped or deceived, a perpetuator, not a perpetrator.

The vines (picture Kudzu) are "all over the place".

A poet friend (named Laura Moore) puts it:
"We were small then, slow leaks in the universe,
the whispers faint, our laughter loud"

Interestingly (to us nerds) there is a parallel here with the brain of young hominids. The prewiring is a whole lot more extensive than what the brain gets pruned into later. Even much of the hardwired structure is developed by experience.
So I see obscure mostly in the sense of unfocused, as with attention deficits. The wild energy needs training and self-discipline.
There's also a strong theme about developing one's methods of inquiry, of learning how to learn, which in turn involves finding hidden relevance and deferring gratification. The hunger is there already, and takes something awful to stop it (like the public education system). All of these themes come up in the lines. So does failure to find any focus or purpose.

[portakal]

There were no implicit/ explicit insults to you..
You must have thoroughly misunderstood me...or i have not been able (misjudged ny sentences) to be clear.
Funny, but i was busy trying to prove your way of understanding, evocating images bettering any books on the yijin also meaning playing - freely associating may be the best way to see through any realm.
Oh my !

[bradford_h]

Hey Rhett-
If you're not gonna post a link to your "Higher Reaching" site (fun title btw) people are gonna have to go to the first part of my links section to find it.
b

[cheiron]

Portakal

I appologise for misunderstanding you.

Embarassed

--Kevin

[cheiron]

Brad

Thanks - I've never seen that before - makes sense.

You gonna help with the lines?

I was going to play with Zhi Gua and Fan Yao there ;) - Throws up some interesting things eh?

Tempted? or are you gonna let the student put his foot in it? lol

All the best

--Kevin

[val]

changed the image... found some airbrushing outside the border... ooops. see below

[cheiron]

Val

Eccentric one of the far West - Hi - good to see ya http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

Will I ever understand your commings and goings? LOL

--Kevin

[rhett]

Hi Bradford,

I have not added to my site in some time, but for those interested, here is the link to my highereaching (http://www.iris.iris.edu/rhett/hi) site.

Enjoy,

Rhett

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/messages/6331/1750.gif

[rhett]

Val,

Mahalo nui loa for my first Internet shaka!

\m/ Rhett

[val]

<CENTER>http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/messages/6331/1751.gif</CENTER>

[val]

Rhett...

hey you one lolo haole standing in the snow at the South Pole in your short sleeve Hawaiian shirt.

I love it!

I'm not through with you yet! I've still got Photoshop open, I've got a digitizer tablet... and I know how to use it... muhahahahaha

Kevin...

lolo = eccentric... *grin*

Love,

Val

[chrislofting]

IC+

Hex 04:

from/with containtment (water in lower) comes discernment (mountain in upper)

socialisation means the learning of a particular set of qualities with which to interpret reality and share those interpretations with others.

the containment introduces a degree of 'negativity' in the restriction of self-expression.

Water doubled reflect control (hex 29 with/from containment comes control)

Discernment reflects the refinement of self-restraint (mountain in lower position)

hex 52 - with/from self-restraint comes discernment.

BOTH trigrams in 04 reflect 'egalitarian' forces and so a social bias( but with the top trigram 'out of place' - the discernment is thus IDEALISED and so can become extreme over time)

The general form of water is linked by IDM to the MBTI concept of conservators/protectors (XSFJ) - IOW the act of socialisation serves to conserve the social history, to protect and overall reduces to the focus on security-seeking.

Chris.

[bradford_h]

Here's an anecdote that might relate to 04.6 (smiting the halfwit). The facts may need some correction.
About ten yeas ago there was an incident in Singapore (?) involving a young American who was caught vandalizing cars. He was found guilty and the punisment was to be five whacks across the butt with a cane. Some blood would likely be shed. It seemed at the time like the majority of Americans were outraged at the thought. The media, of course, played to those without lives of their own.
Well, my ladyfriend at the time was sort of a "dangerous minds" inner city high school teacher. She taught social studies and, amazingly, pychology. Anyway, more than half of her kids were gang members. One tough bunch. So, she decided to do a poll, secret ballot, and ask what the kids thought of this social problem. The results were intriguing - 32 out of 33 kids supported the foreign government and the punishment.
Several things might be made out of this, but for myself I saw a serious need in these kids for clearer boundaries and high ethical standards.
The Zhi Gua for 04.6 is the Militia, and the Fan Yao: the seasoned noble assumes the mandate.... Lesser people will not be used. Anyway, I think they were willing to acknowledge a degree of seriousness and severity to this need. And I don't think their attitude was about vengeance or bloodlust - I think they were looking for something that, per 04.6, could prevent transgression, or something than could not be transgressed.

[tashij]

Hex 4 is the first place in the sequence where the Yi speaks of itself. "Not that I seek the..." it is a rather startling voice.

The voice repeated in 27.1. Also startling.

The oracle announces it's own presence. The mountain speaks. Could the small spring at the base of the mountain could be where invocations are initiated?

[dharma]

i've been following this thread trying to make sense of hx4 but there is a lot of talk that seems to focus on the historical aspect that just goes above my head. except for one of Bradford's posts that seemed to point to the lines as containing the clues, i haven't been able to grasp much. so, i sat with my books for a few hours and here is my 2 cents worth of understanding...

it is my hope that those experienced among you will come forward and mark my homework http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

.....

Hx4:
an inexperienced person or an unripe situation - both require a period of maturation and are instructed to develop objectivity and be prudent through measured self-discipline

1- the first line cautions one of the trap inherent in the maturation process - taking care that your experiences don't degenerate into dogmatic self-righteousness

2- the second line orients one to the facts - that all worthy achievements and understandings are directly borne out of specific application, consistent practice, and personal experience

3- the third line warns one that merely imitating others and following in their footsteps is a false pretense at experience - it is simply not enough to conform and be like others

4- the fourth line alerts one to the risk at taking on more than one is really prepared to handle - recognize your limits; overconfidence in your abilities is a mistake that can cost you dearly

5- the fifth line advises one to be realistic and accept oneself - admitting ignorance, being flexible and accepting advice, serves the maturation process by leaps and bounds

6- the sixth line counsels one to not lose faith - failures, loss and reaching wrong conclusions due to inexperience, should not be regarded in a negative light. these should be taken as lessons that encourage us to prevent future mistakes

[cheiron]

Thanks for helping me with my homework!

I chose this Hx. as an exercise to try to get my head thoroughly inside a hexagram which fitted Stephen Karcher?s idea of progressive change with no transformative change whatsoever.

That is that this Hx. rotated by 180 deg. Forms the other hexagram in its pair? Hx.3.

Readers of Karcher will know that he proposes that these pairs are about smooth progressive change as oppose to those which form pairs when each line becomes it?s opposite? as in 1:2 for example which he proposes is a ?transformative change?. A change where one ?passes through a gate? and somehow life is not quite the same.

These main transformative pairs are 1:2 27:28 29:30 and 61:62) They fall at key points in the YiJing? beginning the end of the upper Cannon and the end of the YiJing before the ?Great Revolving Door?of 63:64.

There are hexagrams where a line(s) might lead to a transformative pair? That is that there are perhaps windows for this type of change.

Also there are some interesting ones (11:12 17:18 and 63:64) which are both transformative and progressive? (rotating them or changing the lines to their opposite gives the second Hx. in the pair). I wonder does the nature of the change depend on the nature of the time or ones approach to it? Or both?

I?ve been chasing Dragons and stalking Tigers through the Yijing for a couple of weeks now? (Hx.10 always shows up somewhere whenever there is transformative change? the Transforming Tiger who stalks the Yijing)

Look what happens in 10.3 ? Treading on the tail of the Tiger? ZAP! ? The Dragon appears!? That naughty big kitty ? Its fairly well hidden in the undergrowth of 10 too!

So to the cries of What the?

And

Pah!

I thank folk for the help and will try to get that 61:62 (transformative hx.) sorted out.

Any views?

--Kevin


http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/messages/6331/1824.jpg

[cheiron]

Afterthought

These ideas are not my own? I am following Stephen Karcher?s work from his ?Total I Ching?

So I offer my profound thanks to him for this jewel from that book.

--Kevin