remo
August 23rd, 2002, 12:07 AM
A couple of recent posting raise, even if in different ways, one of the fundamental (I believe) question about the I Ching.
Is the same question that everyone asks me when I spoke about I Ching: "How does it works? How could a set of coins or stalks be related to my present or my future?"
Before I try to share with you my opinion on the subject, I would like to be sure that one thing is clear: I do respect every opinion or belief, I absolutely don't think I have the ultimate truth. I'm just a wanderer looking for a light.
I'm open to accept every comment on what I think.
Hilary said (apart from the real meaning of her phrase):
> if (and only if!) there is no power (God, spirit, cosmic order, call it/him/her
> what you will) who guides the fall of the coins and gives you a meaningful answer.
> [...]
> if there really was nothing more to it than arid, random chance [...]
I see here a deep dicotmy, the question looks like:
"There exists an entity that is physically able to turn each coin (stalk, dice, ...) in the exact position that is required to give me a meaningful answer OR everything is just a meaningless random event?"
Sincerely I have a lot of difficulties to answer to a question like this. In the first case we are asking for a (sort of) miracle (a suspension of everyday physical laws) every time we cast a hexagram, in the second case why are we here talking about it?
Having grown up in a roman catholic environment (like the vast majority of the italians) I would not dare to ask God for a miracle just to answer my questions. Yes, maybe in His infinite goodness He answers every time, without exceptions, but if this were the case I would prefer that His attention would not be distracted by my requests.
Personally, I don't think that there is "someone" or "something" that just suspends the laws of physics to give me an answer, exactly as he (or it) does not suspend the law of gravity when I have to move upstairs something very heavy.
To work around arguments like the ones above, there are theories that explain how the I Ching is related to our phenomenical world through some ontolgy that is different from the one underlying the physics (and the common "objecive" western thought).
I've tried, many many years ago, to understand some of them but I did not succeded. They looked to me too complex or too far away from my everyday life to be applicable.
I also do believe that there is no predefined "future" to foretell. I just cannot accept that everything is (more or less) predetermined, what about my "free will", then? What about my "freedom of choice"? So, generally, I'm not interested in the "future divination" methods.
If the only other option left is that everything is meaningless, why I'm writing this mail?
When someone asks me a question about "what's behind" I Ching, my usual answer is:
"I don't "why" or "how" it works, but it works!"
Of course, it depends on what "works" means: if you want to know exactly when there will be your next car accident (hopefully never!) so you can stay home, it could not work (even if I know of someone who claim it is possible).
Maybe a more interesting question would be:
"What's the effect of I Ching on you?" (It looks like the question on "lessons learned" that Hilary posed some time ago).
As I said before, I'm a wanderer looking for a light. To me "works" means to gain understanding of the moment I'm living in so to better explore the future implications.
The question I write down, the table, the coins, my hand who is throwing them, the way they fall, my eyes who are reading the response, my brain who's trying to understand the answer, everything HAS a meaning in that precise moment.
And the process of trying to have a meaningful answer becames the process of posing a meaningful question. The words "crossing the river" remaind me of aspects that I neglected at a first sight or warn me about the difficulties that I tried to minimize in my mind. Every sentence of the answer refines the question, because "a good answer is silver but a good question is gold" they say.
At the end, the lights are shed, the landscape is a little bit clearer, the mind a little bit more focused. It worked again!
Should I say that God is behind this? Yes, of course, He's behind everything why should I exclude Him? He may guide my feelings, enlight my mind. The coins are just a mean, exactly like everything else.
But what if I don't believe in God or any "non-physical" entity? Where is "statistics"? Why a random event should be related to my question?
From a statistical point of view, I know of studies that tried to prove that the distribution of hexagram casting is not uniform (i.e. hexagrams do not appear "at random") but none of them is conclusive and frankly I don't think that someone will ever prove that.
From this perspective every hexagram will appear "at random".
On the other hand if you measure the relevance of the answer with respect to the question you surprisingly will find that it is very very close to 100% (I would rather say it is 100% but let me have some doubt).
In this case there is no randomness at all!
It looks like a paradox.
No surprise: paradoxes appear everywhere when you try to separe what happens "outside" you (objectively) and "inside" you (subjectively).
Casting I Ching hexagrams is not something that happens objectively (measurable, governed by predictive laws, ...) or subjectively (unclear, discretionary, ...).
It is both and you have to take it or leave it. You may create your own justification (as I did here) or take someone else words to explain it but the basic fact is that he works.
By the way, one of the reasons I created my site on casting hexagrams is that I wanted a method that came both from my hand and from my mind. I felt much more confortable with my cards or my bead string than I ever was with stalks or coins. I hope that this could be useful for someone else.
Hopefully not too boresome.
Remo
Is the same question that everyone asks me when I spoke about I Ching: "How does it works? How could a set of coins or stalks be related to my present or my future?"
Before I try to share with you my opinion on the subject, I would like to be sure that one thing is clear: I do respect every opinion or belief, I absolutely don't think I have the ultimate truth. I'm just a wanderer looking for a light.
I'm open to accept every comment on what I think.
Hilary said (apart from the real meaning of her phrase):
> if (and only if!) there is no power (God, spirit, cosmic order, call it/him/her
> what you will) who guides the fall of the coins and gives you a meaningful answer.
> [...]
> if there really was nothing more to it than arid, random chance [...]
I see here a deep dicotmy, the question looks like:
"There exists an entity that is physically able to turn each coin (stalk, dice, ...) in the exact position that is required to give me a meaningful answer OR everything is just a meaningless random event?"
Sincerely I have a lot of difficulties to answer to a question like this. In the first case we are asking for a (sort of) miracle (a suspension of everyday physical laws) every time we cast a hexagram, in the second case why are we here talking about it?
Having grown up in a roman catholic environment (like the vast majority of the italians) I would not dare to ask God for a miracle just to answer my questions. Yes, maybe in His infinite goodness He answers every time, without exceptions, but if this were the case I would prefer that His attention would not be distracted by my requests.
Personally, I don't think that there is "someone" or "something" that just suspends the laws of physics to give me an answer, exactly as he (or it) does not suspend the law of gravity when I have to move upstairs something very heavy.
To work around arguments like the ones above, there are theories that explain how the I Ching is related to our phenomenical world through some ontolgy that is different from the one underlying the physics (and the common "objecive" western thought).
I've tried, many many years ago, to understand some of them but I did not succeded. They looked to me too complex or too far away from my everyday life to be applicable.
I also do believe that there is no predefined "future" to foretell. I just cannot accept that everything is (more or less) predetermined, what about my "free will", then? What about my "freedom of choice"? So, generally, I'm not interested in the "future divination" methods.
If the only other option left is that everything is meaningless, why I'm writing this mail?
When someone asks me a question about "what's behind" I Ching, my usual answer is:
"I don't "why" or "how" it works, but it works!"
Of course, it depends on what "works" means: if you want to know exactly when there will be your next car accident (hopefully never!) so you can stay home, it could not work (even if I know of someone who claim it is possible).
Maybe a more interesting question would be:
"What's the effect of I Ching on you?" (It looks like the question on "lessons learned" that Hilary posed some time ago).
As I said before, I'm a wanderer looking for a light. To me "works" means to gain understanding of the moment I'm living in so to better explore the future implications.
The question I write down, the table, the coins, my hand who is throwing them, the way they fall, my eyes who are reading the response, my brain who's trying to understand the answer, everything HAS a meaning in that precise moment.
And the process of trying to have a meaningful answer becames the process of posing a meaningful question. The words "crossing the river" remaind me of aspects that I neglected at a first sight or warn me about the difficulties that I tried to minimize in my mind. Every sentence of the answer refines the question, because "a good answer is silver but a good question is gold" they say.
At the end, the lights are shed, the landscape is a little bit clearer, the mind a little bit more focused. It worked again!
Should I say that God is behind this? Yes, of course, He's behind everything why should I exclude Him? He may guide my feelings, enlight my mind. The coins are just a mean, exactly like everything else.
But what if I don't believe in God or any "non-physical" entity? Where is "statistics"? Why a random event should be related to my question?
From a statistical point of view, I know of studies that tried to prove that the distribution of hexagram casting is not uniform (i.e. hexagrams do not appear "at random") but none of them is conclusive and frankly I don't think that someone will ever prove that.
From this perspective every hexagram will appear "at random".
On the other hand if you measure the relevance of the answer with respect to the question you surprisingly will find that it is very very close to 100% (I would rather say it is 100% but let me have some doubt).
In this case there is no randomness at all!
It looks like a paradox.
No surprise: paradoxes appear everywhere when you try to separe what happens "outside" you (objectively) and "inside" you (subjectively).
Casting I Ching hexagrams is not something that happens objectively (measurable, governed by predictive laws, ...) or subjectively (unclear, discretionary, ...).
It is both and you have to take it or leave it. You may create your own justification (as I did here) or take someone else words to explain it but the basic fact is that he works.
By the way, one of the reasons I created my site on casting hexagrams is that I wanted a method that came both from my hand and from my mind. I felt much more confortable with my cards or my bead string than I ever was with stalks or coins. I hope that this could be useful for someone else.
Hopefully not too boresome.
Remo