How to study the i ching

[sergio]

Fresh off the oven from the vaults of Liu Da Jun.
http://zhouyi.sdu.edu.cn/english0/newsxitong/selectedPapers/2008813181945.asp
Sergio

[lienshan]

Thanks for your posting of fresh links, Sergio :bows:

lienshan

[sparhawk]

Did anyone noticed how 'junzi' is translated in one of the paragraphs of the article? How interesting...

Ⅲ . Follow Erudite Teachers
The third line statements of Hexagram Zhun (hexagram 3 in the received version of the Zhouyi) suggests that “Hunting deer and running in the forest without guide, the wisdom observe the occasion and deem to leave. Therefore, the hunting is indeed disagreeable. （即鹿无虞，惟入于林中，君子几，不如舍，往吝） ” which implies that hunting a beer in a mountain without a guide, people would get lost easily. The wisdom anticipates that the condition is dangerous and the subject should give up going forward rashly. This kind of principle is suitable to research on the Yi jing . Basing on its complicated systems and multitudinous related texts, you would follow blindly, thereby causing your lifelong efforts to vanish, if you don't know the valid path.

[sergio]

Hola Luis;
I wouldn't put too much into it.There are so many mistakes of all sorts in this article that is nearly impossible to determine what the author wanted to say.Take this one,for example:"It is said that the Yijing originated from divination,which here doesn't mean strategies for the later generations,especially fortune tellers to use."Or:"As for morality,it means that choosing the less hazardous side when sinking into the conflict between two powers;choosing the more beneficial side when facing the integrating of two powers.Still,justice means the spirit of proceeding resolutely , and burning by bridges.However,these kinds of experiences just demand individuals to practice personally."
And what is "fetation" or "orthoepy" ?
This is really a pity because there is great information but it's just so difficult to dig out of the text, leaving interesting ideas vanish in a limbo of surrealistic neologisms.
This is a problem that unfortunately remains unsolved greatly diminishing the respectability of a material that deserves much more than this sorry attempt at translation.
Sergio

[sparhawk]

Hola Sergio,

Oh, I know about their translations to English; they're fun to read. They write with an "accent"... :D Still, I don't think they would leave to shoddy, unintentional translations, a term as important as "junzi". Perhaps is not the way they intended to write it in English (wrong syntax, third person singular, etc.) but I think the semantics of it was in the heart of the writer.

BTW:

orthoepy (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/orthoepy)
fetation (http://www.yourdictionary.com/fetation)

I also think the article is a little snooty in the way he tries to raise the bar of Yijing studies to a level only achievable by native Chinese students.

[sergio]

Hola Luis;
The bar is set a tad higher now ,specially for us westerners.But it is only natural it would be like that.For me it shows a lot of material that needs to be addressed and I wonder how much of that is reflected in the books that are available to us.I mean,do all western scholars go through the same material or are they also limited by our cultural differences?In any case I think what is available to us is pretty exhaustive and can only wonder how much more all the material mentioned in the article could enhance or change what we know or understand about the Yi so far.Not to say there is no more to know about it but in spite of all that we are still struggling to understand how the Yi works,how to interpret it,how to divine or what method to use,what the meaning of certain words are,when was it written,who wrote it,what is the right sequence,etc,etc,then what's the point of absorbing all this?
We could read all there is available about the Yi and still would not fathom what it is.
"The Yi that can be figured out is not the Yi
The Yi that can be named is not the Yi"
Sergio
P.S.:Gracias por desasnarme!-thank you for educating me about those two words!

[sparhawk]

Hola Sergio,

The bar is set a tad higher now ,specially for us westerners.But it is only natural it would be like that.For me it shows a lot of material that needs to be addressed and I wonder how much of that is reflected in the books that are available to us.I mean,do all western scholars go through the same material or are they also limited by our cultural differences?In any case I think what is available to us is pretty exhaustive and can only wonder how much more all the material mentioned in the article could enhance or change what we know or understand about the Yi so far.


Chuckles! When you receive Richard Smith's book, in the preface you'll see a humble answer, from one that knows much, about the amount of material to be studied and the "lifetimes" it would take to accomplish that... :) So, we are in good company.

Still, I don't think anybody can honestly and fully equate 'erudition' of the book and materials with finding the bottom of the well it offers as wisdom.

[meng]

Hunting beer on a high bar in the mountain - I guess they mean Coors?

[sparhawk]

Hunting beer on a high bar in the mountain - I guess they mean Coors?

Hey, go through the pain of reading the whole article... You'll end up cross-eyed. :D

[fkegan]

Hi Luis and Sergio,
The difficulties of this article and its attitude about studying all Chinese materials is a good illustration of the advantages of working on understanding the Yi through its line structures and relationships to other systems. Only the inner structural analysis of the Yi gets beyond and within the various complexities of the many Chinese interpretations and perspectives. They all have their place though ---as poetic costuming of that fundamental structure and meaning or as illustrations in various contexts which are more familiar or popular at various times.

Frank

[sergio]

Hi Frank;
Yes,ultimately it's up to each of us to undertake the analysis and understanding of the I Ching although it certainly helps to know what insights other readers like us had or what kind of approach they used however pintoresque it might had been.And there were a lot of different approaches,schools,sects,political and philosophical cliques attached to the I Ching all through its existence in China up to this moment so there is a lot of material to cover...Just as it is impossible to read all the books in the history of humankind it is also unrealistic to cover all the material ever written about the I Ching.Could it be a case of too much information thus preventing our understanding of the text,diverting us through too many possible avenues? I think the difficulty of this article is its focus on covering all this existent material as the only way to understanding the text. As Luis points out ERUDITION DOES NOT EQUAL UNDERSTANDING.NOR DOES IT SUBSTITUTE FOR PROPER ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT.AS YOU SUGGEST.
Sergio
P.S.:accidentally pressed the caps lock at the end-too lazy to retype....

[fkegan]

Hi Sergio,
The point of my remarks was basically that quality matters more than quantity. There are millennia of Chinese commentary on the Yi, however, they are all rather two-dimensional, although certainly having 360 degrees of scatter upon the single plane. Understanding the Yi gets simpler when one uses the third dimension to get an elevated or inner perspective on its hexagrams and sequence and meanings.

Of course, I realize there are remarkably few of us working on these other dimensions and my work is still just piddling along, I am only now realizing the implications of insights I came across decades ago. However, there is special delight in getting away from the crowded field of Yi studies in Chinese Yin and Yang to the pristine wilderness of simple structure, gestalt perception and Pythagorean dot-number patterns.

Being able to interpret Yi oracles without any reference to any Chinese material or even any dualistic notion of Yin and Yang lines in a hexagrams still amazes and delights me. Traditionally, the Chinese were famous for taking anything to its ultimate elegant development. I enjoy the notion of the Yi as that ultimate elegant expression of the insights embodied in a pair of dice cubes and their Pythagorean dot-number patterns arranged upon the cube.

The latest insight is that the dice cubes are special since throwing them is a means of focusing your own ultimate subjectivity (through your palm doing the throwing) to the exact measurement of the timing tides (or gravity) of our Universe in terms of Big Bang theory. The notion of gravity from Aristotle to Newton to Einstein is still all about a static Earth with a magical force field (or twisted space-time abstraction) rather than a truly dynamic understanding all is fluid, there is nothing solid or Terra Firma. Thus when you consult the oracle you are basically putting down a log over the side of our personal ship upon the Cosmic Ocean of Flux and by watching the log or coins or milfoils making a reading of the timing current around us all.

Thus the question you ask is not some arbitrary notion you think of, rather it is part of the timing flux, so the Yi works by putting a measurement of that flux together with you at this moment which answers whatever question you manage to think of NOW. It is a very different notion of interpreting the Yi, not limited to just the oracle hexagram but also considering what might influence or control the oracle question as well.

In any event, alternative perspectives which offer far more power, insight and majesty than arguing over the various Chinese texts and their philology.

Frank