Specific Guidance

[frank]

Hi guys,

I was just wandering what you make of this kind of entrances the Yi provides:

There are many ways of interpertation towards answers the Yi is giving us. The most common one is reading the Judgement and the changing lines and form an answer out of it. There is also another way of reading the answers as given in books like "The Pocket I Ching" by Melyan and Chu and "The Book of Changes" by Ni Hua-Ching. In those books a small list of everyday considerations are connected to the hexagrams and therefor particular answers the Yi gives. You can think of entrances like 'Personal Fortune', 'Personal Wish', 'Marriage', 'Household', 'Money', 'Travel' etc... Now I found diferences between these answers and I start to wander...

For instance at hexagram 40... In both books there is an answer given towards Marriage.
Chu & Melyan declaire: 'A good match, succes possible' while Ni states: 'There is no succes, even if the marriage endures there is quarreling'. At 'Waiting for Someone', Chu & Melyan say: "Will come with good intentions", while Ni talks about: "They will not come"...
And there it goes... all kinds of answers on the same hexagram, and all kind of DIFFERENT answers... and not only in this particular hexagram, but with ALL 64 hexagrams... How do you know now what's the right answer, and how is it possible that these answers are not the same? Ofcourse.. there are many ways of writting possitive or negative answers in many different ways, but is it not a way bit off when one answer says yes, and the same respons in another book says no...???

Just wander what you make of this.

Frank

 

[jerryd]

Just as the doctor makes predictions on the sex of an unborn child. I have seen the DR. tell the mother it will be a girl and off handedly write down on the notes in the chart " boy" so as to cover his mistake should it be questioned later. He will inadvertently be correct if the birth is not a girl as he refers back to his notes. A quest for being more correct or to make more $ is a never ending joke among many.

 

[nicky_p]

Hi Frank,

Maybe I'm being a little niave but I would like to think of it along the lines of 'one man's pleasure is another man's pain'.

I do read a couple of 'interpretations' as well as 'translations'. I guess it says to me that with the Yi there is no concrete answer in 'interpretation' because every time you approach the Yi it's with different questions and different situations. As in - there is no dogma if you get what I mean?

Love
Nicky
xx

 

[dobro p]

Hi Frank - the thing about the Yi is that it has a very high degree of objective variability - a particular character in Chinese can have a whole range of meanings, so one line in the Yi can also have a whole range of meanings. This means that if you're dealing with English translations, you're using a sort of dumbed down version - it's probably got a much narrower range of meanings than the Yi. A multipurpose tool becomes a much more limited tool, sort of. But I really don't think that's a huge obstacle for the user if you do two things. First, decide which version you're going to go with and pretty much stick with it. (I got so dissatisfied with all the different versions for this reason or for that, that in the end I did my own version. It took me ten years, but it's worth it.) Second, the key to understanding the answer to your question is to know how to read what comes up in your mind by association with the hexagrams and lines you draw. That's where the real message is, not the printed words on the page. In other words, when you consult the Yi, you're not looking for the meaning that the book gives to a line or lines, but you're looking for the meaning that comes up in your mind and heart when you're reading those lines.

Any help?

 

[jesed]

Hi Frank

You could find interesting ask Yi it's qualification of Ni's interpretation, as well as asking Yi it's qualification of Chu's interpretation (as well as asking for Yi's qualification of any interpretation of Yi) and contrast both quealifications.

Best wishes

 

[lightofdarkness]

Hi Frank - to get a generic meaning for the hexagrams move to the universals level and get the IC to describe itself to you - as covered in the ICPlus XOR-ing material. Hex 40 as such has its skeletal form described by the under-exaggerted characteristics of hex 38, as the under-exaggerated characteristics of hex 40 describe the skeletal form of 38. etc etc.

IOW each hexagram is described in detail through analogies to all of the other ones. These universals are then applied to LOCAL context and that includes issues of marriage etc - BUT, due to the duality possible in interpretations of the IC LOCALLY, so a hexagram can represent a positive or negative perspective. LOCAL context, one's direct experience then GROUNDS the hexagram into the particular situation (or more so particular emotional situation) and that can best be done through interrogating one's emotions.

Thus - given the analysis of how our emotions can be accessed using general questions to give us a 'resonance' of the current context in the form of a hexagram, so ANY context with that emotional content will elicit the same form.

The IC does not predict as such, it can show based on current conditions any 'inevitable' flows. If you use 'random' techniques then the results will not be consistantly correct.

Most of the divination material is, IMHO, 'hocus pocus' and often derived out of basic exploitations of the IC or the perpetuation of traditional perspectives without questioning.

BUT behind all of that chaff IS wheat. (E.g. the emotional IC ;-))

Chris.

 

[lightofdarkness]

Using the full spectrum of the IC we can flesh our particular hexagrams associated with particular contexts and XOR them with a hexagram of interest to give a unique expression.

Thus for marriage you can focus on 53/54 pair or the development of family into the 40/37 pair etc.

37 is of interest in that it covers the family representating a context of rigid structure that acts as a form of tension release.

53 covers representing a developing relationship, on maturing, as 54 covers issues of the immature (including the 'marrying maiden' issue)

IOW if you pick a concept such as marriage or family or money etc there is some hexagram that is the 'best fit' for that concept. XOR-ing then gives you that 'best fit' expressed through some context described by all of the other hexagrams.

Chris.

 

[frank]

Hi Jerryd,

Thanks for your remarks, but I guess I start to wander about when it is a boy or a girl, when a Yi answer in the Judgement or line-texts tells it?s a boy (like hex. 1), or a girl (hex.2), and not a boy OR a girl within the same hexagram... That?s to simple... I started to look a bit more critical to the books I mentioned, as besides the ?normal? way of I Ching answers (judgement & lines' and finding it difficult enough already sometimes to just interpreted that, and the Mei Hua method / Na Jia school of thought, this entrance is exteemly populair in Asia, and seems to be invented for the 21-th centry people who wants a quick answer... Nothing wrong with that, but then the answer should be correct :-D.

Hi Nicky,

Ofcourse with every answer the lines mean different things, or could mean that, but always in some way that is related to some average answer, and not that black and white way of seeing things as these kind of I Ching entrances, right? I was wandering about a certain entrance in particular, besides the judgements, lines, Mei Hua, Na Jia, Wu Qi, etc... I have these kind of books in my shelfs for years and I was just reading them a litte bid as a new way of reading an answer I received recently from the Yi. I was just curious what it could tell me more then just reading the judgements and lines... And I do not think that these answers has something to do with??some man?s luck is some other man?s pain?, I was just wandering...

Dobro,
Again, as to all of you :-D: I?m NOT looking or wandering about the judgements and lines! I?m wandering about a certain and particular entrance the Yi provides like in the books by Melyan / Chu and Ni... Entrances like ?personal luck?, ?money?, ?travel?, etc... A bunch of these kinds of entrances and a sort of B/W straight kind of answer with that... as I said with the EXAMPLE of hex. 40... OFCOURSE I know Chinese can mean different things, but there is no way a character exists that BOTH MEANS YES AND / OR NO :-D...
Just wandering...

Jesed,
Ha, that would be some idea indeed! I did that with some of the Yi books I bought in the past... But then again... what makes the difference...? WHY is it in one book a NO answer and in another one a YES...? Just wandering...

Hi Chris,
Great, those entrances you provide... I can?t use them though :-D! I asked somethings else :-D!
Just wandering...

Thank you all for answering. I shall wander further :-D.

Hug,
Frank

 

[jesed]

Hi Frank

Had you ever thought that maybe one is right and one is wrong?

That's why I suggested to ask Yi how it qualify those works.

More seriously: in the same way there are diferents translations of text, and diferent qualities of those translations; in this aproach there are diferent conclusions, and
diferent qualities of those conclusions.

Simple to understand, isn't?.

The hard thing to solve is: how do we know this conclusion is right or wrong? Again, an interesting question to ask Yi.

Best wishes