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The old character includes the image of a knife, and it describes the experience of having something cut away. That 'something' has to go, because it's exhausted or defunct somehow, but it usually doesn't feel like something you can do without.
That's a really good description. 23 isn't exactly splitting away; it's more like carving away, like you do meat off a bone. And the 'ouch' is often there.
Me neither. However -
'Mountain rests on the earth. Stripping Away.
With generosity from above, creating tranquil places below.'
- seems pretty clear. The mountain has always been in the process of eroding, and always will be; it doesn't find it painful. What you build up is always in the process of crumbling away to nourish whatever is to grow next.
Ah - have you read Danny van den Berghe's 'I Ching Landscape' article, available from here? Definitely my favourite article on the sequence....interesting how six of them live in the Lower Canon...
Mountain on the outside mostly seems to me to be closing off and defining a space, often to nurture and develop what's inside it. It's just that in 23 you find your boundary is also crumbling.
Question: if there's no erosion in 23, then what were the Daxiang authors on about?
Does any author write in detail about which hexagrams move in which directions,
As to a systematic discussion of the direction of each of the 8 trigrams, they generally follow traditional Aristotle, things of the Heavens tend up, things of the Earth sink down, so Heaven (sunshine), Thunder, Fire, Wind (growing wood) all press upward, while Earth, Mountain, Water, and Lake all sink downward. Thunder in Chinese view comes out of the Earth toward lightning coming down from the sky while wind or growing wood is the growth away from the solid Earth and up into the heavenly. Everything containing earth or water are traditionally mundane and sink lower by their natural motion.
Dr. Frank R. Kegan
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).