Just listening to a podcast on meditation and Prapanca was mentioned, the word I heard for the first time but the mental state I'm all too familiar with. Conceptual proliferation is the western translation and hexagram 28 describes it perfectly. The podcaster described it as when a negative thought snowballs and creates mental paralysis, although wikipedia explains it a bit differently, "It is intended to elucidate reality, although it has the unexpected result of blotting out or reducing direct nonverbal sensory perception."

To stand alone and outside can be paralleled to the practice of mindfulness where one observes oneself, that old trick of changing your own thinking by going beyond it and outside it (like consulting yi) > :bows:

In astrology I would look at it as the reality defining function of Saturn, and preponderance occurring when saturn is given too much reign, standing alone and outside being a function of high saturn, medicine to bring out its best quality: resilience.

Heard that, thought of this, wanted to pop in and say hi xx :hugs:

Yay chingching where ya been ? Someone was asking about you in CC the other day I think.

Never heard of 'prapanca' so not sure I understand your post yet, probably will need to Google.

It's papanca (no r) in Pali.
Yixue itself holds an excellent example, with its endless proliferation of new interpretive methods, algorithms, and dimensions that got underway with the Ten Wings and Han Dynasty Yiweishu. It's like a form of ADHD, anything to avoid slowing down and digging deeper into the simpler core of the reading.
More detail in the Madhupindika Sutta (MN 18)
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.018.than.html

ADHD , yes I heard the word spoken and they added the 'r'. It's amazing how the mind will stop one from going deeper.

Yo Trojina! I've always been here

oh how about that, it is spelled without the r in pali, but it is pRapanca in sanskrit, seems I heard it correctly six years ago, but doubted myself when corrected. On the downlow, back in my university days we used to refer to the phenomenon as mental masturbation.

Fear of death, avoidance of entropy. The last two years I've not been avoiding the pitfall, but instead have allowed the ridgepoles--which kept various parts of me in suspension--to collapse. Today, revisiting this post, I now know the process of 28.3 quite differently. The whole hexagram can appear unbreakable, but at line three there's your opportunity. Let the prapanca go, and go down into the pits. Its not easy, but it is rich, even if the pit is full of s... unpleasantness.

But I have to say, from experience, 28.4 has actually been the times when I've ended up letting the structure fall, and have noticed the workings of conceptual proliferation finding perspectives, meanings, potentials and possibilities of how and why the situation is strong, great, reliable; but, I've ended up not being able to ignore those snakes, which were there, so down I go. Sometimes even by purposefully stomping on that thing til it breaks.

For me it aligns with the experience of grief (but not by having has cast 28 in times of grief, that I can recall).

Finally, I'd say going deeper is to go beyond all systems and symbols. Then maybe come back up to re write the words for 28.2 and 28.5, for these days its not so impressive for an old man to take a young wife (or husband), but still could be fruitful in ways (albeit that it does reveal the broken parts of both people quite starkly), but it is quite impressive when a woman take a young husband (or wife) because it not only shows the shift in culture but it supports the biological fact that women's bodies can stay very healthy and fertile for a lot longer than common medical canon believes. But actually the age gap thing is kind of old news altogether these days.

So then what could be new words for these lines in order to align with the core meaning of 28. They both need a complete re-think. My thoughts circle around where is love found these days because I see so many people running on prapanca to try and find it, on theories or cultural subversions, but, to me anyway, most of the time the two (or three or four) people end up looking like sagging ridgepoles.

I don't have an answer, just adding some thoughts.