1) Does the Yi advise us what to do, or does it tell us what we will do or what will be ? the conclusion we would have ultimately reached anyway?

2) Is hope and fear the core of our dilemmas? If so:
A) Does consulting the oracle perpetuate our never ending questions?
B) Does it achieve the opposite of what we seek to accomplish and understand?
C) Can it (our involvement with Yi) keep us from our own inner truth?

3) How many of our questions to the oracle are asked out of boredom or a desire for mental entertainment?

4) At certain levels, the Yi isn?t as important to us to solve our personal dilemmas as it is to show us how life works. Is this the true purpose of the oracle?

5) Does Yi have a purpose of its own? Does it serve a higher authority? Or is it an unliving mathamatical consequence?

6) Does this make your brain hurt?

C

<CENTER>Hi Candid </CENTER>

1) Does the Yi advise us what to do, or does it tell us what we will do or what will be ? the conclusion we would have ultimately reached anyway?

<FONT COLOR="ff0000">probably, all at the same time ...sometimes,
an emphasis on one, more than the others ...at other times
and perhaps occasionally ...none of the above</FONT>

2) Is hope and fear the core of our dilemmas? If so:
A)Does consulting the oracle perpetuate our never ending questions?
B)Does it achieve the opposite of what we seek to
accomplish and understand?
C)Can it (our involvement with Yi) keep us from our own inner truth?

<FONT COLOR="0000ff">like children, we trust that our guardians will provide the answers to all the questions we have about the world around us. does consulting one's parent about life perpetuate neverending questions? yup! does asking questions ever achieve the opposite? no, I don't think so ...involvement with Yi, like a child's involvement with a good parent, allows one to align with personal truth quicker and with more trust</FONT>

3) How many of our questions to the oracle are asked out of boredom or a desire for mental entertainment?

<FONT COLOR="119911">many, I'm sure ...but does it really matter if the course is gently and casually leading one to truth's doorstep?</FONT>

4) At certain levels, the Yi isn?t as important to us to solve our personal dilemmas as it is to show us how life works. Is this the true purpose of the oracle?

<FONT COLOR="aa00aa">understanding how life works is the point of the oracle. thus, understanding life's program allows us to more easily go on and find the solutions to our personal dilemmas</FONT>

5) Does Yi have a purpose of its own? Does it serve a higher authority? Or is it an unliving mathamatical consequence?

<FONT COLOR="ff6000">yes, yes, and yes. it's essence is spiritual. a highly spiritual life force contained within a 'hardcopy' that anyone of us can identify with. it is an entity in corporeal form following its own mission ...growing and evolving as other lifeforms do, yet in its own way, with a purpose uniquely its own</FONT>

6) Does this make your brain hurt? [

]

<CENTER> </CENTER>

OK, tell us immediatelly what have you done to Candid and what gives you the right to be speaking on his behalf!!!!!

Now seriously, fear not, I guess its only natural that these questions spring to mind every ten years or so of using the Yi

I think we often forget that the Yi itself is pretty much a patchwork. Strip it down to the bare essence and what do you get? Very little indeed

All oracles speak more or less to us depending on a number of factors, like room temperature and humidity, to name a few

But I disagree the Yi has a purpose of its own. I think it proves beyond doubt that there is no purpose whatsoever. The real purpose we can sense from the Yi was already OUR purpose, the Yi just helps us confront our "fears and hopes" to find out what we really are and want

Do you really thing it is taking us in the path of wisdom and truth? No, it is taking us through our path, if that happens to be the good path, then you should feel proud of yourselves

It can take us through the bad path just as easily

It can even make us more confuse, like you sugest, havent we all been through those times?

I guess its worth is apreciated from the moments it smacked us in the forehead, the rest is scenery

But no doubt it can not only show us the future, but indeed make the future that way. Thats why I feel some questions are better not asked...

Dharma, I tried tilting my monitor to see if your little juggler dropped his balls (er.. not one of my verbal days, sorry). He seems to have quite a grip

Another thing, Dharma, can I borrow your crayons?

please please pleeeease???

Just for you Arien

The Yi is us. As there is just ONE thing, how can it be anything else ???

Micahel F.

thanks Dharma,
like'em all faces and stuff

Hum, Michael, Im not sure I get that
There is still a part of ONE that I dont understand

Really, I know you mean well and all, but it shouldnt be necessary for us to keep on saying these things, if we really simply done it, I mean, if we really simply GOT IT

Hi, Dharma, Arien and Michael!

Thanks for your responses. Its really interesting how different folks view the answers to these questions. I can't totally agree or disagree with most of them so far; just drinking it in.

Of particular interest to me is Dharma's answer to 4 and 5. I also enjoy Arien's answer to 5, and how it differs completely from Dharma's. I'm in total agreement with Dharma's answer to 2.

Michael's summery is, of course, true. Everything together equals one. But it doesn't help to sort the answers to these particular questions. There must be a questioner and an answerer, and even if in fact they are together one, there's nothing to reflect on and no-one to engage, since it/we are all the same one.

I have to say regarding 5, I haven't a clue. I could accept any answer if it was the actual truth, and I someday hope to know for certain what that answer is.

Hope others will offer their points of view too, from any perspective, no matter how unpopular, learned, unlearned, vague or detailed.

C

hi candid. a humble take on Q.5.

What's the diff?

Either way it's perception, and so that's all it is. Till one is beyond perception, one is influenced by conditionality, mathematical or divine.

Tash, beyond perception there is nothing? Is there existence in unconditionality at all? As with the "all is One", which is absolute unconditionality, this doesn't sort truth from fable. I'm not disagreeing within the context of oneness, but perception is our means to discern truth from untruth. Everything is refutable, even 1+1=2. But upon this conditional world of separation, 1+1 does =2. I love fables more than math, but if the Universe is devoid of spiritual substance, the stuff fables are made of, I want to know. Either way is cool by me.

Why think about the ONE? Why not just experience it? Be it?

hi candid, to my understanding, 'unconditionality' is a different subject than 'all is one' . i dont know what is beyond perception. gate gate paragate. i do think the fables are important. very important. as for the yi jing, i dont know, really anything about it. allan says it is a diety.
***
&
tash.

Candid...

Answers:

1) I don't know. Do you? Does anyone really?
2) To each his own
A) See 2) above
B) Only if you don't listen
C) See B) above
3) I don't know
4) See 1) above
5) See 1) above
6) No

Love,

Val

Val, I don't know either or I wouldn't be asking. Just thought I'd ask for perceptions of others.

Tash, I agree that fables are important.

Who here can really just be? Please teach me to just be. I generally try to just be but then questions pop up that cause me to think. Then instead of just being, I'm thinking.

One is great but it takes two to reflect, to reason, and to consult the oracle.

C

1) Does the Yi advise us what to do, or does it tell us what we will do or what will be ? the conclusion we would have ultimately reached anyway?

1) I believe it advises us of the possible consequences of our actions/inactions as regards the question.


2) Is hope and fear the core of our dilemmas? If so:

2) Usually this depends on the individual or specific question.

A) Does consulting the oracle perpetuate our never ending questions?

A) Should the questions be never-ending, I don?t believe we can blame the oracle for their perpetuation. Only ourselves.

B) Does it achieve the opposite of what we seek to accomplish and understand?

B) Only if our understanding is flawed and our ?sought accomplishments? banal.

C) Can it (our involvement with Yi) keep us from our own inner truth?

C) Only if that is our objective.


3) How many of our questions to the oracle are asked out of boredom or a desire for mental entertainment?

3) How long is a piece of string?


4) At certain levels, the Yi isn?t as important to us to solve our personal dilemmas as it is to show us how life works. Is this the true purpose of the oracle?


4) The primary purpose for me is to use the lessons as an on-going, life-changing/life-enhancing process.

5) Does Yi have a purpose of its own? Does it serve a higher authority? Or is it an unliving mathamatical consequence?

5) I have always believed that it is the translator for the dialogue between the conscious and unconscious.


6) Does this make your brain hurt?


6) Only when I answer these posts by typing with my nose.

Namaste,
Leonard

Leonard, good stuff to chew on. Thanks.

still feel there's something missing...

I'm gonna think on this some more and take a position on each question, knowing I don't know for sure. But first I'll sleep on it cuz right now my head hurts.

So what.. will go for it now anyway

1) Does the Yi advise us what to do, or does it tell us what we will do or what will be ? the conclusion we would have ultimately reached anyway?

Yi does advise us what to do concerning our question. But its what we would normally do anyway. There are exceptions, and its these exceptions, usually small adjustments, that over time amount to significant changes in our person.

2) Is hope and fear the core of our dilemmas?

Yes. Without hope or fear we would be in a state of perpetual innocence.

If so:

A) Does consulting the oracle perpetuate our never ending questions?

Consulting the oracle focuses the line of our questions over time. Its moves us farther from subjectivity and closer to seeing things from a more objective perspective, as they are. Moving closer to this viewpoint raises questions, but its answers far more.

B) Does it achieve the opposite of what we seek to accomplish and understand?

Often, yes. We seek inner truth and freedom. If the oracle is parental, which it sure seems to be, I imagine its important to leave the nest at some point. We can always return if/when the time is right.

C) Can it (our involvement with Yi) keep us from our own inner truth?

I believe it can for the above reason in B. If we?re always relying on an outside source to affirm our thoughts and actions how will we ever know how to fly alone?

3) How many of our questions to the oracle are asked out of boredom or a desire for mental entertainment?

Many. We can usually answer most of our own questions. Its more entertaining to probe Yi?s lessons than playing video games or watching TV.

4) At certain levels, the Yi isn?t as important to us to solve our personal dilemmas as it is to show us how life works. Is this the true purpose of the oracle?

The principles of the oracle releases active forces with potential creative, penetrating power. The affect is seen through our personal dilemmas, shaping our lives, and over time showing us how this world works.

5) Does Yi have a purpose of its own? Does it serve a higher authority? Or is it an unliving mathematical consequence?

Whew. I don?t believe the Universe has an agenda. Given that, I don?t believe Yi has an agenda either. If it does serve a higher authority, there still is no agenda. That said, I believe in my heart that all things serve a higher authority, and that authority is the Godhead. And no, I don?t believe the Godhead has an agenda either.

And it can be seen mathematically, just as it can be seen poetically.

6) Does this make your brain hurt?

Growing pains is all.

g'nite

Most of all things the Yi has given me the insights necessary to fly alone.

LiSe

LiSe, maybe Yi is like a plane?

I?m ending my participation in this thread. I believe its good to questions these things I have held as truths for so long. I?ve attempted to stir up public opinion, and with only a couple exceptions, I think I?ve annoyed more than I?ve provoked to thought.

I?m generally a pretty positive person and typically look for the light in the dark, but there are times when I have to face the dark possibilities that lie beneath the surface of what I?ve previously called the truth.

My thanks to those who have helped.

C

Hi Candid, I hope you stick around to read this lenghty excerpt from Chan-Soo Chung's book, The I Ching on Man and Society.

I will not answer any of the questions posted - I think there is enough of a rainbow of opinions on that - but I believe you will find this as interesting as I did.

Mr. Chung sees the I Ching as a Field Theory. This is only a small portion of the chapter where he delineates his theory but it has some meat in it.

BTW, this is almost guaranteed to bring tears of emotion to Chris's eyes...

Luis


=====================
Some of the essential features of the field theory as characterized by Lewin have been summarized above. Now, I will go back to and examine the claim that I put forward at the outset of this chapter, that as a theory the I Ching can be characterized as a field theory. Since the field theory has been characterized by 1) the principle of contemporaneity, 2) the holistic approach, and 3) the constructive method, the I Ching, if the claim has validity, also should involve the same essential features of the field theory as described by Lewin. Then, first, let us examine how the system of knowledge presented by the I Ching features the principle of contemporaneity.
A hexagram, the symbolic representation of a social situation, consists of six lines. Since the lines symbolize individuals with certain behavioral dispositions, it is interpreted that in the I Ching a social situation is defined as a function of activities of individuals who are involved in the situation represented by a hexagram. Here, we may say in principle that among the individuals represented by the lines of a hexagram, there is no time differential. They all belong to the situation that exists at the time t. The idea that a hexagram consists of elements that coexist at the time t can be expressed graphically as <Figure 3> (p. 369).
<Figure 3>, as its title suggests, illustrates a hexagram as a representation of a social field, or situation, constituted of elements (individuals) that exist contemporarily at a certain point in the temporal dimension, on the space cut along the spatial dimension at the time t.
Now, as applied to the I Ching, the principle of contemporaneity can be expressed as follows:

Lijk= f(Hk) [2]

***see picture below in next message***


where Lijk refers to a specific situation of an individual actor (or group of actors) at the ith position (one of the six positions in a hexagram), with the jth type of action orientation (expressed as either a yin or yang line), under the kth type of a situation represented by the kth hexagram (Hk) (among the 64 hexagrams).

Verbally expressed, the above formulation says that a specific situation of an individual actor (or group of actors) at a specific position is a function of the situation (as represented by a hexagram) in which the actor is situated. And, since a hexagram represents a situation that exists at the time t, the above stated proposition can be rephrased as: "the specific situation of an individual position holder at the time t is a function of the situation S at the time t only (as represented by Hk)."

This is a restatement of what Lewin defines as the principle of contemporaneity. As a matter of fact, as we have observed throughout this treatise, in the I Ching the specific situation of an individual position holder is interpreted only in relation to those factors that exist concomitantly with the line that represents the subject. These factors could be the properties of an overall situation represented by a hexagram as a whole or the properties of the other component lines comprising the same hexagram. As far as this characterization of human situations by the I Ching is concerned, there seems to be no ambiguity about the core idea the I Ching is based upon. lung, the German psychologist who noticed the significance of the I Ching especially with respect to this principle of contemporaneity ("synchronicity" as he calls it), observed:
This assumption involves a certain curious principle that I have termed synchronicity, a concept that formulates a point of view diametrically opposed to that of causality. Since the latter is a merely statistical truth and not absolute, it is a sort of working hypothesis of how events evolve one out of another, whereas synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers. (1967:xxiv)
From the discussions so far, readers may have noticed already that the principle of contemporaneity is closely connected with the second important feature of the field theory, the holistic approach. As a matter of fact, the formulation Lijk = f(Hk) can be regarded as stating not only the principle of contemporaneity but also the holistic approach. With respect to the holistic approach, the formulation states that a specific situation of an individual actor (or group of actors) is a function of the total situation (as represented by a hexagram) in which the actor is situated. But, as I pointed out already, the relationship between the whole and its parts should be of mutual interdependence. Thus, we will have to add another formulation to the one given above to fully express the interdependence between the parts and the whole, roughly expressed as follows:

Hk = f (Lljk, L2jk, L3jk, L4jk, L5jk, L6jk) [3]

Combined with the previous formulation Lijk = f (Hk), the above formulation expresses a very complex relationship of interdependence that exists between the overall social situation represented by a hexagram as a whole and the specific situations of individuals represented respectively by its component lines. A change of a line will change the structural make-up of a hexagram, and, as the formulation [3] indicates, the hexagram will change into another, meaning that one type of situation has changed into another. This is because the overall situation represented by a hexagram depends on the state of each of its component lines. To put it in terms of social reality, the overall situation of a given social unit is determined by the specific ways in which each of its members behaves in relation to one another. Yet, an individual's behavior toward others is not a matter of independent chance variation. As is indicated by the formulation Lijk = f (Hk), the specific situation of an individual actor (or group of actors) is a function of the total situation (as represented by a hexagram) in which the actor is situated. Thus, to get a meaningful understanding of what is stated by the hexagram statement or its line statements, the interdependent relationship between them must be taken into consideration. The logical relationship between the hexagram statement and the line statements may be described as circular, suggested by formulas [2] and [3]. Their meanings refer back to each other, and, therefore, an interpretation must be made by moving back and forth between the hexagram as a whole and the individual lines. Hence, the interdependent relationship that exists between the overall situation, the specific situations represented by the hexagram as a whole, and its component lines renders evidence to the fact that the holistic approach is one of the basic orientations of the 1 Ching in understanding social reality.
Another important feature of the field theory, the use of the constructive method, also seems quite evident from the 1 Ching. The constructive method carries specific significance in the 1 Ching in that its use is indicative of its interest in building up a body of knowledge that is specific enough for, and thus "useful" to, individuals acting under real social situations. Lewin points out that the constructive method differs from generalization in that it aims at "the representation of the individual case." Yet, the representation of the individual case must begin with the abstraction of some basic elements of which individual cases are constituted. Things will be experienced only as an endless, passing flow of appearances in infmite variety until we are able to reduce their specific features into some basic elements. In Lewin's psychological field, concepts such as "positions," "forces," and "positive or negative valences" refer to some of such basic elements, or properties of them, which are abstracted from all the specific variations among individual situations (Lewin, I 997b). The unique situation of a psychological field then would be represented by mapping the ways or the "dynamic" patterns in which "positions," "forces," or "valences" of certain psychologically determined factors are distributed or operative in that specific field. With respect to the use of the constructive method, the I Ching does not seem to differ much from the field theoretical orientation described above. There are two basic assumptions underlying the I Ching. One is that social situations undergo change, and, therefore, there will be widely varying types of social situations, each characterized by a unique feature with specific kinds of objective conditions imposing different life chances upon involved individuals. The other assumption is that despite the differences among situations there are "constant" elements, the basic ingredients of the situations, which will not change while all the changes take place. In the I Ching, the basic ingredients of the situations are reduced to two elements, the social positions of individuals and their action orientations. Every individual case among all the specific situations is constructed from, thus analyzable in terms, of these two basic elements. Therefore, regarding the use of the constructive method, we will not miss an obvious similarity that exists between Lewin's field theory and the I Ching.
The preceding discussion render sufficient evidence in support of my initial assertion that the I Ching shares enough essential features with Lewin's field theory to be considered a field theory unto itself. At the same time, however, there is an important difference between them. Evidently, Lewin's field theory concerns the psychologically determined field; as he himself points out, his task as a psychologist "is to find scientific constructs which permit adequate representation of psychological constellations in such a way that the behavior of the individual can be derived" (1997b:213). The field, as he defmes it, therefore, would be a theoretically formulated construct that aims at the representation of "constellations" of psychological factors. In contrast to this "psychological approach" employed by Lewin' field theory, the hexagrams in the I Ching aim to represent varying situations in what may be called "the social field" whose component elements are undoubtedly of sociological nature. Thus, in the following, we will examine in more detail the essential features of the social field as put forward by the I Ching in its constitution of the social world, whose essential features are seized systematically through the hexagrams.

=====================

L

<BLOCKQUOTE><HR SIZE=0><!-Quote-!><FONT SIZE=1>Quote:</FONT>

BTW, this is almost guaranteed to bring tears of emotion to Chris's eyes...<!-/Quote-!><HR SIZE=0></BLOCKQUOTE>

FOTCROTFLMAuraO

Love,

Val

Candid,
"Who here can really just be? Please teach me to just be. I generally try to just be but then questions pop up that cause me to think. Then instead of just being, I'm thinking."

you can just be thinking

Arien, I think - therefore I am, but only when divided into two. So then where went the oneness, and the unconditionality? (see what I mean, Tash?)

If I'm defined as a thinking entity, I split from wholeness, though not apart from the whole.

But I agree, I can 'just be' thinking. Thinking reflects upon it's own ideas, including it's highest idea forms. If thinking is fearless, it can and will tear down its own construct (23), which is exactly what I've been doing.

My error was bringing the process to a public forum. Not everyone has the heart for construct demolition, especially not one?s own.