Yi works in mysterious ways . .

just sharing here another aspect of hex 14 (long intro coming but for a good reason)

so, I was in a lecture the other day. I went there with a quiet mind after spending two muddled days, quite an upheaval, really unsure about things and having the Yi being obligingly cruel to me . . I had to figure out this one myself (it didn't brush me off with 4 or anything, just gave me two lines of readings with common hexs without any clarity about the best way to proceed . .)
Anyways, took a deep breath and went the way I felt best

The lecture was about Stravinsky's musical endings and analyzed in depth how he tried to incorporate the "undefinable" moment of the pieces' end in the musical piece itself. According to the music expert talking, Stravinsky did that by using 1st)2 musical patterns (one followed by the singer, another by the organs) of 3 and 8 beat which coincided or fell apart accordingly and 2nd) by introducing silent moments in the composition. His aim was to produce a sense of "acute hearing" in the listener and provoke an "innovative" listening experience

The lecture was very interesting and included some high points but leaving I was wondering about it (allow me to withhold the details ). I asked Yi 2 questions about it, and got 14 unchanging . .
well it was time for some searching and reading!!

and lo and behold, this is what I came up with:
(what follows is a description of Cage's composition "Hexagram No. 14 for John Cage: A Yi Jing Jitterbug Vococtet, for voice & piano" found in
http://www.answers.com/topic/hexagr...-a-yi-jing-jitterbug-vococtet-for-voice-piano)

The music progresses in groups isolated by silences. The harmonics of the piano and the voice gradually move away from each other, creating more complex and surprising relationships. The dynamics are unvaried, but a feeling of active meditation is established. One feels both the variety induced by chance and, at the same time, the fixed physical relationships (tonality) of the harmonic series. This is like the changing/unchanging nature of the I Ching's eternal advice and its quasi-random method of access. One is reminded of Louis Pasteur's adage that "chance favors the prepared mind."

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noticing the similarities of the lecture to that, I couldn't help but smile

I know this is a very 'limited' understanding of hex.14 and not very helpful for other instances but thought it would be nice to have it here and who knows, perhaps someone might see a way it could connect with the more traditional interpretation of 14 . .

:bows:
rodaki

aaaa . . thought!

hex 14: fire over heaven: the variety induced by chance(fire), the fixed tonality of the harmonic series (heaven), the changing/unchanging (fire/heaven) nature

perhaps one instance of fire that is not threatened by dying out, fed by the eternal presence of heaven? (ok not talking specifically about the situation, these change, but about the state it found itself in . .)

a flash of illumination fed by an undercurrent of (divine) inspiration?
please don't laugh at me but I think I heard his thoughts and felt him smile (no, I didn't look)
not sure how this works with the music theme though . .

perhaps the music preparing you for the silence of the ending, opening up to silence the eternal, perhaps the silent interjections are the light that springs up from heaven's sound?

huh??oh well, not saying any more, waiting for your thoughts

:bows:
rodaki

Interesting you are receiving these insights at this time. We are at 50.1 over on the Memorizing thread. When you change line 1 the hexagram becomes 14.

oooh . . that's lovely!!
seems all Clarity (I mean the website) is in that pot

. .or is Clarity the pot????

thinking about 50.1 with its upturned legs, being emptied, there was talk in the lecture about the build up of the musical piece (its last part in particular) where in parallel to what I've said already (the rhythmical patterns and silences), Stravinsky gradually 'empties' the piece of the wealth of different sounds, which creates paradoxically the enrichment of the sounds that remain, another technique that induces the "acuteness of hearing" he was striving for . .
Sounds a bit like the emptying out of the vessel (also like 41 though) to ready it for the cooking process

Also 14.1 is about clearing out from 'the harmful', stale remnants, an impure state?

Some instances of the techniques Stravinsky used were pointed out as 'mistakes' in the traditional view of composition -the ding upside down might look from afar like an accident (did the legs break?) but this is not a mistake, it's a preparation for what is to come

Thanks Rosada, your remark brought about a whole lot of understanding -I'll put a link of this in the 50 thread

rodaki

rodaki said:

huh??oh well, not saying any more, waiting for your thoughts

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Interesting connection. Most of that was way over my head, but if I consider the value (14) of spaces (rests) in music: what isn't defines what is. It isn't a far reach to extend that likeness to the illumination of heaven.

It's a different - perhaps reversed - value perception. And that, for me, is typical 14 (said with a frustrated grmph..). 14, for me, is usually a piss-me-off hexagram, cuz I typically don't see what's so damned rich about it. I have to reverse my polarity before I can see the light. It's sorta like looking at a negative photo image.

meng said:

Interesting connection. Most of that was way over my head, but if I consider the value (14) of spaces (rests) in music: what isn't defines what is. It isn't a far reach to extend that likeness to the illumination of heaven.

It's a different - perhaps reversed - value perception. And that, for me, is typical 14 (said with a frustrated grmph..). 14, for me, is usually a piss-me-off hexagram, cuz I typically don't see what's so damned rich about it. I have to reverse my polarity before I can see the light. It's sorta like looking at a negative photo image.

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Hi Meng
Are we walking into the glass half full/ half empty question here? I'm not too sure whether a pessimist can have possessions in great measure.
I get a sense of this poem by Kipling when i think of 14. ( with perhaps a smattering of 50.2 as well). It was ruddy hard finding this poem to copy and paste.

IF

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Whatever life throws at me, I walk the line.... "Walk the line" .... Hmmm now there's a catchy ditty for a song title for someome to cash in on.

It's a sort of.......Enjoy the highs, but don't let them take you into orbit. Feel the lows but not as a dead weight. Use them as a springboard . Is this the reverse polarity you are plugging in to?

Mike

my_key said:

Whatever life throws at me, I walk the line.... "Walk the line" .... Hmmm now there's a catchy ditty for a song title for someome to cash in on.

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Sorry, already been done by Johnny Cash.

I guess where you're seeing pessimism I intended as being honest with oneself. Can't see our value until we reveal our own stinkin' thinkin'.

I guess where you're seeing pessimism I intended as being honest with oneself. Can't see our value until we reveal our own stinkin' thinkin'.

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OK - so my pessimism=your honesty in either way can we say it's more a case of keep on peeling that onion. The more you peel the more the eye stinging tears, but the closer you are to seeing the reality of your core. Until the veil of filters are gossamer thin. The "stinkin' thinkin'" thing is a bit judgemental to my mind....do the filters themselves stink or is it coming from the way we have bothered to address our routine maintenance plan?

Mike

I'm not sure what you're arguing, Mike. If you have a different pov for 14, that's cool. My own view doesn't seem to click with you, which is also fine.

hello everyone,

ok, first of all, I realized that describing the effects of music WITHOUT the music can be quite a puzzle for people . . too bad I can't let u hear the passages, maybe my train of thoughts would be clearer . .

but Meng, I think you understand what I'm talking about way better than me, perhaps not with the words I use though . .
Why do I bring silence and the divine together? Silence is not very different from your desert and I keep remembering one comment you made about the abundance of 55 and the desert . . I see it very much like that, an area marked by a certain lack, seemingly empty but in fact very much alive and full of potential.
Kind of like white light -all the colours together and at the same time no colour at all.
In that sense silence is where all music springs from, and yes your image of reversed polarity works nicely, only it is about reversing, and i see reversing as keeping some kind of polarity which for me does not exist. It might manifest as such and it's easier to recognize it as such but in fact it is not about opposition (I hope I'm making sense) kind of like the duck/rabbit if that helps, it's not about either/or, it's about both and the way one leads to another and back . . Music is already in silence and silence is already in music

but again why do i see silence as sth of the divine? It seems to me to be close since the divine is what we can not actually say in words being beyond what we can reach cognitively, it lies beyond our man-made tools like grammar and syntax. I see the divine as what can be conveyed but not named or called, just like silence which we can not possibly articulate . .

back to the quotation on Cage's "Hexagram 14":

One feels both the variety induced by chance and, at the same time, the fixed physical relationships (tonality) of the harmonic series. This is like the changing/unchanging nature of the I Ching's eternal advice and its quasi-random method of access. One is reminded of Louis Pasteur's adage that "chance favors the prepared mind."

Click to expand...

I tried to see "the variety induced by chance" (in the musical piece that would be how the two rhythmical patterns come together or fall away form one another) as the variable nature of the fire element which will flare up and die out depending on its relation to another presence
and the "fixed ( . .) relationships of the harmonic series" as 14's undercurrent element of heaven which is there always, a stable, unchanging base


Another way of trying to see the elements of 14 in those musical compositions (Stravinsky and Cage), to find the changing/unchanging constitution of the hexagram would be thru the use of silence: silence is always the undercurrent of music (heaven), while sound represents the changing variety (fire). By introducing silence as part of the musical composition, we are bringing the unchanging nature of silence/heaven up on the unstable surface of sound/fire

of course i might also be mixing up things in unclear ways and i might be mistaken, but I am just trying to find how the musical pieces might reflect the meaning of the hexagram's values . .
so any feedback from all of you wise minds out there is always cherished and appreciated . . (not sure if that was out of your league or if I'm in over my head)

hi Mike,
I very much enjoyed the poem you posted (i seem to have encountered it somewhere else recently but as always cannot remember exactly the context )
In fact i seem to read it a bit differently, for i see in it Meng's "I'm not my feelings, not my thoughts, not my ego" (which I 've recently came to see as what is the essence of 25 . . I'll try to say more on that in the 24 thread http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/friends/showthread.php?t=7141)

:bows:
rodaki

Rodaki, I relate a lot to what you're saying (as usual). It also seems harmonious with Dao-ish philosophy, in general.

The Creative (with its many sir names) is given the vast amount of credit for creation, especially in modern times. 'God created the universe', etc. But, unless there was the divine space, there would be nowhere to create anything. Clearly, the hen gave the rooster a place to roost!

(that's me silly happy lol!)

meng said:

I'm not sure what you're arguing, Mike. If you have a different pov for 14, that's cool. My own view doesn't seem to click with you, which is also fine.

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Hi meng

I'm fine with you being fine.So let's be fine together.

Mike

Latest update:
I have tried to edit the personal details I have included in this thread but with no success. The reason I tried to do so, is because I feel that the path down which i was lead concerning hex. 14 was not at all of such nature . . I still find the correlation to music to be quite valuable but I think I am missing an important node, or some catalytic element in order to really comprehend what it is about . .

:bows:
rodaki

Hi rodaki
It may be that the feeling that you are missing something still is an important thought for you to follow.

For me 14 is not only about the talents (nothing material related to possessions here) that you have but also how you use them. It's a bit of a multi stage process - undertanding what you have, using what you have and then developing the talents you have to be the best that you can be with them.

It's a bit like moving up the learning ladder from unconciously incompetent ( you didn't even know you had this ability) to unconsciuosly oompetent (I'm doing this without thinking - it's a natural part of who I am/ what i do) and then finally putting the icing on the cake for actually using your talents in alignment with what makes your heart sing.

Mike

hi Mike,

your words are truly an inspiration, thank you so much for sharing!
it definitely feels like a learning process, even though not sure of what . . but I can only go forth . .

:bows:
rodaki

Center of universe - silence

From "Zen Flesh Zen Bones"

3. Whenever inbreath and outbreath fuse, at this instant touch the energyless energy-filled center

4. Or, when breath is all out (up) and stopped of itself, or all in (down) and stopped - in such universal pause, one's small self vanishes. This is difficult only for the impure.

These are two of the 112 ways which Shiva answers to Devi's question
"O Shiva, what is your reality?
What is this wonder-filled universe?
What constitutes seed?
Who centers the universal wheel?
What is this life beyond form pervading forms?
How may we enter it fully, above space and time, names and descriptions?
Let my doubts be cleared!"

oh my . .

i have no words
the little clarity i might be able to reach, i'd like to offer up in silence . . .

:bows:

4. Or, when breath is all out (up) and stopped of itself, or all in (down) and stopped - in such universal pause, one's small self vanishes. This is difficult only for the impure.

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Like that instant at the top of the swing on the Viking Ship ride at the amusement park?

my_key said:

Like that instant at the top of the swing on the Viking Ship ride at the amusement park?

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Hmmm, is it at the top of the swing looking up or looking down? It makes a difference...

sparhawk said:

Hmmm, is it at the top of the swing looking up or looking down? It makes a difference...

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Hi Luis
Do you mean the people looking up are more liable to have their space filled with something coming down.................or should that be "filled with something coming up coming down".

This is all getting very confusing !!!
Maybe the answer is to stick to the rollercoaster.

Mike

LOL! Yup, can't trust all those kids with bellies full of park hot-dogs and soda, specially if looking up...

urgh Luis... yucky my imagination is too graphic for this!!

Rodaki, what you are saying about music is also just a part of our collective cultural constructions no? We are so immersed in a dominating western (ethnocentric) view of the world that musical "greats" - the canon - often tend to conform "our" constructs. Perspective in so-called realist art is another example... What we call "Art" with all its built in assumptions about what it is not (craft, architecture, whatever) has a particular history which in turn influences our perceptions of "Art".

In the west this was initially about picturing "heaven" or the cosmos and then later on shifted to the mundane world and voila up came perspective - the idea that there is a vanishing point encased by a frame. This was an art theoretical idea that just reflected other areas of thinking about "development" and "progress" and our ideas that "we" had "progressed" further than "them" (and thus could justify colonial domination). Linear mierda. (ha ha the censorship button can't speak spanish....)

But the Japanese for example had completely different ideas not dependent on ideas of framing or perspective - thus what was external to the image helped to define what the image was. Your ideas about music can be extended to reggae and flamenco both of which run on contratiempos or "missed beats. In flamenco those so called contratiempos are highly complex. Flamenco has complex historical roots partly in arabic and s.asian music both of which had theories about resonance and vibration which in India were/are extremely sophisticated expressions of divinity.

Another example would be the Arabic concept of zero which we purloined - imagine life without it!! And meanwhile, think about how exactly "we" have come to define it. As a lack!! That's not the original thinking... that's what "we" have done to it.

One of Bradford's keywords for Hex 14 is resonance ..."After successfully seeking harmony, things respond. Things resonate. ...... there follows an outpouring, a bounty, a great harvest"

Course, while that sounds good there is, as others have pointed out on this site, economies of scale and thus not necessarily lights, music, roll the credits etc., but I reckon something is "resonating" somewhere and that in itself helps us escape the half full/half empty trap we so often carry with us into our interpretations.

In India, also, there was no concept of "Art" or "Craft" as something seperate from each other. Beautiful things we have come to categorise in this way, had, what for me is a very Hex 22 ish meaning - external expressions of the divine intrinsically internal.

Just some thoughts......

Lucica

hi there Lucia

I think that the whole oppositional divide issue was one primarily of politics in a very broad sense of the word, more like in the meaning of the dynamics of power relations that reigned every era.
I think that in the west we took a huge step towards individuality which brought along a whole lot of discriminating policies, whereas the east seems to have never felt the need for such a move and I see those two as just different ways of being, no judgement (these are rather new thoughts so I'm still tentative here . .)

On the other hand, artists never fully complied with theoretical constructs even when they seemed to do so for the sake of appearances and power balance, so in turn resonance and spiritual experience spring from the same sources in all art no matter where it comes from. The emptiness principle has been very important to western art and spirituality too, only it might come under a different cloak
What is always a puzzle to me is, however, that the west did manage to become dominant by transgressing limits, by sheer force, and it makes me wonder how come it hasn't collapsed and it is continually expanding . . of course that also provoked all the pathologies of the west that are so obvious today, but . .
this is still very much a western world and the fact that I'm typing these words in a board and you will see them in a screen wherever in the world you might be, that's also thanks to the binaries of western thought

but I'm stopping my rambling right here, I think it's very hard to respect differences without feeling obliged to choose one over the other, perhaps sth to do with very basic cognitive abilities? don't know for sure but it's a compulsion that seems to come naturally to all of us, now why would that be?

Course, while that sounds good there is, as others have pointed out on this site, economies of scale and thus not necessarily lights, music, roll the credits etc.,

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'economies of scale' sounds sth I'd like to understand more, how do you mean?

rodaki

With economies of scale I just meant that sometimes the ching says something that sounds dramatic but that in the context of our question it just translates as something realtively mundane but by taking a resonance view of 14 we don't have to get too excited or over optimistic.

"I think it's very hard to respect differences without feeling obliged to choose one over the other, perhaps sth to do with very basic cognitive abilities? "

That's part of the dualism inherent in "our" cultural heritage with it's roots in judaeo/christian thinking. Hence, nature/culture; rational/emotional; male/female; mind/body and so on; always weighted to elevate one over the other. If we turn them upside down we still fall into the same trap. Even East/West is problematic because it implies no-one ever travelled about until we 'discovered' them and anyway, where does one end and the other begin? Meanwhile, all kinds of so-called "eastern" thinking was well embedded in European thought but we have literally "whitewashed" our history and so few realise that.

Our cultural heritage is represented as originating from Greece & Rome? Hijo de puta the mediterranean is a pond, these guys didn't live in a vacuum that pond was getting crossed with great regularity for eons. Al-Andalu - now southern Spain is only 8 miles from Africa at the Straits of Gibraltar. And the West coast of India is not very far from Africa and was also a regular crossing point for centuries before "we" got there. So much of modern "western" pharmacology originated from these crossings but we edited that out of our history too!!

These ways of thinking have dominated because as you said power and then ultimately hegemony - in other words it becomes almost impossible to escape these terms of analysis because they have permeated everywhere - they appear 'natural'.

But power and domination aren't just products of the "West" and that's one side of the ching that for me is fun, the layers of time, one of which is the storytelling and learning about the different Kings and dukes and all their goings-on as metaphors for hex meanings!!

My comments about art weren't about what motivates or inspires it but about "Art" as a category. What is classified as "Art" at any given time. If you could transport Picasso back to the 16th Century for instance, I doubt very much he would have even been seen as an artist let alone a great one. And the idea of perspective and framing makes it almost impossible now to think in any other terms - they appear natural or normal.

Wilhelm is a fab example of the crucible of all this stuff. Thanks to European colonialism, the Great Exhibitions and various aspects of mass culture (comics, popular novels etc) the so-called "East" came to be very fashionable in Europe and America. There's some great materials on all this stuff. Wilhelm and others of his time had funding for translations and studies partly because of the colonial need for languages in order to rule. None of this takes away from their work but the context is fascinating and maybe it teaches us to be careful about imposing our ways of thinking too forcefully onto ancient texts. But I think we can use things as tools in the toolbox to help shed light on our thinking.

This is what I assumed you are groping towards with your thinking about the music and I think it is a fruitful route to go and certainly had me thinking in the shower just now!!

Thats also why, (despite a lack of chinese), I like reading Charly's and other translators posts - they struggle over the delicate and always ongoing task of translation and that for me can be very illuminating.

I do agree with you - I love what the zeros and ones have done for us, that you and I can share this conversation is a marvel and just to thwack the dualistic prioritising on the head our conversation is motivated by our shared interest in ancient chinese divinatory practices!

Back to Hex 14 - I like the idea about talents but because of its title in Wilhelm it can be overinflated in our thinking - talent can be so many things and if you can 'resonate' with some form of talent it needn't be half full or half empty (I'm like Meng in this respect I also have a less than optimistic view of my hexes sometimes).

And back to silence, you have given me food for thought I shall ponder more gracias..

Lucia

lucia said:

urgh Luis... yucky my imagination is too graphic for this!!

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LOL! That's why people should carefully mind their use of metaphors...

Answering to Lucia's melody of economy

One of the big impressions on me about this was shed by Chris Lofting, when he talked about the necessary exaggeration of each hexagram, from which we automatically search for the clues (the "dots" Maria spoke of in the 50 thread) that pertain and speaks directly to what our brain is searching for in our question.

This dovetailed for me with something Bradford would sometimes say around here, that 1/64th of a whole is really very big!

Part of what makes Wilhelm so alive and animated is its exaggerations. You step out of being "just" a regular person to being a prince or noble, and in this process we step into our nobility. Efficient pragmatism simply lacks the colors and depth needed to cross a great water. However, often, and for some most often, a simple pragmatic answer is what we search for. In which case the exaggerations can appear terrifying!

I think Brad's on to something here saying 14.Abundance could also be considered Resonance.
Interesting that the opposite hexagram is 8. Union, suggesting that Abundance is the result of Uniting or Resonating with those on a similar wave length.