Contesting 63's already across/complete

meng · Aug 13, 2009

Awhile back I started a thread about predicaments, where "already across" or "already complete" could not apply to questions about how to proceed with something, since both cases involved projects that were only partially completed, and needing completion. I did a lot of reaching and rationalizing to come with an explanation (i.e. see someone accomplished, a professional) that would only superficially satisfy me. There was still the itch that I was missing something. And now I'm quite sure I understand.

In these questionable circumstances, what did make perfect sense is something more like "finish it" or "complete it". Not "already finished" or "already complete". The latter answers make absolutely no logical sense to the questions I'd asked. The former answers made complete sense. Finish it! And do it thus: Prepare yourself for the unseen, make precautions, just in case. There seems to be some irony, in reference to Murphy's Law. But keep on going - rewarding to persist. And when it does reach completion, expect disorder to arise.

So my little tickle file for 63 will henceforth simply be: Complete.

bradford · Aug 14, 2009

The title makes more sense when you understand it as ironic.
Complete, huh? There is no perfection, and those who chase it
just get anticlimax.

meng · Aug 14, 2009

Yeeah, I could see that Brad, but the examples I'm applying to were very black and white. It's like taking something apart and staring at the pieces, wondering if you can put it back together again, and then receiving 63. It's not completed, except perhaps a completed pile of parts. It is to be completed, and 63 shows how to go about that.

With all due respect, I think you and LiSe are both mistaken to limit the title to past tense, as something already accomplished.

bradford · Aug 14, 2009

meng said:
With all due respect, I think you and LiSe are both mistaken to limit the title to past tense, as something already accomplished.

Chuckle. Technically, it's a double past tense, the first of which serves grammatically as
the past tense marker for the whole language. Maybe that's like a double negative so it's not really not what it doesn't seem to be.

heylise · Aug 14, 2009

I really love the association of Murphy's law with hex.63. Makes a lot of sense. "At the beginning auspicious, at the end chaos", and "The noble one takes thought of misfortune and guards against it".

The translation of the title with past tense is simply the English word which comes closest to what the Chinese says. Trouble with translating is that Chinese is so totally different as a language from Western languages. Here we use words with literal meanings, or a range of meanings within something fairly literal. But Chinese talk with associations. When you think of 'love', then 'hate' can be one of the associations. This seems to be the total opposite, but in reality they are two aspects of one general realm. When translating, the art is to find this 'realm' and from out there find the word which encompasses that as wide as possible. That choice is a lot more limited than the meaning of the character. The entire shimmering range of associations gets lost and we are stuck with one single definition.

I think this goes for every hexagram name, and for every line-text. Hex. 63 is not about "being across" and sitting there, it is about the story of getting across. That includes failing to, succeeding to, trying to, figuring out how, enjoying the completion, seeing it happen somewhere, helping someone to, the positive but also the negative aspects of all that and a lot more.

Hex.64 is about NOT reaching a finish line. About what to do when there is no finish line, or not one that can or should be reached, how, why, what to avoid, the good and the bad side of that, the profit or loss and so on.

It is what makes the Yi so fulfilling to me. If it would only answer questions with yes or no or prediction of a future, I would lose my interest quickly. It would lie on a shelf as a manual for some things, but I would seriously doubt its usefulness. Once or twice you are happy with an answer. WOW – it told me exactly what I can expect or what i should do. But then my guts would tell me to throw it out of my life. I want to live and develop and find the magic of the universe. Not gonna tie my life to facts and security.

Seems 'real' living has a lot more to do with associations than with facts and literal words. Yi does not give us a fried fish, but shows us the fish in the river and gives some clues how to get it into our hungry stomach.

meng · Aug 14, 2009

bradford said:
Chuckle. Technically, it's a double past tense, the first of which serves grammatically as
the past tense marker for the whole language. Maybe that's like a double negative so it's not really not what it doesn't seem to be.

You know, I actually considered the double negative possibility of JI JI. Made me chuckle too.

meng · Aug 14, 2009

Thanks for your thoughts on this, LiSe. Makes lots of sense to me.

Rather than 64 and 63 being simply a before and after shot of something, I believe each speaks to whether something is sustainable or completable. A waterwheel is sustainable - 64. Filling a bucket with water is completable - 63. Flying an airplane is sustainable, landing is completable. Each represents the process of sustaining or completing.

For me, this is a significant change in the meaning of 63. It could mean already across, or it could refer to the process of completing.

javalava · Aug 14, 2009

heylise said:
But then my guts would tell me to throw it out of my life. I want to live and develop and find the magic of the universe. Not gonna tie my life to facts and security.

Thank you for this :bows: .

heylise said:
Seems 'real' living has a lot more to do with associations than with facts and literal words. Yi does not give us a fried fish, but shows us the fish in the river and gives some clues how to get it into our hungry stomach.

And thank you for this too -- something further to "chew" on

!

my_key · Aug 14, 2009

Lise and Meng
Some really thought provoking comments here. Thankyou.
Just for fun, I tried to stick to the double negative in 63

63 - Even though you don't think you have, you've already got all you need to do the thing that you are setting your heart on doing. You don't really have to do anything because you have already got it, you just don't know you've got it.

64 - Even when you go for it and think you've got it, you haven't really got it. There is nothing to complete so how can you complete it - you're just moving to the next stepping stone.

meng · Aug 14, 2009

Heya Mr Mike,

I like and relate with your 64 imagery.

But, staying true to my 63 instances, neither of the projects were completed, nor were even all the needed tools and parts present to complete it. And in one case, I jobbed it out to a professional to complete it, which is how I arrived at the "seek someone accomplished, finished, graduated, qualified, etc" idea. I still think that can, in some cases, be a reasonable interpretation of 63, but I now see 63 as being much broader than past or even present tense of completion. It also includes the present tense of moving forward to bring something to completion. For me, that's a significant expansion of 63's meaning.

heylise · Aug 14, 2009

I agree very much with that.
It is the whole road towards completion, even including a possible failure to reach it. Or going too far and falling over the top.
I have put lots of this thread in my 'notes' for 63. Have a long one for every hexagram. Good ideas here!

fkegan · Aug 14, 2009

A few quotes from my Gia-fu's Taoist translation, etc...

Already finished. Little bliss. Fruitful to have zest. Beginning luck. End confusion. Already finished is bliss. The bliss is in the small. Fruitful to have zest. The strong and the gentle are correct and in the proper places. Beginning is luck because gentleness is manifest but in the end stopped and confused because the Tao is exhausted.

In my Flux Tome terms, hex 63 is The Morning After or Mourning After. Not that anything is complete, but one has awoken the next morning, cold sober and taking a fresh look at what used to seem so important. Also perhaps mourning after something that now feels lost or cause for grief.

Per Wikipedia

The Mourning After is the second major release by the hard rock music group 40 Below Summer

from LiSe

Yi does not give us a fried fish, but shows us the fish in the river and gives some clues how to get it into our hungry stomach.

Reminds me of Lao Tzu poem 60
http://www.daily-tao.com/tao/sixty.html
How would one fry a small fish?

Frank

bradford · Aug 14, 2009

done being done? had it with finished? completion is over?

There are a lot of Gua that spend all or most of the six lines explaining why the conclusion that you jumped to when you first read the title is wrong. Qian as Modesty might be the best example, although Sun, Decrease is the most explicit. This seems to be partly the case with this one.

my_key · Aug 14, 2009

meng said:
Heya Mr Mike,

I like and relate with your 64 imagery.

But, staying true to my 63 instances, neither of the projects were completed, nor were even all the needed tools and parts present to complete it. And in one case, I jobbed it out to a professional to complete it, which is how I arrived at the "seek someone accomplished, finished, graduated, qualified, etc" idea. I still think that can, in some cases, be a reasonable interpretation of 63, but I now see 63 as being much broader than past or even present tense of completion. It also includes the present tense of moving forward to bring something to completion. For me, that's a significant expansion of 63's meaning.

Hi Meng

It's good to know that we have a connection on the 64. I liked the waterwheel as well. It reminds me of "Round like a circle in a spiral like a wheel within a wheel never ending or beginning in an ever-spinning reel" - or something like that.
This thread has moved my understanding forward as well. However, I'm not completely sure what you are getting at with

but I now see 63 as being much broader than past or even present tense of completion. It also includes the present tense of moving forward to bring something to completion.

I'm not saying that your wrong. Just exploring. So I'm going to try to meld together what you've written and what I've written for 63 as I think they are the same - ish. I'm making this up as I go along so bear with me if I lose the plot.

So you had a couple of projects to do and i guess from what you are saying both had been stared by you but not finished. So let's take the one you jobbed one out to a professional to finish. And start with teh premise that when you first thought about doing it you already had everything to hand to complete it. You are right that when you say you didn't have the tools and parts or the professional know-how or the time or the inclination to do the work yourself. What you already had though was the desire to start the job and then the intelligence to know when the job got too big for you, the phone and the power of speech to call the professional, the negotiation skills, the money, etc etc.to see the job through.

So you already had what you needed to get the job done before you went off and started the job yourself. In the beginning it was good, all was in order - you had all you needed at the start of the the job (but they weren't the things that you thought you needed to finish the job) and then came the chaos of you trying to complete the job yourself.

Murphy's Law applied perhaps because the "right action" wasn't taken. As Lise noted:

I really love the association of Murphy's law with hex.63. Makes a lot of sense. "At the beginning auspicious, at the end chaos", and "The noble one takes thought of misfortune and guards against it".

I think that says what I wanted to say.....and I feel that makes the connection for me. Now it only remains to be seen if it makes sense to anyone else.

Mr Mike (not to be confused with Mr Ed

)

meng · Aug 14, 2009

bradford said:
There are a lot of Gua that spend all or most of the six lines explaining why the conclusion that you jumped to when you first read the title is wrong. Qian as Modesty might be the best example, although Sun, Decrease is the most explicit. This seems to be partly the case with this one.

Yes, I understand that. For me the biggest example is 55. It's funny how lately small hex's are growing bigger, large ones grow smaller.

I don't recall what lines, if any, I'd received. All I know is I was looking at something that needed to be finished.

Now, if I saw the project as being complete in my mind, even (as I believe Mike is saying) if the pieces are scattered within a 20 mile radius (which they were), that image or vision could easily be seen as 63. The vision of completion: do as though it’s already done. That makes perfect sense. Um, along with the warnings given. But, the real time, classic view of science, says it's not done until it's done. Not potentially done, but done done. And that simply was not the case, yet. Both were brought to completion, but not at the time of the readings. I can't make it plainer than that, fellas.

my_key · Aug 14, 2009

meng said:
I don't recall what lines, if any, I'd received. All I know is I was looking at something that needed to be finished.

Now, if I saw the project as being complete in my mind, even (as I believe Mike is saying) if the pieces are scattered within a 20 mile radius (which they were), that image or vision could easily be seen as 63. The vision of completion: do as though it’s already done. That makes perfect sense. Um, along with the warnings given. But, the real time, classic view of science, says it's not done until it's done. Not potentially done, but done done. And that simply was not the case, yet. Both were brought to completion, but not at the time of the readings. I can't make it plainer than that, fellas.

Hi Meng

I'm not sure that was quite or all I was saying. Trying to make sense of what Brad has said as well here.

There may also be an element of 63 being "Already Crossing" and that what the thing that you are already crossing is not totally aligned with the thing that you were looking at as wanting to get finished.

I'm just thinking that perhaps what you wanted to get finished (done done) wasn't really the thing that you needed to be focused on crossing.

Mike

meng · Aug 15, 2009

my_key said:
Hi Meng

I'm not sure that was quite or all I was saying. Trying to make sense of what Brad has said as well here.

There may also be an element of 63 being "Already Crossing" and that what the thing that you are already crossing is not totally aligned with the thing that you were looking at as wanting to get finished.

I'm just thinking that perhaps what you wanted to get finished (done done) wasn't really the thing that you needed to be focused on crossing.

Mike

Mike, I got a lot from what you said. And still thinking on Brad's comment, about what part lines play to seemingly contradict the hex title.

I'm just thinking that perhaps what you wanted to get finished (done done) wasn't really the thing that you needed to be focused on crossing.

mm, no, they both were completed as I'd planned. Well, one did require a bit of improvising (the professional wasn't a guitar tech but TV and appliance tech. Might say he made it an industrial grade overkill job, lol, but it works perfectly, and I haven't messed with it since. It's a done deal. This raises yet another point: gear-heads, like myself, are prone to change out components rather frequently. I was taking a chance with this pickup part, having never heard it live before. It worked out better than I had hoped. So just the fact that I've made it a keeper is 63. Another angle I hadn't looked at.

Of course I don't expect anyone to change their own meanings based on a couple of readings someone else received for a couple of mundane projects. But perhaps if you receive 63 for something that you know darned well isn't finished, you might relate to my experience with it. If you do, or have already, I hope you share it.

heylise · Aug 15, 2009

What if both 63 and 64 (and the other 62 hexagrams) are about a time? A "time of completion", and "time of not completion".

When it is a time of completion, it means that you are doing something or something happens or whatever, which does need completion. It has to become reality, "completed". Nothing more than that, or maybe better: nothing less. A guitar has to be put together in such a way that it works, if it is done 'more or less right' but not really right, it will not play properly.

For 64, a time of not completion: things don't need completion, something else is at work. It is in 64 as if they unfold and it is best to assist them in their own unfoldment, in finding their own right direction. Like having a plant and making sure there is enough light, enough water, everything needed to grow. Often not even that, just having the ability to keep your hands off. Don't touch the growing itself, leave that to the plant and to universe.

That is where the lines can look as if they contradict the hexagram. They are about your input in a time like this. Activity or non-activity is very different to 'a time'.

In 63.3 the ancestor attacks the gui region. It is not completed, but it has to be. Not good to stop halfway. The line only tells him how best to go about it.
In 64.4 he receives rewards. He opened the road for them because he did something big, but now he should not try to 'complete' this, should not ask for them. Just let it happen.

fkegan · Aug 15, 2009

Hi All,

Even in the Wilhelm, hex 63 is AFTER Completion. Nothing about getting things done, but all about what happens once you realize it has already been completed and you are into the next phase. As in the real estate aphorism, a neighborhood starts running down hill as soon as the new houses are sold.

All the counsel in this hexagram 63 is about dealing with the various realizations as it finally hits that what you had been engrossed in trying to complete has been over for a while already. In Meng's example, he thought he still had these projects to complete, but his active completion was over, so it was time to outsource their further development.

Line 1 especially nice. He puts the brakes on ...since he has come to the end of his journey didn't realize it before.

The fox gets his tail in the water, but that is OK since he has crossed the deep part of the river and his tail falling through just shows he is virtually on shore.

Frank

meng · Aug 16, 2009

even Wilhelm says..

I find often that the realities of life are not restricted to the definitions previously given them by archaic law makers, who never intended these to be laws, but ideas which reflect reality.

fkegan · Aug 16, 2009

meng said:
even Wilhelm says..

I find often that the realities of life are not restricted to the definitions previously given them by archaic law makers, who never intended these to be laws, but ideas which reflect reality.

Hi Meng,

Is Wilhelm now a previous definition?

Hex63 is the next step after apparent completion. Even the examples you cited from your own Yi experience indicate that. For you they were completed projects and then after the Yi Oracle you sent them to professionals to work on more or differently.

"Archaic law makers" is that really, really your view of the Imperial Edition of 1716?

You express a fascinating point of view, though usually elliptically rather than fully expressed. Do ideas reflect reality? Or is the Yi about abstract symbolism that embodies how the mind understands the personal experience of the Flux of Reality?

Frank

hilary · Aug 16, 2009

I've found that 'already across' can mean 'already committed' or 'already started' - Karcher has it as 'Already Crossing' rather than 'Already Across'. I still think of it as 'already across' - but that doesn't mean you get to sit down on the bank. You crossed the river because you had somewhere to go and something to do over here, and it's that forward momentum that holds everything together.

Maybe a bit like passing a music exam - doesn't mean you can stop practising. When is anything 'done'?

A couple of times I've asked about a course of action and got 63 unchanging to say, 'Haven't you already decided on this?' (I had.)

meng · Aug 17, 2009

hilary said:
I've found that 'already across' can mean 'already committed' or 'already started' - Karcher has it as 'Already Crossing' rather than 'Already Across'.

Thank you. This was precisely the case.

maremaria · Aug 17, 2009

Interesting thread. Lots of food for thought. !!!

If i recall correct, Martin in a reading called 63 as gosts from the past, unfinished things need to be finished.

Sparhawk · Aug 17, 2009

Searched for the word "milestone" in this thread and didn't find it. There it is now. One of the many ways to interpret 63, IMO.

maremaria · Aug 17, 2009

i like that

meng · Aug 17, 2009

Milestone is an interesting choice of word and meaning. It makes turning back not quite impossible, but surely unprofitable. You would still have to live with the original problem, or possibly worse. But once a milestone is reached, there's the sensation of receiving a second wind, and being ready to "finish this thing."

Nice one, Luis.

fkegan · Aug 18, 2009

Hi Hilary,

My Wilhelm gives the name for hex 63 as "After Completion" With the judgment ending with "At the beginning good fortune, at the end disorder."

It is all about what happens when you have a place for everything and everything in its place--then what comes next.

'Milestone' would imply the problem is confusing a road mileage sign with the final destination. This hexagram is all about what one realizes after one believes that everything was taken care of yesterday. My Flux Tome name is The Morning After or Mourning After (when one still grieves what has actually finished and been buried).

Frank

Sparhawk · Aug 18, 2009

Ah, what a surprise...

fkegan said:
'Milestone' would imply the problem is confusing a road mileage sign with the final destination.

1 : a stone serving as a milepost
2 : a significant point in development

(in the Unabridged version as "a significant point in any progress or development")

But, of course, you are not obliged to use it as a possible interpretation, the same way I don't yours. I'm glad though, others can find some meaning in it. It works fine for me, within certain contexts.

fkegan · Aug 18, 2009

sparhawk said:
Ah, what a surprise...

But, of course, you are not obliged to use it as a possible interpretation, the same way I don't yours. I'm glad though, others can find some meaning in it. It works fine for me, within certain contexts.

Hi Luis,

How are you surprised? You sound angry or something, very sorry if I upset you.

The thread is about hex63 and the issue is whether it is about "completing" or 'After Completion.' It is very clear many folks agree with you it is about getting things done or completed or reaching an important milestone. I was merely pointing out Wilhelm is not one of that crowd. There is at least a philosophical quibble whether a milestone, even in its metaphorical sense of an achievement of some notable accomplishment is what hex 63 is about.

Wilhelm and I agree that rather than being about coming to a relevant milestone, hex63 is about the realizations and developments that occur after achieving that milestone.

It is like climbing a tall mountain. Attaining the summit is an achievement, an accomplishment, and a milestone. Then next morning up there on the summit comes the hex63 situation. Now you have to climb down which is more difficult and damaging to your body. Although you can tell yourself that you climb the mountain because it is there, once at the summit you next must face the nagging question of why did you do this and will climbing the next peak be any better? That is hex63.

Isn't it OK that I don't always agree with you? I don't mind that you don't agree with me. That is what makes for good discussions. If we all agreed what would be the point?

Frank

Contesting 63's already across/complete

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