About trigrams: as I have shown in my first video the shuzigua, the 'numerical hexagrams' that are the precursors of the hexagrams in the Yijing, were already quite early in history divided into trigrams. This trigram division goes all the way to the Han dynasty. Apparently trigrams had meanings. We might not know the original meaning of them (although we have material at out disposal that helps us to sketch a rough picture of early meanings and usage; see also the articles by Adam Schwartz about the trigrams, their names and history) but I don't think that needs to keep you from finding a practical application for them.

Also, there are hints that the sequence of the hexagrams in the Yijing might be trigram related.

About my 3rd video: I made it because many people take the rules that are given in many (often new age-ish) books & websites as gospel. Keep in mind that such rules were totally absent in early Yi history. But as I say at the end, if rules help you there is no reason why you shouldn't use them.

About the Five Elements: The Shifa manuscript dated around 350BC shows that they were already used quite early in the practical divination with hexagrams. Parts of the Shifa manuscript are found in the later developed Wenwang Gua method of Yijing usage which relies heavily on the Five Elements. Maybe TCM can do without the wuxing but as connectors between several disciplines like Yijing, TCM, Feng Shui, bazi etc. they serve a good purpose.

Just like TCM could do without wuxing you can practice Yijing without yin & yang or trigrams or text. But that doesn't devalue the practical application of these parts. In the end it is not about these different parts but how you apply them. It's your personal experience that counts. However, one's personal experience does not devalue (nor should it be a judgment of) the experience of others.

Again please either make the effort to use the quote button or if you cannot do that use quotation marks otherwise it is very confusing for readers

Trojina

There's been so many threads on these aspects over the years and so many experienced people saying the same kinds of things. So to call them 'notions' does seem to show a lack of experience on your own part.

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jukkodave

The reasons that I referred to them as notions is that, despite your assertions that many experienced people are saying the same things, my experience and those that i know that have used the Yi for many years would not agree with him.

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oh well


Anyway your posts are hard to read being dense lengthy chunks of text with little spacing and no use of quotation marks of any kind. If you can't make it clear who you are quoting then don't quote otherwise it looks like you yourself are saying the very thing you are responding to and it becomes confusing.

How hard can it be, if you can't figure out where the quote button is, to simply put Trojina says " xyyyz". You can't really engage effectively on a forum without considering the reader which means making it quite clear for them who said what and not expecting people to labour through lengthy unbroken text. Paragraphs do benefit from having some space between them. As it is you have mastered the paragraph but put no space there.

I think if you want to stand a chance of having your views heard by a wider audience you really do need to pay attention to your formatting. I've not read even one of your posts fully because I cannot wade through all that text with no spacing and no attempt made to make it clear when you are quoting.

Trojina says "I've not read even one of your posts fully"
Fair enough but if you haven read everything I have been saying why are you even commentating on my posts. That would seem to be just taking a quote out of context as a means of disagreeing with me just for the sake of it. Correct me on my formatting by all means, I agree it is not good but if you havent even read the rest of the posts my are you just picking bits that you think you can have a go at.
But "oh well" is hardly a comment.

The fact is that many people dont agree with Harmon, or the other experienced" people, and I have provided a rational reason as to why that possibly might be the case - that there are two fundamentally different reason for consulting the Yi which require different approaches.

I agree that my use of formatting is very poor. It is not something that I am good at, that may mean that it is difficult to read my posts but that doesnt mean that they shouldnt be read just because the formatting in the same way as everyone else. I have at least been trying and will look at the advice that have been given about how to format when I have more time over the weekend.

For the record I make no attmpts to make it clear when I am quoting because I rarely do. But I think when I did quote (Legge) I made that clear. But that confuses me, if you have not read my posts how would you know if I am or am not quoting anyone.

I have made it clear in my posts that unless we have a way of measuring and evaluating whether what someone has said, is of value or not, or that they even have the authority of the understanding of knowing the Yi for themsleves, from the inside out and were not just perhaps scolars writing down what someone else had told them, that I consider that relying on the concepts and interpretations of others really is no validation of the Yi at all. Especially when we seem completely unable to even make an attempt at rationlising what are considered to be the fundamental concepts of the Yi. I would be most unlikely then when I am asking where is the validation, other than the repetition of what someones opinion thousands of years ago was. And especially when history tells us that so many "ideas" have turned out to be wrong.

All the best Dave

jukkodave said:

Thanks Liselle, I will look at how to format my posts more clearly over the weekend. Even the workarounds will be useful. I have to admit that understanding new technology and such things formatting is not my strong point. Sorry, I shall attempt to do better.

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jukkodave said:

will look at the advice that have been given about how to format when I have more time over the weekend.

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If you have time to write lengthy posts now, you have time to figure this out now, surely. It's not that hard. It sounds harder in instructions than it is to actually do.



I think a problem here is that exactly how the I Ching works, through whatever various methods are used to access it, is fundamentally unprovable. Whether Yi has a consciousness or not is also unprovable, at least not in the same way we can prove that angles of a triangle always add up to 180 degrees.

It's fine to be skeptical, but getting readings that actually answer you - how startling is that?! - tends to allay doubts about whether this "works."

Trojina says "I've not read even one of your posts fully"

Fair enough but if you haven read everything I have been saying why are you even commentating on my posts. That would seem to be just taking a quote out of context as a means of disagreeing with me just for the sake of it. Correct me on my formatting by all means, I agree it is not good but if you havent even read the rest of the posts my are you just picking bits that you think you can have a go at.
But "oh well" is hardly a comment.

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'Oh well' was meant to indicate well okay if that is what you want to think.

As for disagreeing for the sake of it I must say that is often how your responses have struck me all through this thread.

I'm commenting on part of your posts and after all this isn't your thread it's Hilary's Blog . I can get the gist of what you are saying without reading it word for word and I do think you could likely be far more succinct to good effect.

I have made the reasonable point that it is not necessary for you to devise means of making yourself remote from the casting process.

I see that you are also saying that it is not rational for the trigrams to be allocated and named as they are. I don't have much to say about that especially as I don't focus heavily on trigrams in interpretation feeling the hexagram to be far more than the sum of it's parts. There are far more learned people who can answer you on these points about trigrams, historians for example, but ultimately it feels a bit like asking "who decided that the word 'blue' would describe the sky ?" or even "who decided that the concept of 'colour' would be used to describe the sky ?" How could anybody answer that ? Actually children do say such things, I recall a child asking her father "Daddy, why do we see with our eyes ?". He could have answered her if she had said "how do we see with our eyes ?" but she wasn't asking how but why and that is an unanswerable question. This is the reason no one can answer you to your satisfaction I guess.

I agree that my use of formatting is very poor. It is not something that I am good at, that may mean that it is difficult to read my posts but that doesnt mean that they shouldnt be read just because the formatting in the same way as everyone else. I have at least been trying and will look at the advice that have been given about how to format when I have more time over the weekend.

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I'm not saying that your posts shouldn't be read, only stating it's unlikely they will be fully read unless you can give some attention to your presentation.

For the record I make no attmpts to make it clear when I am quoting because I rarely do. But I think when I did quote (Legge) I made that clear. But that confuses me, if you have not read my posts how would you know if I am or am not quoting anyone.

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I can read quickly, take a lot in at once so I have seen you quote me and others without making it clear you are quoting. But I don't have the time to sit and pay really close attention to your words in all of your posts.

I have made it clear in my posts that unless we have a way of measuring and evaluating whether what someone has said, is of value or not, or that they even have the authority of the understanding of knowing the Yi for themsleves, from the inside out and were not just perhaps scolars writing down what someone else had told them, that I consider that relying on the concepts and interpretations of others really is no validation of the Yi at all.

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Everyone who has posted on this thread so far has extensive experience with the I Ching. No one here mindlessly goes and follows an 'expert'. Someone engaged in teaching about Yi may make a summary, may gather a bunch of points which others may find helpful. There's nothing very unusual about that. What you are saying almost amounts to an idea there should be no Yi teachers and that everyone must go to their experience. In a sense I agree with you, a teacher, any teacher, cannot hand you your own connection to Yi, everyone has to go their own path with Yi but that doesn't mean it's not useful to have some pointers along the way.

Especially when we seem completely unable to even make an attempt at rationlising what are considered to be the fundamental concepts of the Yi. I would be most unlikely then when I am asking where is the validation, other than the repetition of what someones opinion thousands of years ago was. And especially when history tells us that so many "ideas" have turned out to be wrong.

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So you think dui may not be a lake and xun may not be wind. Well I can't argue with that and it is interesting to think about such things. Sometimes trigrams seem to make complete sense of a hexagram such as 59, Dispersion, wind over water. However many do not. Why for example would mountain over water give us Youthful Folly. I do not know but we have discussed these things
together on the forums at times, it isn't as if no one ever gave it any thought before.


I think it is a good idea to start your own new thread on things you want to discuss.

Hi Harmon
Thanks for responding.
I appreciate what you are saying about the history of the Yi, the Trigrams and the 5E. But the point I am trying to get across is why should we consider that to be of any value when it is full of contradictions, when we cant even decide which version of the Trigrams is the definitive one. When there is no attempt at any rational, logical or coherent arguments that even begin to explain or justify the theories of the 5E and the Trigrams. I did watch your videos and there is no doubt that you are very learned on the subject and by comparision I am a mere ignoramus.
But my questions are not ignorant and if there is no validation, not even logical arguments, as to why 5E and 8 Trigrams might be relevant at describing the fundamental underlying principles of nature and the ordinances of heaven then why are we so reliant on concepts which we can claim to have no understanding of if we are unable to explain them in a justfiable, rational and coherent matter.

As to the history, I would suggest that the history of the Yi and the relevance of what has survived can only be taken along with the rest of the history of the time. Which includes the hierachy of the rulers and the fact that most of the masses had no education. That confiines the knowledge of the Yi, at least the written part and so probably confined the knowledge of methids of divination to the Trigrams, which may be why they "appear to have importance, to those that had power and authority and as history clearly shows us the "purposes " of those in power are not necessarily without selfish motive and are often less than transparent and honest. We know that most knowledge in China was passed down by word of mouth from teacher to student, and wouldnt have ever been written down.

We have to consider the possibility that the Trigrams were easy to memorise and were "given" to the masses just to keep them subdued. Who in thier right mind which give real tools of power and knowledge to those that they were trying to keep in line anr rul. We do know that as far as the 5E are concerned that a major consideration as to how they came to be known as they are today was a political one, I think it was one of the translators of the Neijing that pointed out the historical situation of the time, that the masses believed in spirits, ghosts and such things as nature spiits and demons and the creation of the 5E as we know it today provided a very good way of placing the Ruler, and his hieracrchy at the centre of the universe, and that, by using a system that "explained" that the spirits and demons were really natural phenomona, that the Emporer was really in control of everything and placed him firmly back in control

How do we know that the fragments or anything else that survived, are ever accurate or relevant.

It is hard to see that the belief in something that cannot be rationaly justified or logically argued, that has no discernable coherence with itself or with any of the other methids that attempt to describe the universe, is much different than theories of flat earths or the Sun going around the Earth or of any of the weird and wonderful notions of medicine that have permeated throught the ages. Some of them have contained pearls of wisdom but it is noly when we have the perspective, the framework and the measures of actual knowledge and understanding that we can make sense of any of those ancient theories and evaluate what is of value and what isnt. If we "believed " in things just because they were ancient then we would still be living on a flat earth and would never be able to fly to the moon, it is only because we use the logic of rationality and the demands of evidence that we can ever move forwards.

It is of course academically fascinating to explore the ancient works. But the Yi is a practical tool, which the commentators and the Yi itself have made clear has the potential to be a mirror to oneself. We can of course use it for any sort of mirror and rather than making decisions consciously for ourselves, pass that responsibility to an inanimate object, and ask the most trivial of questions. But the questions I am putting forward are not how we might use the Yi for such trivialities but how we might use the Yi as the mirror of the self, how we might use the Yi to guide us to become the sages that the Yi reminds us as so important, to know what the sages knew.

It is all very well to know the history but that does nothing to explain how and why the 5E and the Trigrams work, how they relate, interconnect, what their purpose and function is. So where are the rational, coherent arguments that might begin to explain the contradictions, that might begin to explain the fundamental principles and the ordinances. What indded are the findamental principles of nature, what are te ordinances of heaven, what indeed is "actually " meant by earth and heaven in that context govin by the commentators. Where is the rationality of why the Trigrams were assigned such attributes as water, fire, mountain, wind, lake and thunder, which are distinct physical phenomena and then we also have heaven and earthe which are clearly far more "substantial" than mere physical attributes. How can we not know how the Trigrams "flow" from one into the other, and so which should be adjacent and opposite ot one another. How can we not have a rational explanation of why there are different theories of the directions the Trigrams should be assigned. How can we not have coherent or rational exaplanation of how 5E fits into 8 Trigrams, into 12 Zang Fu. How can we not have any rational expalnations of why we consider that a particula Trigram should even be assigned a quality such as a lake, when it si obvious that the symbol that is used to portray the actions of a line in a Trigram can be easily represented by any other sort of inmagery which would not change the underlying fundamental quality at all and so make it clear that the assignation of a lake or mountain or any of the other apparent attributes cannot havebeen made on the appearance of just the way that solid and "broken" lines look. Though if they were assigned their qualities on such arbitrary and artificial grounds that would declare the "interpretations" of the Trigrams to be little more than a mistake and we would have to go back to basics and work that out for ourselves. If it not arbitrary imagery the what are the fundamental underlying principles and ordinances that led to the 6 attributes of nature and the 2 attributes of heaven and earth. If cant explain that then perhps the "theories" of 5E and 8 Trigrams has no justification at all and despite the fact that the Yi provides such a wonderful insight into ourselves we should be completely honest, decare that we dont have a clue as to why and go and eat some cake. Much better to eat it than waste time staring at it if there is nothing of value that we can communicate to anyone else in a coherent and rational way.

I shall have closer look at you videos whn I have a bit more time, though I think my first priority should be to learn the rules of formatting, as that does seem to be annoying so many people.,

Will post when I have viewed all your videos. Regardless of whether one would agree or disagree I have to compliment you on you presentation of how to not use the Yi. It was thoroughly enjoyable.

All the best Dave

Freedda said " q few different directions than the original subject, which was about the imagery of the Yi."

I think that if you read my posts that I have made it clear that it is all connected. Isnt that the point, that because it is all, or should be coherently connected, that the question of if one can even have imagery about the Yi, the question being on what would one use as the basis for any imagery is cintral to the post and while I may have pointed out many of the logical tendrils that connect the various points together the question of how and why one could use imagery and on what would it be based is central to the questions of how any why we actually have 5E and 8 Trigrams and the questions of whether there is any logical or rational validation for either, how and if they are connected, other than the fact that someone said thousands of years ago, that we have no idea if they were considered to have any "expertise " in the understanding of the Yi, or were just academics repeating what someone had written before with no inner understang themselves to know if what they were saying was correct or not. And that we take such ancient writings as absolute aparently without any consideration of if they make any rational or coherent sense andwith little or no consideration of the history and the circumstances of the times they were written.

So it is all about the imagery of a cake. Perhaps cake tastes better than it looks and there is no imagery other than admoring the skill of someone that can construct such a thing as a 6 layered cake. Pehaps that is why we place so much reliance on Trigrams, only because it is easier to make 3 layered cakes. Just in case, that is supposed to be a joke. I was sitting here with my Latte and couldnt resist. Sorry, itsnot meant to be a dig, it just made me laugh out loud. I hope you can see the funny side of it.
We have perhaps got overly caught up in personal opinions. For myslef I am trying to see beyond individual perspectives and focus just as the commentators say the Yi represents, on the fundamental underlying Principles of Nature and the Ordinances of Heaven, which just about includes everything including cake.

I think that the notion of breaking the question down into smaller specific subjects would be missing the point of how is everything connected. I think that the thread would have to be just that, how are the 5E, the Trigrams connected. Seeing as the question of the imagery of cake provided the means to raise thise very same questions perhaps the topic should be renamed to be more appropriate to e the inclusion of how everything is connected and what can be shown to be valid or not. That is rather fundamntal and basic to those of us that use the Yi for anything other than questions about what way to wear my hair today.

I think that the discrimination tha we can use the Yi as a mirror for the outside or as a mirror for the inside and so a reflection of our very selves is an important one to make. The responses and discussion are going to be very different if they are about how we look in the mirror to everyone else and how we look in the mirror to ourselves. If we are looking at the mirror of the outside then it really doesnt matter how one uses the Yi, what kind of imagery one uses, if one uses 5E or Trigrams, or if any of it makes any sense at all. We can "create" whatever rules we care to and that will define what we will understand from the Oracle. It is known that one can create any sort of "oracle" at all and it will work so on that level there would be nothing to discrimante the Yi from other type of divination and if we want to believe that Trigrams or 5E are useful then because we create our reality then that is what we will find. But if we want to go bwyinf the reality that we have created for ourselves and do as the Yi makes clear is possible and use it as a mirror for the self then the accuracy and relevance of the fundamental underlying principles and how everything conects together in a rational and coherent way becomes incredibly important.
If one just wants to talk about cake, if one wants to believe in things that were said thousands of years ago or the interpretations that others have put on them then my posts are not going to be taken well, and may well be taken as chllenging and confronting,

But of one want to examine the fundamental principles that underly the Yi then my posts will have a completely different meaning.

Perhaps we should all declare, before we post, whether we are more interested in the fundamental principles of the Yi or more interested in maintaining the world that we create with our beliefs.

Cake or Principles.

For myself I declare Principles.

All the best

Dave

jukkodave said:

Perhaps we should all declare, before we post, whether we are more interested in the fundamental principles of the Yi or more interested in maintaining the world that we create with our beliefs.

Cake or Principles.

For myself I declare Principles.

All the best

Dave

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Where do you expect this sort of condescension to get you?


It's not that you're asking bad questions. But Trojina made a very good point - they're probably unanswerable.

Let me ask you this: what do you want us to say to you? If you think we're all suddenly going to abandon everything just because you tell us we should, I doubt that's going to happen.

Why don't you give us an example of how you'd approach a reading, if you have one you can share. Explain it that way? (edited: on a new thread, would probably be best)

jukkodave said:

Hi Harmon
But the point I am trying to get across is why should we consider that to be of any value when it is full of contradictions, when we cant even decide which version of the Trigrams is the definitive one.

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I don't know who this 'we' is that you are talking about. Contradictions are a matter of perspective - I don't see any contradictions and find trigrams very valuable (and easy) to work with. That is also because I only know one 'version' of the trigrams (although I am not even sure what you mean by 'version'.)

if there is no validation, not even logical arguments, as to why 5E and 8 Trigrams might be relevant at describing the fundamental underlying principles of nature and the ordinances of heaven then why are we so reliant on concepts which we can claim to have no understanding of if we are unable to explain them in a justfiable, rational and coherent matter.

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Explanation or rational reasoning is not required to be able to use trigrams and similar structures. I don't need to know how a car works in order to drive it. I can make use of the value that I see in them. It's a personal matter based on personal experience. No amount of rationality will change my experience. I also don't see why trigrams should be "relevant at describing the fundamental underlying principles of nature and the ordinances of heaven". That's philosophy and I'm not interested in philosophy, nor do I need it to make trigrams etc work for me in a way that is beneficial to me.

As to the history, I would suggest that the history of the Yi and the relevance of what has survived can only be taken along with the rest of the history of the time. Which includes the hierachy of the rulers and the fact that most of the masses had no education. That confiines the knowledge of the Yi, at least the written part and so probably confined the knowledge of methids of divination to the Trigrams, which may be why they "appear to have importance, to those that had power and authority and as history clearly shows us the "purposes " of those in power are not necessarily without selfish motive and are often less than transparent and honest. We know that most knowledge in China was passed down by word of mouth from teacher to student, and wouldnt have ever been written down.

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Yes, you always have to look at the context in which a certain subject is used, referred to, or in any other way examined or applied. It is exactly that which has taught us how trigrams were used in early China: by studying the context.

We have to consider the possibility that the Trigrams were easy to memorise and were "given" to the masses just to keep them subdued.

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? That's a strange assumption. Why would I have to consider that? I don't see the point of it.

Who in thier right mind which give real tools of power and knowledge to those that they were trying to keep in line anr rul. We do know that as far as the 5E are concerned that a major consideration as to how they came to be known as they are today was a political one, I think it was one of the translators of the Neijing that pointed out the historical situation of the time, that the masses believed in spirits, ghosts and such things as nature spiits and demons and the creation of the 5E as we know it today provided a very good way of placing the Ruler, and his hieracrchy at the centre of the universe, and that, by using a system that "explained" that the spirits and demons were really natural phenomona, that the Emporer was really in control of everything and placed him firmly back in control

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That sounds like a whole load of bollocks to me so I would like to see a source for that. You often say "we know..." but that doesn't mean anything if I don't know who 'we' is and when a source is missing. A good introduction into the wuxing is John Lee's article 'From Five Elements to Five Agents: Wu-hsing in Chinese History, in Julia Ching & R.W.L. Guisso (eds.), Sages and Filial Sons: Mythology and Archaeology in Ancient China, p. 163-178. This article shows that the wuxing were used for legitimation, but that does not mean that their origin was a political one.

How do we know that the fragments or anything else that survived, are ever accurate or relevant.

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When it comes to the Yijing they are relevant because their context is related to it. I don't know what you mean by 'accurate'.

It is hard to see that the belief in something that cannot be rationaly justified or logically argued, that has no discernable coherence with itself or with any of the other methids that attempt to describe the universe, is much different than theories of flat earths or the Sun going around the Earth or of any of the weird and wonderful notions of medicine that have permeated throught the ages.

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I don't see the Yijing, or more specifically the Zhouyi, or its parts, as a method to 'attempt to describe the universe'. I also don't find that relevant for the usage of the book.

Some of them have contained pearls of wisdom but it is noly when we have the perspective, the framework and the measures of actual knowledge and understanding that we can make sense of any of those ancient theories and evaluate what is of value and what isnt. If we "believed " in things just because they were ancient then we would still be living on a flat earth and would never be able to fly to the moon, it is only because we use the logic of rationality and the demands of evidence that we can ever move forwards.

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Rationality and evidence don't change my experience. Even when I was told that trigrams are nonsense and made up by a bunch of sinologists who manipulated all the records that we have about them, I probably would still use them because, made up or not, they have proven valuable to me and fit the structure, content and context of the Zhouyi. The meaning that I attach to them is mine alone, based on my research and usage of them.

But the questions I am putting forward are not how we might use the Yi for such trivialities but how we might use the Yi as the mirror of the self, how we might use the Yi to guide us to become the sages that the Yi reminds us as so important, to know what the sages knew.

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The Zhouyi does not talk about sages - you are referring to concepts that are mentioned in the Ten Wings and I am not interested in that (not am I interested in becoming a sage.)

It is all very well to know the history but that does nothing to explain how and why the 5E and the Trigrams work, how they relate, interconnect, what their purpose and function is.

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I find the 'why' totally unimportant, I am not interested in that. I examine and observe their application in early China and try to use the info that I get from it to my advantage. That's all.

So where are the rational, coherent arguments that might begin to explain the contradictions, that might begin to explain the fundamental principles and the ordinances.

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There are no contradictions unless you are unable to make your own choices. There will always be contradictions when you allow yourself to stay stuck in all the numerous directions, usages and applications of the wuxing, trigrams etc. What matters is: how are you going to resolve these contradictions? You don't need any knowledge of history or whatever to do that. You can make up your own mind.

What indded are the findamental principles of nature, what are te ordinances of heaven, what indeed is "actually " meant by earth and heaven in that context govin by the commentators.

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I'm not interested in commentaries.

Where is the rationality of why the Trigrams were assigned such attributes as water, fire, mountain, wind, lake and thunder, which are distinct physical phenomena and then we also have heaven and earthe which are clearly far more "substantial" than mere physical attributes.

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Read Adam Schwartz's articles for a possible hypothesis: https://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/hkbu_staff_publication/6900/ and https://www.degruyter.com/abstract/j/asia.2018.72.issue-4/asia-2017-0067/asia-2017-0067.xml

How can we not know how the Trigrams "flow" from one into the other, and so which should be adjacent and opposite ot one another. How can we not have a rational explanation of why there are different theories of the directions the Trigrams should be assigned.

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You keep talking about 'rationality'. That might be important to you but it isn't to me and it might also not have been relevant for the development of the Zhouyi and its parts. Rationality is not the only way to arrive at meaningful structures.

If it not arbitrary imagery the what are the fundamental underlying principles and ordinances that led to the 6 attributes of nature and the 2 attributes of heaven and earth.

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I don't see '6 attributes of nature' nor '2 attributes of Heaven and Earth' in thre Zhouyi. It seems your ideas about the Yijing are mainly based on commentaries. I am not interested in that.

If cant explain that then perhps the "theories" of 5E and 8 Trigrams has no justification at all

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Explanation of these points do not devalue the usability of the Zhouyi and its parts or the wuxing, nor does it devalue any posisble theory behind them. What we know about them is very little and yet I think many find these concepts useful, practical and leading to results that are enduring. Justification is not necessary, at least not for me: I have experienced that 'it' works. How it works, and any possible rationale behind it, is of no interest to me.

and despite the fact that the Yi provides such a wonderful insight into ourselves we should be completely honest, decare that we dont have a clue as to why and go and eat some cake.

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I find the 'why' the least important aspect of the Yijing. I'll have the cake, thank you. I can eat cake. I cannot eat principles.

I shall have closer look at you videos whn I have a bit more time, though I think my first priority should be to learn the rules of formatting, as that does seem to be annoying so many people.

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Yes, structure in your posts might help to understand them. I can hardly read them, for various reasons but lack of structure is one of them. So if you reply, please keep it short. I cannot read long pieces of text.

Will post when I have viewed all your videos. Regardless of whether one would agree or disagree I have to compliment you on you presentation of how to not use the Yi. It was thoroughly enjoyable.

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Thanks. I find it interesting that so many people take issue with that video while all I am saying is: make up your own mind. Don't let anyone tell you how to use the Yijing.

Hi Trojina
I think that a detailed response to your post may be useful in all sorts of ways.
I have italicised your posts until I learn how to properly format. I hope it makes more sense and is easier to read.

"'Oh well' was meant to indicate well okay if that is what you want to think"

Just saying "Oh well " with nothing else is rather dismissive and disdainful and you could have added any number of derogatory statements and they all would have fitted with oh well.
It certainly makes no attempt at any sort of explanation as to why you would think that.
There is a valid point that not only is it my experience, but the experience of many others. Interstingly it is the experience that had not "tuition " to guide them. When those I knew first got hold of the Yi there were only two variations in circulation, Legge and Wilhelm, and most of the people that I knew, having perhaps not been that intellectual or academinc and possibly lost a lot of confiidence in all sorts of authority, had no interest in the viewpoints of any interpretors of commentators, and so we simply got on with it and we worked it out for ourselves. The interesting thing was that in general we all came to similar understandings, which were contrary to those that that Harmon presents, and it was only those that had been "educated by what they had read somewhere or another that had different viewpoints.
It is of course entirely dependant on what you wish to use the Yi for. If you wish to use it as a mirror to the self then the focus and effort required demands far more care and attention. If you wish to use it just as a divinitory tool and abnegate that responsibility then it really doesnt matter if you pay any care or attention and then Harmon cannot be wrong. It is really a question of why one is using the Yi. One can you is as a book of divination, an oracle or one can use it as a book of Wisdom.
The direct experience versus the passing on of information is of course an important consideration. In many fields it is vitally important to have that grounding from others in the basics, but in most fields that grounding get usurped by better understanding and knowledge and we often discover that the things that we were initially taught were only partial and often not even that correct. We are only taught the fragments of subjects at school, we learn more as we go through Higher Education, more as we do our Doctorate and for those that go into research the learning goes on. It never ends, What that does reveal is that, from that persective of academic learning we only ever know a part of any subject. On the other hand there are the direct experiences, what Maslow termed peak experiences, that give an insight into the fundamental principles that drive existence.
When one considers those what have been termed peak experiences they are very similar to the insights and illuminations that the sages had. Perhaps there were practices that were able to induce the peak state, perhpas there were foods that were prone to mycotoxins similar to ergot that produced such experiences by accident of perhaps there were known herbs that were taken to induce peak experiences, perhaps there were a series of genetic mutations that led to a time in China that such insights were common. Suck peak expereinces it turns out are no so uncommon but the result of those peak experiences os going to be strongly influenced by the world in which one lives and so the world of divinations may have been the very thing that were focussed on.
The choice then is of what we are concerning ourselves with, the academics or the direct experience, what others have thought or what we know for ourselves, the belief in a "theory" or the search for the coherence and resonance that is the fundamental, underlying principles that led to the foramtion of the Yi.

"As for disagreeing for the sake of it I must say that is often how your responses have struck me all through this thread".

I am afraid that you cannot be reading my posts properly. I may be disagreeing, mainly because no one is actually responding to the questions of how things are coneected or if there is any logical coherence in what is used in the Yi, but I cannot be accused of doing so for the sake of it. If one is concerned with the fundamental underlying principles, the details of what may detract from any understanding are important and if they are not responded to may be considered as being agreed with. But I most certainly do not do it just for the sake of it. You will see that while I could apply the same logic and point out that someones interpretation of a particular Hexagram has no validity, that I dont. That would be arguing just for the sake of it. I have focussed on certain threads that involve the bigger issues of if and how the 5E and the Trigrams have any relevance to our readings of the Yi, and if they do, are our interpretations of the attributes we ascribe to them accurate or are they leading us astray in our search for the underlying principles.

"I'm commenting on part of your posts and after all this isn't your thread it's Hilary's Blog . I can get the gist of what you are saying without reading it word for word"

I really dont see how pointing out that this is Hilary's site as any connection with the contents of my posts. Of course it is Hairily's blog, that is rather obvious and all thanks to her for hosting it. But I dont get what point you are trying to make.

Can you really think that getting the "gist" is going to provide an adequate understanding of what is rather a complicated and inter related subject. It is in the detail that the importance of what I am posting is going to be found. Perhaps your gist has missed that detail and missed the important points. I am aware that my formatting skills are haphazard. But we can hardly say that the fragments that we rely on for translation have been "formatted" correctly and yet we seem content to give them detailed consideration. I am not saying that one is comaprible to the other only that we "choose" what we give our attention to and if your gist reading is missing important points or possible has led to a conclusion that you dont agree with me then it would seem to make more sense that you either didnt respond at all or responded in detail to set me correct and show me the error of my ways. But surely you would not be responding with a gist so if you intend responding why would you read it with a gist. I understand what gist reading is about, I use it all the time, if I have no interest then that is the end of it, but if I have interest in any way and would want to respond I read it carefully, even if it not particularly easy to read.

"I have made the reasonable point that it is not necessary for you to devise means of making yourself remote from the casting process."

Of course it is a reasonable point, if it has taken notice and responded to the detail of the contents of what was being presented in the first place and it is supported by proper arguments that have rational coherence and a chance of being validated. I have presented that it is scientifically known that we can "influence" the outcome of any result if we are aware of the facts. That is why science has had to develop all sorts of methodology to prevent those influences. The fact that it is a subconscious influence, though it can also be a conscious one, and the fact that as we learn the Hexagrams of the Yi better we will know what possibilities there are as we cast a reading, gives us the potential to influence the reading and as it is likley to be subconscious we would be unaware that we were even doing so. Why would we even want to get a reading that was maybe influenced adversly even in the most minimal of ways, but it would harldy be minimal if we were able to influence say the sixth line from a solid to a moving that might change a reading from one of, whoops, not a good idea, to one of it will all come out right in the end. In that example the initial reading of the Hexagram wont have changed but even one samll change will colour the reading to make it substantially different, and we would have no idea that we had done it.

I see that you are also saying that it is not rational for the trigrams to be allocated and named as they are. I don't have much to say about that especially as I don't focus heavily on trigrams in interpretation feeling the hexagram to be far more than the sum of it's parts. There are far more learned people who can answer you on these points about trigrams, historians for example, but ultimately it feels a bit like asking "who decided that the word 'blue' would describe the sky ?" or even "who decided that the concept of 'colour' would be used to describe the sky ?" How could anybody answer that ? Actually children do say such things, I recall a child asking her father "Daddy, why do we see with our eyes ?". He could have answered her if she had said "how do we see with our eyes ?" but she wasn't asking how but why and that is an unanswerable question. This is the reason no one can answer you to your satisfaction I guess.

The questions that I am asking are why! What are the fundamental, underlying principles of nature and the ordinances of heaven. If we dont know that then how can we know if we should be focusing on Trigram or not, It may be that the sum is the very thing that determines how we understand the Yi. I have said that it may be that the individaul lines and their relationships, one to the other, or the nuclear Bigrams and Trigrams may be the source of much information. It is posssible, but unless we can start with the rational and coherent understanding of those existing notions, that if Trigrams and 5E, what hope do we have of comprehending the value of the rest. I do agree though the the "overall" picture" of the reading goves a much better sense than perhaps trying to break it down into its varios components. But perhaps that is simply because we dont understand the Trigrams and you "subconsconscioulsy" know that and so the Trigrams arent something that you want to focus on.

As to there being far more learned people, by what criteria would you evaluate that to be the case. They may have read many more books than I have, but then perhaps not, they may have only read works on the Yi and that somewhat narrow field of view has limited their understanding. They may wish to "believe" in the ancient works simply because they are ancient, and so may have never discriminated, they may have cast thousands of readings but not really understood what the Yi is about. There are many "experts" in the world that when challenged actually know very little other than being able to recount the "information" they were taught on the way to their expertise. In fact in most fields it is rather easy to demonstrate that so called experts are really rather limited, even in their specialist field. If we are referring to the Yi as an Oracle then there will of course be experts that know a lot about the history and are possibly skilled in translation but as there is little chance of any real validations as to the real meanings of the Yi how would one evaluate that expertise execpt by the other criteria that the Yi is a book of Wisdom, of book of knowing oneself, a book of a mirror to the self and then not only would there be the wisdom, the knowledge and the understanding of direct insight and illumination but one would have the necessary tools to be able to evaluate the works of others and to discriminate if they had value in the pursuit of the fundamental, underlying principles of nature and the ordinances of heaven, and we would even know what was meant by those statements. But even if we did not have such direct illumination and insight we have our intelligence, we can see when things make no logical sense, we can see when there is no cohesion and no resonance, we can see that if we have more than one possible arrangements that no one can agree on and no one can apparently begin to explain how and why such things might occur and why there might be contradictions and how those contradictios might be explened and resolved. So onw needs no specil sage like insight to work out when things just dont make any sense.

How it was decided that we should use a particular word is really rather simple. It doesnt matter what the word is just as long as we have a way to share our interactions with the owrld with others. The fact that every language has a different word for most things demonstrated that the word itself is irrelevant, it is only the common sharing that enables communication that drives the need to have common labels. And we are of course easily able to translate all any any of those words from any one language to another. The problems begin when there is no common experience and so no corresponding word in another language. Many of the words on the Yi, in Chinese Medicine, simply have no corresponding words, making it impossible to actually translate them and the result is that we have mnay translations of the same texts that bear little resemblance to one another, even though they are from the same source. Kind of proving that "translations" of ancient text are never going to be little more than inspired guesswork and only when we have the illumination os the sages, of peak experiences will they make sense to us, even if we dont have the language to describe them properly.

You consider that why is an "unanswerable question". Everything is answerable if one has the correct perspective. In the case of why do we see with our eyes it is infact rather simple. We see with our eyes because we need to be able to negotaite our environment and clever nature has worked out that for most creatures the visual eye methos is incredibly efficient and effective. Of course it needs to be both or we would be exhausted by the effort of moving just moving a few feet, eyes do that very well and enable us to move around and manipulate our environment very efficiently.
Everything is a matter of perspective. If we change our perspective then we have clarity and understanding. Much of our failures to understand is that we are to full of what we think we know to be able to change that perspective that allows clarity to shine.

"I'm not saying that your posts shouldn't be read, only stating it's unlikely they will be fully read unless you can give some attention to your presentation."

I agree that proper formatting will make it easier fro everyone to read but surely if someone is interested they will want to read it in detail even if the formatting is a bit confusing.

"But I don't have the time to sit and pay really close attention to your words in all of your posts"

But if you dont have the time to pay really close attention why bother reading it in the first place and why bother posting a reply.

"Everyone who has posted on this thread so far has extensive experience with the I Ching. No one here mindlessly goes and follows an 'expert'.
What you are saying almost amounts to an idea there should be no Yi teachers and that everyone must go to their experience. In a sense I agree with you, a teacher, any teacher, cannot hand you your own connection to Yi, everyone has to go their own path with Yi but that doesn't mean it's not useful to have some pointers along the way."

It really isnt a question of "extensive" experience but the understanding and clarity of that experience. We would need to be able to discriminate whether the person that had been using the Yi for an extensive time was able to validate and rationalise their understanding with their own experience and clarity or whether they were just skilled academics.
It is the question of whether they have had extensive use of the Book of Oracles or extensive use of the Book of Wisdom.
If one wants ot learn the Book of Oracles then one is going to want and even need a teacher. If one want to learn the Book of Wisdom then while it may be helpful to begin ones journey with a teacher only a teacher that can reveal the Book of Wisdom could be called a teacher. Such a teacher of course would know the answers to such tricky questions as how and why the 5E and the Trigrams fit and connect to each other and to the 12 Zang Fu of Chinese Medicine and would be able to explain the contradictions in the 5E and the 8 Trigram systems. So my take is that while there are many highly skilled teachers of the Yi's Book of Oracles, I dont know if there are any skilled teachersof the Yi's Book of Wisdom.
As you say a teacher cannot hand youthe connection to the Yi, everyone has to go on their own path to the Yi. But isnt that because the Yi is only us. The Yi is only an inanimate object we can never have a connection to that, we can never be on a path to the that, we can however be in a path to oursleves , we can have a connection with ourselves. Because we have become disconnected and the Yi, in its capacity of a Book of Wisdom can guide us back to heal the severed connection.

"Sometimes trigrams seem to make complete sense of a hexagram such as 59, Dispersion, wind over water. However many do not. Why for example would mountain over water give us Youthful Folly. I do not know but we have discussed these things together on the forums at times, it isn't as if no one ever gave it any thought before."

I think that the relevant point here is the lack of coherence. Some Hexagrams make sense but if there is coherence then all, or at least most of the Hexagrams would make sense, and we would have a framework to work out why the few reaminders did not.
I agree that such things have been discussed many times before but the simple fact that no one has seemingly come up with any coherent or rational answers, or they would have been repeated and quoted in response to my questions, suggests that no one has any answers.
It is encouraging that the questions are still being asked, but surely we have to recognise that if we are not able to give any answers of understanding, of clarity, of insight, coherence and rationality, if we are not able to illuminate the fundamental underlying principles of nature and heaven ordinance and show that the 5E and the Trigrams are part of those principles and ordinances then it is hard to see how we can claim to have any "expertise".

"I think it is a good idea to start your own new thread on things you want to discuss".

Would youhave any suggstions as to how that thread might be entitled. Would it be something like; Are the 5E and the Trigrams of any value; Are there any experts out there: can anyone provide a coherent rational explanation of the underlying principles; Does anyone know how everything connects together; Does anyone think that because nothing fits together that what we think about the Yi might be wrong;

All the best
Dave

Hi Harmon
If you are not "interested" in the points I am making why have you gone to so much trouble to respond to them.
But I dont actually see much of a response other than you saying you are not intersted, or you dont do that, or dont read that.

My posts are about the side of the Yi that IS concerned with the fundamental, underlying principles of Heaven and Earth. If you are not bothered about such things and wish to use the Yi as a Book of Oracles,then I have of course no problem with that. But it would be clearer if you said that in your vidoes so that those Users of the Yi that are interested in its value as a Book of Wisdom would know that and Freedda would have known not to link to your videos.

Of course you cant eat principles but if there are no "principles" you wouldnt have any cake.
Being critical of the lenght of my posts is rather personal, I could ask you to keep you videos below 2 minutes as I dont watch long videos.
I would refer you to the numerous works in Psychology that show that what we think about ouselves and the world is far from reality and that we manipulate our perceptions of us and our surroinding to the extent that they are competely different from what is actually there. Without coherence and justification we, us human beings, are in no position to have mich confidence that anything we think has any value other than maintianing what Psycholgy describes as our delusion and illusion. One Professor of Neuroscience oges so far that say that we all hallucinate and when we share the hallucinationwe call it reality. So "we", as human beings are constantly creating and illusion that is going to fit what eveer we want it to fit. How else are we gong to see beyond that "illusion" unlesss we apply a bit og logical, rational, coherent thought and are able to see the underlying patterns that resonate through everything and allow us to evelauate if it is rality we are experiencing or our personal illusion, whichwe may of course "share " with many others througn our educations or our belief systems.
You talk about not being intersted in "commentaries" but of course you really have no way of knowing if what you are thinking of as the "source" is nothing other than a commentary of sorts of some earlier work.
I shall read Adam Shwatz's article. But I would point out that if the "lines" are just arbitrary symbols, that as one could substitute symbols of any sort and arrive at a different image, that only if there was some" underlying principle" for that particular symbolism would that interpretation of the image be relevant, other wise it would be completely fabricated and mean nothing at all.
As to the part that you consider "bollocks" you might want to look at the translatioins of the NeiJing, I think it was Unschuld that went beyond the limits of one subject and inderstood the history. And I think the possibility that Trigrams could be easily passed down because they could be remembered a good point to consider. I thought that you with your knowledge would have known that 5E often referes to the 5th "element" belonging to the centre. That was how it started, the thread on 5E someone has posted lots of examples of how 5 is used throughtthe world and just like they wereoriginally in China the 5th is at the centre. But it seems you are not interested in such rationalities.
The context I am referring to is the much bigger context, what else was going on, what did people do, who had the power, how did they use it, what did people believe in.
If you want to use the Yi as an Oracle and not as a book of Wisdom then you dont need to "know" anything. But then you dont even need the Yi, as you could just make up your own interpretations of the Hexagrams, they wouldnt even need to be connected to anything in the Yi and it would "work" for you. You can actually do that with anything that has enough variety in it to give meaningful "answers" and of course of you leave them a bit cryptic so much the better. It is good to remeber that the Yi is just an inanimate object, it ahs no power in itself and it is only a tool that is capable of allowing us into the recesses of our subconscious. Unless of course that it is based upon a nd representative if some underlying principles and then it becomes not only a tool to delve into our subconscious but a tool to delve into the very iniverse itself. If it is the first then it wouldnt matter if there were Trigrams or not, it wouldnt matter if there were 5E or not, it wouuldnt matter if we read the originals or not, a single translation would suffice. But if it is the second then all of that would matter. You have declared what you use the Yi for. Fine, but then why not make that clar and why get involved with discussions that are about the other side of the Yi, its use as a Book of Wisdom. If you choose not to use that side of it or you dont find that side of it has any meaning or interest for you, fine, but why would you then want to get involved in discussion about the Wisdom side of the Yi.

Hi Freedda
Just a quick response to a couple of points.
The "we" that I refer to are the we of human beings, the we that science has recognised that we have in common. Soory that I didnt make that clear but it is a common usage so I never thought that anyone would think that I meant individuals such as Dave, Bob and Mary as meaing we. If I had meant we in that sense I would have made that clear.

I think that because you dont "see" the dualistic dichotomies in things that Yin and Yang would not make sense to you. My background in Chinese Medicine means that I have seen and felt these things in a very real live situation. I dont necessarily agree with many if the "definitions " that I was taught and read about, they are rather static and often are simply not accurate but as to having two fundamental "forces" I have seen that in avery real and live situations and seen that such dynamics are present in every aspect of life. I even used that knowledge of those fundamentals in order to show that some of the theories of Physics could not be correct.

Any ideas as to what the thread might be called. it does seem to be a rhater big subject and while breaking it soen into smaller parts might be useful in one way because the manner in which things are connected however it started it would quickly end up with the same discussions as in this thread.

As regards the card method. As one would shuffle the cards face down there would be no chance of influencing them. If you could then a visit to the Casino might be the order of the day.

I appreciate what you are saying about the slow method migh allow access to the subconscious, I agree, but the risk that if we think that one reading smight be preferable to another, no matter how slight gives rise to the possibility that there might be "undue" or advers influence.
The other advantage of my card method is that, if it is important to focus on ones questions while one is asking the question that ther would be less risk of becoming distrated.
Of course there is no way to validate that one method is better than another but when I cam up with the idea I not only found that my reading were more on point and clearer and had less ambiguity but I also did simultanous reading about the same thing, or as simultaneous as I could. Do a card reading but dont turn over the cards then cast with the coins and compare the readings. Of course as one was not being trivial one never got trivial answers and it was astonishing how similar the reading were, I dont know what the odds were for getting an identical reading. But they were different in a way that I recognised that the card method gave a clearer reading, sometime it was more brutal and telling me that I was going astray sometimes just easier to understand. So my personal experience is that it works better, it reduces the risks that science knows are present.
But what ever works for you.

As much as I admore Bradfords work I dont agree with him on this. If he is referring to the Yi simply as a book of Oracle then of course it statnds in its own right, but if it is a work of Wisdom then it is connected with any other works or methids that are attempting to address the fundamental Principles of life the universe and everything. I know, it is not 42.
Unless there is the discrimination as to what aspect of the Yi we are referring to, the Oracle side or the Wisdom side there is going to be lots and lots of confusion.

All the best

Dave

jukkodave said:

You have declared what you use the Yi for. Fine, but then why not make that clar and why get involved with discussions that are about the other side of the Yi, its use as a Book of Wisdom. If you choose not to use that side of it or you dont find that side of it has any meaning or interest for you, fine, but why would you then want to get involved in discussion about the Wisdom side of the Yi.

Click to expand...

I do not want to get involved in a 'discussion about the wisdom side of the Yi', nor do I see this thread as a discussion of it. Someone referenced my video, trigrams were mentioned, and I wanted to make a few points about that. You replied to that, and I replied back. I don't have anything more to add to what I already said, and I'm not looking for a discussion on this matter. I leave that to others.

jukkodave said:

...Of course it is Hairily's blog...

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Over the years I have seen several versions of my name, but that one is brilliant and wins all the prizes.

Apart from that, I don't think I have much to add. To recap something Harmen and Freedda have already said:

You do not need a complete, logical understanding of the entire Yijing in order to do readings and learn from them. This is just as well, because no-one has such an understanding (pace the ghost of Chris Lofting).

Maybe it's all a question of how different people react when we realise how much we don't know. 'I can't be sure this is a correct translation, so I'll... give up on the words and use [insert system of choice] instead / write my own words / abandon this whole divination thing and turn to religion / conclude I'm just not clever enough to do this myself / study, find the best translation I can and trust the oracle.' All those reactions visit this forum and my email inbox fairly regularly.

By the way, the article Harmen linked to on the meanings of li will give you a full explanation of how hexagrams were written with '1' and '8', and how that looked and what it might mean. I don't find the results hugely useful for understanding the Yi, but it's a fascinating article nonetheless.

Hi Trojina
I think that a detailed response to your post may be useful in all sorts of ways.

Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time but I don't have the time right now for posts that long and frankly I shouldn't think many people have. I mean it could take hours and hours out of someone's day to read and respond to all that.

Also I doubt responding to you fully would really lead anywhere since it appears to me that you are taking a position many have taken before here over the years which is you are posturing as the radical free thinker and casting everyone else as the tired old stick in the mud traditionalists. People can labour to point out your misperceptions of them and their views, because it is a stance that can wind people up. But in the end it's not worth it because this isn't really about exchange it seems to be more of a game where you end up convincing yourself, satisfying yourself, that you are the misunderstood free thinker and everyone else is just kind of stuck in a rut.

It's not true you know but I don't want to write an essay on how it isn't true.

You consider that why is an "unanswerable question". Everything is answerable if one has the correct perspective.

Click to expand...

No, everything is not answerable if one has the correct perspective even if there were this thing called a 'correct perspective'. Surely you are educated enough to know that vast areas of study, Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, Sociology, Astronomy I could go on, all of these areas of study grapple with the unanswerable.

What happens when we die ? Is that answerable with the correct perspective or shall we look at the views on that in different religions and paths. We can look but it is fundamentally an unanswerable question because no one alive has been there.

There are questions about our purpose, our humanity, the reason for life, the purpose of life, none of these are actually answerable once and for all.

As human animals we have to learn to accept the limits of our vision. Yi helps us to expand those limits I think. It boils down to what Hilary said right at the beginning in response to you

jukkodave
It should be obvious to anyone that if there is no consistency, no coherence and not rationality in the placing of the Trigrams that the method cannot be correct.

Click to expand...

Hilary
Generally speaking, when something in the Yi seems to have no consistency, coherence or rationality, it's obvious to me that I have more to learn.

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You speak as if your own scope of perception were the absolute limit of all there is. You are wrong, you will drown in hubris through that perspective. You try to make the trigrams fit in with your own cognitive limits rather than open up your limits to see what is there is bigger and broader and more awesome than you could currently imagine. There's so much you, we, don't know, that is the truth.

Actually I don't think Yi is taking any sides in that reading - each side is "non-people" to the other, and neither can/should coerce the other. That's what I think it's saying, anyway.

Hi Harmon
Could you explain the contradiction of why you would state,

"I'm not interested in commentaries"

and then link to Adam Schwartz's article as a possible answer when he states, at the very beginning of his article,

"with a focus on images in the shuoguo 說卦 commentary."

It hardly seems coherent to use as an argument the very measures that you decalre you are not interested in.

Perhaps I have misunderstood your meaning. Could you clarify, I wouldnt want to respond inaccurately.
I will let you have my full response when I have read the article.

All the best

Dave

'Moderator aware' (you know, like the 'police aware' signs that appear in the windscreens of cars in ditches...)

Hi Liselle

Sorry of you took it as condescension. I think in the context of what I have posted, in the simplest terms, of the choice between using the Yi as a Book of Oracle or a book of Wisdom, with no judgement either way, other than the questions I am asking are relevant to the Book of Wisdom and not to the Book of Oracles, so it would seem pointless to respond to questions on fundamental principles with answers pertinent to matters relevant to other parts of our lives.
I thought that I hade made the point of discrimination betwenn the two quite clear.
I was perhaps trying to bring a lighter tone to posts that some seem to be take very personally as almost an attack on their beliefs. Of course if one has beliefs and are content with having a faith that cannot be explained then it would seem best to avoid becoming engaged in discussion that might highlight possible contradictions on one beliefs. We, as humans, are, as Neuropsycholgy shows us, quite capable of generating beliefs on just about any matter. Direct experience, understanding and knowledge can replace belief, although sometimes it can be very painful to discover that ones "beliefs" have no solid foundation and I can speak very personally on that point and verify that to give up something that one has placed ones faith in and believes that it is fundamental in some intrinsic way, is a very dofficult and painful experience indeed.
Someone once said that a "belief" is simply another way of saying- I do not know".

"It's not that you're asking bad questions. But Trojina made a very good point - they're probably unanswerable"

While I have to agree that there are some questions, as Trojina quite rightly points out, perhaps questions of what happens when we die. Though even on that point there are various people, those that have had near death experiences, the peak experiences that Maslow and others reference, those clairvoiants and mediums that communicate with those that have passed etc, that would argue that they do know what happens in that case. There is also an argument that one can connect with the future as much as one can connect with the past, and with a more humerous view, those that are trained in the "force" of Star Wars.
But this is not about "everything" I was being to adamant in my response, the questions that I am asking are not unaswerable. Even if they were and we could not actually provide and answer we could still examine the questions and see if what we think that we know, at this point in time could be correct or accurate. I appreciate that, as human beings, we are not keen on mental vacuums and the brain likes to have labels, descriptions and "answers" for just about everything, but surely that should not mean that we fill out questions with "answers" that seem to have little or no rationality, logic,coherence, or resonance.

"Let me ask you this: what do you want us to say to you? If you think we're all suddenly going to abandon everything just because you tell us we should, I doubt that's going to happen."

If I had any idea I would not have come to the Yi community with questions, so there is nothing that I "want" anyone to say. I did make it clear that I have asked these, or very similar questions, the those in Chinese Medicine and have never got any answers. I was hopeful that perhaps the world of Medicineine was so highly focussed that its practitioners found it difficult to have a perpective other than the limits of one discipline and was hopeful that those in the Yi community would be more widely read and might be able to shed insights and illuminate, what I agree are rather difficult and can be challenging questions.
But I am not asking anyone to abandon anything. The Yi has both the path of the Book of Oracle and the path of the book of Wisdom. If someone has no interest in the Boolk of Wisdom then their use of the Yi is clarified by that choice, but if a person is interested in the Book of Wisdom then the questions that I am asking are not only pertinent but would surely be if interest to anyone that used the Yi in that way.
If I had any new theories on how to use the Yi as a book of Wisdom I would have probably created my own Forum and written books on the subject. But I think that the essence of what I am trying to get across is the simplification so that we, those interested in the Yi, can determine if the things that we believe in have any substance. If we are using the Yi as a Book or Oracles then it really doesnt matter if there is any substance, if there is any understanding of the underlying principles, it doesnt matter if the assignations that are given the Trigrams are correct or even consistent, but if we are using the Yi as a Book of Wisdom, as a mirror to the self, if the designations that we give to the 5E are to be used in perhaps a life and death situation in Medicine then it really does matter if they are correct or not.
There is one perspective that I find insightful. Adam Schwartz in the aticle that Harmon links to states that the keepers of this professional knowledge and the one responsible for making the earliest divination manuals were probably confined to the King, Royal family, and elite lineages, ie the rulers, the ones responsible for ensuring that the art of war was succesful. Given that there were many such rulers any source of diviination would have been kept a closely guarded secret,as if one could gain an advantage over ones adversary through art of divination that would give them a considerable edge. Even if it was a political "battle" the art of divination would give one a distinct edge. No ruler is going to share their secrets and lose their edge. But not only that the regions fo China were not closely connected, China was a rather large country back then and even if there had been trade it is not likely that they got together over a cup of tea and discussed their particular view on the arts of divination or informed their neighbours that they had discovered a more accurate way of divination. That does rather give a different perspective on the faith that we place in the fragments relating to the Yi that have survived. We have no idea if there are representative of a "good" method of divination, if they were representative of what the rest of China was using, no idea if they were mainstream or fringe. Given the numbers of states and regions within the states, all of which may well have had their own diviner and different methids of divination our reliance on scraps of information from thousands of years ago is similar to someone going into a Library, picking one book on a subject and expecting it to tell one everything about that subject.
All the best
Dave

Freedda
Why would you be trying to make it so personal and quoting me out of context.

I was referencing what Psychology and Neuropsychology has to say on how the human brain works.

Dave

Hilary, so sorry I missed that. Glad that you found it humerous. For reasons that are rather personal I sometimes use a word processor and paste into the box, may have been my auto correct, I think I will turn it of just in case it comes up with something that someone finds offensive.

All the best Dave

jukkodave said:

Hi Harmon
Could you explain the contradiction of why you would state,

"I'm not interested in commentaries"

and then link to Adam Schwartz's article as a possible answer when he states, at the very beginning of his article,

"with a focus on images in the shuoguo 說卦 commentary."

It hardly seems coherent to use as an argument the very measures that you decalre you are not interested in.

Perhaps I have misunderstood your meaning. Could you clarify, I wouldnt want to respond inaccurately.
I will let you have my full response when I have read the article.

All the best

Dave

Click to expand...

You asked, "Where is the rationality of why the Trigrams were assigned such attributes as water, fire, mountain, wind, lake and thunder, etc.", a question that Adam is trying to answer in his articles. That is the reason why I mentioned them.

Hi Trojina

"you are taking a position many have taken before here over the years which is you are posturing as the radical free thinker and casting everyone else as the tired old stick in the mud traditionalists."

I am puzzled as to how you could take the view that is the way I am. Yes of course I have experiences and knowledge that may mean that I ask questions that some find difficult to answer, but I dont understand why they would even get involved in the discussion if they are not interested and dont want the challenge trying to address these questions.
I can hardly be called a "radical" free thinker when I am making references to parts of the commentaries from thousands of years ago, when I am referencing the studies of Psycholgy and Neuropsychology nad the questions tht I am asking are one of rational logic which would be quite at home in the Oxford Union debates. Though given that there seems to be no one actually wanting to "debate" the questions I would not particulary want to be on the side of the debate to defend the rationality of 5E and Trigrams.

"you are taking a position many have taken before here over the years"

I would have expecte that if that was the case then the answers that were given to those "many" times would have been easy to reference . But I dont see any signs of that.

"more of a game where you end up convincing yourself,"

It most certainly is not a "game" though I do try to maintain a sense of humour and not get weighed down by the lack of responses to the actual questions. I am puzzled that you would consider that I may end up "convincing myself" when the most that could be said is that I am suggesting breaking down some walls and see what might be behind them. But that would only apply to those interested in exporing the fundamental underlying principles of nature, the ordinances of Heaven, those that see the Yi as a Book of Wisdom, as a method of a mirror to the self. For those that done have that interest then my questions are meaningless and nave no relevance for them. As soon as I realised that not everyone shared my "view " of the Yi, I made it clear that I understood and appreciated that there is another side to the Yi, that of a book of divination and that side is just as relevant to those that wish to use it in that way, as the warring nations diviners would have been no doubt doing thousands of years ago. At the end of the day this question, this point, is not separate from that which Neuropsycholgy and the commentators on the Yi and the Tao etc. We make that choice. No one can judge that one is wrong or one is superior. I have just pointed out that not only does the Yi suggest that is its purpose, with its references to the superior man, the commentaries also dorect us that to be the Yi's purpose. To me it seems rather strange that anyone would want to consult the Yi for any other reasons, Of course it is possible to do so, but then it is just as possible to construct a book of divination oneself and that would work just as well, for most of the time anyway but, if the Yi has an insight that the commentators and the Yi itself suggest then only the Yi will be able to reveal and guide us to those underlying principles, it seems to me that a way to examine the underlying principles is to evaluate if the very things that we consider to be part of the Yi are part of the fundamental underlying principles or not. So that everyone knows if they are part of the fundamentals, part of the inner Book of Wisdom or part of the outer Book of Oracles. The point being that if they are part of the Book of Oracles the only criteria is if they work for the person casting the reading. One could say the Trigrams represented parts of a Computer if one wished and that would work for that person. But if one is considering the Trigrams as part of the underlying principles then the consideration of what they are assigned is of course important.

"everything is not answerable if one has the correct perspective even if there were this thing called a 'correct perspective"

Perhaps everything was to inclusive or one would know all the answers to the questions that Science has no answers to. But as for the kind of questions that were presented by yourself they can be answered and that is entirely dependent on ones perspective, which may of course be one differentiated by such things as direct experience, by scientific knowledge or sometimes the application of simple logic, such that even if it cannot provide an "answer" may be able to ascertain that the existing "answers" cannot be true.
Of course we can know what happens when we die, but for most we are not going to know that until the time and so the question of what we know is entirely differerent. If the question is about the future then for most people the answer would be no, most people do not have the perspective the knowledge of seeing into the future, but for most questions about oneself, in the moment of now, then I would say that many of the questions that we consider to be unanswerable do in fact have an answer if we can only change our perspective. Perhaps even more than one. I gave the "answer " that the reason for sight was to enable us to navigate our way around our environment, but it would be just as valid, as there are those that have no mobility, to say that sight permits the understanding of communication through reading body language, or another answer to the apparently unanswerable question is that sight is a gift that allows us to appreciate what a beautiful world we live in and the appreciation of that beauty is one of the things that reminds us that we have an inner world, which of course brings us neatly back to, if we have a such an "inner " world what are the fundamental principles that created that inner world, as well as the outer world.
We may not have answers to all of the questions to "Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, Sociology, Astronomy but that does not mean that we have to accept the answers that others have provided in the meantime while we are still working it out. There have been "answers" in Psychology that were considered to be "correct" at one time or another and often the questioning of if something made any sense bought about the inviestigations that revealed that those theories were incorrect. If we just took a translation and used the Yi for whatever way we did, that would be the end of it, but if we are trying to find "answers" by examining the original texts, by reading commentaries, or by studying the subject in any way, then the "answers" that we come up with, whether that is 5E, Trigrams or anything else that such studies suggests become "answers" that, unles we wish to bindly believe in what someone else tells us, desrve to be examined an questioned. I have merely pointed out that the logic of the "studies" of the "answers" in the realms of 5E and Trigrams at least make little sense.

"There are questions about our purpose, our humanity, the reason for life, the purpose of life, none of these are actually answerable once and for all."

I would strongly have to disagree with this. Isnt this the point of what I have been saying. Isnt the search for the fundamental underlying principles part of the search for the "reason" and "purpose" of life. If there is no purpose then it really wouldnt matter what we did or what we knew. If there was no purpose and we were nothing other than random chances of life that created a form and that form, other than staying alive and procreating, had no purpose then by simple logic it wouldnt matter what we did while we were alive, it wouldnt matter when and how we died, it would matter how much siffering there was in this world, and love would have no prupose and be a complete delusion that served no other purose that nt bind us to one another. If there was no purpose then it wouldnt matter if we understodd the Yi or not, it wouldnt amtter if the readings we got were accurate to use or not, if we understood them or not. It is only if life has a bigger, fundamental purpose that the details of what happens in the time between our birth and death has any purpose. If you dont thin k it does then why bother with anything and why bother even responding to my posts. From my perpsective we only respond to those things that get our attention because they interest us either because we consciously know we have an interest, because we subconsciously have an interest or because it challenges our belief structure in some way. If it doesnt "interest " us in some way we might read it but we wouldnt be responding. My "interest" has I hope been clearly declared.

"As human animals we have to learn to accept the limits of our vision."

From my perspective I see a a number of problems with that reaponse. One being that unless we have the "vision " to see the fundamentals, the principles, the purpose for life, to actually know those for ourselves, that knowing of course being being completely different to not being interested, then by what measure would we be able to determine where the limits even are.
Another problem being that vision, whether that is literal or figurative is only one way of comprehension and even if there might be limits to our "vision ", the other means that we have of understanding may not have the same limitations. But I am being rather literal in interpretating you. Even if you meant vision in the sense that we comprehend the entirety of our comprehension, how would we even know where that "limit" was. There would be nothing to learn as when we hit the limit we would obviously know it.

"You speak as if your own scope of perception were the absolute limit of all there is."

I think you must be misunderstnding the purpose and the content of my posts. Firstly I have asked questions as to if any one has any answers to what appear to me to be contradictions, a lack of rationality, logic, and coherence in certain aspects of 5E and the Trigrams. In the development of that I have proposed a number of possibilities that the way that various parts of the Yi are interpreted may not be that logical either. No one has actually provided any response to those questions, or provided any sort of rational, coherent or logical "arguments, as in the arguments of a debate, to address those questions, those contradictions or to counter any of the possibilities that I have presented. As a large part of my "presentation" is based on the principles of logic and the information provided by scientific understanding perhaps there are no possible responses and all people can do is ridicule me in some way or another or declare, even after they have posted, to have no interest.
Speaking honestly with the "authority" of science, personal experience, pointing out the lack of rational logic or coherence in ceratin presentations is hardly even expressing an opinion. If my personal experience was not supported by the "validation" of logic and science, the works of the Yi itslef, the Tao, Chinese Medicine, with what we know about the history of China, with what we know about how poor our understanding of history usually is and how often, in most fields that gets corrected, Science even tells us that as humans we are very poor at even remebering the past accurately.
I have backed up my "arguments" with personal experience, logic and science, I have tried to avoid any sort of belief at all. I try to only say what I know. It is a big subject and goes way beyond the boundaries of the Yi, it includes Medicine, Neruology and Psychology, it includes common sense.
If you really thought I was expounding a theory, my perception, I think that you and everyone else would have been point me out as a hypocrite as I have repeatedly expressed the problems with theories that cannit be validated in some way. I think that I can support and validate everything that I have said. But the main thing I have been saying is really about asking questions and questions can hardly be seen as the presentation of my "perspective".
I dont see what is so difficult. I have asked questions, if no one is interested and no one wants to consider the Yi in the way of the Commentaries, based on findamental, underlying principles of nature and the ordinances of Heaven, the why bother responding at all.

That would make it likely that everyone is content to use the Yi as a means of Oracle and not a means of insight into the underlying principles but if that is what everyone wants to do then why not just say so.There is no discrimination on my part that one is better than the other, actually that is not true, for me personally one is better than the other. I never had any interest in the Yi as a means of Oracle, I realised very early on that because the "Book" is an inanimate object that I was and am the source of the oracle and of I could delve into the inner subconscious areas that the Yi makes externally manifest, that I had no need of a book of any sorts. Easier said than done of course, but one thing that led from that realisation was that the access to the inner oracle was nothing other than the search for oneself. For me personally I couldnt consult the Yi without consulting myself and that meant that I had to know who myself was. So when the commentaries talk about underlying principles my experince was that any consultation of the Yi was an examination of the underlying principles of myself and so of the universe itself and the meaning oflife itself. But I also understand that is not everyones experience and many want to just use the Yi for an oracle. Fine, but lets have some logic and honesty and one thing that does not equate is deriving "meaning " of importance in one way or another from interpreations of ancient texts, when history informs us of the possibility of errors in consdering that what we think we know is often completely wrong, when we dont even have the knowledge of if those texts that survived were considered of value at the time, if they were representative of the knowledge of the day or just the ideas and mental machinations of some ruler that wanted to have a go at being a diviner. Lets have some logic as to why they dont "fit" with one another or are even logical in themselves. And if it doesnt matter and they dont "have to be logical or coherent, why bother reponding at all.

All the best

Dave

Dear Freedda
If what I have said makes "absolutelty no sense" to you then why have you bothered responding, If it is making no sense to you then how can you know that you are even responding to what I have said. If there was something that you didnt understand in my posts why didnt you just ask.
If I gave every reference to every part of Neurology and Psychology then my posts would be a book long as it would be virtually impossible to wuote one reference without referencing all of the others.
One of the reasons why it is connected of course. But it is also connected because there are underlying principles. It is the underlying principles that connect it all together. Even if one takes the viewpoint of Physics it is known that every thing is connected by the underlying principles of the Quantum world. Are you suggesting that I should be quoting that as well.

I have made it clear that I dont consider quoting from those that "study " the Yi particularly useful as I dont see much evidence that the scholarly skills are connected with the understanding of the underlying principles.

I can understand if you are getting "baffled" but why would that lead to "frustration". I usually find that if something baffles me that I dont bother with it and I realise that being baffled I cant be understanding it and wouldnt even begin to know how to respond. How would one go about commincating with someone that what they say makes absolutely no sense. Perhaps it does actaully make sense and you just dont like what I am pointing out. My personal experiences is that when I find out that things that I beleive in are littel more that castles made of sand that my initial reaction is often one of confusion and anger. That seems to be a common reacton.

I havent said that what people have said in the past is tainted, I have pointed out that history provides us with lessons, that there are other interpretations and other scholars have pointed out that the way that we seem to see the times of thousands of years ago in China a sort of calm benign time where there was agreement about the arts of medicine and Divination is far from the truth. I have pointed out that the probalbilty that there were as amny types of divination as there were regions on China because have a source of divination that was more accurate than one adversary would confeer a distinct adavantage, I have pointe out the relying on fragments to substatntiate anything that we could consider usable has to be questioned as being valid. What is wrong with point ing out what seem to be obvious concerns.

Actually I havent disagreed that much at all with what people have said, nmainly because no one has really said very much about the questions and point I have raised, I have asked for some sort of validation rather than accepting something just because that may have become the accepted way. I have asked questions and pointed out what appear to be contradictions, posited possibilities but no one has actually responded to the details of those questions, or even tried to explain why they are no contradictions or countered the possibilities. There has been no detailed response to any of the actual questions I have posted and nothing to counter why the things I have put as possibilites should not be considered.

Dont know how the Yi, it commentaries, the Tao, Science and Logic can be considered "new-agey".

I havent questioned anyones "right " to respond, I asked why would anyone that isnt interested in exploring and understanding the fundamental underlying principles want to respond.

But all I have really had in responsesis, not interested, dont understand, poorly formatted and the like, but nothing detailed at all on the actual content of my posts. So I am not sure how you think people have gone out of their way to "answer", if it is not any answer to the questions that I am posting but more like the repetition of the very things that I am questioning, that can hardly be taken as giving answers. That is surely just asking me to believe what they say is true with nothing to substantiate it.
Harmon proved a link to the article by Adam Schwartz, I heve already posted a couple of things from that article which support the validity of my questions and as it was provided as a link to addresss things in my posts I shall in due course provide a detailed response to his article. But as it doenst actually address the questionthat I put forward, of if the image can be taken from the lines of the Hexagram, when a different symbolism in place of a solid and boken lines would give a different image, and so any image generated would be completely arbitrary how the symbolism of the lines can be considered important, unless there is some underlying fundamental principle at work as to why the lines are represented in such a way.

A quick read has already discovered an number of further contradictions. There do seems to be rather a lot. Please remember that I have used the Yi for more than 40 years, I have no problems with the casting and understanding of the readings. The difficulty i have is that I have seen the practicalities in work in the actions of Medicine. The principles that are present in the 5E, and which connect and tie in with the Trigrams, are presented as a means of healing and if they are not correct then that should be of fundamental concern. I would have expected that the contradictions that I am pointing out would have been of concern to those that used the Yi. I would have thought that everyone would want to understand the underlying principles of the Yi. If I was wrong and people dont then I dont understand why everyone is getting so upset by my posts. Just dont read them, ignore them, dont respond. It is fine if everyone declares that they dont use the Yi for the reasons of knowing the fundamental underlying principles. But that would and should have been the end of it, in fact no one would haveneeded to ahve responded and the poor formatting, which I havent yet had time to learn, would not be an issue. I would have posted a response to Hilary's first post and everyone would have ignored me. But there is a major proble with that as that would be decalring that no one knows tha tanswers to my questions and if no one knows that answers then it may just be possible that what we think that we know about the Yi is based upon rarher less than we would care to think. I think that is why everyone is getting upset , because no one knows the answers, no one can debate the questions in a detailed logical way and that is striking at the very heart of what people believe. Sorry if that is the case.

Not sure why quoting from the Tao should be incomprehensible or confusing to anyone. I am going to be a bit pedantic here, you say that they are not the word of God, how do you know that.
The Tao, the Commentaries, the sciences of Psychology, Neurology and Physics are obviously not my "constructs".

If you are weary of ot Freeda, why are you bothering to respond. I thought it was clear wher I was hoping to go with this. I started with a discussion about 5E, as that is intrinsically related to the Trigrams the idea that we can generat an image of what may possibly be a random and arbitrary symbolism raised a way of bring the discussion of 5E, which no one seemed able to respond to, and I took that perhaps as I was being rather technnical with the Chinese Medicine references, and so a thread on the imagery of the lines provided a means of bring the same basic question to the Forum in a more generalised way that I discussion only on 5E seemed to do. I made the mistake of thinking that everyone, or at least most, as I am very aware that there are those that have no cinsideration of the underlying principles. But I thought that a site, with a Forum dedicated to the Yi would surely have many that treated the Yi as something rather more substantial, and the indications of the many scholars that contributed to the Forums led me to think that this was aplace that the answers to the contradictions that I had observed in Chimese Medicine might be addressed by those that understood the Yi. I didnt realise that the considerations of the underlying priciples was no longer a concern of those that consulted the Yi. Personally I am perpelexed as ot how that can be, but there is the discirimination that the Yi can be used as a work of Oracle or as a work of Wisdom. Sorry I dont recall where in the Yi that comes from,the commentaries perhaps.
But even if there were no "quotes" the difference between a means of an "oracle" and a means of "wisdom" is blatantly obvious. There are many types of divination they all work in their own way, there is nothing special in itself about any means of divining anything that gives you a way into whatever it is that you think you are connecting with is going to be a means of divination. It is even possible to construct a means of divination yourself. Nothing special in any of the forms of divination. As there is nothing special then the "rules" are arbitrary, but then so are the "intepretations" that anyone cares to makes of the historical documents. Because nothing in the historical documents is in any way special from any other sort of divination and it is just another form of Oracle. It is only if there is some underlying principles at work that the method of divination becomes special. Is is only if there is provided, in the methods of divination, a means of comprehending the underlying principles, that it becomes more than just that if any other oracle.
That is what the Yi says when it referes to the "superior man", it is waht the commentaries say when they refer to the Yi was composed by the sages to represent the underlying principles.

Personally I have no problem with any sorts of oracle and in the ragged times of China thousands of years ago the advantages of a good means of divination would have considerable benefits. But I never could see the purpose in using the Yi as an oracle, to me it was always crying out to me that there was more and when I realised that an inanimate object such as a book could not have any consciousness and the insights of the Yi were already inside of me and all of the questions that I could ask the Yi, in the sense of an Oracle, were already inside of me, it became obvious that the inside was the place to go and be. That inside is again either nothing other than randomness without purpose, or there are fundamental underlying principles. Why should that be a surprise, isnt the goal of Science to try and know the underlying principles. In Physics the fundamental forces, gravity, the unified theory, quantum and so on. There are fundamental forces at work in every aspect of our lives,why should we think it to be any different with our hearts and brains.
I know from my personal experience with Chinese Medicine that the health of a person corresponds the the dynamic interplay between to basic opposite functions. In Chinese Medicine they are referred to as Yin and Yang, but the label is irrelevant, as long as we understand them we could call them anything we like, we could for example call them broken and solid. As long as we know how the dynamics work, then we have a measure of health. I know from that experience that the theories of 5E dont seem to work. I know from that experience of the Points of Acupuncture that the allocations of 5E to the points doesnt work. Every point has a quality to it, every point on a particular Channel has a the same underlying quality, which is why they are "on " the Channel. but the quality assigned to the points corresponding to 5E are not present in those qualities. Metal point do not all feel like metal points, Sorry getting a bit technica. But that was my first big realisation that waht has apparently been passed down to us through history is simply not accurate. There are dozens of othere reason not connected the 5E to demonstrate that. But 5E is the easist to examine becuase it is so well documented, but it doesnt stand up to logical rational scrutiny.
Because I seemed to by ploughing a solo furrow in my questioning the very principles of 5E I have to cinsider that perhaps I have it all wrong. Even though the practicalities of Acupuncture treatments and how the treamtments improved, lasted longer and took less treatments when I dropped 5E and focussed and learnt the basic fundamental underlying principles of Chinese Medicine it takes a very confident and perhaps arrogant person to go against what everyone else is doing and so I have always considered that perhaps I have it wron, perhaps there is something else that I am doing that means that it is not anything to so with not useing 5E and if I could really understand 5E then that would improve things even more. But that would mean a coherence, a rationality and a lack of contradictions in the current thinking of 5E, I wasnt getting any of that fromanyone in the Medical community and despite my best attempts I have never been able to work oout how 5 can go into 12 and fit with the realities that real treatements provide. I came across the Forum apparently by "chance", when once again I was trying to resolve this 30 year old question and hope d that perhps those in the Yi community, as 5E is connected to the Trigrams would provide the insight that I and those in the Medical community were unable to comprehend.
The lack of response to those basic questions is making me think that perhpas there are no answers, that 5E and by inference probably the Trigrams are artificial constructs that have no insight into the underlying principles. That makes sense if they are partof the same world of Oracles and there is nothinf special about them, but if there is nothing special then why are they used and why is such importance placed on them.

As far as I am concerned Freedda you can never be overstepping the bounds, it doesnt bother me what you say at all. In fact the very act of responding is a wonderful tool to focus. I was recently reading an article where someone had researched the possibility of writing as means to access Maslows Peak experiences and as those are in many ways similar to the insight of the Superior man
or the sages. I foten never know what I have said until I read it back afterwards and for me it works very well as a form of "divination" and gives insights that no book could ever do. Sorry if that results on poor formatting and rambling but if it gives acces to the inner person just a s the Yi does, then I hope that everyone will have patience with me.

All the best

Dave

Hi Harmon
But this does not address why you have staed taht you have no interest in Commentaries and link to an article by Adam that makes it clear in the very beginning that he is basing is presentation on Commentaries. I dont see why you would consider anything that he says as relevant if you arent interested in commentaries.

Dave

jukkodave said:

Hi Harmon
But this does not address why you have staed taht you have no interest in Commentaries and link to an article by Adam that makes it clear in the very beginning that he is basing is presentation on Commentaries. I dont see why you would consider anything that he says as relevant if you arent interested in commentaries.

Dave

Click to expand...

If I think certain articles are useful to someone it doesn't matter if I personally find it relevant or not. When someone wants to try apple pie I can give him a recipe for it but that doesn't have to mean that I like apple pie.

The articles of Adam try to show where certain trigram images come from. That he focuses on images from the Shuogua does not bother me as I am interested in the reasoning behind images that Adam describes, as well as all the other stuff that he addresses. I am not going to say, oh Adam refers to the Shuogua so I am not interested in his articles anymore. What he writes extends beyond the Shuogua and is interesting for anyone who wants to know more about trigrams and the etymology of their names.

Also, the fact that I mention his articles does not imply that I agree with (all of) his findings. But you asked a question that you might find answered in these articles.

Hi Harmon
"If I think certain articles are useful to someone it doesn't matter if I personally find it relevant or not."

I dont need teaching so I think the relevance of if they are "useful" might be considered rather condescending. They cerainly have little to do with the a question of whether one can even generate an image or not.
Though even if you didnt mean it in that educational way, I raised certain questions and points and as part of those I referenced the Commentaries as one of a possible way to clarify what I was questioning. You responded that you are not interested in commentaries. But not only is there no clear evidence as to what is original or not, it is likely that everything is in fact a "commentary" on what has gone before, so isnt everything a commentary. Arent the videos that you posted "commentaries". Someone might "find" them in 2 thousand years and think they were a definitive source of information onYi consultation.
The point I was highlighting is that Adam stes the tone of his article and "begins" with the statement it is based on commentaries. If you have no interest in such things it seems rather illogical to be countering my references to commentaries, with reference to commentaries yourself, that as you have no interest you dont consider of relevance. I usually find that if I find something relevant then I am interested in it and I read it and am then able to reference it.

"When someone wants to try apple pie I can give him a recipe for it but that doesn't have to mean that I like apple pie."

That is of course true, if one is asking for apple pie. But the questions that I am asking are not about a particular item, such as pie, in fact of you want to use a recipe analogy I am really asking if the recipes works, if the recipe is accurate or even if one can use a recipe, and perhaps we should trust our fundamental underlying principles and not have recipes at all and eat what our bodies are telling us it needs. To me the "recipes" of 5E and the Trigrams are like trying to cook food with inedible ingredients or combinations that would make a very unpleasant meal that no one would be able to eat, it might look like apple pie, but it wont taste like apple pie or do one any good.

"the fact that I mention his articles does not imply that I agree with (all of) his findings. But you asked a question that you might find answered in these articles."

But if you havent said which parts that you agree with and what you dont, how would I know which parts you might be considering to provide an "answer" to what I have raised.
One of the questions that I have raised, correspnding to the original point of the tread, was regarding images, and I raised the point that if the Yi was a source of Oracle and the symbolism was an arbitrary one, it wouldnt matter what symbols were used and the imagery that was derived from those symbols would have no bearing on any "interpretations" of the Yi. Only if the symbolism was a representation of fundamental underlying principles would the images that they represent be relevant. So the fact that he devotes a whole detailed article to the importance of the symbols is a dclaration that the Yi must be a book of Wisdom and that there are then fundamental underlying principles. As the article declares that, by logical inference, the fact that he makes no attempt to explain the fundamental principles of the symbolism, leaves the information in the article sort of hanging in mid air and cretes a fundamental contradiction.

A very real possibility of course that has not been considered in the article, as it would no doubt question its academic relevance, is that number and pictoral systems may be nothing other than an a memory aid, unless there is some underlying fundamental Principles of Nature and Heavens Ordinances that make the use of particular symbols, as a representation of those underlying Principles sgnificant. Unless the symbols themselves are significant, any meaning derived from, what could be any type of symbolism, would be of no significance in itself .
The ancient Greeks, for example, used all sorts of image based methods for the aid of memory. Just try memorizing 64 unique Hexagrams and one soon realises that assigning numbers to them makes it easier and even easier if one assigns an image to them, Adam gave the example of a Cauldron an easy image to remember. But the easy to memorize "image" of a Cauldron doesnt mean that the Hexagram should necessarily be interpreted as a Cauldron in its meaning, as it could just as easily be a way of memorizing. By the same criteria the use of Trigrams may be no more that a way of remembering 64 complex diagrams. Much easier to recall that a particular Hexagram is mountain over lake than to remember the positions of all the individual lines. All one has to do then is the remember that a particular image, such as a Trigram pair or a Cauldron moves to another particular image and one could easily work out any moving lines involved and thereby you have the means, without the use of any written document, of remembering large amounts of complex information with only 2 simple images. And as psycholgy research shows the brain is not only capable of remembering imagery far better than most other information, but can retain that image for many years. It might be possible for someone experienced in such skills to remember thousands of readings just throught the use of simple imagery. But there is nothing in the use of imagery as an aide de memoire to suggest that the image itself has any relevance or is important in any way.

Even if the symbolism of the lines was a representation of some fundamental underlying principles the "image" portrayed by them such as a cauldron might have no bearing on the interpretation.
Given that the Trigram Li has two different representations, with the middle broken line represented by either a 6 or an 8 that would suggest that Trigrams have more than one meaning, or it is just that any symbolism that might differentiate one from the other suffices and the image in itself has no relevence. Or the interpretations of assigning numerical values is incorrect and the differentiation of solid and broken is the important fact, because there is are underlying principles.

I still dont see any logic or rational coherent explanation by anyone in the allocation of Dui and Li to lake and fire, or the allocations of the other Trigrams. I still dont see any attempt at explanation, as Heaven and Earth from just about every viewpoint possible are significantly for fundamental than assignation of nature, are opposite to each other, an how there could be any "arrangement" of the Trigrams that doesnt place them at opposite points. Or if Trigrams are of sognificance how then can be more than only one possible arrangement of the Trigrams. I still dont see anyone coming up with any sorts of attempts to give any sorts of rationalle as to why any of these "contradictions exist. What sort of "explanation" might there be as to why we have 6 aspects of nature and then 2 that are referenced as rather more fundamental than "aspects" of nature.

I was going to go into a detailed analysis of the contradictions that Adam reveals and presents in his article, but if no one is even getting the more obvious ones that I have presented already, not least the contradiction that unless there is understanding and discrimination between that of Oracle and Wisdom, the implications fo what Adam says are not going to make any sense and I will be adding to everyons apparent confusions.

The questions I am asking really arent, or shouldnt be that difficult to "answer", if what the Yi is saying is real and valuable, so it seems to me perhaps that no one "knows" what the fundamental underlying principles and the oridnances of heaven are or even considers that they exist and that can only means that the "theories" of 5E and Trigrams are a contrivance that someone came up with at some time and maybe they have no place in the Yi for those that consider the Yi to be a description and a method of illuminating the fundamental underlying principles, the ordinances of heaven or anything else that might be considered to be different from the role of the Yi as an Oracle. And it means that the interpretations of any imagery connected to the appearance what would be just a choice of an insignificant symbol for each of the lines would be of no relevance at all.

It would just be easier if everyone knew what they were using the Yi for, if they had understanding of the Oracle side of the Yi or not or were using the Yi as having underlying principles, as the significance of the impact on how we interpret anything connected with the Yi changes dramatically depending on which way one is "understanding " the Yi. It would be helpful if everyone declared that when they were posting or writing articles or commentating.
That might save a lot of confusion and it would certainly elimaniate the possibility of most of the contradictons that result from the lack of clarity of what viewpoint one is interpreting the Yi.

Given that I have raised such questions as to the very fundamentals of how and what the Yi is, I would have hoped and expected to have some detailed responses from someon. But the points that I make are ignored and the responses both miss the essence of what I am posting and avoid what seem to be the tricky questions. I am pointing out that some of the assumptions that seem to be made dont have a lot of logicality about them and contain contradictions and there are those scholars that have pointed out similar possibilities to the ones that I have postulated that might affect how we interpret things.

I dont think that there would be any point in my analysing Adam's article in any sort of detail but I would point out that he does highlight a rather large contradiction, that the Trigram Li is also Qian Trigram. It is fire but also wood. But he doesnt attempt to explain that apparent contradiction. There are plenty more if one cares to consider the bigger picture and I have pointed out that once again his article brings the question back to one of what the symbolism means and the consequences of it is relevant or not. If it is important and means something then that invokes that there are underlying principles and the symbolism of the solid and broken lines mean something important, but in contrast if they cannot be shown to be symbols of such importance that they should be taken as is, then they are just symbols and could be substituted by any sort of other symbol and then the "image" that is derived from them would only be relevant in terms of an Oracle. That is rather a large difference, it makes a huge difference as to how one reads and places value on Adams efforts, it makes a differerence as to how we interprete anything about the Yi. It is the essential point of what I have been trying to make in my posts and despite my repeated attempts to bring it back to that point, which is in essence connected the the origin of the thread, about whether an "image" can be made of a Hexagram everyone one seems to be ignoring that and the basic questions that I have raised.
To me that does seem rather strange and given what I already know from those in the Medical communities inability to provide any rational or coherent arguments as to why we should have 5E as an explanation of anything I am begonning to think that 5E and now Trigrams are of no significance at all, unless one is using them for reasons of consulting an "oracle" that is not differentiated in any significant way from any other form of divination and so has nothing special about it and could be constricted in any sorts of ways or given any sort of meanings and interpretations that, being a construct and not a representation of anything fundamental, have only relevance to that which we "think" they have. That would make the Yi rather less than kight be considered. Personally my experience, mu understanding is that the Yi is a represeantation of fundamental underlying principles and that the meanings of the differentiated "lines" have a insight and a "message" even thos the "symbolism" or that represenation in itself is not relevena. Though obviously I dont know how that "connects" with anything else and how those fundamental representations of two distinct principles can be represented by the teories of 5E or the concepts attached to Trigrams.
I am still however otimistic that someone might have some insight to open the doors of illumination that might make things become logically rational and coherent.

All the best

Dave

jukkodave said:

Perhaps we should all declare, before we post, whether we are more interested in the fundamental principles of the Yi or more interested in maintaining the world that we create with our beliefs.

Cake or Principles.

Click to expand...

Did someone say cake?

Did someone say principles

I do understand what you mean about yummy cake, though read is about the "image " of cake so wouldnt give the satisfaction that real cake or principles would.

Favourite cake? I might go for anything nice and sticky. Cant beat sticky principles with your cake.