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2.2 immediately completely right

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ewald

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I've always found Wilhelm's translation of 2.2 overly cryptic, and quite unlike the rest of the Zhouyi.
<blockquote>Straight, square, great.
Without purpose,
Yet nothing remains unfurthered.</blockquote>
Sure, there's an explanation for what it means, but that never satisfied me. I believe this is so unlike the rest of the Zhouyi that the translation is simply not correct.
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Xi2 doesn't really mean "purpose." In 29.0 and 29.1 it's used as "repeated."
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Sure Fang1 can mean "square," but elsewhere in the Zhouyi (8.0 47.2 50.3) it's used as meaning "in time, just at that time". It can also mean "right" and that meaning isn't far removed from "in time."
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Wilhelm has this strong tendency to translate Da4 as "great" as in "greatness, majesty," but I think it's meaning is usually more mundane: "big, large, much, very, complete, noble, senior, adult." I think "complete" is suitable here.

So I have:

<blockquote>Immediately completely right, without repetition.
Without disadvantage.</blockquote>

The "without repetition" nicely contrasts first part of the sentence.

I think this is about doing something immediately right because it comes from one's true will. Very much an Earth theme, in my view, having to do with true nature.


Ewald
 

cal val

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Ewald...

I like the possibility that since 2 is earth 2.2 is simply a description of a land survey.

Love,

Val
 
E

ewald

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Hi Val -

From a spiritual standpoint Earth is where we come from and where we die to, where our nature comes from, where we grow and be. It's stability and integration. Our source of nourishment.

I like it that 2.2 is about how we are when we are aligned with our true nature. Spontaneous and precise and not superfluous, because we're stable and integrated, and sufficiently nourished.

A land survey sounds pretty materialistic to me...


Ewald
 
S

simple_complexities

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The translation I used to study (Eranos) translates as:-

"Straightening on all sides, Great, Not repeating, Without Not Harvesting"

I agree, this aspect relates to our true natures, very significant.
 
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bruce

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I?ve always felt that 2.2 was one of Wilhelm?s masterpieces. I don?t think it?s off the mark as a translation. His commentary on 2.2 always engages me: the idea of a line forming a square, forming a cube, illustrates the 3-dimensional nature of earth. Also is the idea of living centrally in it. An image of Zen. No effort, nothing left undone.
 

cal val

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Hi Ewald...

Well they apparently surveyed land back then. Reality... then and now. Hmmmm... I never thought of surveying land as materialistc before... especially when surveying for purposes of farming. I'll have to contemplate that for awhile. My understanding is that this is probably about surveying a field... for planting... from which to harvest food... to eat... to survive. Hey Ewald, thanks for the heads up. I'll be looking for the materialism in that.

The first six lines of Richard Kunst's notes on 2 seem to be about cultivation. And then there's notes on the possibility in Richard Rutt's Zhouyi.
http://research.humancomp.org/ftp/yijing/yi_hex02.pdf

Love,

Val
 
E

ewald

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Hi Val -

Fang1 is in 63.3 and 64.4 used as meaning "region." So I could see the first three characters of 2.2 as meaning "straight large region" (with land surveying in the back of my mind). But in that case I can't see any meaning for bu4 xi2. What's "without repetition?"

Ewald
 
E

ewald

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Just read Rutt's notes on 2.2. I can see that there may be a reason for his translation:
<blockquote>Surveying the terrain.
Great winds will blow.</blockquote>
But, well, all this stuff about animals and captives being tortured... it's all a bit different from how I see the Zhouyi text.

Ewald
 

yly2pg1

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bu4 xi2

This is the meaning i am able to capture in Chinese. It is like in a long lasting love. A woman love the man for what he is, and vice versa. Without any ulterior motive and purpose, the act of love is natural - manifests itself as zhi2 fang1 da4.
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lightofdarkness

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...and so bu4 xi2 'fits' the overall focus of 02 on absolute, unconditional, devotion to another/others.

In ICPlus line comments for 2.2 we have:

"One needs to always remain adaptable to the demands of the outside. this adaptability is more stimulus-response than considered action."

and so reflecting an ease in give and take, unconditional adaptability, receptivity; spontaneous and so immediate.

Then we can consider the line position that is controlled by hex 07 and so a focus on uniformity in a context of devotion to another/others. That takes us into the sense of being open to 'orders' where the whim of 'outside' can mean a barrage of orders from different sources and so a demand to be 'flexible'... unconditional execution of orders etc.

Chris.
 

heylise

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Wei wu wei: acting non-acting (Dao De Jing) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_wei


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(the earth is) straight, square, great. Without skill without no harvest.

Straight: directly, just, righteous, honest, frank; forthright.
Square: direction, side; party, place, region, prescription, recipe, method, way , square, upright, honest,(math.) involution, power .
Great: big; great; high; tall; vast, much; very, old , eldest, adult.
Skill: repeating, skill, routine, learning something by training or exercise. The same character is used in the name of hex.29 ('repeating'). Xi is composed of 'wings' or flying, and sun (or maybe: white). One learns flying by beating one's wings over and over again?

The earth brings forth and sustains all beings without knowing, without skills, without acting on anything, without purpose?

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heylise

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Sorry for the big picture. Forgot to 'act' on it and make it fit in this page...
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gene

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So many ancient languages are hard to translate because they have many metaphorical meanings. I suggest all of the above translations might be at least partly right.

As far as materialistic, while I do believe in a spiritual universe, we must "keep our head in heaven, while keeping our feet on the ground." In other words, we cannot keep our spirit in heaven if we are not rooted, grounded.

There is a certain affinity of this line with hexagram 25, where the work is done without a view to the harvest. The work is simply done. The universe does not "need a purpose." And yet it does, a paradox that is so common in oriental thinking. It does not need a purpose because it just does what is in its nature to do, and all things come out well. The purpose here is in the context of a manipulating, thoughtful mind, thoughtful in the sense of always contemplating, "what is best for me?" And attitude of, "I have to control everything and everybody or things will not come out my way." Manipulators can sometimes get their way, but then some time or other, their karma comes back to them, or if you don't like the idea of karma, let's put it this way, the universe rebalances itself.

It is also true, as Lao Tzu said, that if we just do things the natural way, everything comes out right in the end. Is there a universal subconscious mind? See: http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=4704

And the universe (tao) does not have to repeat. It does not have to use conscious purpose, it simply works the way it is natural to work, not repeating, and everything comes out fine.

I do have a bit of a problem with the way W/B uses words like unfurthered, sublime, supreme great, etc. But in the introduction or preface to the work, somewhere there, he gives the definition of those words in the nature of the text that does make some sense. I just think there is too great a difference between the ancient Chinese way of thought and ours, to really get a true grasp on the meaning of these words.

Gene
 

martin

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Reminds me of a poem that was cited by Alan Watts:

The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection.
The water has no mind to retain their image.

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hilary

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Lovely.

Or Silesius:

Die Ros ist ohn warum,
Sie blühet, weil sie blühet,
Sie acht't nicht ihrer selbst,
Fragt nicht, ob man sie siehet.

The rose has no why.
She blooms because she blooms,
She pays no attention to herself,
Doesn't ask if anyone sees her.

Oh and LiSe - the image fits the page beautifully without your having worked on it at all
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hilary

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I know I'm a bit late with this, but fwiw land surveying may not be such a mundane or materialistic occupation as we'd think. Aligning and orienting new building work to bring it into harmony with heaven was work for sage kings.

I picked this up from the book I'm reading (or at least dipping into) at the moment, by Michael Puett. He starts by quoting from the Huainanzi, a passage from 'some time before 139BC:
'Long ago, in the time before there existed Heaven and Earth, there was only figure without form. Obscure, dark, vast and deep - no one knows its gate. There were two spirits born together; they aligned Heaven, they oriented Earth.'

He goes on to describe 'aligning and orienting' as what sage kings did before acts of construction - eg Wen having his tower built in Song 242.

Not that these characters appear in Hexagram 2 (the word translated as 'aligning' is actually jing) but it gives an idea of how important it might be to orient yourself on the earth to be in harmony with heaven. Deciding which land to cultivate was also important - maybe in similar ways?
 
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bruce

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Love it.

So many lofty and 'spiritual' ideas just seem to float around in space somewhere. It's only by grounding these ideas that they have real and practical use.

J. Campbell (yes, I've become quite a fan of him) says to the question 'what is the meaning of life?' (he laughs and says..) 'There is no meaning to life! But there is meaning in a blooming flower.'
 
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bruce

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Also this, which I wrote some 15 years ago while driving through the mountains of Washington state:

Fantasy flies by at a thousand miles an hour, while the real world opens slowly, as a flower.
 
E

ewald

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Hilary - That sounds like some Feng Shui approach to land surveying.

LiSe - Thanks for listing the meanings of these characters.
(The wide picture in my situation is an inconvenience, since I'm not using my browser at 1024 px width. I actually have to make adjustments to read what's on this page because of it.)

Bruce - Love the fantasy/real world line :)


Ewald
 

freemanc

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I'm very on board with the idea of a figure comparing a rectangle of land rightly surveyed and the character of a person or a state. I tried to catch some of that ambiguity in TCB 2.2:
<font color="aa00aa">
<pre>
Straight, square, big and unbowed:
nothing for which this is not favorable!
</pre></font>

I don't have Kunst's concordance handy but at least one other use of "double" is at 29.1. The doubled pit. I can't remember how I settled on the reading that double was "bent over in labor."

My other thought was that "doubled" was sort of bad. My thought now is that it's a figure for moral character: bent, crooked.

FC

PS BTW The pre tag works!
 

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