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23.6

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maremaria

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Hi,
I wonder if you have any experience with 23.6 line and want to share.

There's a large fruit still uneaten.
The superior man receives a carriage.
The house of the inferior man is split apart.

My experience about 23 is positive in a way. I don’t mean pleasant but there is a relief after that. A call to strip away all the unnecessary things, see what is beneath , in the center of the things is how I have experience 23 till now.
23.6 seem to talk about a very important and critical point of one’s life. And here, in that line, the choices one has are stated very clear. Like one standing in front of a crossroad and knowing (or not) that the next step will lead to another “life”.
The uneaten fruit looks like a sacred fruit not meant to be eaten.

Does anybody had 23.6 and how it played out for you ?

Maria
 

dobro p

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Kinda like Meng says. Overall it's positive of course, cuz the superior man is augmented and the inferior man is diminished. What I'm never sure about is whether what I've just described, the augmentation of the greater and the diminution of the lesser, is equivalent to the 'large fruit still uneaten', or whether the large fruit is some sweetness yet to come. Because it's Hex 23, I think the sweetness is something in the near future, which involves (either now or in the near future) what I described earlier.
 
M

maremaria

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Thank you both for your ideas.
Seems that this line talks about new beginnings, changes or chances. Maybe about things we have not control at the way they evolved but we have a choice of how to embrace them.

We’ll see …

Maria
 

charly

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...
There's a large fruit still uneaten.
The superior man receives a carriage.
The house of the inferior man is split apart.
... The uneaten fruit looks like a sacred fruit not meant to be eaten.

...

María:

Or maybe to be eaten if one knows how to behave ...

shuo4 / large / big / LARGE
guo3 / fruit / result / FRUIT
bu4 / (negative prefix) / not / no / [STILL] UN
shi2 / animal feed / eat / food / EATEN
jun1 noble / ruler / SUPERIOR
zi3 son / child / seed / MAN
de2 obtain / get / gain / RECEIVES
輿yu2 carriage / sedan chair / CARRIAGE
xiao3 small / little / INFERIOR
ren2 man / person / people / MAN
bo1 peel / to skin / to strip / [IS] SPLIT APPART
lu2 hut / shack / cottage HOUSE

Besides the problematic SUPERIOR MAN and INFERIOR MAN some W/B options are not accurate:
  • Uneaten fruit: STILL is a supposition, could mean a temptation or not at all a temptation (unedible fruit). I believe, something that we may take as it is or not, we cann't change its nature. Maybe a promise or a menace. Also can be unedible results, results hard to be accepted.
  • Receive a carriage: more than to receive is to gain, like a prize or a reward; the carriage is a sedan-chair a chair driven by hands, the noble is exalted, almost glorified.
  • The house is a humble house, a hut, a shack, with thatched roof, it has the destiny of much fruits, to be peeled, to be stripped.
Maybe the fruit is unedible if not stripped, the fruit is a challenge.

The Noble is the one that knows how to behave.

Little People are common people, people that don't look for hidden meanings, for them a fruit is someting to be eaten, they go ahead getting their own huts stripped.

The promise: if we know how to strip the fruit, glory is ours.

As you say:
... new beginnings, changes or chances. Maybe about things we have not control at the way they evolved but we have a choice of how to embrace them.

Yours,

Charly
 
M

maremaria

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Hi Charly,
You used the word “temptation” which for me isn’t very clear in this line, but as a matter of fact in the whole story yes there is something very tempting but initially I reject it but then it came again in front of me and agreed to accept it without second thought. Seems as an event that inevitably will happen in the future.

Maybe the bitter lemons , Meng said, are already in my kitchen and I have to act as a noble man and make that lemon-aid ;) or don’t use it and left them rot.
Dobro, what you said “whether the large fruit is some sweetness yet to come” Sounds like the prize Charly mentioned

Let you know how it played out. What an interesting line !!

Thank you all
Maria
 
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M

meng

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Charly, do you read Bradford's too? I think he captures it really well.

To me line 6 is inspiration in any form, which lifts my vision to what I can't quite grasp. A hard example of 23.6 is a POW, or just doing hard-time in prison. It's why so many inmates "find Jesus". The unreachable star (yeh, corny, but..). We have to return to ourselves sometime, and sometimes it takes believing what you don't understand, to get you there.

The challenge to believe what you don't see. The result is as though you're riding in a carriage... being pulled along like a dragon's tail.

On the other hand, if you fold and cave in, that is your hut.
 
M

meng

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A Christian's 23.6 - 1 Cr

For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble;

Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.

If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.

If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.
 

charly

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... If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.
If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved...

Meng:

I have read Brad years ago, I go to refresh it.

About the last concept I'm not so sure:

For ancient chinese HOME is the ancestor's shrine. If stripped your hut you become without home, but also without GOD and without FAMILY, maybe worse than paying yourself your own faults.

Don't you agree?

Yours,

Charly
 

charly

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Hi Charly,
You used the word “temptation” ... initially I reject it but then it came again in front of me and agreed to accept it without second thought. Seems as an event that inevitably will happen in the future.

Maybe the bitter lemons , Meng said, are already in my kitchen and I have to act as a noble man and make that lemon-aid ;) or don’t use it and left them rot.
... What an interesting line !!...
María:

A fruit yet bitten but not still entirely eaten is the standard image of temptation, like the Mac apple. How much more if not even bitten!

Yours,

Charly
 
M

meng

Guest
Meng:

I have read Brad years ago, I go to refresh it.

About the last concept I'm not so sure:

For ancient chinese HOME is the ancestor's shrine. If stripped your hut you become without home, but also without GOD and without FAMILY, maybe worse than paying yourself your own faults.

Don't you agree?

Yours,

Charly

I don't know about these early traditions. You pose an interesting existential question, though. I think the idea of the hut is the body, so the question becomes: what is left when the body is no more? That's a pretty fundamental question across time and cultures.

My own opinion is, when this hut goes up in flames, I plan on going for a ride! Not weeping over ashes. The timeliness of this is funny, btw, as I just yesterday secured the dispersion of my hut through the Neptune Society, by fire and water, when that time comes. I don't expect "life" to end there, even without a hut.
 

bradford

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Besides the translation & commentary you might look a my footnotes to 23.6.
This is fragment 105a from the Greek poet Sappho, mentioned there:

... like the reddening apple,
at the tip of the topmost twig,
which the apple-pickers missed –
or no, not missed entirely;
the one they could not reach.
 
M

maremaria

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Sirs, your last comments remind me the phoenix. Birth, death, rebirth. The same happens to that fruit. Isn’t it ?

Brad thanks for the poem. I try to google it,after reading your note, but with no luck.
 

charly

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I don't know about these early traditions. You pose an interesting existential question, though. I think the idea of the hut is the body, so the question becomes: what is left when the body is no more? ...

Meng:

About ancient chinese people, in few words, the guys were pagans.

The Duke of Zhou, supposed author of the lines, was generous with the defeated Shang Dynasty, allowing the Prince of Yi to continue worshiping his ancestors , of course, far from China. He became a Korean legend and Shang ancestors were not forgotten.

If gentlemen are rewarded, why only little people's hut is stripped? The question about what is left is only for little people? Maybe only they are bodily punished.

Of course, HOUSE symbolize BODY, mainly the MOTHER'S BODY

I wonder if ancient chinese people were not only pagans, but, worse of all, they worshiped GODDESSES !

The whole meaning could be that little people that worshiped goddesses will see his shrines destroyed while gentlemen supporting new patriarchalist order will be rewarded ...

Maybe.

Yours,

Charly
 

charly

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...The same happens to that fruit. Isn’t it ? ...

Maria:

As Meng says, HOUSE symbolize BODY, what does FRUIT symbolize?

HOUSE symbolize BODY, mainly the MOTHER'S BODY, as psychoanalists know. Two consequences:
  • For GIRLS it means the gift received from the female line, her own female anathomy.
  • For BOYS, the eternal mystery of feminity.

And the fruit? Maybe they symbolize WOMBS?

FRUITS DO NOT SYMBOLIZE WOMBS,
THEY ARE WOMBS !

FRUITS SYMBOLIZE LOVE:
DANGEROUS BUT TEMPTING.


The temptation of love: if you accept the challenge, you would become rewarded like a Duke or puneshed like a villain.

pic.jpg

Yours,

Charly
 
M

meng

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If gentlemen are rewarded, why only little people's hut is stripped? The question about what is left is only for little people? Maybe only they are bodily punished.

Another good question, Charly. Do only little people's huts strip, or is it that the small mind fixates on it, and is therefore ruined through his own judgment?

Only bodily punished - that is the biblical verse's implication: yet saved as though by fire - fire in the bible usually means trials and tests. Saved by the testing which tries each man's work. I think that does sum up 23.
 

charly

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... I try to google it,after reading your note, but with no luck.
María:

From:
Ancient Weddings
by Jennifer Goodall Powers, SUNY Albany
Original text © 1997 Jennifer Goodall Powers

This:
... Fragment 105a is a familiar, but instructive verse that typifies Sappho's treatment of the marriage ceremony.

All alone a sweet apple reddens on the topmost branch,
high on the highest branch, the apple pickers did not notice it,
they did not truly forget it, but they could not reach it. (Fr. 105)​

and this:
... The sexual image of the bride in this poem is also evident. Apples are symbols for breasts and sexuality; the use of the verb usually has blood and blushing connotations; and a sweet apple symbolizes the sweet temperament of a wife. Winkler expands the simile's meaning, which, for him, also goes beyond just describing a sexual woman: "the vocabulary and phrasing ... contain a delicate and reverential attitude to the elusive presence and-absence of women in the world of men." He goes on to point out that not only is this something men had never expressed in poetry before, but it is also something men would not understand. Sappho is not describing the physical aspects of the bride's sexuality (breasts, etc.); she is illustrating the emotional sensuality of the bride (maturity, growth in womanhood). Male poets would traditionally focus on the physical lust and desire aroused in themselves by women. Instead, this fragment explores something only a woman would truly have been able to vocalize...

... are here: http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/consortium/ancientweddings10.html

Yours,

Charly
 

charly

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charly

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Yup. Sometimes I've wondered if Lao Tzu was wise or just a coward. Or if they're the same thing.
Meng:

None coward, Lao said, I believe:

«The Spirit of the Valley doesn't die.
It's called the Mysterious Mother»​
Lao

Lao was speaking of the shady valley, the valley of mystery with his hidden fruits. There is also the sunny valley with his exposed fruits. Maybe being both the same valley, the House of the Mother.

Yours,

Charly
 

jilt

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line six is that what is left over after illusion has fallen away. After that hex 24 sets in.
 

charly

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line six is that what is left over after illusion has fallen away ...
Jilt:

Do you mean that the uneaten fruit is only a residual illusion?
There is not really fuit for us?

Before getting inconsolable, I must refer you to a new study at Harmen Mesker page. There, after learned filological considerations, Harmen arrives to the following translation of 23.6:

碩果不食.君子得輿.小人剝廬.
A large fruit is not eaten.
The junzi obtains a carriage.
The xiaoren cuts the radish.

From: Cutting through hexagram 23 by Harmen Mesker
at: http://i-tjingcentrum.nl/serendipity/

I encourage anyone interested in H.23 to read the whole article, I myself have not read it whit the owed attention and I still don't know if it can affect our juicy speculations.


Conclusion
The contexts for which these line texts are meant are not explicitly indicated, as is so often the case with the Yijing. But there is a practice which is often mentioned in the Yijing and which could have a connection with hexagram 23: the practice of ancestor worship. We know that the ancestors often received copious offerings with all kinds of food - meat, fish, vegetables, fruit. The preparation of the food was also part of the ritual. Imagine that during the cutting of the food you would wound yourself: a bad omen: misfortune! At the third line it is going okay, so 'no mistake'. At the sixth line the meaning of the text is also symbolic: a large fruit will have to be cut before it can be eaten. In the same text, as well as in other instances in the Yijing, the junzi is mentioned against the xiaoren. The junzi has transport and does not have to work, the hard labour passes him by. The xiaoren, the common people have to do the hard work. Both have there function and use, and for the right execution of the ritual both will have to take their proper position. That is how the high is connected with the low.

From: Cutting through hexagram 23 by Harmen Mesker
at: http://i-tjingcentrum.nl/serendipity

Yours,

Charly
 

jilt

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Jilt:

Do you mean that the uneaten fruit is only a residual illusion?
There is not really fuit for us?

Before getting inconsolable, I must refer you to a new study at Harmen Mesker page. There, after learned filological considerations, Harmen arrives to the following translation of 23.6:



I encourage anyone interested in H.23 to read the whole article, I myself have not read it whit the owed attention and I still don't know if it can affect our juicy speculations.




Yours,

Charly


Well, perhaps you strip it a bit to much Charly, perhaps I made it a bit to much in dried bones. :)
What I consider as the bottomline for 23: there is a tree with fruits. tree gets destroyed, but only one fruit remains. The fruit-flesh is attractive af course, but what counts are the seeds. That is the logos that pulls the whole image.
Consider the sequence of the hexagrams. 22 is all about image and putting energy in the imagebuildingprocess. Then in 23 the image is destroyed, or it can only maintaned by putting more and more energy in the illusion. People only pay lipservice to what the image represents, but in private they gossip about it. So, after stripping the image the nucleus is left. Then comes 24, building a new situation with the seeds from top 23.
Holy cow, there are some resemblences with Moze's actions in the desert with people worshipping that golden young cow.
Of course there can be connections with ancestor-worship, or any worshipping that has gone to far. There is nothing ancient about that, and nothing "only about ancestor-worship".
If you only consider the modern worshipping of logo's, popstars, president's candidates and all the imagebuilding and marketing. We offer, sacrifice a lot in those actions, to keep up appearences. Nothing new, nothing ancient, nothing special. Even in our language we use the word "victim" in a casual way, sombody that has been sacrified because we use a certain sytem, e.g. a traffic-sytem. But when you start to observe those "systems" you observe offerings, sacrifices and imagebuilding, accompanied by policies to maintain the order.
A lot more to be said about it, but that needs an essay.:):bows:
 

charly

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Well, perhaps you strip it a bit to much Charly, perhaps I made it a bit to much in dried bones. :)
What I consider as the bottomline for 23: there is a tree with fruits. tree gets destroyed, but only one fruit remains. The fruit-flesh is attractive af course, but what counts are the seeds. That is the logos that pulls the whole image.
... Of course there can be connections with ancestor-worship, or any worshipping that has gone to far. There is nothing ancient about that, and nothing "only about ancestor-worship"... Even in our language we use the word "victim" in a casual way, sombody that has been sacrified because we use a certain sytem, e.g. a traffic-sytem. But when you start to observe those "systems" you observe offerings, sacrifices and imagebuilding, accompanied by policies to maintain the order....

Jilt:

Maybe you think that I suscribe all what Harmen said. I respect his scholarship and agree with much of his analysis but about the proper position for people I have some reserves: too much dominant-ideology compliant fro me.

In ancient China ancestors worship was notorious, royal ancestors worship was public, if any kind of worship I believe that must be a secret one.

Something like ancient sorcery, goddess worship, secret brotherhood's rituals, esoteric arts or bedchamber technics (1).

You are right, sacrifices continued though all the history, there are too much victims whose rights are not recognized, I only point that swapping the concrete «animal» by the abstract «victim» is not without consequences for the undersgtanding of the general meaning.

You said that
The fruit-flesh is attractive ... but what counts are the seeds.
But the seeds need the fruit-flesh for their own developpment. Also the tree counts, at least while fruits and seeds need it. All under the sky counts, the useless tree inclusive. Nothing prescindible.

Don't you agree ?

Yours,

Charly

__________________
(1) not a taxative list, you can add another issues.
 

jilt

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Dear Charly,
I think Harmen is an excellent scolar, and I do not oppose your views. I only tried to say _in a rather crude way, I'm sorry- that making image, face, sacrificing for image and face, for ancestors, is something from all times and cultures. Think about the iconoclastes, the times of Cromwell, the book-burnings. When somebody is saying something from the Yi has something to do with ancesors, it is very true of course. In the case of 23, where the mirror breaks, a long time there has been sacrifced for an ideology, in the case of the ancient chinese inevitably the ancestors. It is good that Harmen pointed to that, he deserves merit for that. I was only pointing to the fact it is something from all times and places.
:bows:
 
M

meng

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I think human wisdom is way overrated, Jilt.

A cowardly rabbit lives to eat another day, and the wise coyote knows, that makes the rabbit all the fatter. So both live in peace for today. Tomorrow is a different day. That's nature's wisdom; self-evident.

Man's wisdom stands on its own, like a discolored mole on the back of a big pig.
 

jilt

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Is melancholy a sign of wisdom or just a way to avoid the risk?
 

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