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39.3>8 Wilhelm v. Karcher et.al.

miakoda

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Wilhelm: Going lead to obstructions; Hence he comes back.
Balkin: Going forward means obstruction; So he comes back.
Karcher: Difficulties going, reverse is coming.
LiSe: To proceed: limping. To come: reversing.
Bradford: If going is impassable, then coming back means turning around.

Wilhelm and Balkin interpret this line to be reversing yourself or retreating from the obstruction, returning to safety, etc., but Karcher says to wait, the situation will reverse itself. I've tried to find some tie breakers, but am getting nowhere. Anybody have any ideas which camp to lean towards on this line?

Thanks,

Miakoda
 

rosada

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Line 3 is the top line of the trigram Ken, Mountain, so when you are at the top of the mountain you can't go any further. So you don't, you go back.

Of course I can't speak for Karcher, but it seems Karcher is saying this line cautions not chasing after something, and that by not chasing, that which now seems to be fleeing will turn about and come to you, as 39.3 leads to 8, Union.

Either way though, it seems there is agreement that 39.3 counsels not to pursue your interest at this time.

I think of it as the chasing rainbows line, because the trigram K'an is above, like water in the sky makes rainbows, but even from the top of a mountain we can't touch them.
 
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lightofreason

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Wilhelm: Going lead to obstructions; Hence he comes back.
Balkin: Going forward means obstruction; So he comes back.
Karcher: Difficulties going, reverse is coming.
LiSe: To proceed: limping. To come: reversing.
Bradford: If going is impassable, then coming back means turning around.

....

Line 3
"Going leads to obstruction. Coming leads to the reverse." [Adopting a position of uniformity and order removes the obstruction]

Line position 3 is controlled by hexagram 15 and so a focus on modesty, no extremes.
The expression of 15 in 39 is through analogy to hexagram 08 where the focus is on a passive centre of attraction as being the 15-ness of 39.
 

miakoda

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Rosada and Chris:

Thanks for both of your replies. They were both extremely illuminating. I was getting very caught up in the fan yao of the line of being grouped with the wrong people. I think that's where Wilhelm derived that whole scenario he has in the explanation about returning to your poor starving family that needs you--very melodramatic!

Rosada, I hadn't really thought about the trigram images. It's an aspect I overlooked in trying to understand the hexagrams. There's a lot of value in it. Thanks for the tip. And Chris, I really appreciate the information about the passivity, etc. When your writing is terse, I can see you've got a lot to offer. Thanks for that.

Miakoda
 

charly

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Miakoda:

Two more translatios of 39.3:

Mawangdui manuscript lacks of 39.3 but Shaughnessy in accordance with other five lines gives:

«Going afoot, coming in return»

Richter translates:

«In going there are impediments, in coming there is opposition»

There are two key characters in this line: jian (蹇)and fan (反).
Some alternative translations for each could be instructive.

Jian(蹇): difficulties, obstructions, impediments / lame, limping (remember that «the lame can walk»).

Speaks about a dificult way or path to be walked by the subject. I preffer «impediment» neither necessarily imposed by an external agent (could be self imposed) nor necessarily refused by the subject (could be accepted).

Fan (反):come back, return / reverse, wrong side out, bottom up.

Warnings that things can change, fortune can turn to misfortune, misfortune can turn to fortune or can be worst and all situations came to an end.

Looking at the hexagram as a whole it speaks of a mystical trip, an initiation trip, SouthWest is profitable, the direction of LaoZi final trip towards the sources of the three great rivers.

The lines describes initiation rites alternatives:

1) spiritual goals, expectative of personal perfection (yu=honors);
2) caused by superior mandate, no physical need (as the behavior of the royal minister);
3) difficult alternatives, tests, ordeals, process can fail;
4) even when carried in loneliness, initiation implies conections, superior wisdom linking (lian);
5) initiated becomes member of a brotherhood, «friends» mutually recognizes by secret sygns (peng)
6) arriving to a good end (shuo, greatness), initiation provides a Master recognition of acquired status (profitale to see the Great Person)

The word «wang» appears in almost all the lines, wang(往)=going / wang(王)=king , but wang is also lame(尢), and the word jian=impediment, that also appears in all the lines is also lame.

Who is the lame? : the lame is the person who goes to be initiated, the person who faced the dead (also wang(亡)).

Thanks for your patience.


Charly
 
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heylise

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"The word wang".. In Chinese there is not something like "a word wang". There are many words, with very different meanings, which happen to be pronounced wang, but they have nothing else in common.

Two of the words you mention, do have something in common though, the 'king' part: going and king.

Going like a king, proceeding. A bit like going on from-out tradition.
Coming is the opposite, it goes towards something.

I think there lies the main meaning of the lines. The difference between going on or clearing a new path.

LiSe
 
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bruce_g

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The difference between going on or clearing a new path.

LiSe

This reminds me of something Steven Karcher said, during one of Hilary's webinars. I don't recall his exact words. Something to do with how the body/brain builds new neuro-pathways, when the common pathway is blocked, and how we can aid in that process through our thoughts.
 
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bruce_g

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To continue…

The stream analogy for 39, mentioned on another thread recently, still holds water here (39.3 – 8). A blocked stream moves energy and matter back upon itself, but it doesn’t end there. It makes a new pathway or pathways around the obstruction.
 

charly

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Lise:
In Chinese there is not something like "a word wang"

You're quite right, I concede. In chinese one syllabe up to five tones = hundred characters = thousand meanings.

But what do you think about the remainder?

Resuming the original post:

Wilhelm & Balkin: obstruction = better come back home

Bradford: come back = turning around

Karcher: reverse is coming (you can wait that obstruction reverses by his own?)

LiSe: To proceed, limping. To come, reversing. You add: «The difference betwen going on or clearing a new path»

I think no one of this is true, but all of them, yours the first (I love your book).

There is no one way, but multiple choise. Person who asks for advice needs to take the right one for him. But also needs to be aware that even the best advice can fail in the real life.

And that's what I want to say: death (the higher danger / fatal error) is not absent in 39, but ever present in «wang» that could sound as a mornful «亡» (among hundred other associations).

Your 39.3 translation (for me) has two important insights: limping instead of obstruction and reversing instead of come back, and of couse going / coming by all the lines.

I feel that 39 is far from being, as Wu Jing-Nuan says, «... prosaic and simple. The languaje is clear, the instructions direct.» (page.150). I Ching is never simple.

I remmark: no one meaning, no one advice, nothing like if ugly path, better come back home. Is one of the alternatives, but there are also others such as : you may reverse your mind, you can turn back becoming another, obstructions can reverse, opportunities can dissapear, Go bold, Be prudent, &&.

Yours,

Charly
 
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charly

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Bruce:

A blocked stream moves energy and matter back upon itself, but it doesn’t end there. It makes a new pathway or pathways around the obstruction.

If you are the stream, you necessarily will make new pathways, if you're not, you can take it as a model, as the JunZi frequently does.

If you're the obstruction, better be aware of the water strenght. If you're a tree or a stone or an animal drinking, what can you do?

If you're drinking in a mountain stream, and you're wise, you can listen and hear the uproar of the torrent before it arrives to you, so you can move towards higher places where it cann't take you.

If you're a tree, and you're wise, you can imitate the stream ad throw new strong roots far enough from the place where you are, as the mangles do, and resist the stream (but the mangles are not from mountains) or you can be very flexible and let the stream flow.

If you're a stone you can roll with the stream or be converted in sand or you can enjoy the time that you still have.

I like very much the stream analogy, the advice could be don't come back so soon, explore the possibilities that you have.

Yours,


Charly :bows:
 

rosada

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39 Reaffirmation
Any outward progress is ill advised here. It is time for one to reaffirm contact with his spiritual source, to withdraw physically from the adverse outer conditions and give attention to his inner growth.

8 Cooperation
Often the best way to meet danger is by joining with others. As in the situation in hexagram 3, this admission of need pushes aside the ego, permitting adequate receptivity. It is well to listen to the inner self when one is threatened. One should also be ever mindful of his basic unity with his fellows, allowing them to help him, for the sharing of responcibilities fosters brotherhood.

-Edgar Cayce Foundation
 

charly

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Rosada:

39 Reaffirmation
... It is time for one to reaffirm contact with his spiritual source, to withdraw physically from the adverse outer conditions and give attention to his inner growth.

If H.39 蹇 Jian is The Lame, it links with the «Hanged Man» card of Tarot, which is said:

«...the Lamed designates the arm, and therefore it is connected with anything that stretches, that raises, that unfolds like the arm, and has become the sign of expansive movement... it is the image of the power derived from elevation... But the revelation of the law involve punishment for him who violates it, or elevation for him who understands it ... our young hero is again suspended between two decisions, from which will spring, no longer his physical future ... but his spiritual future.»
Papus, 1892.

«...He chose this way himself. For this he went over a long road from trial to trial, from initiation to initiation, through failures and falls...»
Ouspensky, 1913


Yours,


Charly ;)
 
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charly

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Rosada:

When I posted the «Hanged Man» came to my mind the LiSe «Cold Feet», she describes an ancient character «with a man upside down with a big mouth in a hut filled with grass or straw» all over two lines «is maybe the floor?... it has no feet...»

Two scenarios arose:

(1) punishment: a person hanging from the roof, far from the soil, very old iconography, but also modern (remember Duce & Claretta fate); but why grass or straw? It conduces directly to «Hanged Man», a punishment, but mostly an iniciatic rite (grass/straw = life tree).

(2) developpment: of course, a fetus in the womb, waiting to be born. That's the reason for the soil/earth, and grass/strow = water/amniotic liquid. H.39 cann't be «one of the four evil hexagrams in I Ching» as Jou Tsung-Hwa says. It's time of internal developpment, of taking his time.

Then I go to Dan Stackhouse, he attach another character, more similar in structure to the regular one, he describes it as «a tall arching roof under which a person whit an inmobile or resting foot is surrounded by herbs or straw», also speaks of «earlier bronze drawings whit x [foot character] that show people burying themselves in straw to keep warm», something like Dersu Usala in the Kurosawa's film.

May be the second character evolved from the first? May be no matter which description fits best?

It reminds me another image: peasants using wooden shoes (1) filled with straw, go on could be difficult, but come bak could be dangerous (2). What a situation! And that's the situation of the person who goes to be initiated: to soon for go on, to late for come back.

I attach the characters from LiSe and Dan and the current Jian character.

Yours,


Charly

(1) clogs = woden shoe / obstruction (!)

(2) In my country ther is a saying: «peor que recular en chancleta» (worse that to recoil in slippers), and chancleta = slipper / female parts > the womb (!?). To come back in slippers require to be much cautious, to take the needed time, something like to carry a child.
 
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rosada

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Hi charly,
I don't know anything about Chinese characters (Is this a sign it's time I learned? Auuugh!). Maybe someone else here has some thoughts about this..?
 

Sparhawk

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My "dos centavos"... :D I've some ideas that just occurred to me.

If I'm not mistaken, within the first Chinese 10 numerals, there are four numerals where Heaven, Earth and Man are implied. 1, 一, for Heaven; 2, 二, where Heaven and Earth are depicted; 3, 三, where Heaven, Earth and Man are depicted in a sort of balance; and 5, 五, where the character for Man is clearly enclosed between the two lines of Heaven and Earth, showing a more dynamic relationship, interaction.

I may very well be mistaken but it occurs to me that the character used by LiSe, showing two lines at the bottom of it, clearly below and outside the rest of the character, may be depicting something that is outside the influence, or help, of Heaven and Earth. Whatever is happening to the subject enclosed in the rest of the character is beyond the influence of those two entities. His situation must be resolved without their assistance.

Now, how's that for wild speculation? :D

L
 

charly

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I don't know anything about Chinese characters (Is this a sign it's time I learned? Auuugh!).

Hi Rosada:

You say this, I also thing YES!
You don't need to be scared. Chinese is so large, but...
If you begin with 5 and, after a time, you get 10, your revenues are 100%
100 x (10 - 5) / 5 = 100
If you begin with very, very few, whatever little getting means enormous revenues. The more little the begining the more large the revenues, it trends to infinite.
Try!

Chinese writes with characters, characters are signs, signs have meanings, meanings are humane meanings, are inside of you. And you have a good background in working whith meaning.

Look at the character Jian in LiSe page. Feel its beauty. Look inside. If LiSe says the little central sign is a kid, accept, is a kid. Don't you recognize nothing else?

These four litle signs like goose footprints surrounding the kid, don't say you nothing?
LiSe says that they are straw, plants, bamboo perhaps? Take bamboo. What is bamboo? Bamboo is panda's feed.

Now, you are a chinese panda. What is bamboo for you? Panda only eats bamboo. For he bamboo is life. These four litle signs like goose footprints are life.

For us, westerners, the Tree of Life, you know. This is your little fund for trying some chinese, the revenues shall be enormous!

Wellcome to the beginers' lobby. :bows:

Yours,


Charly
 

charly

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chinese character

His situation must be resolved without their assistance.

Luis:

Totally in accord with you!
1) I also see the two lines outside the «main» character
2) situation is of inner developpment, no outer help

I see the two lines as the old character for UP (something above the horizon), but is located DOWN! Some things are upside down? The kid, yes. May be the roof were an inverted vessel ? May be the herbal signs were stems with two branches / arms up?

What if we reverse de character? Now the two lines are the old character for DOWN, but is located UP. Now the kid is head up, the vessel is up, the stems have its branches down. Somethig is upside down, or perhaps branches become roots.

The reading: Things change. An almost imperceptible oscilation of the image, a little change in the point of view, shoots many different meanings, many different images, like an hologram.

Another: did you see, like me, the four little goose footprints? Up, the goose go. Down, the goose come back. Difference between going and coming back went only from point of view, not from true reallity, not from the goose. The goose is neither going nor coming, he is walking, making his own path, printing his own footprints.

As you imagine, goose is a wild goose. Perhaps someting is wrong, perhaps.

Hasta pronto, ;)

Charly
 
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