Blog post: Hexagram 4, ‘polluting the waters’

[hilary]

Hexagram 4, ‘polluting the waters’

If you try for an ‘eagle’s-eye view’ of the Yijing, you get to admire its architecture: the intricate connections between hexagrams, the Sequence, two-line changes and so on. What if you zoom in, instead, for a mouse’s eye-view? Here’s an example of that.

I’ve translated Hexagram 4’s Oracle like this:

‘Not knowing, creating success.
I do not seek the young ignoramus, the young ignoramus seeks me.
The first consultation speaks,
The second and third pollute the waters.
Polluted, and hence not speaking.
Constancy bears fruit.’

告 Gao, ‘speaks’ means to announce or inform. Ir could also mean a more performative announcement, such as making a ritual report to Heaven or the ancestors, but the basic idea is simply that the voice of this text (often, though not always, the Yi itself), when consulted, will speak – or, if questioned again and again, it won’t.

Why not? Because this repeated questioning ‘pollutes the waters’. This may be a bit of a poetic over-elaboration of another single Chinese word, 瀆 du.

Here are some other ways du is translated:

• Harmen Mesker: ‘excessive’
• Schilling: ,verschmutzt’ (soiled, polluted, dirty)
• Rutt and LiSe Heyboer: ‘confusing’
• Wilhelm and Minford book I: ‘importunity’
• Lynn: ‘violation’
• Bradford Hatcher and Geoffrey Redmond: ‘disrespect’
• Minford Book II: ‘insult’

There’s a mix there, but you can see the core ideas: confusion and disrespect. It all fits well with the dictionary definitions: to lack respect, to profane, to take liberties; to importune with repetition; disorder; covetousness, avidity.

The word has another meaning, though: a ditch, drain, sluice or gutter. The left-hand part of the character, generally described as its significant part (the part that conveys the meaning as opposed to just the sound), represents water:

du, disrespect/ ditch​

And this awakens our interest, of course, because the inner trigram of Hexagram 4 is kan, which also represents water:

​

There’s water below the mountain, painting a picture of a stream welling up from the rock strata. In the story told by the Image, the mountain ‘nourishes character’ and the stream acts (or ‘goes, travels’), as it begins to carve its course and create its own nature as it flows.

‘Below the mountain, spring water comes forth. Not Knowing.
A noble one nourishes character with the fruits of action.’

The clear, new stream represents the young ignoramus’ spirit of experiment and enquiry, finding his way through trial and error.

So what might a ditch represent?

The remainder of the character du, its ‘phonetic’ element, means ‘sell’, which in turn is made up from elements meaning ‘buy’ (probably a cowrie shell in a net) and ‘go out’. In theory, this is a purely phonetic element. However… mightn’t the meanings of covetousness, avidity and over-familiarity be connected with buying and selling? Digging a ditch turns the natural flow of water into something transactional: we’ll have less water here, more over there, to match our needs.

All this casts light on the choice of du to explain ‘not speaking’. We might imagine a clear and innocent question meeting with a speaking answer as a fresh stream, and disrespectful, repeated casting as an attempt to channel the stream, leaving you with nothing more than a ditch.

 

[my_key]

While 'Not Knowing' does carry a government health warning on how Yi will respond towards acts that can be seen as leading to 'confusion and disrespect' there is also, I believe, a nurturing element within the judgement advising that 'constancy bears fruit'.

At the deep root of Hex 4 its nuclear Hex 24 is directing the situation from a place aligned with reversing the impetuous, foolishness of youth or immature thoughts and acts. These deeper undercurrents are embedded in the flow of the pair 23 to 24, Stripping to Returning, and so does carry a positive connotation towards education and learning. Perhaps it is at this level, if the ditch can be dug that deep, that the flow is provided for the transactional element to which you refer: "we’ll have less water here, more over there, to match our needs". At the mouse-eye level perhaps the ditch provides a structure for containing and directing.

Having said that, I see the flow of the waters more as being a natural progression rather than being ditch related.

Stepping back out into the eagle-eye view. The gushing water emerging at the foot of the mountain has a long journey as it first becomes a muddy stream before joining the great river - paraphrasing Alfred Huang's words.

Beyond the river lies the vast ocean of Enlightenment: the Ultimate Knowing. Muddied by 'not knowing' the stream will flow downhill in a natural direction governed by the landscape around, taking the line of least resistance, towards the river which increasingly becomes meandering and slowly drops all it's silt, as the strength of it's flow decreases, finishing the clearing job at it's mouth or delta, just before it joins the ocean.

It is a natural feature of any journey that there is a beginning and an end. So, if we want to arrive at a location called 'Knowing' (through asking a question of the I Ching or any number of wider connotations) that the starting point will always be a place of 'Not Knowing'.

 

[rosada]

This conversation reminds me of the experiments done with water that showed different sounds, vibrations, creating different patterns. I remember that classical music created beautiful snowflake patterns and heavy metal sounds resulted in very messed-up patterns! Anyway, I see this idea of a second question muddying the waters as being like this experiment that showed vibration creating patterns in water and how a second vibration/question would have disrupted the pattern and all would be unreadable.

 

[surnevs]

This conversation reminds me of the experiments done with water that showed different sounds, vibrations, creating different patterns. I remember that classical music created beautiful snowflake patterns and heavy metal sounds resulted in very messed-up patterns! Anyway, I see this idea of a second question muddying the waters as being like this experiment that showed vibration creating patterns in water and how a second vibration/question would have disrupted the pattern and all would be unreadable.

It's Masaru Emoto, the Japanese researcher, I think: https://masaru-emoto.net/en/crystal/

 

[wanlihonghu]

Let me interpret this hexagram with Chinese thinking.

The Chinese name of this hexagram is Meng（蒙）.

The meaning of this name, in Chinese, is, hazy, unclear.

It's like you're in a fog and you can't see what's ahead.

The analogy is that your knowledge and IQ have not reached a certain level, as if you are still at a confused and ignorant age.

As long as you don't understand the truth and do things before you reach a more accessible level, this is called meng. The antonym of meng is to understand.


meng（蒙）: It is a hexagram that can get good luck or success, But being able to make yourself a bright future and success is conditional. It does not mean that it can be successful soon.

If people who are still in the stage of ignorance and confusion can use wise and knowledgeable people as teachers to let them gain wisdom, let them grow up and become smarter, so that people who were still ignorant and confused can do things success.

 

[my_key]

Let me interpret this hexagram with Chinese thinking.

The Chinese name of this hexagram is Meng（蒙）.

The meaning of this name, in Chinese, is, hazy, unclear.

It's like you're in a fog and you can't see what's ahead.

The analogy is that your knowledge and IQ have not reached a certain level, as if you are still at a confused and ignorant age.

The likening of Meng, by some commentators, to that of the parasitic plant Dodder that spreads over the roof of a house covering, matting and shutting out any connection between what is inside and outside of the house also supports your analogy. The path in this hexagram features one of uncovering the wisdoms that have yet to be developed or have been stunted. I suggest that this would not just apply to IQ but also to any other aspect of grown wisdom such as EQ (emotional understanding).

As long as you don't understand the truth and do things before you reach a more accessible level, this is called meng. The antonym of meng is to understand.

One element of Meng is not so much that we don't understand the truth, more that we will act from the truth that we know and hold dear at the time. We speak or act from a place of stunted, immature partial truth or partial wisdom.

meng（蒙）: It is a hexagram that can get good luck or success, But being able to make yourself a bright future and success is conditional. It does not mean that it can be successful soon.

If people who are still in the stage of ignorance and confusion can use wise and knowledgeable people as teachers to let them gain wisdom, let them grow up and become smarter, so that people who were still ignorant and confused can do things success.

Yes. I'd agree that this is the best practice that is being advocated in the Image. Find ways, right for you, that will allow you to grow and build your wisdom and virtue. As the waters become less hazy the farther into the depths we can see.

 

[wanlihonghu]

The likening of Meng, by some commentators, to that of the parasitic plant Dodder that spreads over the roof of a house covering, matting and shutting out any connection between what is inside and outside of the house also supports your analogy. The path in this hexagram features one of uncovering the wisdoms that have yet to be developed or have been stunted. I suggest that this would not just apply to IQ but also to any other aspect of grown wisdom such as EQ (emotional understanding).

One element of Meng is not so much that we don't understand the truth, more that we will act from the truth that we know and hold dear at the time. We speak or act from a place of stunted, immature partial truth or partial wisdom.

Yes. I'd agree that this is the best practice that is being advocated in the Image. Find ways, right for you, that will allow you to grow and build your wisdom and virtue. As the waters become less hazy the farther into the depths we can see.

I agree