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Blog post: Hexagram 5, and rain-making (a rethink)

rosada

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Seeker: What is the key to happiness?
Guru: Do not argue with fools.
Seeker: I disagree.
Guru: You are right.
:)
 

Liselle

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So in other words I'm a fool?

I mean, not that I'm not, but...

I suppose if you're going to say I'm a fool, you may as well say it outright?
 

Trojina

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I live in northern California where we have experienced extreme drought the last several years. We also have a large Indian population and awareness of shamen. A couple of years back when we hadn't had rain for a record number of days and it was getting really scary - waiting in blood! - I attended a picnic and "rain dance". Masses of people from the surrounding towns gathered together for the event and it was a remarkable experience. The beating drums and the shaman's dance created a vibration that seemed to shift reality and we all sensed it. Two days later it poured rain.

It was put forward, I can't recall the context, that of course, dogs will believe their barking saw off the postman, because their thinking is based on conditioning as is ours to a great degree, which is why we develop superstitions. 'Aha' reasons the dog, 'each day that rascal, that intruder, seek to gain entrance through the hole in the door and each day, my noble ancestors strengthen me to fight the good fight, bark the good bark, and sure enough each day I, yes Me, protect my family and my home. I see them off each day, tough job but someone's got to do it'. Woof Woof

Of course the dog doesn't see off the postman every day the postman would go anyway and sometimes when there's no letters the dog still barks anyway and wins because the postman isn't an intruder but the dog doesn't know that.


So it would rain anyway but people like to do something to pass the time and a rain dance is quite an impressive way to show what clout he has with the gods.


On the other hand I'm not a total sceptic, I don't totally disbelieve rain dances ever produce rain, how would I know.

I personally feel 5 has a lot more to do with simply passing time, daily living, than all the magical shamans and wotnot actually creating the future. Well at times they can but other times I think 5 is so much to do with passing time in faith, ordinary days where not a lot seems to happen, holding faith it's all for something, not falling into despair nor trying to force things to happen (rain).

Of course here in the UK the idea of doing anything to encourage it to rain is ridiculous as it never stops, except sometimes.
 

Trojina

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Also, sort of off topic, the discussion in general has made me realize, or rather notice more, the limits of historical 'fact' in modern day interpretation.

How much does discovered facts about what shamans did, or might have done, impact on our modern day interpretation ? The sand is always shifting anyway. One moment some scholar says the one in 5 is waiting for the rain to stop and another says he's waiting for it to come. All the time there will be new discoveries which is good, a good thing yes, but it does remind me of dietary advice to some degree.

One moment they say eggs are bad, now they are 'good' again...then bread is bad then it's good and many people seem to have their own mini food religion. There's a bunch of people who think grain is bad and there's a bunch of people who think meat is bad and I pretty much don't listen to it any more I just carried on eating eggs.

You may not see my reasoning, how burrowing into etymology is anything like being instructed in the media that eggs are suddenly bad/good or hey blueberries are a 'super food' oh right super foods well now it's more fashionable to say this whole thing about super foods is piffle...You may not see my reasoning, which is understandable, but it's a bit like suddenly one might be told there's an elephant or a mouse in a hexagram one was hitherto unaware of and one still understood one's answers. How much does someone's new discovery about a character affect interpretation...but more to the point, what I'm trying to say is, in the end is how a word was meant thousands of years ago really crucial to our understanding, practical use of the Oracle now ?

It's not an answerable question I think because the Yi seems to grow and become more along with the times we are in. I mean it isn't just an ancient text where all clues to meaning lie in history, it's meaning is perhaps being made now too.

This is not to undermine research and so on which is undoubtedly a good thing bringing in more scope, a widening of understanding. But it isn't just that that brings understanding, there's something else too, perhaps a sense we have probably all had, Yi as a living oracle, living now not only in the past.
 

Liselle

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but more to the point, what I'm trying to say is, in the end is how a word was meant thousands of years ago really crucial to our understanding, practical use of the Oracle now ?

Good question...

In things like Shakespeare, I suspect if you don't know what the word meant back then, you'll miss something, but you'll probably get the gist of it from context. If there's a word that's changed meaning since then, it's surely useless to try to read his plays picturing what it means now. You have to know what Shakespeare meant by it.

But Shakespeare isn't an oracle and has no need to "speak" in that way. It can stay static.

Could Yi be some of both? Maybe we really do have to know what things meant to the Zhou, but also imagine what our word would be for the same thing, how we'd conceptualize it?

An example from yesterday (the imagery workshop) is what Hilary said about horses - they represented something very different 3000 years ago than they do to most of us now, so when Yi says "horse" we have to replace it with modern-day things like "car" or "telephone."

But that's probably a pretty easy one; things like rain-dancing are more difficult because it's harder to understand it as they did.
 

rosada

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I just thought that was a pretty funny joke about the seeker and the guru and not an inappropriate moment to share it, no offense intended.
But what's so bad about being a fool? What's is a fool anyway, except someone who is inexperienced and obviously no one else here has participated in a rain dance, felt the energy shift and witnessed the good fortune of the then coming rainfall. So it's natural and appropriate that folks would be skeptical. Anyway at least now you can say you read about someone who saw a rain dance and shortly there after, rain.
 

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