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dramatis personae

dobro p

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Here's a list of the main characters in the cast in the Yi:

great person

small person

king

prince (or duke)

jun zi

I'm leaving out the sons, daughters, wives, concubines, people hiding in caves, and the powerful woman of 44, not because they're not part of the picture, but because they're not part of my question. And what's my question? Well, what's the relation between the five characters I've listed? What's the difference between a king and a jun zi? What's the difference between a king and great person? What's the difference betwee a great person and a jun zi?

I'll start. A king seems to have two functions: first, day-to-day decision making. Second, the real and symbolic order-maker. So what is the 'king' in terms of human psychology as you understand it? Is the king the ordinary mind, the ego mind, or is it the higher mind, the capital 'S' self? And if the latter, where does that leave the great person and the jun zi? See where I'm going with this? Rather than deal with one term at a time, I'm trying a comparative approach. The whole constellation rather than the individual star.
 

getojack

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I see the "small person" and "great person," as a convenient dichotomy used throughout the text, showing situationally and through numerous examples, the actions which will benefit you (seeing the great person) and actions which will be to your detriment (the small person does *fill in the blank*). The king, then, seems to be the decider... dispensing the "judgment", the answer to your question, delivered from on high. The prince or duke is the actor... the one following the commands delivered from the king... and the junzi, the scholar or student, the one questioning, learning and evolving.

Maybe something like this...
junzi... the questioner-seeker-scholar
small person... wrong views-wrong actions
great person... right views-right actions
king... the decision-maker, handing out judgments
duke (prince)... the one carrying out the action

Of course, others may see things entirely differently.
 

dobro p

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Okay, I think I can translate most of that into parts of my own psychology in terms of different functions. But I wouldn't call the 'small person' wrong, I'd just call him 'small'. Misguided, maybe. Uninformed, maybe. Concerned with the small stuff and lacking the big picture, basically. Somebody's whose chief concerns are security, filling their belly and getting a cuddle or two.
 

lindsay

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This is an interesting topic. Don't forget the bandits (kou), bad guys (fei ren), evil doers (e ren), and the infamous Red Knee-bands (zhu/chi fu = government men in wing-tip shoes?). Also, there are several different types and grades of prince, lord, and duke mentioned. This was a hierarchical society, and titles and positions mattered a lot.

I always thought the da ren was just a Big Guy - powerful, rich, influential, connected. The kind of person who can make things happen. Needless to say, seeing him can be very, very beneficial. The junzi, on the other hand, has a touch of nobility, refinement, cultivation, he's a gentleman. Like all the rest of the feudal thugs who ran the show, he can hack you into chunks in ten seconds flat, but you'll die admiring his poise and gravitas.
 

fkegan

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Hi Dobro,
Uninformed, maybe. Concerned with the small stuff and lacking the big picture, basically. Somebody's whose chief concerns are security, filling their belly and getting a cuddle or two.

What's so less than great about those goals? Or to cite Maslow--don't you have to Satisfy those basic needs to be free to move on to higher levels of his hierarchy? Your perspective would make only the affluent and successful open to being more than the small person. That is just not right at all. The small person rides in a carriage carrying a peddler's pack on his back, not the peddler who has only his backpack to earn his bread.

Try the concrete alternative-- the King is the ruler, commander of the army, who is responsible for making decisions and assuring his people of peace and security.

The Prince isn't the ruler though he may be an important vassal (feudal law without the heavy discipline capable of fielding a truly powerful infantry--just a collection of sub- commanders for battle).

The junzi is the sage gentleman whose merit shines even without the outer trappings of power or position.

The great man is someone with status and position in time of peace. The small man is the bureaucrat at his important desk.

The Confucian Yi is used by bureaucrats to figure out what is going on outside their cubicle and keep from getting blamed for what goes wrong. Others use the Yi for idealized guidance.
Frank
 
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dobro p

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This is an interesting topic. Don't forget the bandits (kou), bad guys (fei ren), evil doers (e ren), and the infamous Red Knee-bands (zhu/chi fu = government men in wing-tip shoes?). Also, there are several different types and grades of prince, lord, and duke mentioned. This was a hierarchical society, and titles and positions mattered a lot.

I always thought the da ren was just a Big Guy - powerful, rich, influential, connected. The kind of person who can make things happen. Needless to say, seeing him can be very, very beneficial. The junzi, on the other hand, has a touch of nobility, refinement, cultivation, he's a gentleman. Like all the rest of the feudal thugs who ran the show, he can hack you into chunks in ten seconds flat, but you'll die admiring his poise and gravitas.

That's an interesting take on the 'great person', and I'll consider it over the next few weeks of working the Yi. Thanks for the idea. It's a good one. I suppose, if I translated it into human psychology (which is my motivation in this thread) that your idea of the da ren would be something like 'one's strong suit' - the part of you that can get things done. Whatcha think? For instance, if you see people as having intellectual, emotional, sensual, and active capacity, my strong suit would be the intellectual part. Not cuz I'm smart, but because I work things out and make decisions based on thinking, not how I feel. (By contrast, a man of action solves problems by acting, by doing something. An emotional person (please note I did not specifically say 'woman' lol) deals with issues primarily by working through their feeling tone.) So in my case, 'seeing the great man' in a psychological or inner sense would mean resorting to thinking something through. Is that too great a stretch?
 

dobro p

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Two responses, Frank. Here's the first:

What's so less than great about those goals?

Because that's the ONLY thing that concerns a 'small person'. That's what makes them small. There's nothing wrong with it; I do those things and you do them too. But the small person limits themselves to those goals - that's all that moves them, that's all they really want out of life. A comfy tummy and a safe, warm space. There's nothing wrong or bad about it. But you do have to describe it as 'small'.

By contrast there are the movers and shakers, the people who tend to influence others or dominate socially - they're trying to achieve. Somebody like you, with your website and the projects you've worked out with a lot of work and over a considerable amount of time - you're AT LEAST at that level or stage. Now, about these movers and shakers - I would think Lindsay's idea of the 'da ren' might fit them.
 

dobro p

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And here's the second response, and what I'm more interested in:

Try the concrete alternative-- the King is the ruler, commander of the army, who is responsible for making decisions and assuring his people of peace and security.

The Prince isn't the ruler though he may be an important vassal (feudal law without the heavy discipline capable of fielding a truly powerful infantry--just a collection of sub- commanders for battle).

The junzi is the sage gentleman whose merit shines even without the outer trappings of power or position.

The great man is someone with status and position in time of peace. The small man is the bureaucrat at his important desk.

With the exception perhaps the important bureaucrat at his desk, I'd endorse all of those descriptions. But what do they refer or correspond to psychologically, do you think? What's the Prince in you? By contrast to the King, I mean? And compared to those psychological functions, what's the Junzi, then? And the great man?

That's where I really want to go with this. If you've got any ideas, I'd be eternally grateful etc... lol
 

dobro p

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Hilary said this in 'that other' junzi thread:

"I really like Lindsay's blunt view of great person and junzi having the capacity to change into big cats, and Frank's take on the difference being one of having 'established position', or not.

"I'd see the junzi vv small person contrast as one of character and position in the moment, not as an asssessment of character cradle-to-grave. But it's certainly helpful to think of it in terms of resourcefulness. Maybe small people don't get a cart in 23.6 because carts just aren't so easy to come by."
 

fkegan

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Because that's the ONLY thing that concerns a 'small person'. That's what makes them small. There's nothing wrong with it; I do those things and you do them too. But the small person limits themselves to those goals - that's all that moves them, that's all they really want out of life. A comfy tummy and a safe, warm space. There's nothing wrong or bad about it. But you do have to describe it as 'small'.

By contrast there are the movers and shakers, the people who tend to influence others or dominate socially - they're trying to achieve. Somebody like you, with your website and the projects you've worked out with a lot of work and over a considerable amount of time - you're AT LEAST at that level or stage. Now, about these movers and shakers

Hi Dobro,
First thank you for your kind remarks. Personally, I rather envy folks who can fill their minds and live their lives just for basic human necessities. It would take me years of meditation to achieve that much of the status of an uncarved block.

In more general terms, I believe in a capacity theory of such things. If all one has the capacity to achieve is basic human needs, that isn't a small person but one achieving his total capacity. It is the folks who could do better that still only seek petty self-interest that I would call small.

With the exception perhaps the important bureaucrat at his desk, I'd endorse all of those descriptions. But what do they refer or correspond to psychologically, do you think? What's the Prince in you? By contrast to the King, I mean? And compared to those psychological functions, what's the Junzi, then? And the great man?

That's where I really want to go with this. If you've got any ideas, I'd be eternally grateful etc... lol

My crack about the bureaucrat at his "important desk" was again a matter of capacity. The desk was important but the small man sitting at the desk is a poor administrator.

The psychological implications within each of us is taking a set of symbolism and distilling it a whole new way. The descriptions I gave can be subjective and internal as well as objective and established.

The Prince is one's best expression of parental expectations for you. The King is whatever station you hold in life and have recognized by folks in your community.
The great man is what folks seek your counsel about. The junzi is your own continuing self-development.

These symbols refer to functional roles which can be given concrete expression in whatever context is of interest. After all, Confucius came up with an entire set of proper relationships--husband/wife, king/minister, Divine/king all based upon the symbolism of open Space in the gua taken as a new, independent entity, the Yin--separate but equal though subservient to the Yang. As an American this smacks to me of racism and sexism though.

Frank
 

lindsay

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Dobro –

I’m trying to understand what you wrote a few posts back about translating stock figures in the Yi into appropriate psychological states.

I think it’s pretty clear that figures like the great man, the noble one, the duke, the lord, the king, the small man, and so on are intended to be symbols. They do not refer, nor did they ever refer, to any particular individual, historical or mythological. There are a few specific individuals mentioned in the Yi, so the Yi was not afraid to name names when necessary. No, these references were doubtless meant to point to more general situations.

But were they meant to refer to inner psychological states of feeling and intention and will? Was the outer person a symbol for the inner person?

Perhaps.

I would like to quote some comments by philosopher Jacob Needleman about the Daodejing, from an old edition of the work translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English (a translation, Frank, I have admired my whole life). Here is what Needleman says about Laozi’s work:

“In the symbolic language of sacred writing, the outer and the inner are spoken of with images and formulations that embrace the laws of one’s own inner world and the greater outer world simultaneously. In this language, words such as leader, warrior, king, and sage refer both to an individual in relationship to other people and to a part of oneself in its relationship to the other parts that make up one’s total inner world. There is or can be a leader in myself – a warrior, king, and sage. There are armies and peoples within myself. There are desires, fears, hopes, needs; there are timid and brave impulses; there are thinkers, dreamers, scoundrels, and madmen. In the Old Testament these are “the people of Israel” whom Moses leads out of the state of slavery. These are the “people” of Plato’s Republic, whom the philosopher-king rules with wisdom and justice. Like the Tao Te Ching, such texts are “political” in a much vaster and more intimate sense than we may imagine. To be a warrior in the outer life, one must be a warrior in the inner life. To be a king in the outer life, one must be a king in the inner life. To be a sage in the outer life, one must be a sage in the inner life.

“Thus, when the Tao Te Ching cautions the ruler against imposing concepts of good and evil onto his people, it is also cautioning us against cutting ourselves off from the vital forces within ourselves through attachment to mental or emotional judging of ourselves. To read anything in the Tao Te Ching as merely advice for the outer life is, putting it bluntly, to desecrate it, that is, to pack it into our own store of illusions, the sum total of which has made our individual and collective life on earth a hypnotic sleep that could very well end with our eyes still closed. But to read it as applying simultaneously to the outer life and to our own inner life is to feel ourselves invited to a life of searching that will be supported by the strongest and greatest energies of the universe.”

I’m sorry this quote is so long, but I thought you would like it. I believe every word applies equally well to the Yijing.

Lindsay
 

dobro p

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Well-spotted, Lindsay. Yeah, I agree with Needleman completely. That's how I've been using the Yi for a long time now. It's useful for helping me delineate and navigate outer situations, but it's the inner stuff that I really want it for. Why else would I be going to all the trouble of coming up with my own rendition, complete with glossary and concordance? In order to get on better with the people at work? Nah. I can do that without the Yi. I want a guide for the inner life.

When I draw 40.6, that prince and that hawk and that wall are something in me, something high up, something worth nabbing, something requiring some skill.
 

fkegan

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Hi Lindsay,
I must say my first reaction to your remarks on Gia-Fu's translation is that he just published that in 1972, but I guess that is a lifetime ago. I met him and Jane in '73.
Do you know much about Needleman. My first acquaintance with him is on this cassette I found in a local used bookstore. My appreciation for his psychological insights was at first diminished by his pronouncing Tao Te Ching as if it were English, though someone did manage to tell him Tao is spoken Dao.
I generally take the Yi as speaking symbolically, though I take Lao Tzu as both concrete practical reality and abstract symbolism simultaneously. It certainly is easier to deal with Oracles in terms of inner psychological states, since things in the concrete world with other people are subject to so many sets of influences and stray momenta that the answer one gets from the Oracle may refer to a timing that has changed by the time one can finish analyzing the hexagram lines.

Dobro,
hex 40.6 Release>> Eve is structurally about the power of sexual satisfaction to allow one to move on to one's Next adventure or in marriage to roll over and get a good night's sleep to be rested for work the next morning. Shooting the hawk on the high wall is getting one's act together or making the golf hole for par or under. Hexagram 39 is the intensity of sexual desire without release, Hexagram 40 is its polar opposite, Release and the quiescent completion of the decad of physical attraction between sweethearts who by this time have become a married couple with kids and a good, regular sex life.

Frank
 

sergio

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Hi Dobro; maybe the whole idea is to balance our outer life and in that way get rid of our inner demons,the ones that ultimately force us to constantly fight and question whatever it is that we are pursuing in life or think we are pursuing in life..If we are able to deal with all that in a less traumatic way thus calming our mind and ridding it of desires then the dust goes all the way down and the water becomes clear-the mind is free of clutter and Illumination becomes a feasable reality.Then that's when the Yi comes really handy,then as the Old Sages intended it to be.
Sergio
 

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