Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).
OMG it seems I was blindly focused to the spiritual aspect of Great person ! I simply must take myself time to study Your explanations of terms in I Ching (Don't remember where it is). It changes a lot that the Great person as well can be a person in a powerful social position or simply a rich person and that alike.I agree that lines about the great person invite you to ask, 'Is that me?' Might be, might not. And that the great person is also often someone who can see further - like seeing the wisdom of resting when blocked, being able to imagine the longer term, knowing that the mulberry cut back harshly this year will grow bushier next year.
Another characteristic of the great person, though, is their resourcefulness: they can afford to rest. That could cover any kind of resource, so being the great person isn't necessarily a moral achievement.
Not necessarily, but possibly, sometimes. It's possible to be resourceful in experience (Brad's version) or wisdom or insight or calm, too.Great person are not necessarily one to follow or idealize
Not much - but the question is about the expression 'great person' in the Yi. 'Great' here literally just means 'big, tall, high, vast' (and also 'adult'). So 'great person' vs 'small person' can mean the spiritually/morally great vs the small-minded, and it can mean 'the big man' vs 'the little people'. It's not an either-or. As I said, you can find a broader concept that encompasses both ideas if you think in terms of resources.I'm not really getting where wealth and/or power have anything to do with the qualities of a 'great' or 'mature' human being?
Friendly forum public information notice:I actually placed this thread in Open space...
All Right. But call me crazy if I'm wrong in claiming that Open space were the place for BOTH off-topic matters and divination stuff like contradictional view points etc. etc. etc. (UFO's / Atlantides bringing I Ching/Astrology/Tarot/.../ jingle-bells ) when I joined this forum some years ago.
Or it's just my memory that have gone.
[........................] The great person for many people is a higher being, a spiritual being, to which status we can only aspire, however I think at line 5 it is vital that we see at least the possibility of ourselves as that higher person, even if only for a second. That provides the spark for the growth of our own adult / mature person to come in and assist with the decline of that which has ensnared us. [...............................]
I see where Bradford Hatcher refers to this person as the 'mature human being' which I like. It could mean someone else whom is wiser, but perhaps it is also advising us (or anyone) to act in a more mature manner or with a mature response - which could include being responsible, patient, persistent, accepting, firm, .... or whatever the situation asks or demands of us ....
Interestingly, Hatcher's interpretation of the line (which is different than others I've read) is:
Easing out of separationThe mature human being’s promise:This passes, that passesAs surely as mulberry seedlings
One read I have on this is that a mature human being sees the change and impermanence in things, that all states (including separateness) will pass as mulberry seeds are scattered by the wind, or as they might pass through us ....
Best, D.
There's a lot of lore about mulberry bushes. Their leaves feed silkworms, of course. Just recently, archaeologists discovered the remains of silk in a Neolithic burial in China, 5,000 years old. And it's good-quality silk, so the craft was already well-established and refined even then. You would have a mulberry tree near your home, for convenience. As well as silk, you get medicine from the bark, and firewood and twigs for basket-weaving.Why is it specially the Mulberry bush and not any other bushes mentioned ?
The underlined expression is an example where I'm blocked in understanding:
"Easing out of separation
The mature human being’s promise:
This passes, that passes
As surely as mulberry seedlings "
Hi Svenrus
Thank you for your feedback on my previous comment. I'm not sure what you mean exactly by ' dark hexagram' with respect to Hex 12. For me, the contrast of light and dark between hex 11 and 12 does not mean that they have to be seen wholely as light and dark hexagrams e.g 11.6 and 12.6 show darkness in light and lightness in dark respectively.
Hex 11 talks of flow and heaven and earth mingling, Hex 12 of blocks / obstructions that cause the flow to stop and heaven and earth do not mingle. Here in the hexagram, in general, heaven and earth are separate and to Bradfords way of seeing things at 12.5 there is a dimininshing of this separation (i.e easing out of separation). Things can start to show signs of becoming aligned again, start to mingle. This can be promoted by emulating the great person and living up to his promise. I see here the word promise perhaps more as as a 'quality of potential excellence', rather than promise as an 'assurance that one will do something'. Maybe though a case can be made for both.
The threats, the doubts, the ill-conceived calls for action can be allowed to pass as we obtain a foot and hand hold in our own power; the authenticity of the mature adult finds a way to unplug the obstruction. He finds the ray of sunshine; the right size and shaped plunger for the blocked drain pipe.
The Mulberry bush either as seedlings or as a tree that something is tied to (perhaps akin to rituals of letting go and natural slow return) gives for me a picture of new growth or release in preparation for 12.6.
And then to follow through on Hex 12, at Hex 13 " Fellowship of Man" trigram Li manifests in the lower position, bringing inner sunshine.
Or maybe it all means nothing like this at all.
Good Luck
No worries, all is well from where I am viewing your posts, however thank you for your apology. Wine can help bring many things out into the open and if you add to that situation the energies of a full moon then who can tell what was really going on. Sometimes we just have to vent those feelings !Thank You. I'm so sorry for that it went wrong yesterday and can only apologize what happened. I feel bad with myself for not having been able to separate wine and my partisipation here, something I have been able to do for years and I will take the consequense and withdraw for a while from this forum.
Sorry to You all.
Oh dear, awkward question - lots just gets stuffed into my 'notes' doc when I find it, with or without sources. Ann Birrell's work on Chinese mythology is certainly one source I rely on; then there were lots of gardening forums about the difficulties of eradicating mulberries. The information on cultivating mulberries by cutting them back is apparently from Fan Shengzhi Shu in 77BC. And I depend on Richard Sears' Chinese Etymology site, https://hanziyuan.net .Thanks Hilary. I wonder if you have an references or sources for all these good things about the mulberry.
Perhaps it could. I've never heard of such a thing in Chinese lore, but you never know.One association I have with the mulberry bush is as the fiber (called kozo in Japan) used to make handmade paper. However, paper wasn't discovered in China until quite a bit after the Yi was written (and the first fiber used was hemp) - and hence the older Yi versions are found on silk and bamboo strips.
One thought I had about 12.5, and the line 'tie it to the bushy mulberry tree': could this be a diviner's instructions or advice, sort of like, 'on a slip of silk or bamboo, write down what you want to happen, and then tie this to the mulberry bush near your home.' Perhaps this was not unlike the idea of a 'wishing tree' where people leave wishes, and such tied to a Hawthorn tree - as found in Ireland and Scotland (England too?)
Best, D.
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).