Gua river meditation.

[candid]

Hello everyone.

I happened upon an interesting meditation today that I?ll share here. It is a simple counting of breaths and associated hexagram/change, 1 through 64. Each breath is a change until all returns to 1. The trick is to not think ahead but allow the Gua to appear with each breath, and then depart with each exhale, then inhale the next change and so on. What is interesting is how these changes just come and go, one flowing into the other. Each change is inevitable and appears naturally, then disappears again just as naturally.

The mind doesn?t wander easily since there is an object of focus and continuity, and because the object is always moving (changing), it flows of its own accord.

~Candid

 

[hilary]

Thank you. I'll try it.

Have you tried drumming your way through the sequence? (You need to enjoy compound duple time

)

 

[candid]

No *grin* but I shall! Double paradiddles should work nicely. Bring on the dancers!

 

[Frankelmick]

Hilary/Candid,

About this drumming business.

Am I right in thinking the rhythm for Hx1 followed by Hx 2 would be

1-2-3 4-5-6

1and2and3and4and5and6and

So the whole Yi Jing sequence becomes 64 bars of 6/8 Is that the way you do it?

I tried it that way and it sounds quite Medieval to me. Sort of "Early music" rhythms.

Very much in 2-bar questions and answers I felt.

But I like the 4 bar section hx 51-54. Makes a nice loop I think.

Loads of scope here I think. For example, I noticed that the last half of Hx 1 and the first half of Hx 2 gives Hx 11.

In other words there's a transitional Hx between all of King Wen's pairs. I never thought of that before.

Thanks for that.

Bye for now,

Mick

 

[hilary]

Yes, I was thinking of 6/8, too. Thank you for finding a way of writing it out!

The pairs and opposites come alive, of course... now, will the bigger structures that the big theorisers find become tangible? And is it just bias on my part, or do you feel as if you're left hovering at the end of #64?

Good to have people to drum with

 

[Frankelmick]

Hilary,

I feel an Oxford-based drum workshop coming on

When I got to 64 I found myself looping back over 63/64.

It's like a 2-bar repeat and fade.

Fulfilled, unfulfilled, satisfied, still hungry, after completion, before completion...

You get the idea, just like life quoi?

 

[willow]

Ooooooo...

And of course drumming is heartbeat - the flowing fire...

 

[chris]

Guys - Primitive.

There are THREE steps of development in the IC, the first one is the generation of the symbols using recursion. This gives you the 'traditional binary' order. At the trigram level this is:

000,001,010,011,100,101,110,111

These are what are called SCALARS - they only represent QUALITIES. They are mechanistic in that I can move 'along' the sequence and go in reverse at any time. Thus I can use these as a form of thermometer where each value is just an expression of magnitude.

Go 'deeper' into the methods of the IC and the next step is the discovery of VECTORS. These are expressions of magnitude and direction and as such are NOT reversible but ARE repeatable.

Each of the above eight symbols has a magnitude attached, reflecting the path 'up' a trigram/hexagram, whatever (the trigram has 8 steps, the hexagram has 64)

The 'final' step (reflecting the same pattern as with trigram creations) is the summing of all elements of a symbol into what is called a TENSOR. Imagine each symbol, be it hexagram or trigram etc as a spinning top. ANY force applied down a specific dimension (aka vector) will force that top to change its expression, to adjust itself to the force and so maintain its internal order through a change in expression. This is what changing lines deal with where in the IC hexagrams we are dealing with 64 combinations, not 6 as in traditionally thought.

See the pages on IC Matrix (http://pages.prodigy.net/lofting/icmatrix.html )

The archetypal format of the symbols allows for them to be inserted in ANY context and as such will 'adapt' to that context in different ways - where we have to use other hexagrams as analogies for the expressions.

The vector for each TRIGRAM or HEXAGRAM or more, is derived by working UP the SCALAR version of the symbol, the part derived horizontally.

In identifying the relationships of the vector symbols you will find that the TOP line is the source of oscillation - thus mapping Candid's breathing analogy in fact reflects the differentation/integration properties of each symbol, be it trigram or hexagram.

This reflects the identification of the vector form of a scalar by turning it on its head - which is the pattern we see in the traditional sequence. This process has its roots in recursion.

Chris.
http://pages.prodigy.net/lofting/newindex.html

 

[Frankelmick]

Well I'm proud to be primitive.

Playing music with other people has been very precious in my life and I like the idea of connecting the I Ching with drum beats.

The drum is the most primitive of all musical instruments. Playing percussion with other people is wonderful, I think, even over the Internet!

 

[candid]

Heya Mick!

In the words of the great Lady Ella:

?It don?t mean a thing if it ain?t got that swing ~ doowah doowah doowah doowah doowah doowah!?

 

[chris]

Mick,

having spent 15 years as a professional musician (Progressive Rock etc - vocals and Sax) and a further 25 as an analyst/programmer with my computer systems loaded-down with sequencers etc I am well aware of rhythms and their 'primitive' natures. BUT my response was in particular to Candid's 'interesting meditation' - in particular focusing on going way past the breath-in/breath-out to identifying specific hexagrams etc and their specific biases to breathing in/out and from that what you can do with them - IOW the meditation was 'primitive' but not seen as such.

I keep emphasising the point to Candid and you et al that your reflections are 'primitive' and as a species we need to put in more work and that means transcending our child states in that playing can be fun but we do need to get out of the sandpit.

Focusing on the I Ching through the mindset of Wilhelm/Jung/Karcher etc IS PRIMITIVE.

There is no problem with being primitive out of choice, the issue is being primitive and not knowing. Time to grow up. Lose the innocense.

In the realm of complex chords and their transcending ability, to life you to something 'new' and 'simple' but qualitatively
higher than the traditional IC, have a look at the matrix patterns and see if you 'get it'...

http://pages.prodigy.net/lofting/icmatrix.html

lets see if you can pick-up the rhythm...

Chris.
http://pages.prodigy.net/lofting