Help with Hex 64

[rodaki]

yes, art is like a koan in that sense . . it's gist cannot be taught or explained, you only get it by meeting it . .
pretty much in the spirit of 64

 

[fkegan]

Hi Frank

First of all, just for the record, I didn't get hex 64, nor am I looking for a relationship. I'm just trying to understand the hexagram.

I frankly don't understand your response. Doesn't the oracle make predictions? You seem to be calling that disparagingly magical thinking. But things do happen without any effort sometimes. One finds love in an unexpected place. One is offered a job when he least expects it. One receives an inheritance from someone he barely met.One is disabled in a crash. Won't the I Ching predict these things? Also, some events are out of one's control, and so people, while doing ll they can to help themselves, have to hope for a miracle. Can they ask the i Ching if the problem will be cleared up.

So to get back to hex 64, apparently you're saying that hexagram is not saying the end is in sight. But if you believe the i Ching does make predictions, why wouldn't it say that if that is what will happen?

Hi Bostonian,

The Yi Oracle speaks to each of us in our own unique way. What it offers to you or me is a private and personal matter. Your strange comments and offering first one example and then denying that example make me think strangely of you.

As to the hexagram 64 it is three Yang Lines and 3 open Yin spaces alternating with all the Yang lines in even line places. What that conveys is open to interpretation. Meng has mentioned that in his personal oracle use it has appeared for him as he has posted.

When the Buddha was asked questions such as you in the quote above, questions to which any answer would promote misunderstanding and other evils, Siddhartha just sat and meditated silently. Your hypotheticals illustrate your misunderstanding of the Yi Oracle generally and your comments do not indicate much interest in being better informed.

Good Luck,
Frank

 

[bostonian]

...make me think strangely of you.

Do you mean that your thinking is strange or that I am strange?

 

[fkegan]

Hi Bostonian,

I would say you do not fit my experience of folks from Boston, a city I lived in various times in a number of places, though many were not the finest, you seem not to represent well that great city of the 17th century. Moving on...

Won't the I Ching predict these things? Also, some events are out of one's control, and so people, while doing ll they can to help themselves, have to hope for a miracle. Can they ask the i Ching if the problem will be cleared up.

What does the Yi "predict" or " control" or "guarantee" you? That pretty well depends on whether it would forgive your faults or not. More in general, every oracle is an instantaneous tangent from the differential equations of NOW over the arc from the Big Bang to the End of Time. How long is it good for in its prediction? Until some other force affects the relevant angular momentum.

If you assume you can at any time cast the Yi to get a guarantee that rather than you being responsible for your own life and actions and results but rather you can just coast upon your pennies cast, all of the Heavenly Host should rise up against such an affront to decency, making a new force that reacts badly with such foolishness and crash your sandcastles down into lowest depths.

That is about as clear as I can make it. In Buddhist belief you can spin an appropriate wheel of good prayers to build up merit but if you get intoxicated and spin it the wrong way you lose merit. Your posts so far feel to me to not be building up any merit for you.

Good luck with your Karma,

Frank

 

[hilary]

Come, come, Frank, you know very well that this is the 'Exploring Divination' forum and your judgements on Bostonian's character are off-topic. They're wildly off-target, too - he's offering a hypothetical example, which is a useful way of giving a discussion a focus, and asking a legitimate question - would the oracle predict something outside your control, or not?

Suppose someone has as his goal to find a loving relationship. He's doing the work needed to achieve this goal: he's put ads in personal columns and websites, he goes to dances, and goes on dates. But so far, no chemistry with anyone. So he asks the oracle to tell him something about his quest and he gets hex. 64. If that hex simply means you have to do more work before you achieve your goal, that's useless to him because since he hasn't found someone to love, by definition he has to do more work. On the other hand, if it's saying that you have some more work to do, but you're getting closer, that is meaningful because it tells him something he didn't know: that the goal is within sight.

It would be telling him he was like the small fox that hasn't crossed the river yet. I read this one as someone on the verge of commitment, wanting to make the transition, but not quite ready - waiting, instead, and gathering more information, for fear of getting stranded mid-stream. (So it's not about 'doing more work' as such, it's about when he decides it's safe to cross.)

So his nice, broad, open request 'tell me something about my quest' would get him a picture of his quest, enabling him to look at it objectively. Maybe he'd conclude that he just needed to do more of the same until he found a place where he could cross the river (and a woman with whom he'd risk a second date). Maybe he'd find the picture of the hesitant little fox struck a deeper chord, and start asking whether he was personally ready for this.

 

[solun]

Hi bostonian,

enabling him to look at it objectively. Maybe he'd conclude that he just needed to do more of the same until he found a place where he could cross the river -hilary

This seems to go with what I find in BBWalker, too. Given bostonian's hypothetical situation - where Walker says:
"The transition from chaos to order depends on your achieving true inner calm.
The transition is not yet complete; here it depends on you strengthening your clarity, calm and conscientiousness. Wei Chi often comes as an indication that we have not yet achieved a genuine inner equanimity."
In short, we are still responsing to outer pressures with our egos. Letting go here seems more on note than doing anything especially. Acceptance. Inner goals.


And I think meng's earlier observation that 'it may not even happen'was actually very considerable. Many who are in a situation filled with potency of nearing completion need to find that calm in the penultimate suspense, anticipation and pressure around them. Here the required repose before the finale elan or the long-awaited situation. The notion that it may never happen, or that you can accept without all the expectation whatever comes, to the point of the possibility of not arriving means you have the peace required to actually ''complete'.
This, too, reminds me of Preponderance of the Great in a way. Even 63, Completion, calls for a vigilance of sorts. Where here, 64, more of a centering, deepening and preparation of sorts is in order.

It's like the antithesis of western musical tonality. There is no need for the expectation from the leading tone or penultimate, just a 'before completion' repose, which is the first part of completion. Whether there is the resolution you want or not, you are at peace, and this is part of the finished work. Not a gratification fix, but a stable spiritual posture.

 

[midaughter]

In my own experience 63 represents a cycle of time. Everything, including the wart growing on your nose to the destiny of nations is included. This is helpful when diving about things that have a long future. So for instance when asking about a marriage you might receive 63:1 and a reading of increase, then36, meaning some wounding ans injury has occurred, later 63:2 and hexagram 14, things are pretty good again, then 63:3, hexagram 23, things fall apart and so forth. I think the Yi is far more elegant than most people think. Hexagram 64 is that brief period of time before another cycle of time begins for that particular influence. People rely far too much on line statements, sometimes the line statements are obscure, or wrong, sometime quite good. Don't be a slave to line statements. They have their place but should not be taken as gospel. the image, the inner and outer trigrams were the ancient way of reading the Yi. they deserve equal weight

 

[hilary]

Don't be a slave to line statements. They have their place but should not be taken as gospel. the image, the inner and outer trigrams were the ancient way of reading the Yi. they deserve equal weight

OK... the question of how old the trigrams are is a debate in its own right, but the Image is a thousand years or so less ancient than the line statements, which mark the reading's pivotal moments of change.

 

[meng]

In my own experience 63 represents a cycle of time. Everything, including the wart growing on your nose to the destiny of nations is included. This is helpful when diving about things that have a long future.

Thanks, Mary. Confirms my own more recent experiences. I'm sure it could as well have applied to many others, in retrospect.

On the importance of lines, they're all contextually connected to the main structure, the main idea. Lines may go the opposite way of it or go with it. In readings, lines are sometimes said to take precedent over all else in the reading. I think Mary's saying, don't fail to see the forest before examining the trees.

 

[fkegan]

Hi All,

In diving or divining through the Yi Oracle, there are many elements one may find useful or pertinent in any specific result. The prime feature of the Chou Yi is the numbering of the 64 possible hexagrams by the King Wen Sequence.

From that starting point arose names and line judgments with divination slogans and then commentary and other stuff, like trigram images, memorizing sequences, Yang and Yin theories, Confucian commentary for divination use by Imperial bureaucrats, and Taoist commentary from monks meditating upon the hexagrams for years and on and on.

The Yi in general involves a perspective of eternal and unceasing Change or Flux as the natural reality of the Universe (as the Buddhists posit Ignorance as the Source of everything humanly knowable).

Hex 63 has 3 Yang lines in odd line places and 3 Yin lines in even line places that gave rise to the notion of being All Completed with a place for everything and Everything in its place. However, nothing ends the universal flux, so when things are finally all in the precise order to complete your expectations, the next step in the Universal Flux is that things start to unravel from there and your expectations fall short and make you unexpected troubles.

Therefore, this Hexagram tends to come up when you are expecting to fit things into your preconceived pigeon holes and the Oracle wishes to remind you that not even pigeons remain there for long.

Hex 64 is very similar to the hex 63, only with all the lines NOT in their correct places or Yang in even and Yin in odd numbered line places. It represents having things organized but still with either room to improve or energy from diversity. How long its pattern is relevant depends upon what gets done Next.

Frank

 

[midaughter]

the Image

"OK... the question of how old the trigrams are is a debate in its own right, but the Image is a thousand years or so less ancient than the line statements, which mark the reading's pivotal moments of change." Hilary wrote

Since the Yi for most of its history was an oral tradition, no one really knows if The Image is part of the oral tradition or a later wriitng written after the line statements. However, in Taoist tradition, the movement of the energy through the hexagram is primarily important, they see it as dynamic expression of energy, always in flux The idea of describing all phonomena is terms of energy and movement in terms of the cardinal directions and 5 Elements. Our Western reliance on static words can only approximate the process and movement of energy that is a hexagram.What is described in the Image is fundamental to early, prehistory beginnings, ever before 'Taoism" was called 'Taoism.. The Image would likely be an ancient teaching passed down orally for generations. The Image is only to help us learn the workings of the 5 Elements. Meditating on The Image is to help us use the non intellectual centers of the brain. Turn off that center and you may have realizations that spring from intuition and more. Again, not a static concept based solely on the words. For example the Image in the Wanderer (hexagram 56) is Fire on the Mountain (run boys, run!). The writings in the hexagram offer a guide: Fire is seen in its destructive aspect, at least in WB. Thus, the Image in this hexagram is rather a conflagration as fire travels up the slope quickly.

Fire and Water (Kan and Li)

You note from hexagram 63 and 64 that Li and Kan are intermingled throughout the hexagrams. These juxtaposition of Li and Kan, in this hexagrams mean (IMO, humbly) the passage of time itself. Whenever these two appear together throughout the Yi as inner or outer trigrams there is a dynamism, movement, the passage of time. Fire and Water are the principal elements that drive the forces of life of this plain of existence.

PS What you are saying is that The Image was written down after the line statements (all of them?, does this writing predate the Han?). Perhaps Bradford will weigh in..

The idea that line statements are old and venerable is overbraod. Indeed we have some useful line statements such as those in Hexagram 4. Yet, other line statements are suspect. In Hexagram 63 we have two diviners in the Han offering alternate line statements. It is pretty clean that they are reading from the bones from the Shang Dynasty. (I know there is a silly issue about these line statements being later but one can over-intellectualize and end up word-driven and exhausted. (Anyone who writes of this is a show off!.) The diviners are using the yin-yang theories of their day to analyze the characters that themselves were written on bone at least from 1300 BC. So wer have a large passage of time. Modern people have many more sources of information. I am sure the language on the mouldy old bones is not even the same, although these two young men had to learn the ancient Chinese in order to pass the imperial examinations. (They probably had to do this.) The significance of some line statements is primarily historical. Sometimes line statements are the result of court politics: its a great honor to be allowed to be credited with the authorship of a line statement. That, of course, does not mean the particular line statement is accurate or helpful. Some times certain key words of line statements are not quite the words wer understand, and so forth.:bows:

 

[midaughter]

I wrote: The idea that line statements are old and venerable is overbraod. Indeed we have some useful line statements such as those in Hexagram 4.

I meant to say hexagram 48, - a straightforward hexgram and the words even make sense in 21th Century.

 

[midaughter]

I should point out that the Yi in its earliest beginnings was a guide to internal alchemy. Of course, the movement of energy is fundamental to this practice.
The Yi is very old and many commentaries, line statements, and images are the result of early scholars illuminating (usually) and writing down the early Yi.

 

[fkegan]

Hexagram 4 or 48. The ancient Image independent of the trigram allusions that make up the Image commentary. Taoism before being called Taoism. When was the Yi an oral tradition--why folks so big on the artifacts in tombs if there is a DVD of archaic oral tradition floating about to meditate upon?

Isn't the standard legend, not backed up by tombs but only as a tradition, that King Wen gave the hexagrams numbers 1 to 64, then his son Duke Chou attached line judgments and divination slogans, then the trigrams were separated out and the notions of Yang and Yin applied and then centuries of commentary were floating about until organized in 1716 into the Imperial edition like the King James Bible. Everything else would be just conjecture without substance except for the various artifacts dug up and made much of by those who find concrete objects and chronology essential to their respect.

Perhaps that is why I limit myself to the Chou Yi of the King Wen Sequence beginning in relatively recent, by Chinese reckoning, 1100 B.C.E. and then focusing upon the line patterns themselves and the decads of the Sequence...
I leave the rest to those more given to notions of personal imagination and absolute certainty...

Frank

 

[midaughter]

RRutt on Hex 63-64

Richard Rutt, author of Zhouyi, says of Hexagrams 63 and 64 agrees tha the traditional explanation of these two hexagram is that Hexagram 63 means, "not yet across" while Hexagram 64 means that another cycle of time must begin again as the crossing has been completed.. Rutt, p. 355, of the 1996 edition. Placement of these hexagrams at the end of the Yi has import: While Rutt says that 64 is the beginning, I say it is the end before the new cycle begins.

Rutt also traces the originis of NWB to the Song Dynasty. Rutt, p. 78 of the 1996 edition.. (I presume everyone knows that the Song were originally the Shang.) More later, I am in the middle of writing a more complete answer