Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).
4 change
go over to the second hexagram and take the lowermost of the two lines that have not changed from the first hexagram
What is below is decreased to the benefit of what is above.
Duration is rather the self-contained and therefore self-renewing movement of an organized, firmly integrated whole, taking place in accordance with immutable laws and beginning anew at every ending. ~ Wilhelm 32
Why trouble the Tao with such adolescent speculation? There is only the present. Everything else is illusion.
PS I don't think the Tao can be troubled
Really? On more than a few occasions I've had the distinct impression that the Tao has had about enough of my nonsense. 4.4 comes to mind, and 60.3. Then there's 29 and the unknowable, discussed by Hilary a week or so back.
There are things that cannot be known, and that includes the future.
If there is an afterlife -- and the culture that developed the IC practiced ancestor worship -- those entities existing on the other side exist in this moment now.
Partisans of most every religious & philosophical tradition, including Jung, have speculated about death. Insofar as they bring comfort and resolution to the distressed, these have their value.
In the Tibetan approach to IC, time itself is an illusion. Once one overcomes the illusion of time, one may enter immortality.
Just some adolescent speculation...
I find a 'small' question asked with sincerity is answered
I like the story Joseph Campbell tells, of a student who goes happily into the world with the knowledge his guru has just given him: everything is God. The student is walking down the street and coming the other way is an adult elephant, complete with trainer, yelling at the student, "Get out of the way you fool!" The student thinks to himself, "I am God, the elephant is God. Shall God trample God?" Where upon the elephant picks the student up with his trunk and throws him a good distance, banging him up pretty good. The student goes back to his guru, very upset. The guru asks "what has happened to you? You are a mess!" So the student repeated the incident. The guru said, "well then, why didn't you listen to the driver of the elephant, who is also God?" So, there are those two sides of life on earth, and if we forget the mortal side, we set ourselves up for a big beating from the elephant.
Relax, renew yourselves, and allow yourselves to release any sense of judgment concerning what is going on. If you experience deaths, pain, or losses…….feel your emotions, express your pain, and then get up and go on. Remember what we said about death and about power. Remember also that everything and everyone you see around you is a reflection of some part of yourself! The more you allow yourself to look with personal eyes, at a humanity that is rapidly changing, the less will be your need to look with general eyes, waging warfare and heaping judgment upon those around you.
--David Gray
Thank you, PG! An elegant expansion of the point I've been trying to make. If/when the illusion of linear, cause-effect time is overcome, everything exists in the present.if I may..or may not...I've found one of the truths to be that everything exists always at all times..
Paraphrasing Dickens: Is it the future as it MAY be, or the future as it MUST be? As mortals, we essentially live in the past, as our interpretation of the present is conditioned on past experiences. IC often shows us the present unbound by our ego-involvement -- the "small, sincere questions" you describe. Or IC indicates a future likely to emerge should we continue a present course of action. Is this really "the future" or just raw probability based long observation of the human condition?Of course the Yi gives us glimpses of the future its one of its main functions.
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).