Li in 30.0

[bruce]

I mean no disrespect to the Zhouyi or Mawangdui, or those who study them. But the idea that because something is older makes it necessarily truer seems rather like a scared cow when taken too literally. It?s as though the original is cast in stone and everything following leads away from completion rather than toward it. In this respect I have to lean closer toward Chris? ideas, in that he isn?t relying solely upon artifact to express value and meaning to a legitimate I Ching rendering. Too much starch makes the shirt unwearable.

 

[ewald]

I agree that something older isn't necessarily truer. But the older Chinese texts do seem closer to the original intentions of those authors and diviners. So when I'm confident about having captured those intentions to the best of my abilities (and there are definitely limits to that), I may go check what newer developments can do.

Also, newer isn't necessarily truer. A different approach, building on previous accomplishments may certainly constitute progress. But there may be a price, a loss to that.

Ewald

 

[bruce]

"God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars." Martin Luther

laughing at myself

sorry, I'll behave now

wait.. no I won't

 

[bruce]

Ewald, I certainly agree with that.

 

[hilary]

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

(made me miss Startrek Voyager too!)<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>No!! You poor soul. Parents - Kazon, the lot of 'em.

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

I do find the step from radiance to seeing a bit large, especially as there are several characters in the Zhouyi that are more specifically about seeing and looking.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>
I see your point. That is to say, I understand your point. Seeing-understanding is a different concept from seeing-awareness in hexagram 20, for instance.

There is still a leap, but maybe less so if you think that light is something people can have, not just something that bounces off the retina.

Can anyone - like say Brad or Lindsay - recommend good reading on the early Chinese idea of people being 'radiant'? I'd like to have a clearer idea of it.

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

rather like a scared cow<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>Bruce, if that's a Freudian slip, it's an inspired one.

I start off thinking that the text meant something before these later discoveries, like trigram systems or line theory or whatever else. That 'something' will most likely be very simple and straightforward, like 'horses are beautiful' or 'carts move stuff', or in this case maybe 'cows have calves'. (That, and 'we need cows to make our economy work well enough that we have time to understand our world.')

If I can get an inkling of the simpler meaning, then I have something like warp threads, and the more elaborate conceptual frameworks can weave into that. Trigrams make more sense to me when they're part of all this, than when they're an abstract diagram on a page.

Looking at my email I see the last couple of posts have arrived while I've been writing this. Posting quick before I get any more behind.

 

[bruce]

"Bruce, if that's a Freudian slip, it's an inspired one."

No, Hilary, just a synchronistic pun. It's pre-Freudian.

FWIW, to me, your way incorporates a wonderful balance of knowledge and personal insight. You catch the bird whether it?s coming or going.

 

[bradford_h]

The word radiate comes from Latin Radix, root.
But it applies to branches too because it's really about the dendritic shape that roots have, one into many. So it also means to branch out, diversify, evolve, become (apparently) more separate or distinct. Light does this when it proceeds outward from its source.

 

[bruce]

Yes! Hadn't thought of separate in context of rays or beams.

 

[lightofdarkness]

In the MBTI categories the same qualities for Fire (expansive bounding) are reflected in personas that make maps - and so guides, like a flashlight in the dark. (also gets into commanders, stratagists and so the overall sense of guidance doubled - direction setting and ideologies etc)

As for the ICPlus perspective, it looks at what is common between all members of the species regardless of WHEN and WHERE - and so 10BC elements still shared today, and those are in the neurology and so general method used to categorise.

Thus the general, univeral, feeling is expansive bounding and so all that falls within that is associatable with the trigram of fire and hex 30. - those associations being LOCAL (and light does that 'expansive bounding' be it as a circular form of expanding in all directions or as a 'beam' or 'ray' - there is still the distinction of a boundary and expansion - countless metaphors are possible but the underlying generic, univeral, vibe is constant)

I suppose the issue is re attempts to grasp the mindset of the local developers of the traditional IC or to grasp what is BEHIND those local, ad-hoc, associations, the set of universal feelings derived from the method we use as a species to derive meaning.

IOW - given the latter, the IC, or something like it was inevitable.

Chris.

 

[heylise]

I understand what you are doing. I did the same thing when I made my own Yi. Used the text, and the images of the hexagrams, nothing more. Now I often look at the trigrams too, but not back then.
The 'images of the hexagrams' meaning only the picture of those 6 lines, one on top of the other. I thought it had to have a meaning if a line was at the bottom or halfway or at the top. But even that idea not restricting to any fixed idea of what it meant. A succession in time, aspects of a situation, different aspects of the human mind, or of society. Any or all of these.

I did not even translate the text in a way Chinese 'should' be translated, reckoning with grammar and such, as far as there is any in Chinese.. I simply took one character after the other, as stand-alones, and searched for their meaning. For ALL their meanings, because I knew from the beginning that that was the most important aspect.
So I figured out how they looked in Oracle Bone script, what they were supposed to be. A bird? A man? A foot and a road?
And I searched for characters in which they were one of the constituent parts, because when the meaning of the character itself changes, the old meaning is often still preserved in other characters, or in words or expressions.


This is what I made for the SanShan program
<center>

</center>

Picture at top: LI2, the ancient character and its parts.
LI2: At left the original character: a bird and a net. LI2: to catch or having caught (birds, later all game), grasp. Later, an additional bird ZHUI1 is added. Nowadays the net-part means: a bogey, bright, elegant, to oppose.
LI2: name of a bird, Oriole. Loan for leave, depart from, abandon, to be dispersed, separate, distinguish, analyze, distinguish oneself, explain, distribute, arrange, vis ? vis, paired, meet with, fall into, get caught, fasten, attach, pass through, droop, hang down, light, to shine, brilliance, bird-net, hedge, frontier, cut apart, divide (territory).

Li can also be pronounced as Li4, with different meanings.
LI4: to be separated from, differ from, to defy, to go against, avoid (a mistake), to associate, partner.
Exch. with CHI1: a bogey, a kind of yellow dragon, the Oriole (its song attracts the silkworms).
In the MaWangDui YiJing the name of this hexagram is Luo (the little character nr.1): a snare, a net, to catch.
It might be a bird being caught, or escaping the net, or it can mean trying to catch it.

The characters at left: words or compounds with LI2
1 Mawangdui: (net-fiber) net for catching birds (OB character at top right: picture 3)
2 (jade-separate) glass.
3 (this-separate) birds.
4 (differ not separate) almost; about; not bad,
5 (wine-separate) dregs.
6 (separate pattern) go beyond what is proper; be out of place.
7 (separate earth) rise from ground, above ground.
8 (bamboo-separate) fence or hedge.

Between brackets are the parts of the characters, connected by dashes - or words/sentences, which I did not connect that way. I chose 'separate' to represent Li, which is rather arbitrary, but I wanted everywhere the same word for the same character.

LiSe

 

[heylise]

1 Mawangdui: (net-fiber-bird)

 

[heylise]

Posted it twice, cannot remove this, only erase, tried put in a bird instead. But in editing that seems not to work..
oh well

 

[ewald]

Thanks for posting the characters, LiSe

Ewald

 

[freemanc]

What a nice thread.

The oriole is, or is often, a "Bird of Filial Return" in Zhou era poetry. This was a poetic convention, a bird that heralded acts of filial piety or rememberance of one's parents.

This is relevent to the Zhou Conquest narrative and a source is cited in The Chameleon Book. (I'll dig it out if anyone asks.) Harmen would probably know this theme well.

But more abstractly, I think it's a lovely theme and datapoint for the Zhouyistically inclined diviner to file away...

Too muzzyheaded to weave a correlation into the current line of though, so I'll just ask:

Does the "Bird of Filial Return" ring a bell to anyone? LiSe?

fondly,
FC

 

[cal val]

Freeman...

It's my understanding that 30 is about the Golden Oriole which is a bird of omen. I wouldn't be surprised if filial return was the subject of one or more of the omens. So I went searching on the net, and I found the following:

<blockquote>11. It is said in the Book of Poetry (IV, iii, 3),

'A thousand l? extends the king's domain,
And there the people to repose are fain.'

And in another place (II, viii, i),

'Twitters fast the oriole
Where yonder bends the mound,
The happy little creature
Its resting-place has found.'

The Master said, 'Yes, it rests; it knows where
[1. A fact not elsewhere noted. But such inscriptions are still common in China.
2. The repeated use of 'new,' 'renovated,' in this paragraph, is thought to justify the change of 'loving the people,' in paragraph 1, to 'renovating the people;' but the object of the renovating here is not the people.]
to rest. Can one be a man, and yet not equal (in this respect) to this bird?'

12. It is said in the Book of Poetry (III, i, 1, 4),

'Deep were Wan's thoughts, sustained his ways;
And reverent in each resting-place.'
As a ruler, he rested in benevolence; as a minister, he rested in respect; as a son, he rested in filial piety; as a father, he rested in kindness; in intercourse with his subjects, he rested in good faith.</blockquote>http://www.100jia.net/texte/liji/liki2/liki239.htm

I'd love to know the source where you learned about the golden oriole's connection to filial piety.

Thanks!

Love,

Val

 

[freemanc]

Hi Val!!!

Sure. Here tis:

C.H. Wang, The Bell and the Drum: Shih Ching as formulaic poetry in an oral tradition. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974. p 118. (I was right; it is cited in TCB in the footnote for Hex 30.)

Yes, that poem does seem relevant to Hexagram 30! Oh my gosh!

When life gives me a little more wiggle room for literary projects again I'm going to try to read the Shijing really well. It looks like it would be really worth it at several levels.

fondly,
FC

 

[cal val]

Hi Freeman...

Yes... I'm learning a lot about the customs and beliefs of the people who wrote the Zhouyi through the Shijing. I'm also really enjoying your book and comparing it with other translators who prefer to adhere to the ancient meanings (or possible meanings). Besides the fact there are some real loud bells going off for me with a lot of your interpretations of the lines, the entertainment value is great! It's a 'spirited' read.

The oriole does come up a lot in the ShiJing, and there apparently was a great deal of respect for the bird. There's still much for me to learn about it, so thank you so much for the source information. I'm off to library site now to put a hold on it... *hearing the theme from Lone Ranger* Ciao for now.

Love,

Val

 

[freemanc]

Oh, Val, how cool is that!

It is ripping, epic material, isn't it.

Your faithful companion will be tracking your adventures with great attentiveness. Let me know what you hear of the oriole.

Harmen mentioned a couple of sources that I haven't read yet but sound superb:

Sanctioned Violence in Early China by Mark Edward Lewis. Also by Lewis, Writing and Authority in Early China.

And Hilary, the figure of using the Zhouyist viewpoint as the warp thread on which to embroider a new story about this moment was quite lovely and quite to the point.

There are more and other reasons to know the Zhou well, and I've weaved and unweaved paragraph after paragraph trying to put across these feelings concisely.

My feelings on this matter are deep and apparently inchoate. My distant native American ancestors perhaps are trying to speak as well.

Suffice it to say It ain't just anthropology to me.

More another time perhaps.


FC