Sequence of the Hexagrams

[lindsay]

Why isn't anyone talking about the Mawangdui sequence, which has impeccable archaeological credentials predating all this heady speculation about King Wen? There is no proof I know of that the King Wen sequence was the original one, the one intended by the framers of the Yi.

I'm not sure about Dobro's point, although I have long suspected it to be true. If you are going to standardize 64 things of any sort, sooner or later you are going to place them in a more or less standardized sequence. No doubt you will come up with some reason for doing this in a specific way. (Not many things are done for no reason at all, even in Washington.) This is especially true of oral material that is to be memorized, not written - and I would bet the farm that many early practitioners of the Yi did not read or write. Even the ones who did may not have been able to afford or own manuscripts of the Yi, which - like all hand-written manuscripts by highly trained scribes - were very costly to produce. The fact that various sequences differ may have little meaning beyond tradition. Can you tell me why the books of the Jewish Torah are in a different sequence than the Christian O.T.?

Lindsay

 

[hilary]

There's no logic to it. If there was a pattern, a million people would have seen it by now.

And if there are a million patterns...

I know no reason to suppose this is the original sequence, either. Since it's strongly trigram-centred, in a way that the text isn't, I shouldn't think it is. (Though then again - it's possible the oracle could have evolved and been used with no fixed sequence at all for a long time.) But the question of what's original isn't half as interesting to me as the question of what makes sense and works well. As a picture of where you're coming from/ how you're getting here, the 'King Wen' sequence is superb.

 

[Sparhawk]

Why isn't anyone talking about the Mawangdui sequence, which has impeccable archaeological credentials predating all this heady speculation about King Wen? There is no proof I know of that the King Wen sequence was the original one, the one intended by the framers of the Yi.

Because, everybody loves a mystery? Homo Sapiens are enticed by puzzles. As opposed to the King Wen, the Mawangdui sequence has a clear and orderly logic. The King Wen sequence is our very own "Voynich Manuscript"...

 

[lienshan]

Why isn't anyone talking about the Mawangdui sequence, which has impeccable archaeological credentials predating all this heady speculation about King Wen? There is no proof I know of that the King Wen sequence was the original one, the one intended by the framers of the Yi.

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/friends/attachment.php?attachmentid=399&d=1184489318

The above pottery-pat with the hexagrams 10-9-8-7 + an arrow predate the Mawangdui sequence with
more than 700 years ...

It was exavacated in 2002 and "the experts" still haven't noticed, that the no 7 is inscribed upside down! Maybe this is just that piece of the puzzle needed to explain the King Wen order?

I think that the structure of 4-6-7 and 10-12-13 parts of the Wen sequence described earlier reminds me
more of the Mawangdui sequence than of the two wellknown later and earlier Heaven trigram sequences?

lienshan

 

[dobro p]

There's no logic to it. If there was a pattern, a million people would have seen it by now.

And if there are a million patterns...

...then there's no one pattern at all.

But the question of what's original isn't half as interesting to me as the question of what makes sense and works well.

I agree with you completely.

As a picture of where you're coming from/ how you're getting here, the 'King Wen' sequence is superb.

Gee, it's never struck me as much more than a handy mnemonic. It's my belief that if it were organized differently, you could just as easily see the 'natural' flow and unfolding of supposed sequence from one hex to the next. There are things that make tons of sense in the present sequence, like putting Hex 3 right near the beginning and Hex 64 right at the end. But you know, it would have made just as much sense to put Hex 2 smack dab in the middle of the whole thing, saying that the polar flow between Hex 1 and 2 is what's driving the whole system. And we could talk about this forever, and I think that is because the present sequence is not resonating particularly with any pattern of sequentiality that exists in the universe. There. Grump.

 

[dobro p]

Why isn't anyone talking about the Mawangdui sequence, which has impeccable archaeological credentials predating all this heady speculation about King Wen?

Cuz it's so flakey?

The Mawangdui is excellent evidence that the ancient Chinese took LSD.

Actually I think it's a kinda uneducated transcription of an oral tradition. It's gets dozens of terms wrong, and they're all terms that sound like or look like the real originals. It comes across as a sloppy copy. What I value in it though is when it DOES correspond to the modern version, cuz I think that suggests the modern version is true to the ancient version. (Sigh. Not that the ancient version is necessarily the best version, but it would be nice to know what the first one (if there ever was a 'first' one) really looked like.)

 

[fkegan]

Blind folks exploring the elephant

Lindsay--what gives archaeological evidence any credence about an ancient Chinese work. Isn't the notion of digging up ancestral tombs, removing artifacts to be carried away and put on display rather more grave robbing than truth seeking in traditional Chinese values?

That the hexagram patterns were once ordered as a binary counter marking out a sine wave pattern and this was abandoned when the King Wen sequence (and its associated thinking) became available suggest that the academic assumptions tied to our modern beliefs still in that older mathematics and thinking may not be proving out so well. The climate crisis bringing such terrible floods to the U.S. heartland now are another indicator of the need to let go of the old ways of thinking from the prior millennium.

As to the order of Books of the various Judeo-Christian Bibles, they were decided by committees in the centuries around the beginning of the prior millennium. The Jewish rabbis somewhat earlier than the Christian Popes since Europe wasn't feeling like taking on major tasks until after 1001 CE when they started the "modern" with their focus upon the Crusades. You can read up on the history and details of early medieval Bible scholarship yourself. It is clearly known and reported in the literature.

In general-- it sounds like the argument of the group of blind folks trying to explain an elephant. Each one has hold a one part, and thinks that explains the entire animal. The point of that story is that none of them has the ability to see the whole picture or the willingness to reach out beyond their initial point of contact, or to listen to what the others might be adding to the general understanding.

Each of us comes from our own background and prior training which delightfully are all different. However, wondering why others don't follow in your own background is like wondering why there are other people in this world. The more interesting question is why we don't find the other perspectives insightful.

I have problems with attention to text details from my experience with the difference between translation and meaning. Translation details smacks of the Wharf hypothesis with the belief that words control understanding. However, my experience is that the mind stores not words but meaning in brain synapse patterns that may well be more like Yi hexagrams which produce meaning from binary line patterns without language--if you find the hexagram meaning, not just in the commentary, but in the actual hexagrams themselves.

I have problems with genetic arguments from historical artifacts (which came first to produce specific tangible objects) since that put meaning into objects rather than understanding. That became important in academic circles when the Black Death of the 14th century eliminated many of the literate but left totally intact the books in the libraries and other artifacts. However, a superstitious awe for objects which survived an epidemic hardly seems to be of much intellectual value any more.

The more general question is whether the Yi is purely Chinese or a Chinese innovation of general principles. From my experience with Gia-Fu Feng, I believe that which is purely Chinese is unknowable to anyone not native Chinese from at least the first Empire. Therefore, a discussion in English must be about the general principles and insights to be gleaned from those of us picking up the gleanings of prior Chinese harvest.

If an ordered sequence is not obvious to those looking at it, does that mean it is random? Or more to the point is anything random or just unknown to folks who insist all true knowledge was revealed to them and any else is randomness or evil.

The nature of randomness was my first insight in college that led me from a chemistry concentration to the view that rigorous empirical investigation required Buddhist and Taoist perspectives, the Western sciences were 13th century misunderstandings of the world outside their cloister and mistranslation of Aristotle's elegant teachings in rhetoric as objective sciences.

Anything that strikes one as random, simply has an order unknown as yet--since humans are incapable of randomness. So asking someone to state two natural numbers 1-64 results in an oracle of the Yi that describes that person's interaction with you at point.

Most folks come to the study of the Yi from their personal experience of the oracle not by textual analysis of various manuscripts and ancient tomb artifacts. There is something quite special available from just the hexagrams themselves in their oracle interpretation. That interpretation gains in depth and profundity when the King Wen Sequence is put within the grid of the Pythagorean Tetraktys.

The only connection in terms of tangible artifacts is that the 4 constituent perspectives of the Tetraktys can be seen in the T'ai Chi symbol. The difference between the Tetraktys as a triangle of 10 dots and the inscribed swirls and eyes of the famous yin/yang symbol clearly indicates that any attempt to relate them in terms of words or texts or artifacts cannot even get started. Yet it works very well.

Looking to the history of Pythagoreanism in the West, it has endured and continued although no texts or practitioners have had any formal recognition or tangible objects to find since before Athens defeated the Persian invasion. Clearly that demonstrates there are other mechanisms of transmission and development involved.

Perhaps it would help if others took the time to post what their perspective is based upon and why they feel it is of importance more generally then their own personal devotion.

Frank

 

[martin]

I remember that I wrote something about this in another thread, and thanks to the forum search I found it again:

"Whatever the Chinese, Confucians or not, wrote about the hexagrams and lines, it's only their interpretation and their (necessarily imperfect) wording of the meaning of the hexagrams and lines.
So it's okay to try to discover what they actually wrote, but it's not holy bible, isn't it?

The word, the name, Chinese or English, is not the thing, the hexagram or the line.
If you want to know what the 'thing' really means, well, you can only discover that through experience with it.
Analyzing the Chinese text, although it might be fun, is not going to help beyond a certain point."


I should add that analysis of the structure of the trigrams and hexagrams can also help. So experience is not the only way.
I'm not (yet) familiar with your work, Frank, but I know the work of Nigel Richmond and I think he did a very good job.
What I especially like about him and his approach is that he uses clear concepts but doesn't get caught in overly rigid system thinking. There is a lot of feeling in his writings, and he remarks somewhere (forgot the exact wording) that the concepts need to be applied with some humor. Great.

 

[lindsay]

Dobro -
I don't think the Mawangdui Yi is just a sloppy and botched copy of some purer original. That sounds like the kind of put-down we use about things we do not want to consider.

Frank -
I'm sorry but I can't follow your argument, if you have an argument. The only thing I understand clearly is that you do not like me. Too bad.

Martin -
I can't agree with what you are saying either. It didn't make any sense the first time you said it, and it hasn't improved with age.

I would like somebody to explain to me the benefits of this speculation about the King Wen sequence, since you all seem to hold it in such high regard. What is all this business of "making sense" and "working very well"? It doesn't make sense to me, just like Chris Lofting's theories didn't make sense either. It doesn't help me in my readings. I see no evidence of extraordinary cleverness in the ancient Chinese. Help me out here. What exactly are you guys talking about? And please - no nattering about Leibniz and Pythagoras. No half-baked forays into binary arithmetic. No schoolboy history lessons about the Greeks and Romans. I was professionally trained to be a historian, have taught history at the university level, and know b.s. when I hear it.

Lindsay

 

[Sparhawk]

Well, yes, perhaps you are correct, and there is no intrinsic value in finding the key to the King Wen sequence. All the speculation doesn't help me to interpret readings either. OTOH, it is a challenging subject upon which countless Yi students have spent time thinking and debating about. A worthy mystery. Take Richard S. Cook's work, for example. For the little I could understand of it, I could not find any speculation in it about "his" understanding of the sequence and its practical usefulness in actual readings. That for a treatise on the sequence the size of a phone book... So, my point is, he worked on it because he wanted to tackle that challenge, from a mathematical point of view, and share his findings. I believe that most people that seriously speculate about the sequence have a similar drive, even if they come up with different results.

 

[fkegan]

What determines utility or magic in personal I Ching readings

Is the utility of our own Yi oracle interpretations determined by our personal feelings of success with their answers or a mix of our level of understanding about the Yi, its hexagrams and organization with the additional spice of how exquisitely a particular oracle interpretation fits our realization of what we needed.

Lindsay,
I don't dislike you, I simply don't believe the academic assumptions that you do. You have made the choice to only listen to your own expectations, and as Buddha noted, that tends to be a source of suffering. Of my own I have a different set of assumptions, based upon the same academic library sources as you. The only difference is when things seemed not to make sense, I declined to just accept them on faith or loyalty to the professor. Instead, I tracked down the sources and found where the divergence appeared and how it had been ignored--usually to hold on to obsolete paradigms which were still comfortable though filled with devastating anomalies.

I regret that you so totally identify with with your background as to believe it is you. But that is one of the limitations of the academic perspective that it finds only its own library to be anything but evil and keeps its denizens from developing independent adult perspectives of their own.

As to why folks on this thread are focused upon the King Wen Sequence, it starts with this being a Sequence of the Hexagrams thread, and many of us find it polite to accept the premise of a discussion.

If you wish to start a thread about whatever it is that so consumes you, I am sure you would find folks eager to join that conversation as well. Set out your premises, which academic historians you accept, how that strand is modified by your use of the Oracle in contravention of the fundamental Church bias of the academic perspective, I would be glad to try to join that conversation to at least leave a few bread crumbs from where you are in the deep woods toward the sunlight and open fields of the King Wen folks.

Martin--I was delighted by find the books of Nigel Richmond through your mention of him. Looking them over, I came to a somewhat different impression. I notice he published in the '70's and '80's on the I Ching, as I did and that he quotes Gia-Fu Feng on Lao Tzu as I do also. Beyond that I was more struck by the memories of that New Age milieu that pervaded all of our thinking back then. It does explain a lot of what his work was based upon.

Unfortunately, the spirit of those heady years were just a blip of insight into a new Tao for this new millennium (and New Age, literally by the calendar timing). He bases his insights into the Yi upon his personal associations to the graphical line patterns with Yin being active yet receptive since it is a broken line. That is certainly a step up from the earlier Western assumption that the broken and firm lines must be Freudian symbols since they also have a masculine and feminine association.

Moving on to your own words,
the I Ching is one of the Confucian Classics, that is very much the Bible of the Confucians and his interpretations were to be memorized in traditional China to pass the exams to be considered for employment in the Imperial bureaucracy (like U.S. Civil Service exams).

"If you want to know what the 'thing' really means, well, you can only discover that through experience with it." Actually, the logical import of your remark is more clearly phrased as YOUR experience with something brings you to an understanding of what it means to YOU.

I have actually experienced folks using different methods of casting the oracle from me for the same situations. The coin tosses were interpreted differently for which side of the coin was yang, and which line was determined first. The resultant oracles were totally different in that transformation. However, they were each insightful in our individual terms for each of us.

The point of studying the name and sequence of the traditional hexagrams is that they explain and extend one's understanding of what a particular oracle response means in your exact situation. In my own work I have also developed new names for the hexagrams and put the King Wen Sequence into the framework of meaning by sets of 10. Of course, none of that would be your personal experience with the oracle, but at some point it may be useful to consider other things to improve your basis for interpreting your oracles.

Dobro and others,
The mystery of the King Wen Sequence intrigues some of us so, since it seems clear that it is intentional and organized by an intelligence which clearly knows far more than we do. Given involvement with our results with our own Yi oracles, with the clear realization that there are many aspects and details of the ancient commentary which seem rather obscure, it strikes many that the more we knew about how the structure of the hexagrams is connected to the names, and how the names and structures are organized into the King Wen Sequence the better.

In my own case, the Eureka! epiphanies of figuring out pieces of this puzzle were personally amazing with the further working out of it all being ever more exciting and attractive. So, for all the reasons you focus upon your own oracle experience beyond the words or sequence; I find the line patterns and sequence an entire superlative level of interpretation for my own oracles.

One of my early insights was to see the lines of the Yi hexagrams as little x-ray snapshots of a company of repertory actors who enacted the scenario depicted in an oracle. I don't now see hexagrams as animate beings, though they remain as delightfully magic as ever. Now that magic comes to me in the Aha! realization as my technical analysis of the lines and philosophical analysis through the Pythagorean matrix makes so much fit together and stand out.

Frank

 

[dobro p]

Dobro - I don't think the Mawangdui Yi is just a sloppy and botched copy of some purer original. That sounds like the kind of put-down we use about things we do not want to consider.

Boy, are you ever grumpy. lol What I said about the Mawangdui Yi is a putdown, yes, but it's the conclusion I've drawn from looking at it closely and comparing it to the modern version. It's got so many instances of goofiness that 'sloppy copy' is the only conclusion I can make. We can start a new thread about it if you like. But having trashed it, I use it regularly to compare its meanings with the one I trust and follow, cuz like I said, when EVERYTHING agrees on a term, then it's probably gold.

I would like somebody to explain to me the benefits of this speculation about the King Wen sequence, since you all seem to hold it in such high regard.

I don't hold it in high regard, and I said so. You've been hanging out with bad company, Lindsay lol.

What is all this business of "making sense" and "working very well"? It doesn't make sense to me, just like Chris Lofting's theories didn't make sense either.

It doesn't make much sense to me, either, and nobody's ever been able to present a convincing argument about why it *does* make sense. People praise it and people use it, but when you ask for evidence, they come up with stuff that sounds like they've interviewed their own left thumb. (There! Shall we do a grumpy old men routine every time somebody mentions 'sequence'? lol) As for Chris, what do you think was energizing that overactive intellect of his? Too little sex, or too much repression? lol

It doesn't help me in my readings.

Nor me in mine.

I see no evidence of extraordinary cleverness in the ancient Chinese.

Well, not in the matter of the so-called sequence, no. But you have to admit the Yi itself is a cunning piece of work, a rare and useful beautiful thing.

Help me out here.

I just did.

Ingrate.

 

[hilary]

The grumpy old men routine is outstanding, and should be on TV.

Frank, I don't know where you get the idea that Lindsay is lacking in 'independent adult perspectives', unless you're joining in the aforementioned routine.

Whatever the Chinese, Confucians or not, wrote about the hexagrams and lines, it's only their interpretation and their (necessarily imperfect) wording of the meaning of the hexagrams and lines.

That's one way of looking at things: the words are just an interpretation of the hexagrams and lines. Having tried that one on for size, though, let's also try:

"Whatever arrangements of lines the Chinese may have made, it's only their (necessarily imperfect) way of arranging and cataloguing an ancient oracular tradition."

Another way of looking: the hexagrams are just a cataloguing system for the words.

Neither way of looking seems to me to have much mileage in it - either seems to throw out whole families of babies with the bathwater. Unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible for any normal human brain to encompass the whole picture of the thing, so we have this distressing tendency of promoting the part we have an affinity with to be 'the true I Ching', and demoting the rest to be an add-on. Oops.

 

[martin]

Neither way of looking seems to me to have much mileage in it - either seems to throw out whole families of babies with the bathwater. Unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible for any normal human brain to encompass the whole picture of the thing, so we have this distressing tendency of promoting the part we have an affinity with to be 'the true I Ching', and demoting the rest to be an add-on. Oops.

Yes, I agree. But I think that neither the text nor the hexagrams are the 'true I Ching'.
In what I wrote earlier I stressed that the I Ching is not the text because I was reacting to a tendency that I sometimes see to treat the text as bible, as the final truth about the I Ching. But I can say exactly the same about the hexagrams. Analyzing the Chinese text is not going to help beyond a certain point but neither is structural analysis of the hexagrams. Richmond apparently realized this and, as I wrote, that's one of the things I like about him and his approach. He doesn't allow himelf to get trapped in a rigid system and that is what may happen if you try to go too far with structural analysis and treat the hexagrams as the final truth about the I Ching.
That's the problem that I always had with the work of Chris Lofting. There are good ideas in it but he tries to catch the whole of the I Ching in the cage of his system and that spoils the whole thing. Richmond also uses a kind of cage but he leaves the door open, the bird is free to go if it wants, it isn't imprisoned. It's a bit like what the king does in line 5 of hexagram 8?

 

[Sparhawk]

Yes, I agree. But I think that neither the text nor the hexagrams are the 'true I Ching'.

I'm telling you people, nowadays we have so much cattle around in the world, emitting so much methane, for what? Only to provide us with milk and beef? Hmmm, all those bones going to waste... We should go back to scapulimancy!!!

Of course, we should ban the use of any Brit cows. Those are just "mad cows"...

 

[martin]

I'm telling you people, nowadays we have so much cattle around in the world, emitting so much methane, for what? Only to provide us with milk and beef? Hmmm, all those bones going to waste... We should go back to scapulimancy!!!

Of course, we should ban the use of any Brit cows. Those are just "mad cows"...

Huh? What has that to do with what I wrote?
Ah, you are still after my cow Bella! You don't give up easily do you?
Forget it, she is not available, not for your barbecue and not for your scapulimancy, neither is her friend Harry!

 

[Sparhawk]

Well, you did say that "neither the text nor the hexagrams are the 'true I Ching'"... I thought we could step back in time a little further to find some common roots. Forgot your coffee this morning?? Wanna fight?! Come on! I'll take you and your cow (and Harry too)...

 

[martin]

I had way too much coffee this morning. I hardly sleep at night these days because I'm working on mathematical stuff and it seems that I'm onto something new . So I'm too excited to sleep.

But seriously now for 1 moment, lol, the common root would be, umm, not cattle but experience (with the Yi and life), feeling, intuition? Analysis (textual or structural) is useful, necessary sometimes, interesting and fun, but it's not everything. That's all I'm saying.
Now, don't fight, simply nod, because I'm right, isn't it?

 

[Sparhawk]

But seriously now for 1 moment, lol, the common root would be, umm, not cattle but experience (with the Yi and life), feeling, intuition? Analysis (textual or structural) is useful, necessary sometimes, interesting and fun, but it's not everything. That's all I'm saying.
Now, don't fight, simply nod, because I'm right, isn't it?

Ok, how can I not agree with that? Not fair! Where is the fun in agreeing with anybody? Well, if you are right, you are right.

So, you finally tackled the Goldbach Conjecture? Or is it the Collatz Problem? Or the King Wen sequence?

 

[martin]

Lol, the Wen sequence, that would be nice.
I sometimes wondered if it is perhaps one of the 'most complex' or 'most random' sequences possible (apart from the pairs, so only look at the odd numbered hexes, for instance). Hmm, no, I'm not going to explain now what I mean, exactly.

But there is something about the Yi, not only that sequence, that can drive people who are looking for patterns and hard and fast rules nuts. And I think those ancient guys did that on purpose. "Try to catch me, no you can't "
The Yi is a koan, sort of.

 

[fkegan]

A KW sequence challenge

Martin,
Yes, the King Wen Sequence is intriguing in that it implies it has total complexity--it is complex poetry. How does something get to be more random, let alone most random, other than having a precise order that you just don't know.

Hillary,
Having turned 60 a while back, I think joining the grumpy old man thing is the best offer I have had for what my mother would have asked me," ...and what do you plan to accomplish in your 7th decade."

Dobro--and anyone else who finds nothing insightful in the KWS in light of personal experience with the Oracle, let's try the challenge you seem to imply.... take an oracle, perhaps one involving this thread, conversation or community so that we could each and all have personal experience of what the oracle is talking about. You interpret it your way ignoring the sequence, and I will comment from only the Sequence number, and moving line position and we shall see how useful the structural approach is in actual Oracle use.
Frank

 

[dobro p]

Dobro--and anyone else who finds nothing insightful in the KWS in light of personal experience with the Oracle, let's try the challenge you seem to imply.... take an oracle, perhaps one involving this thread, conversation or community so that we could each and all have personal experience of what the oracle is talking about. You interpret it your way ignoring the sequence, and I will comment from only the Sequence number, and moving line position and we shall see how useful the structural approach is in actual Oracle use.

I'm happy to play, but my understanding of people who believe the King Wen sequence has meaning will, invariably, find meaning in it. But, to cut to the chase...

"What do I need to know about the upcoming meditation retreat?"

60.2.3>63

Okay, the retreat's going to be about a week, and it involves a fairly rigid (but not onerous) structure of meditation, exercise and possibly some singing in the evenings. It's a silent retreat (except for the singing, obviously lol).

So, I see the structure of the retreat imaged in Hex 60, and I see that structure involving or leading to everything being in its proper place. Good. But on a more micro level, I see two issues I'm going to have to deal with - although there's a silence rule, and although it's a retreat, I should probably stay in touch with my wife by phone (cuz she doesn't like being left all on her onesie) (60.2), and yet somehow I have to balance that with the very real need for discipline and structure in the retreat (60.3). I'm not sure if these two changing lines indicate two separate mini-aspects of the retreat, or whether they both refer to the same thing, overlapping.

 

[martin]

60? Okay, let everything that occupies you go first (59) and if you do that you will find your innermost heart (61)

(that seems an easy point for you Frank, hope you don't mind I kicked the ball in )

 

[dobro p]

Yes, and that's exactly what I saw too, WHEN I LOOKED AT 59 AS PRECEDING, AND 61 AS FOLLOWING 60.

But let's say we had a different sequence. Let's say that 47 preceded 60 and let's say that 48 followed it. What do we get? 'By way of hard confinement, you develop the disciplined regularity that will take you into the depths of your being."

Or let's say that 8 preceded 60. "By uniting with the principle of the retreat, you find the discipline involved in regular meditation practice."

Or let's say that 8 FOLLOWED 60. "By embodying the regularity of the retreat schedule, you will unite with both the retreatants and yourself - a state of unity will be the outcome."

See, I think that I can find meaning in this situation with about half the hexagrams being either the preceding or subsequent hexagram.

50 - 60 - 40

"Your being has transformed to the extent that real discipline is now the issue, and this will take you eventually to liberation."

Yeah, right...

 

[martin]

Yeah right, damned!
As our great cow-loving master Luis said: "Ok, how can I not agree with that? Not fair! Where is the fun in agreeing with anybody? Well, if you are right, you are right."

Grmp!

 

[dobro p]

Well, maybe I don't get the basic meaning of sequence. In the King Wen version of sequence, is it supposed to be temporal, or is it a semantic sequence? Is the sequence supposed to happen in time, or is it supposed to happen in the mind? Cuz if it's supposed to happen in time (ie 'first comes the Creative; then out of that situation arised the Receptive; then out of that arises Difficulty at the Beginning') then what are we to make of relating hexagrams? If I draw 1.2.5>30, does that mean that 'out of 1.2.5 arises 30'? Okay, if that's the case, then what about Hex 2? Wasn't *that* supposed to arise out of Hex 1? And if Hex 30 arises out of Hex 1, does that mean that the situation is somehow inferior to the 'normal sequence' of 1>2? I mean, the beauty of relating hexagrams is that ANY hexagram can arise out of ANY hexagram. So how does the King Wen sequence fit into that view?

 

[lindsay]

I am feeling contrite. Hilary, Dobro, Luis, Martin, and Frank have all made good points and wise observations. I wish I had time to comment on them all, but they speak for themselves. It’s true I personally have become encased in the text like a beetle in amber. The text is what I know and what I study, so naturally that is what I think is most important – but it is also true that the text is what I think is most important, so that is what I’ve come to know best.

I am well aware the text has limitations. Some readings are difficult to understand on the basis of the text alone. Usually I assume this is my fault, that I am missing something crucial to the reading because I do not understand the text properly or do not have the skill to extract the full meaning. Another common problem is text readings sometimes seem rather thin. A significant question is asked, but the responding texts are occasionally terse and unsuggestive.

Now – about Frank’s challenge to Dobro. This is a brave gesture, and one I admire very much. Can I suggest an example too? I would like to propose considering a recent reading I had a lot of trouble explaining on the basis of the text alone – just to see where a non-textual interpretation would go. This is not a trick or made-up case – it actually happened, and is not so very unusual. Just difficult on the basis of the text, I think.

A friend of mine was celebrating her 48th birthday, and asked “How can I achieve happiness and contentment in the year ahead?” Coins were tossed, and the result was 59.5.6 > 7.

I spent a fair amount of time on this response, reading the books and considering the possibilities, but I still failed to grasp the meaning. Anything anyone does with this reading will be as good as what I did, and probably better.

My version: “You will need to work hard and assert yourself openly to get what you want, but in the end your life will not change much. After so much effort and struggle with little result, you may wish to change course in a completely new direction. As long as you act responsibly according to plan, you should be able to make things work to your advantage. None of this is likely to have any lasting adverse impact on your life.”

What I don’t like about this reading is (1) it’s pretty negative, (2) it doesn’t really answer the question, and (3) it relies on obscure text. The central part of 59.5 has no consensus translation, and the phrase “dispersing one’s blood” does not exactly pop everything into sharp focus.

So Frank, would you please be willing to consider this case? I promise I will strain every neuron to keep an open mind, and I’m sure others would like to see a practical application of your ideas. Perhaps my failure will be your success. I hope so!

 

[hilary]

I never normally have the courage to do quick interpretations - I prefer to read everything and check obsessively. But - first reaction - did you consider reading off the hexagram names as a sentence?

'How can I achieve happiness and contentment in the year ahead?'
'Disperse your Army.'

(Might that imply that 'contentment' and 'achieve' sit oddly in the same sentence together?)

Then we have suggestions of (maybe!) making a great effort to redistribute one's wealth or status, and getting out of trouble.

How do you build up to dispersing? Dobro could no doubt find 63 equally convincing ways to do it, but I've found open communication to be useful. It loosens the boundaries and broadens the focus. And it might also help in self-awareness generally to know that one's army-mindset comes from conflict. Righteous indignation, or just a sense that something is not as it should be or you're not getting what you need, does tend to concentrate the mind around that centre of discontent.

If 'dispersing the army' pulls about the primary/relating hexagram connection too much for your taste, try 'disperse things with the force and concentration of the army' or 'make a serious campaign of dispersing things.' (Unless that sounds as bizarre to you as it does to me...)

I also think the text's what's most important - but I add to that a habit (picked up at Oxford ) of never assuming that something doesn't contain meaning.

But seriously now for 1 moment, lol, the common root would be, umm, not cattle but experience (with the Yi and life), feeling, intuition? Analysis (textual or structural) is useful, necessary sometimes, interesting and fun, but it's not everything. That's all I'm saying.
Now, don't fight, simply nod, because I'm right, isn't it?

:bows:

 

[lienshan]

The only "logical" problem in the King Wen sequence is the position of the 53 - 54 pair

51 ::! ::! 52 !:: !::
55 ::! !:! 56 !:! !::
57 !!: !!: 58 :!! :!!
59 !!: :!: 60 :!: :!!

53 !!: !:: 54 ::! :!!

 

[meng]

A friend of mine was celebrating her 48th birthday, and asked “How can I achieve happiness and contentment in the year ahead?” Coins were tossed, and the result was 59.5.6 > 7.

I'd like to play, using a reversed approach, guessing the personality of your friend based on her reading, to achieve happiness and contentment in the year ahead.

I'm going to guess that this person is tightly wired / stressed out, perhaps obsessively organized and tidy. Further, that she makes others close to her crazy with her perfectionism. I take it she is a leader of some kind?

My reason for the above is that her answer (as I see it) was to let go, not only for her sake but for those around her: her army.