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First let me thank Hilary for such a wonderful comprehensive site, truly devoted to spirit of the Yijing. Its reassuring to find a place (even if its a single occurence) where this matters are dealt with in a serious manner and with so much devotion (yes, it shows). I do my own readings but if I ever need a professional consultation, yours will be the one I choose
I was going to make this an introduction, but Im not really feeling like it (you can ask whatever you may wish to know about me, I love to talk), so I'll just share some thought I have on the Yi (there would be many others I would like to address, but these were the 1st to come to mind).
Let me state clearly that Im no expert on the I Ching. Ive been using it for about 12 years, and I read a lot about it, but although I believe I came to some sort of understandment of its inner works, I could never say that I really grasp it, cause like so many other fascinating subjects, the more you explore it, the more you realise how little you know about it...
WHAT IS IT
Primarly I think the I Ching is a manual to how one should conduct his life in the myriad of situations that can occur. After years of questioning, you become able to know beforehand what the Yi would advise in any given situation, and so it becomes a role model for us to follow. The way to deal with human doubts is pointed out in the answers, and should more people become aquainted with this system, a lot of the world's problems would simply vanish. For instance, take hex#5, the wait, is there any wiser advice that to wait calmly, in good humour, nurturing yourself, whatever youre waiting for? If you have to wait, it should be an act of faith that things will come, and not a frantic walking around in circles that will only disperse the goods the universe had already coming your way. So it is a code of conduct, not really a set of moral rules, but a way to act that is in harmony with the hidden forces of the universe, and we should all realise that this harmony is what assures (or in the lack of it, prevents) us from fullfilling our desires. So follow the Yi's advice and you should live in harmony with the Tao.
But I also think of it as a way to "talk" to the principles ruling the universe, God if you wish. I get many fruitful dialogues that way, and when I question the Yi I address god, the Tao, the universal forces or whatever you wanna call it.
Finally, it is also a way of bringing your hidden mental patterns to the open, a way to know what state your inner mind is into, which given the fact that we already know all the answers, becomes a way to find the truth (in this sense it resembles the tarot).
RULES
In my experience there is only one rule that you must comply: You must really WANT an answer... This rules out all the trivia, although often first time questioners, asking "will I win the lotto", also get a valid answer (like #53 "money wont come easy, go work for it").
There is another rule, a tacit one, you have to respect the oracle, and believe in it as the most wise of all books. That has never been a trouble for me, Ive always understood it as a link to the higher powers, but in any case, this is covered by rule #1, cause if you really want (or NEED) an answer, youre bound to show respect and faith. Another tacit rule, that you have to focus on the question, is also covered by rule #1 (you'll probabbly have trouble NOT concentrating on the question, in this case).
Besides from this simple #1 rule, Ive basically disregarded all others, like lighting incense, putting a white cloth underneath, using such and such coins, whatever. Ive consulted the Yi in less than perfect surroundings, using different sized coins, etc, and yet it never failed to give me valuable answers. Why? because I needed them...
This is why I dont give much credit to this or that method being "better" or "worse". Ive always used coins, the odds are slightly different, so what? Odds are just probabilities, and I expect any person familiar with the Yi to have long past realised that it does not follow statistics, not in the sense a dice would. There is plenty of probabilistic room for the Yi to answer the intended answer, whatever method you're using. So forget about it, and just use the method you feel right. The Yi will know what and how to answer.
WHAT IF YOU DONT UNDERSTAND THE ANSWER?
I see many people have trouble understanding a single hexagram in reply to an important question. In this case, you can ask for clarification to the Yi itself, instead of figuring out the whole answer from this single symbol. Im not saying that you should disregard the 1st answer, or that we should ask again if we didnt like what we got. All answers are valid, but if after reading the first you still have doubts, by all means cast another hexagram and ask for the details you missed... I have many "dialogs" with the Yi this way. I can ask "how to ... whatever". The Yi says "X". Then I can ask, "...but how should I X?", to which he would reply "Y" and so forth. Bottom line, it is not forbidden to ask repeatedly, provided rule #1 is maintained.
In any case the Yi itself will put an end to it if youre just asking meaninglessly. This most often happens when I get hex#4 either as first or second hexagram, but it can simply say something totally out of context. In either case, just go meditate on what you have so far, the answer is probbably already there...
Anyway, Ive had instances when I repeated the same question several times (and I mean dozens), over a period of time, and even then I get valid answers... Sometimes the nature of the matters evolves over time so you can ask to see how its going, but even if you repeat the same question several times in a row, it still gives good answers. So instead of a banalization of the oracle, I think repeating questions can unveil several meanings of the same answer. This is how I found some interrelations between hexagrams, cause they would come up repeatedly, or in pairs, or one evolving into the other, but in any case this repetition showing a correlation that is everything but random.
MULTIPLE MOVING LINES
First I think that all the lines are relevant. But they can have two purposes: sometimes its like the "juice" of the answer is in the lines, but some other times they are moving just to point to the related hexagram, and their significance cannot be taken too seriously.
I can see how most of the single lines are in some way related to the resulting hexagram, and I imagine that was one of the ways the Duke of Chou came up with them, but when there is more than one line moving, its amazing how it still makes sense, given the complexity of the possible combinations. But the truth is it does.
Bottom line, dont be too attached to confliting lines, and just use the "sharpening of the mind" Confucius talked about.
(Btw, anyone using the MPML method? I tryed it a couple of times and it seems to work, but I havent seen it mentioned anywhere else than on the paged linked here on clarity).
HOW DOES IT WORK
Well, basically I dont know, noone does, but I have my theory: I think it is quantum physics
If you're familiar with quantum mechanics (not that I really am) or buddhism, you will see they basically say the same, which is, the whole universe is nothingness (you can get just a glimpse of that by considering that atoms are small scale solar systems, and most of the space they occupy is empty space - so 99.999% of what we see, is really empty space). Anyway, scientists are coming to the same conclusion Buddha taught 2500 years ago, that everything is devoided of substance, and that it is the mind that turns this nothingness into "the miryad of all things". The subatomic particles seem to need an observer thrown into the equation to really explain their behaviour (although no scientist will admit that), so you cant just know where it is without looking, and when you do you've messed with its position so its no longer there (forgive the plain approach, but its more or less like this).
What has this to do with the Yi? well, I believe this influence of the mind over matter is most evident in the so called random processes (there is actually a department from a US university - cant remember which but I'll check if anyone's interested - concerned with investigating this interaction, and their first results seem to offer indication of a real tangible influence). So if mind affects random processes, in a way not yet clear, it may be that the Yi answers are indeed generated from our mind, as if our inner self would make the coins land in a particular arrangement. Its all very schroedinger's cat, but the more I think of it the more I intuitively believe that this is the key. In this sense, you could have all sorts of random processes determining the future (and thats why all divination tools "work"), but the Yi happens to be a sistematic approach, where you have a comprehensive model of the universe built on top of this randomness, and thats why its answers are more valid than just merely a flip of a coin. I believe you could construct other models, based on random events, but then you would need thousands of years of empyrical work, to determine which of the random events would lead to each particular situation. That must have been the way it was invented, lets say a particular mental frame has a tendency to influence a random event in a particular way, then over the years, people come to realise that whenever they were feeling "that" way, the coins would land on "that" pattern, and so it was constructed... am I making any sense?
TAOIST ALCHEMY
To end this overlengthy introduction, I would like to ask your opinion on the hidden depth of the Yi, particularly its esoteric uses. I have a book called li tao ch'un ("school of complete reality") which seems to show a lot of interrelations between the Yi and chinese taoist arts. According to this view, we're in between a dipole, constituted by heaven on one side, and earth on the other. Meditation and spiritual development come from being in accordance with these two poles. From earth you have to be calm. From heaven you have to be open. So this calmness and openness are the start of the understandment ("let all your actions start from calm, and be filled with complete openness"). This makes A LOT of sense to me, and has recently became one of my main interests. This is all too much to go into here, but let me just mention some topics. One of the steps is to "gather vitality", when the body is calm, the mind is open, you have to let vitality emerge and then gather it. The book says this process is explained by meditating on hexagram #24, which makes a lot of sense, cause thats where the first line appears, like when youre meditating and suddenly you FEEL IT (and usually loose it immediately after, because of the excitment). Its this glimpse of the real thing that I thing hex.#24 represents. LiSe names this hex. "return to your tao" and I think she's got the point. Another example comes from the taoist water-course way, which is basically the rule by which we should flow like the water, not restling with but letting oneself go with the flow. But then this is preciselly the message of hexagram#29, water. So I begin to realise that there is also a lot of esoteric meaning in the Yi, that we cannot grasp just from the translations.
On a side note, I would enormously appreciate whatever clues anyone can give to further my study of this matters, either through books (anyone knows of a translation of the li tao ch'un with commentaries? or something similar?), online articles or just plain old conversation.
Well, thanks for bearing with me this far. Hope to have many more conversations with you all regarding this matters, in particular I would like to go into depth with some particular hexagrams that are of particular interest to me. But thats for another occasion...
All the best to you all, cheers
Pedro
I was going to make this an introduction, but Im not really feeling like it (you can ask whatever you may wish to know about me, I love to talk), so I'll just share some thought I have on the Yi (there would be many others I would like to address, but these were the 1st to come to mind).
Let me state clearly that Im no expert on the I Ching. Ive been using it for about 12 years, and I read a lot about it, but although I believe I came to some sort of understandment of its inner works, I could never say that I really grasp it, cause like so many other fascinating subjects, the more you explore it, the more you realise how little you know about it...
WHAT IS IT
Primarly I think the I Ching is a manual to how one should conduct his life in the myriad of situations that can occur. After years of questioning, you become able to know beforehand what the Yi would advise in any given situation, and so it becomes a role model for us to follow. The way to deal with human doubts is pointed out in the answers, and should more people become aquainted with this system, a lot of the world's problems would simply vanish. For instance, take hex#5, the wait, is there any wiser advice that to wait calmly, in good humour, nurturing yourself, whatever youre waiting for? If you have to wait, it should be an act of faith that things will come, and not a frantic walking around in circles that will only disperse the goods the universe had already coming your way. So it is a code of conduct, not really a set of moral rules, but a way to act that is in harmony with the hidden forces of the universe, and we should all realise that this harmony is what assures (or in the lack of it, prevents) us from fullfilling our desires. So follow the Yi's advice and you should live in harmony with the Tao.
But I also think of it as a way to "talk" to the principles ruling the universe, God if you wish. I get many fruitful dialogues that way, and when I question the Yi I address god, the Tao, the universal forces or whatever you wanna call it.
Finally, it is also a way of bringing your hidden mental patterns to the open, a way to know what state your inner mind is into, which given the fact that we already know all the answers, becomes a way to find the truth (in this sense it resembles the tarot).
RULES
In my experience there is only one rule that you must comply: You must really WANT an answer... This rules out all the trivia, although often first time questioners, asking "will I win the lotto", also get a valid answer (like #53 "money wont come easy, go work for it").
There is another rule, a tacit one, you have to respect the oracle, and believe in it as the most wise of all books. That has never been a trouble for me, Ive always understood it as a link to the higher powers, but in any case, this is covered by rule #1, cause if you really want (or NEED) an answer, youre bound to show respect and faith. Another tacit rule, that you have to focus on the question, is also covered by rule #1 (you'll probabbly have trouble NOT concentrating on the question, in this case).
Besides from this simple #1 rule, Ive basically disregarded all others, like lighting incense, putting a white cloth underneath, using such and such coins, whatever. Ive consulted the Yi in less than perfect surroundings, using different sized coins, etc, and yet it never failed to give me valuable answers. Why? because I needed them...
This is why I dont give much credit to this or that method being "better" or "worse". Ive always used coins, the odds are slightly different, so what? Odds are just probabilities, and I expect any person familiar with the Yi to have long past realised that it does not follow statistics, not in the sense a dice would. There is plenty of probabilistic room for the Yi to answer the intended answer, whatever method you're using. So forget about it, and just use the method you feel right. The Yi will know what and how to answer.
WHAT IF YOU DONT UNDERSTAND THE ANSWER?
I see many people have trouble understanding a single hexagram in reply to an important question. In this case, you can ask for clarification to the Yi itself, instead of figuring out the whole answer from this single symbol. Im not saying that you should disregard the 1st answer, or that we should ask again if we didnt like what we got. All answers are valid, but if after reading the first you still have doubts, by all means cast another hexagram and ask for the details you missed... I have many "dialogs" with the Yi this way. I can ask "how to ... whatever". The Yi says "X". Then I can ask, "...but how should I X?", to which he would reply "Y" and so forth. Bottom line, it is not forbidden to ask repeatedly, provided rule #1 is maintained.
In any case the Yi itself will put an end to it if youre just asking meaninglessly. This most often happens when I get hex#4 either as first or second hexagram, but it can simply say something totally out of context. In either case, just go meditate on what you have so far, the answer is probbably already there...
Anyway, Ive had instances when I repeated the same question several times (and I mean dozens), over a period of time, and even then I get valid answers... Sometimes the nature of the matters evolves over time so you can ask to see how its going, but even if you repeat the same question several times in a row, it still gives good answers. So instead of a banalization of the oracle, I think repeating questions can unveil several meanings of the same answer. This is how I found some interrelations between hexagrams, cause they would come up repeatedly, or in pairs, or one evolving into the other, but in any case this repetition showing a correlation that is everything but random.
MULTIPLE MOVING LINES
First I think that all the lines are relevant. But they can have two purposes: sometimes its like the "juice" of the answer is in the lines, but some other times they are moving just to point to the related hexagram, and their significance cannot be taken too seriously.
I can see how most of the single lines are in some way related to the resulting hexagram, and I imagine that was one of the ways the Duke of Chou came up with them, but when there is more than one line moving, its amazing how it still makes sense, given the complexity of the possible combinations. But the truth is it does.
Bottom line, dont be too attached to confliting lines, and just use the "sharpening of the mind" Confucius talked about.
(Btw, anyone using the MPML method? I tryed it a couple of times and it seems to work, but I havent seen it mentioned anywhere else than on the paged linked here on clarity).
HOW DOES IT WORK
Well, basically I dont know, noone does, but I have my theory: I think it is quantum physics
What has this to do with the Yi? well, I believe this influence of the mind over matter is most evident in the so called random processes (there is actually a department from a US university - cant remember which but I'll check if anyone's interested - concerned with investigating this interaction, and their first results seem to offer indication of a real tangible influence). So if mind affects random processes, in a way not yet clear, it may be that the Yi answers are indeed generated from our mind, as if our inner self would make the coins land in a particular arrangement. Its all very schroedinger's cat, but the more I think of it the more I intuitively believe that this is the key. In this sense, you could have all sorts of random processes determining the future (and thats why all divination tools "work"), but the Yi happens to be a sistematic approach, where you have a comprehensive model of the universe built on top of this randomness, and thats why its answers are more valid than just merely a flip of a coin. I believe you could construct other models, based on random events, but then you would need thousands of years of empyrical work, to determine which of the random events would lead to each particular situation. That must have been the way it was invented, lets say a particular mental frame has a tendency to influence a random event in a particular way, then over the years, people come to realise that whenever they were feeling "that" way, the coins would land on "that" pattern, and so it was constructed... am I making any sense?
TAOIST ALCHEMY
To end this overlengthy introduction, I would like to ask your opinion on the hidden depth of the Yi, particularly its esoteric uses. I have a book called li tao ch'un ("school of complete reality") which seems to show a lot of interrelations between the Yi and chinese taoist arts. According to this view, we're in between a dipole, constituted by heaven on one side, and earth on the other. Meditation and spiritual development come from being in accordance with these two poles. From earth you have to be calm. From heaven you have to be open. So this calmness and openness are the start of the understandment ("let all your actions start from calm, and be filled with complete openness"). This makes A LOT of sense to me, and has recently became one of my main interests. This is all too much to go into here, but let me just mention some topics. One of the steps is to "gather vitality", when the body is calm, the mind is open, you have to let vitality emerge and then gather it. The book says this process is explained by meditating on hexagram #24, which makes a lot of sense, cause thats where the first line appears, like when youre meditating and suddenly you FEEL IT (and usually loose it immediately after, because of the excitment). Its this glimpse of the real thing that I thing hex.#24 represents. LiSe names this hex. "return to your tao" and I think she's got the point. Another example comes from the taoist water-course way, which is basically the rule by which we should flow like the water, not restling with but letting oneself go with the flow. But then this is preciselly the message of hexagram#29, water. So I begin to realise that there is also a lot of esoteric meaning in the Yi, that we cannot grasp just from the translations.
On a side note, I would enormously appreciate whatever clues anyone can give to further my study of this matters, either through books (anyone knows of a translation of the li tao ch'un with commentaries? or something similar?), online articles or just plain old conversation.
Well, thanks for bearing with me this far. Hope to have many more conversations with you all regarding this matters, in particular I would like to go into depth with some particular hexagrams that are of particular interest to me. But thats for another occasion...
All the best to you all, cheers
Pedro