Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).
We cannot be sure that the imagery attached to the Hexagrams is an accurate representation of the meaning of the Hexagram.
Good morning Harmen. Thanks for sharing this. When I was about 11-12 I tried to teach myself how to write Chinese (long story and not at all related to the Yi). One of the things I remember from the learning materials was that written Chinese was a picture-based, and the character for mountain (which looks like three peaks) was an often-used example.Context is everything when you want to find out the meaning of a certain character or phrase. Fortunately it has become relatively easy to find out what a phrase like daren 大人 means: go to www.ctext.org, search for 大人 and you will find numerous texts in which the phrase is used. Likewise you can search for (she) dachuan (涉)大川.
That the Chinese script is a pictorial language is only partly true - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters#Principles_of_formation
But today ... walking out to catch my bus this morning (to catch the ferry, to catch the train ...) I saw two deer crossing the road. Then on the train I saw an eagle chasing a duck, so perhaps today, for me 'there is no curse from the ancestors.' :bows:
It sure seems that way sometimes.You live in a world of omens David. Maybe the Yijing makes it easier for you to see them.
It was an awfully scared looking duck and a rather confident looking eagle, so I hope it was just bird chasing prey, and not a sign of a broader omen!But about the 'eagle chasing a duck': the eagle makes me think of the US (of course), and the duck is probably China (Peking Duck) so I am curious what will happen.
That is rather insulting to suggest that it is only on my head.
...you are just looking for an argument.
jukkodave
hmesker
Perhaps having had a serious brain injury that makes language tasks now very difficult and being dyslexic might explain it.
But you said it didnt matter
Dave
All the blast
Dave
All the bleat
Dave
All the bent
Dave
All the boat
Dave
All the beat
Dave
The reality is if there are underlying principles that changes everything that we think about the Yi. If there arent underlying principles then the Yi is nothing special and most of what is thought about the "yi" becomes irrelevant.
How about contributing something to the discussions.
Dave
"He who cultivates the inferior parts of his nature is an inferior man. He who cultivates the superior parts of his nature is a superior man."
and so he who cultivates the "great" parts of his nature is a great man.
And so what is it that is "great" within us.
"the great man might be something like "one needs to seek further for answers"?
Most certainly. The question would be where one would seek for further answers. For those that are isolated form their environment, where would they have to seek but inside themsleves. That is where one finds the underlying principles, that is where one finds understanding and knowledge.
As the Dao says, one can know the whole world without going outside.
It is the confusions and contradictions in the contents of the texts and the concepts that accompany the Yi that create so many problems. "Water", is it a river, a sea, it cant be a lake or a stream as they are referenced separately, is it the water of the fundamantal elements, is it the water of the Trigrams, how can the same term be applied to something considerable less fundamental as in the Trigram as is applied to the findamentals of "elements".
General point:
If you are exasperated by someone's behaviour on this forum, please consider either
a) not interacting with them, or
b) hitting the 'report post' button (if you think their behaviour is actually doing damage).
Please try not to express your exasperation on the thread.
This is so that we continue to have a forum about the Yijing, instead of a forum about how people behave on the forum. (We have tried that in the past. Trust me, it's just not that interesting.)
Good morning Iams Girl: I often use the Buddha's teachings as a 'yardstick' of sorts. The Buddha taught about the nature of reality and how we might experience that (via meditation) - I think of that as an 'inward' journey. But he also gave guidance for how to be in the world: to use right speech, to not cause harm, to find honest or meaningful work and so forth - this we might call our 'outward' journey.How to seek, then, might also be an important key to finding where to seek inwardly .... It occurs to me to also consider what "great" actually does for a person? Do you have thoughts?
"but in both cases, crossing the water or seeing a great man would be difficult to generalise, it's easier understood in the context of a reading or one's own life. i can't know what these things mean to you or how would they manifest in your reality."
But then I am puzzled, if you consider they would be difficult to generalise and easier understood in a personal context, why have you attempted to do just what you consider that you say "i cant know what these things mean.."
I dont get why you think you cant say or know and then give an opinion of what you dont think you know.
Are you actually reading my posts.
In the process, the contradictions, the inconsistencies, the lack of rational coherence, became more obvious and it became more apparent, that the thing that I had realised many years ago, that the Yi can be used in two fundamentally different ways, the way of a book of divination, which makes it no different to any other fortune telling tool and is often only the figment of our imaginations and delusions, or, the book of inner insight and wisdom, the reflection of fundamental underlying principles.
Realising that most of the "answers" I was getting back were focussed on the book of divination side, even though the responses may have purported to do otherwise and not wishing to waste my time, I asked the Yi what I should do, the response was to continue, there was something of importance to learn. So I continue.
I think that I have already made it clear that I dont use any methods that are skewed and dont make all of the Yi available for all readings. And that I try to understand the Yi in its fundamental underly principle form and not related to any external literal interpretations.
That might elimininate a part of the contradiction, but why is everyone not using "river" as the term. Obviously not everyone agrees on that.
Great river would be crossable by boat so no great endeavour there,
and it is still an "external factor, as opposed to an internal one, so that larger and significantly more important contradiction remains. It wouldnt be representative of any underlying principles unlees the underlying principles are explainable by the meaning of a river.
The problem of it being that the "original" has differernt meanings, then makes that the domain of the "scholars" that are doing any translations, and removes it from the domain of the reader.
That would be an unacceptable exclucivity to anyone that consults the Yi. If only those scholars, that havent found a way of agreeing oon what the translations should be, "know" what a word should "mean" and havent made that obundantly clear to everyone at every step then shame on the scholarsfor not getting together and agreeing on the "meaning". Assuming that any scholars know what the meaning really is, as that is significantly different than a literal translation, in a lot of cases.
the evaluation of if soemthing is able to be "trusted" depends on two things.
Firtsly that the text is accurate; in that I mean, rather than it being linguistically right, which may always be a debatable issue for all sorts of reason, but accurate for the reason that it needs to convey the essence and the true meaning of the texts, which may not be always overly obviousn to any scolars from the text itself, if taken literally without context and understanding.
Secondly even if the text is accurate and conveys the essence it is entirely dependent on our understanding and knowledge to be able to make proper sense of it.
The Buddha taught about the nature of reality and how we might experience that (via meditation) - I think of that as an 'inward' journey. But he also gave guidance for how to be in the world: to use right speech, to not cause harm, to find honest or meaningful work and so forth - this we might call our 'outward' journey. .
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).