...life can be translucent

Menu

Q for Bradford, 26.5

M

meng

Guest
This pertains to Brad's specific commentary on 26.5, starting with "Culture is a veneer..." ending with "a little effort to get great result."

Brad, can you offer more on that? IE "it now goes down but not quite as far"?

Or if anyone cares to interpret those comments?
 

heylise

Supporter
Clarity Supporter
Joined
Sep 15, 1970
Messages
3,128
Reaction score
202
I think the boar has less nature now, more culture, so it is more than just veneer. He is through and through culture. Well, as far as boars have culture.
There is nature and there is culture, more nature often means less culture, wilder, less answering to rules of living together. Cut away the wildest part, and culture wins.

I personally think the boar was gelded so the tusks would stay impeccable. If he fights with them, they get damaged. Beautifully curved tusks were one of the presents a man could give to the gods for assuring his position in the hereafter - or something similar.
 
M

meng

Guest
I think the boar has less nature now, more culture, so it is more than just veneer. He is through and through culture. Well, as far as boars have culture.

So, not a good or bad thing, just the impeded nature.

I wonder what the difference is between this and 50.3? Isn't the boar's way of life also impeded without his nature and his tusks, if the handles of his Ding are altered? Well, as far as boars have Dings. Plus, do I also understand that his tusks weren't the only thing cut off? How can this be a good thing for the boar?
 

fkegan

(deceased)
Joined
Aug 31, 2007
Messages
2,052
Reaction score
41
Hi Meng,

Hex 26.5 is a contrast to hex26.4 where time is taken to change the growth of the horns. In this line, it is an immediate action with the adult boar to make things different by executive action. The boar is fully grown, but no longer interested in attacking or procreating and thus rendered more useful for human purposes though less so for those of his own species. This also presupposes a captured rather than a wild boar. Though not domesticated it has been reduced to whatever human organization and development wants, highlighting the developing focus here in the fifth line place.

Frank
 
M

meng

Guest
Thanks, Maria and Frank. Both reasonable answers, me thinks.

I am so used to Brad's careful and deliberate use of language in his texts, and for some reason I can't make much sense of his comments here:

"Culture is a veneer no longer over this wild beast (?), it now goes all the way down, only not quite as far (?). Good fortune for the one with a knife (?), for knowing it takes but a nip at the root of unruly behavior (reference to castration, I assume?) to get great results."

That just sounds un-Brad-like to me. And it doesn't make much sense to me either. Usually I walk away from Brad's commentaries chuckling, nodding and thinking. This one leaves me :confused:. Here we have a disfigured wild beast, maimed for the sake of human compatability. Not that that's anything new, of course, but I'm not getting the moral of this story from the boar's point of view. Is is just decrease to the beast to serve humanity? Or, using LiSe's terms, is nature sacrificed for the sake of culture? Is that the ultimatum given here for the boar?

Now, let me also say, my male dog has also been "gelded", for both my sake and his sake, given the conditions he is required to live in, i.e. no bitches in the yard to play with. But he is bred to be domesticated. He's not a wild boar. However, he does retain a thread of his wolf DNA. Maybe that's what Brad means by "it now goes all the way down, only not quite as far."
 

bradford

(deceased)
Clarity Supporter
Joined
May 30, 2006
Messages
2,626
Reaction score
410
Hi-
I wasn't trying to be neutral here. I was tongue-in-cheek taking the perspective of the husbandman, and not that of the boar (or else I was teasing the boar with impunity).
The boar's point of view was left implied by the insult to his nature combined with his new inability to get too excited about it. Note the zhi gua changes to Taming Power of the Small. The big decision has already been made with the scissors. Now it's time to accept your fate and fit in with polite society. It might also be read as the question: where are my cajones? Oh, yeah, I don't got none. Then grant me serenity, even religion.
"Culture is a veneer no longer" means the same as "Culture is no longer a veneer ", but now it might as well be all of life since there is no longer a deeper depth of wildness and passion to set free.
Also, what he has in common with the bull is being in service to something greater than himself, the legacy that 26 is all about. The bull can still rage a bit within the confines of his pen, but the castrated boar's small happiness can be found in his freedom from rage.
 
Last edited:
M

meng

Guest
Thanks, Brad, for tying it together so thoroughly.

I dunno, even as a kid I never liked the Ferdinand the Bull story.

hm-bll.jpg
 

bradford

(deceased)
Clarity Supporter
Joined
May 30, 2006
Messages
2,626
Reaction score
410
Figuring out some of the animal references in the Yijing was interesting.
I've had various wild and farm animals living next door for decades now, but
several times I paid visits to various country vets and called up zoos to try and
get some insight into what behaviors the authors were trying to describe.
Those guys were pretty observant.
 

rodaki

visitor
Joined
Jun 26, 2008
Messages
2,176
Reaction score
78
But then it's true, it may have benefits for the beast.

ferdinand+3.jpg

well, there doesn't seem to be much choice there, does it? it's either play the fool or a fight in the arena . . anyway, I think bulls are sometimes too patient for their own good
 

bradford

(deceased)
Clarity Supporter
Joined
May 30, 2006
Messages
2,626
Reaction score
410
Milking the Bull
For the summer of 1976 I had moved to a 600-acre ranch near the Rogue River in Oregon to work on my first primitive Yijing book. Harvey, the 88 year-old man who owned the ranch, still ran a small dairy operation there, 25 miles from the nearest small town, population about 100. He grew up there with his brother Charlie. Harvey called Charlie the wild one of the family because once every year around Christmas time, no matter what the weather was doing, Charlie just had to go clear into town.
They kept a bull around on the ranch to freshen the cows. Back in the early sixties or so, he never told me a date, artificial insemination was just starting to get popular, and you could order the necessary equipment from Sears and Roebuck. The main instrument was a hollow hot-water-bottle type of contraption. You would fill and lubricate this thing and slide it over the bull's proud organ of generation until he gave you what you had come for. Harvey had locked the bull into the tight pen so he couldn't move around. Charlie took charge of filling the hot water bottle. They got the young feller all excited and slipped the bovine sex toy over his throbbing bullhood.
Maybe Charlie wasn't so good at reading instructions, or maybe he just made the simple association of hot water bottle with boiling water. Anyway, Harvey described how after the first three seconds there was almost nothing left of that wooden pen, and how it took them three days to catch the bull. The bull was old when I saw him. He had to be led around with a nose ring now. He had developed some kind of a problem trusting people. Telling that story was the only time I ever heard old Harvey chuckle.
 
M

maremaria

Guest
When I said what I said , I had a personal experience in my mind. When I started working at the age of 18, my major problem was the rude customers. I was a woman , having a job that usually men work, and I look much younger than my age, so people were not that much polite with me. Some of them made me mad and that bull inside me wanted to attack. But such a behaviour was not “accepted” . Some I had to invent a trick. One day, I saw a movie with some baseball scenes. The way the player hit the ball with the bat, was amazingly satisfying. That was the trick I was looking. So when a rude client was in front of me, I had that geisha’s smile in my face, and in my mind that bull was grapping the baseball bat and shooting the client’s head and throw it far away, the head and the words. :bag: It’s a bit embarrassing to say that, but the feeling was great !!! Relief !!! That bull, in that little space in my mind was free to express her anger without messing up my duties.

No matter how civilized we are, there are times that that wild beast's nature , wakes up.:rolleyes:
 

Sparhawk

One of those men your mother warned you about...
Clarity Supporter
Joined
Sep 17, 1971
Messages
5,120
Reaction score
107
Maybe Charlie wasn't so good at reading instructions, or maybe he just made the simple association of hot water bottle with boiling water. Anyway, Harvey described how after the first three seconds there was almost nothing left of that wooden pen, and how it took them three days to catch the bull. The bull was old when I saw him. He had to be led around with a nose ring now. He had developed some kind of a problem trusting people. Telling that story was the only time I ever heard old Harvey chuckle.

LOL!! I'd say... :rofl:
 

fkegan

(deceased)
Joined
Aug 31, 2007
Messages
2,052
Reaction score
41
Hi All,

Ferdinand The Bull is also a reasonable depiction of the sign of Taurus, which although called the Bull is a feminine sign and as a sun sign more described by an individual quest to keep upon one's comfortable path than any interest in outward fighting, especially in a bull ring which is fatal.

Mythological animals are only somewhat related to actual animals. For Aristotle they are seen from the outside only. It appears Aristotle's major interest in collecting animal specimens was to relate them to his collection of city-state constitutions to show how everything adapts to local conditions.

In hex 26, the two Yin open spaces have animal references not to the animal itself (as in line 3 where the horse is getting along with others) but to ways to make the animal different for human benefit. Line 4, the bull remains a bull in all ways, just with the horns grown so as to be less deadly. In line 5 the boar is altered to make it totally different, just a large and meaty pig.

One could say line 4 respects and maintains the essential nature of the bull while in line 5 the pig is being totally interfered with to be only its human benefit. In both lines the wild animal power is tamed which is the theme of the hexagram, how to really change things to tame them.

Frank
 

charly

visitor
Joined
May 9, 2007
Messages
2,315
Reaction score
243
...
Not that that's anything new, of course, but I'm not getting the moral of this story from the boar's point of view. Is is just decrease to the beast to serve humanity? Or, using LiSe's terms, is nature sacrificed for the sake of culture? Is that the ultimatum given here for the boar?
Bruce:

I have not my chinese YI at hand, but i will try to do the better.

The line says literally:

GELDED PIG´S TUSK. LUCKY.

Nothing more.

The character FEN meaning GELDED appears only once in the Changes and never in the Odes. I don´t see another meaning for this character, whicn is strange for a chinese character.

Read as a verb this line would say: GELD THE PIG´S TUSK. LUCKY., as an advice of taking care of yourself.

But the word seem to be an adjective: GELDED PIG´S TUSK. LUCKY. No verb, not a complete statement. Why lucky? Lucky for whom?

There is a possibility that the message be:


FORTUNATELY, SOMETIMES EVEN A GELDED PIG CAN CONSERVE HIS TUSKS.

I believe that the GELDED PIG is a metaphor for HUMAN CONDITION, the same as CAPTIVE. We are the gelded pigs.

To be gelded is always the worse thing that can happen to a gentleman?

Not necessarily. The Changes was written for diviners by diviners. Divination was always dangerous. Diviners worry about conserving themselves the more complete possible.

To geld anybody was a royal prerrogative. sometimes scribes were put in the disjunctive of accepting to be gelded or seeing all his descendants in the worse poverty, seeing all his male descendants working as slaves in royal buildings, seeing all his female descendants in another sort of slavery, working as prostitutes in the royal brothels, or maybe making the joy of soldiers.

When scribes had sons and daughters and loved them, they preferred to be gelded indeed. For a gentleman the usual after being geldded was to commit suicide. But there were alt least one case that continued writing his chronicles and continued critizicing the royal despotism.

Lucky for him, for his sons and daughters and for the posterity.

This was the story of a scribe called HORSE: Sima Qian.

Yours,

Charly

tu05b.JPG
 
Last edited:
M

meng

Guest
You raise an interesting point, Charly. The line text actually says nothing about the the boar or the human owner, though it may (or may not?) be implied. Assuming for a moment that nothing but the gelded boar's tusks are the object of this line, might that not reduce it to a symbol of man's ferocity? Like the saber, rifle, or set of dueling pistols, they may be but a remnant for man to reminisce of a more dangerous and invested life. Could it be reduced further to mere saber rattling?
 

charly

visitor
Joined
May 9, 2007
Messages
2,315
Reaction score
243
You raise an interesting point, Charly. The line text actually says nothing about the the boar or the human owner, though it may (or may not?) be implied. Assuming for a moment that nothing but the gelded boar's tusks are the object of this line, might that not reduce it to a symbol of man's ferocity? Like the saber, rifle, or set of dueling pistols, they may be but a remnant for man to reminisce of a more dangerous and invested life. Could it be reduced further to mere saber rattling?
Hi, Bruce:

Human ferocity is not a reminiscence, it's always actual. Few time has passed from the point of view of history. Our time continues being dangerous.

Maybe the whole hexagram is a reminiscence of a nomadic way life, as depicted by the appearance of some topics.

  • 26: big cattle, no home fed
  • 26.1: dangerous but profitable (way of life)
  • 26.2: moving on carts
  • 26.3: pursuing fine horses, wandering long distances
  • 26.4: in the origin, taming young oxen
  • 26.5: adding f_cking pigs after the oxen
  • 26.6: carrying the way of the sky

Waley said that a herd of swine crossing a stream was a portent of heavy rain in the Book of Poetry, the rain that the pastures need. No irrigation in the steppe. Lucky indeed.

A hard way of life where work is almost a sport, where animals are subdued to the human will, where neither people live in houses nor animals live in jails.

Not about farming, but about cattle breeding.

I will post the chinese text assap.

I wonder why swines instead of sheeps, maybe it was a joke, pigs put their dirty noses in all places.

Yours,

Charly

P.D.:

A mongolian beauty from the film Kadak (2006):

khadak-movie-mongolia.jpg

From: http://www.mongolia-web.com/art/2606-khadak-mongolia-movie-in-cafe-amsterdam
 
Last edited:

charly

visitor
Joined
May 9, 2007
Messages
2,315
Reaction score
243
...
Maybe the whole hexagram is a reminiscence of a nomadic way life, as depicted by the appearance of some topics.

  • 26: big cattle, no home fed
  • 26.1: dangerous but profitable (way of life)
  • 26.2: moving on carts
  • 26.3: pursuing fine horses, wandering long distances
  • 26.4: in the origin, taming young oxen
  • 26.5: adding f_cking pigs after the oxen
  • 26.6: carrying the way of the sky
...


da4: big / great /
chu4: cattle / livestock / domestic animal /

li4: benefit / profit / profitable /
zhen1: divination / omen / perseverance / chaste /

bu4: not / no /
jia1: home / family /
shi2: animal feed / eat / food /

ji2: lucky / fortunate /

li4: benefit / profit / profitable /
she4: to wade / to cross / to ford /
da4: big / great /
chuan1: river / creek / stream /


A literal alternative:

BIG CATTLE
Herds of animals bred by nomadic people

PROFITABLE OMEN
Good.


NO HOME FED
Eating pasture, not living under roof.


PROFITABLE TO CROSS THE BIG STREAM
A hard enterprise,
profitable to move them from one place to another.




Of course, not the only possible literal translation and plain interpretation.

Yours,

Charly
 
M

meng

Guest
Hi, Bruce:

Human ferocity is not a reminiscence, it's always actual. Few time has passed from the point of view of history. Our time continues being dangerous.

Had to think about this in the context of 26.5, and you're right. So it does come down to self discipline.
 

rodaki

visitor
Joined
Jun 26, 2008
Messages
2,176
Reaction score
78
there is this song that always makes me laugh when I listen to it cause it reminds me all the various characters we have inside . . and also how when a situation might seem like it could derail, the best way to avoid it is by cutting back for a while what nourishes the source of danger . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1kAGYiCLBs

;)
 

Lavalamp

visitor
Joined
Oct 21, 2011
Messages
1,094
Reaction score
191
Old thread comment additions again.

I grasp the concept of a "gelded pig's tusk lucky" as a reference to culture and civilization. Knowing how to behave in public, what is acceptable and what is boorish behavior. You eat politely, don't burp in public, don't grab the asses of attractive females, don't react with your fists to insults, are considerate of the less fortunate, do not seek for humor in the misfortunes of others - maybe you can ballroom dance, maybe you can play music or paint. It is lucky thing to have been brought up well with manners and know how to get along in society. What, were you raised in a barn? That would not be very lucky, then you have to learn from scratch, better to be trained from childhood.

Actual wild boars (as opposed to metaphoric ones) are I think often different than those imagined. Sure, one wild boar was terrorizing my sisters farm, injured her dogs, so 5 big Hawaiian boys came out and hunted it down. It was REALLY big and mean. But her second boy at his place had 6 wild Boars come out of the woods and adopt their family. Being extremely intelligent creatures, they must have thought dogs had a pretty good deal. He had to give some of them away to other neighbors. They acted like pet dogs, wanted you to scratch their backs, they'd bump you and then run wanting you to chase them... Pretty damn funny with a 450 lb animal that's smart as a whip and has a sense of humor too. And not vicious at all, lying on it's back wanting a 7 year old to scratch it's belly. But then the kids are all half Hawaiian, so maybe there's something going on there too.

- LL
 
Last edited:

Lana73123

Supporter
Clarity Supporter
Joined
May 19, 2016
Messages
145
Reaction score
19
Could hexagram 26.5 be about animalistic nature and just *operating* straight on instinct. Now, you have the ability to refine what it is you perceive as reality which becomes more defined. The reality is one of loss. Or maybe shedding is a better term. It's not a negative reality. It is one based on the removal of something that is inherently a part of us as humans. It could be a chapter which has closed or one that it never fully began - but it is certain that something is gone except for a little bit. And you have learned how to use that bit when it is necessary and would yield the most harvest. GOOD FORTUNE.
The dialogue with yourself has now become more eloquent, more elegant, more dignified, and by all means more enlightened. The energy is now able to be controlled but not to the point of total sacrifice of wild self, which remains present in small quantities. Rare and valuable quantities.

Therefore I completely concurs with Bradford's commentary which said "...it now goes all the way down, only not quite as far." It's getting gone -- but a little bit makes all the difference.
 
Last edited:

Lana73123

Supporter
Clarity Supporter
Joined
May 19, 2016
Messages
145
Reaction score
19
It's like moving from mother into crone. You don't lose your feminine wiles and sexuality but you lose the ability to procreate.
 

poised

visitor
Joined
Jan 14, 2013
Messages
370
Reaction score
11
All hat, no cattle?

Had to think about this in the context of 26.5, and you're right. So it does come down to self discipline.

Couldn't resist tossing in the Bush-ism. Self-discipline is the answer that fits my 26.5 coin toss, "what's wrong with me," which didn't seem too connected to bacon or "huevos."
 

rosada

visitor
Joined
Jun 3, 2006
Messages
9,888
Reaction score
3,169
I get value from looking at the sequence.
Hexagram 25. Innocence describes this naive young soul who gets his cow stolen when he too trustingly leaves it unattended. The lines at first seem to praise his ability to just keep going without being too disturbed by the incident but by 25.6 you'd have hoped he would have learned something but no, he's still waltzing along and it's not funny anymore. At 25.6 we realize he's not just a sweet young innocent, he's a fool who may never learn. So Hexagram 26 describes what happens next - it's necessary to majorly restrain this oblivious character. Hopefully by sharing stories of one's own experiences - as described by The Image - those who have gone before him and already learned how to function in the world can teach him something and prevent him from repeating the same mistakes over and over. The lines indicate whether this approach will be successful.

Imagine you're trying to teach your teenager to drive more responsibly:
26.1 Stop! You don't know what you're doing!
26.2 Take away the wheels/car.
26.3 Carefully explain the laws and let him practice off the road.
26.4 Ride beside him on the city streets. Keep your foot near the break pedal!
26.5 Your son treasures the time he spent riding around with you and hearing your stories and explanations. He now has no desire to take risks especially now that you have gotten close.
26.6. Set him loose on the highway on his own. Pray!
 
Last edited:

Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom

Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).

Top