nirgal
12-21-2004, 03:36 AM
I Ching (book of changes)
I found a new translation of the I ching by a current Taoist master (master of nothing?) and I've been reading about it for several months now and casting it, trying to see if there is anything to it and what its nature is. I've found that it doesn't predict, it describes a situation amazingly accurately and indicates direction, but that is always in terms of change and potential.
What is odd and prompted me writing about it is that yesterday I was going through some boxes of stuff in the storage locker looking for a map of New Zealand. Inside a box that I hadn't opened in years was a book on sychronicity and directly under it was my copy of the I ching, that I had bought back in 1970. So I thought "this is interesting and brought it home, I decided just to open it randomly (it is a book on synchronicity after all ;)) so....... it opens to a page describing the I ching and how it reflects the nature of now, in a synchronistic way. :eek:
WTF?....
A question can be asked from a place of stillness, and the answer will come in the form of a 'Gua' consisting of two trigrams of solid(yang) and broken(yin) lines, one above the other. There are 64 all together and each represent a different stage in cycles of change. The Gua itself describes the situation as it is now, and every line in each Gua represents a place within stage. When you receive an answer, one of the lines in the Gua will be ready to alternate, that is the place the subject of the question is, within that stage. When that line changes from yin to yang or yang to yin, the result is a new Gua, or a new place in the cycle. So the answers are in the nature of what is now and what is changing, rather than a specific out come. Some Gua are more significant than others in that they do represent a lunar cycle as well, and some are double Gua (heaven over heaven for example), but they all represent a place in a great cycle within a cycle.
from the book... Synchronicity
"The contemporary nature of this ancient explanation (of divination) is, that within each process of nature is enfolded the whole...... Within the I Ching, mind and matter are no longer precieved as a duality, but in their essential unity, and the potential of the moment is explicitly unfolded within the pattern of the hexagram (Gua)..... "The creative energy that is let loose at this moment... its power is sufficient to transform the whole meaning of the present and all the patterns it contains."
Basically, casting the I Ching reflects the now as well as creates it.
Whacha think?
I found a new translation of the I ching by a current Taoist master (master of nothing?) and I've been reading about it for several months now and casting it, trying to see if there is anything to it and what its nature is. I've found that it doesn't predict, it describes a situation amazingly accurately and indicates direction, but that is always in terms of change and potential.
What is odd and prompted me writing about it is that yesterday I was going through some boxes of stuff in the storage locker looking for a map of New Zealand. Inside a box that I hadn't opened in years was a book on sychronicity and directly under it was my copy of the I ching, that I had bought back in 1970. So I thought "this is interesting and brought it home, I decided just to open it randomly (it is a book on synchronicity after all ;)) so....... it opens to a page describing the I ching and how it reflects the nature of now, in a synchronistic way. :eek:
WTF?....
A question can be asked from a place of stillness, and the answer will come in the form of a 'Gua' consisting of two trigrams of solid(yang) and broken(yin) lines, one above the other. There are 64 all together and each represent a different stage in cycles of change. The Gua itself describes the situation as it is now, and every line in each Gua represents a place within stage. When you receive an answer, one of the lines in the Gua will be ready to alternate, that is the place the subject of the question is, within that stage. When that line changes from yin to yang or yang to yin, the result is a new Gua, or a new place in the cycle. So the answers are in the nature of what is now and what is changing, rather than a specific out come. Some Gua are more significant than others in that they do represent a lunar cycle as well, and some are double Gua (heaven over heaven for example), but they all represent a place in a great cycle within a cycle.
from the book... Synchronicity
"The contemporary nature of this ancient explanation (of divination) is, that within each process of nature is enfolded the whole...... Within the I Ching, mind and matter are no longer precieved as a duality, but in their essential unity, and the potential of the moment is explicitly unfolded within the pattern of the hexagram (Gua)..... "The creative energy that is let loose at this moment... its power is sufficient to transform the whole meaning of the present and all the patterns it contains."
Basically, casting the I Ching reflects the now as well as creates it.
Whacha think?