I Ching In Brief

 

These are single topic focused articles for the more experienced inquirer and student of Yijing. In addition we hope to include a variety of topics centered on the mythic approach. If you want to suggest a topic or comment on an article, click here and select the ‘feedback’ topic.

A World of Change

 

Today, like it or not, we live in a whirlpool of change. When we experience ourselves as the passive victims of change we feel cut off, isolated, frightened and angry. When we feel a part of the dialogue, we are connected to the basic creative energy that shapes the world we live in and our individual actions can have far-reaching effects.

 

The Name of the Book

Yi (pronounced “yee”), is usually translated as Change or changes. Philosophically, it is primordial change, inscribed in the actual order of things, the on-going process of the real or Way. It gives us the seeds and the symbols through which life and spirit can transmit and extend themselves. The meanings of this truly magical name include making a gift, healing a sickness, calming and tranquilizing the spirit, pulling up weeds, cultivating a field. It is the sun appearing after clouds, thanks to the intervention of an ancestor. It is the name of a frontier region, and suggests borderline or liminal states of mind and place. The Chinese character in its various forms contains the graphs for sun and moon and for a lizard or chameleon.

 

The book contains models of orderly change, such as the round of the seasons and the stages of life, and models of transformation like ice becoming water or life turning into death. Yi or Change itself is something different. It is destabilizing change, a paradigm shift, sudden storms when the stable becomes fluid and structures fail, a challenge to all that is fixed, overdeveloped, oppressive or outmoded. It is also the response to those times: versatility and imaginative mobility, openness, fluid and light, not difficult and heavy, a fluid personal identity, an imaginative mobility that reconnects us with the deep flow of the Dao or Way. The Warring States Sages who developed Change as an Inner Way felt it was a companion or helper, a warm and knowing presence. Through yi or Change, they felt, you can seize the moment (shi), changing and moving as fluidly as the creative force behind it. The great tradition of Change was made to connect the yi of the universe and the Way to your own yi, your creative imagination - if you choose to use it.

 

The Book, the Technique and the Practice

Yijing or Change (yi), as it is usually called, is a book or text, a divination technique and a Way, a spiritual and imaginative process or discipline.

 

The book or text consists of 64 Figures or symbols (xiang), often referred to as hexagrams (gua). These symbols are combinations of linear diagrams, short vivid pronouncements and vast chains of associations. They were treasured as keys to the mysteries of transformation, elaborated and interpreted for over 3000 years.

 

You do not so much read Change, however, as talk with it, for the figures truly come alive in response to an individual question. This is the technique: posing a question and using what we might call a random number generator to connect it with the great world of synchronicity, where individual experience becomes meaningful. This technique enables the book to “speak to your situation,” giving you a symbolic mirror that “reaches the depths, grasps the seeds and penetrates the wills of all beings under heaven.” It teaches you about the fate (ming) that Heaven bestowed upon you and helps you follow your innate nature (jing).

 

This technique is the foundation of the “Great Enterprise,” a spiritual process or discipline, a Way. It turns the book into a kind of portable altar, a personal link to the great river of time and space on which the symbols that unfold the Way flow toward us. It offers a Way to put those symbols into action, a Way to “renew the time.”

 

The Way of Water

So, perhaps the best way to imagine the tradition of Change you are about to enter is as a stream, a living stream of images, words, emblems and myths that mark the Way of Water, the fundamental image of the Dao. This flow is described as wang lai , going and coming on the river of time and space. “Going” represents what is leaving the field of awareness. It is the stream as it flows away from us, carrying away what is finished, reflected in the wang -sacrifice, an exorcism of noxious influences. “Coming” is the stream as it flows towards us, carrying the symbols that will unfold into events. It is the Tree on the Earth Altar. It gives us the seeds: the spirits (shen) and the symbols (xiang) which will unfold into events.

 

We in the modern west tend to see change as either objective and predictable or totally “random.” We use statistics, norms, the law of averages and mass numbers to describe it. We assume that it is the same for all people at all times. This is scientific law; an experience must be repeatable, independent of the subject, in order to be recognized as a valid experience.

 

The sages and diviners who put together Yijing , the Classic of Change, saw things differently. They recognized change and what we call “chance” as the work of the spirit, an individual encounter with reality. They called the basic flow of energy that shapes experience Dao or Way, and realized that this Way expresses itself as symbols (xiang) that articulate a “moment” of time (shi). People can use these symbols or images, they felt, to be “in harmony with the time” and, through using them, their actions can resonate with the spirit of Change and connect with its hidden transformative power. They felt that this symbolic approach to reality helps us live our lives more fully and freely by keeping us in touch with the on-going process of the real, what the old Sages called the Way.

 

Using Change

The Classic of Change offers both the technique of finding these symbols or images and the art of using them. It has been a very real help in times of danger for many people over the 3000 years it has existed, a powerful tool and spiritual vehicle that can help people navigate the voyage of life. It is designed to help us understand and work with the unconscious forces shaping the situations we confront. It does not describe change; it participates in and articulates change. It brings out our helping spirit (shen), the inner voice that helps us on our Way. As we embrace this spirit and this ideal, we can realize our destiny and, through its connection to the Way, acquire the real ability to aid others.

 

There is a way to do this, outlined in Dazhuan, the warring States treatise o Change as a vehicle of transformation. This might be a guide to our encounter with this great tradition. It emphasizes that we must take the symbols into our hearts rather than simply analyzing them.

Change is a book you cannot keep at a distance, for

its Way is always shifting.

Transforming and moving, never resting

it flows through the six empty places

like a messenger of life and death

transforming the strong and the supple.

Rules cannot confine this. It follows only Change.

It issues forth and re-enters in a stately dance,

teaching caution within and without,

illuminating the causes of trouble.

It is not an army to protect you,

but a beloved ancestor who draws near.

So follow the words and feel their place in your heart

and you will have charge of the omens and their powerful symbols.

If you are not willing to do this, the Way cannot open for you.

 

Yijing and its great tradition has been a spiritual and practical guide and a very real help in times of crisis for many people over the thousands of years it has existed. It has certainly changed my life, and I feel a deep gratitude for its presence as it guides me and those I love and care for. I sincerely hope something of this spirit comes through in this translation and that you, too, may experience shen ming , the friendship of this clear and loving spirit.