I Ching, Yijing or Zhou Yi
"Oracle of the moon": © 2000 LiSe
Yi Jing, Oracle of the Moon
Jí Jì, hexagram 63
Already across
Nature knows nothing about fixed order like man does. ‘Everything in its place and stay there’ as if he is training his dog. Nature knows equilibrium, an organic interplay of all creatures, things, climates, everything. When one thing changes, everything moves toward a new balance. People who have a mind like nature are healthy, happy and good. When they are disturbed, their mind moves toward a new natural wholeness. They are not rigidly organized inside, they have an inner symbiosis of all aspects of their personality. It is a mind of Chan, of Zen.
Chaos and order alternate. You need both, you need chaos to take apart the old and obsolete, and to give new patterns and forms the opportunity to emerge. You need order to turn them into reality.
Hex.63 is order – for as long as it endures. Neverending order would be dangerous, things would freeze or petrify. After order always comes chaos. “In the beginning good fortune, at the end chaos”. Order can only exist “now”, it has no future, certainly not a fixed one.
The lost curtain of the second line has to do with fixed order, how things "should be". When the world is as it "should be", small deviations can feel like big disasters. In an old YiJing there is a verse for hex.63 about a spiders web - "throw it in the ditch". A spiders web is a perfect piece of art, but tiny things can destroy it completely.
Ji2Ji4. a pot of food and a man turning away from it, or belching. He has finished eating. FE2197, [M453], GSR.515c: to complete, finish, exhaust, all, entirely, since, after; particle of perfect tense. JI4: water or a river (2) and a field of grain, all being alike (3 and 3a), meaning uniform, equal, of equal length. Meanings: a ford, to ford, to cross a stream; to relieve, to aid; to succeed, to be up to standard; to benefit, benefits. Pronounced JI3 it means: various, numerous, elegant and dignified, an area in the lower reaches of the Yellow River.
The trigrams: Water above Fire.
Already across.
The noble one takes thought of misfortune and guards against it.
Fire inside knows where it wants to go: where it can find food. It doesn't fix a direction beforehand, it looks around and adapts, follows. Water is the shape-giver or shape-creator. Not its own idea of shape but what heaven and earth make possible. It is a wonderful medium for passing on energy, movement, vibrations, forces. Heaven and Earth use water to create together all forms “right here and now”, not one form is premeditated, they come into existence in this moment. The way Heaven happens to be now, and Earth happens to be now.
“The noble one takes thought of misfortune and guards against it“, not by fearing misfortune but by being open to all changes of fortune, like water. Flowing with them.