Chance + danger: Crisis

  John F. Kennedy has been credited as saying, "When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.” It was a very enlightening way of seeing crisis, and it aroused my interest in a language in which this was possible. And when I got Ritsema-Karcher's I Ching with its concordance in 1993 I realized it could indeed be done: translating myself.

  Slowly I worked my way through the Yi, and close to the end, in hex.59, I came across the character Jī, meaning chance.

  In 59.2, the 4th character is usually translated as support or bench. The character shows only wood and table, it looks alike in full-form and in simplified. But the simplified one can also indicate another character in full-form, and in the three full-form (or traditional) Chinese Yi's in my possession there is indeed this other character. It is jí, in Mathew's nr. 411, and in Far-East Dictionary nr.2605.

  Jī is an interesting word. It is an image of a loom, maybe the first 'machine'' of the world. The meanings encompass both what a loom does and the possibilities of weaving something, making something work and the pivotal point where it starts to work.
Meanings: "machine, the key to things, cause of the change of things, opportunity, ingenuity,  endowment, spirit, strategy, inspiration, threshold, 'is different', the moving power of, the workings of things, the pivotal juncture, the inherent mechanism, the organic potential".... For example: TianJī is the influence of heaven, the bent of a man; XinJī is powers of the mind, devices of the heart. Another meaning is opportunity, chance. So 59.2 is: A flood - flee to an opportunity. Or: A flood - grasp every tool you have to make a change. In the MawangDui YiJing there is another character, jiē, a flight of stairs, or 'to rely on'. The meaning: flee to something you can climb on. The chance everyone looks for in a flood, or when running from a pack of angry dogs.

  Maybe the whole sentence, huàn bēn qí jī, is 'disperse (and) go to your moving power'. Then bēn qí jī might be something like grasping your power of pulling yourself out of danger. When everything is in chaos, then your can only rely on your survival instincts, your 'luck', your own wits, 'something' inside yourself which makes you find a way out.

  Fanyao is 20.2: Contemplation with a narrow view. Harvest: woman's determination.  If you can see only a small part of something, then refrain from action.