11/05/2013

I Ching

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I Ching, I-Ging 易經 / 易经 The Book of Changes
"Buch der Wandlungen“ - „Klassiker der Wandlungen“

- quote
The I Ching (Wade-Giles) or "Yì Jīng" (pinyin),
also known as the Classic of Changes, Book of Changes or Zhouyi, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts.
The book contains a divination system comparable to Western geomancy or the West African Ifá system; in Western cultures and modern East Asia, it is still widely used for this purpose.

Structure
The text of the I Ching is a set of oracular statements represented by 64 sets of six lines each called hexagrams (卦 guà). Each hexagram is a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines (爻 yáo), each line is either Yang (an unbroken, or solid line), or Yin (broken, an open line with a gap in the center). With six such lines stacked from bottom to top there are 26 or 64 possible combinations, and thus 64 hexagrams represented.

The hexagram diagram is composed of two three-line arrangements called trigrams (卦 guà). There are 23, hence 8, possible trigrams. The traditional view was that the hexagrams were a later development and resulted from combining two trigrams. However, in the earliest relevant archaeological evidence, groups of numerical symbols on many Western Zhou bronzes and a very few Shang oracle bones, such groups already usually appear in sets of six. A few have been found in sets of three numbers, but these are somewhat later. Numerical sets greatly predate the groups of broken and unbroken lines, leading modern scholars to doubt the mythical early attributions of the hexagram system, (Shaugnessy 1993).

When a hexagram is cast using one of the traditional processes of divination with I Ching, each yin and yang line will be indicated as either moving (that is, changing), or fixed (unchanging). Sometimes called old lines, a second hexagram is created by changing moving lines to their opposite. These are referred to in the text by the numbers six through nine as follows:

Nine is old yang, an unbroken line (—θ—) changing into yin, a broken line (— —);
Eight is young yin, a broken line (— —) without change;
Seven is young yang, an unbroken line (———) without change;
Six is old yin, a broken line (—X—) changing into yang, an unbroken line (———).

Trigrams



The solid line represents yang, the creative principle. The open line represents yin, the receptive principle. These principles are also represented in a common circular symbol (☯), known as taijitu (太極圖), but more commonly known in the west as the yin-yang (陰陽) diagram, expressing the idea of complementarity of changes: when Yang is at top, Yin is increasing, and vice versa.

In the following lists, the trigrams and hexagrams are represented using a common textual convention, horizontally from left-to-right, using '|' for yang and '¦' for yin, rather than the traditional bottom-to-top. In a more modern usage, the numbers 0 and 1 can also be used to represent yin and yang, being read left-to-right. There are eight possible trigrams (八卦 bāguà):
© More in the WIKIPEDIA !

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I Ching - Nr. 24 Fu - Return (The Turning Point) -Wendezeit

. winter solstice -
the dark
growing darker .




Tao and Haiku
. Tao - About Non-doing (wu-wei) .


. Tao - Yin and Yang 陰陽 .





. Ezra Pound and the I Ching 易經 .


. Abe no Seimei 阿倍晴明 .
Onmyodo, onmyoodoo 陰陽道 The Way of Yin and Yang


. Chinese origin of Japanese kigo .


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- - - - - H A I K U - - - - -

sanrai-i: mountain thunder; jaw or mouth

一人前菜も青けりけさの霜
ichinin-mae na mo aomi keri kesa no shimo

on a full tray
the food, too, pale --
frost this morning

Tr. Chris Drake

This hokku was written on 8/30 (Oct. 15) in 1803, when Issa was on a trip to a town just northeast of Edo. The hokku is written on the theme of the 27th hexagram, in Japanese sanrai-i (山雷頤), of the ancient Chinese Yi Jing (I-ching), or Book of Changes, which Issa had been studying, along with other Japanese and Chinese classics. The six-line hexagram is made up of two three-line elements representing "mountain" and "thunder," and together they suggest an open mouth or lowered jaw, yielding an image of eating or talking. As a divinatory sign, this hexagram contains contradictory elements and is usually taken as a warning against immediate or exaggerated expectations that nevertheless holds out the possibility of long-term success if changes leading to self-improvement are made. In terms of eating, it suggests there will be soon be serious eating and related disorders if the person does not realize the existence of the problem and change his (or her) poor eating habits.
For the Legge translation of the Chinese text of the Yi Jing explaining the 27th hexagram:


- source : www.sacred-texts.com - Legge


This hokku is one of a series in Issa's diary that try to capture in a single image an important aspect of a chapter or stanza in various Chinese classics, and much is implied rather than stated. Frost can have many meanings, but here it above all seems to be suggesting whitening or making things pale. It may also be warning of colder times ahead and the need for caution. The meaning of the frost influences how aomikeri or "[is] pale" in the second line is interpreted. The verb can mean 1) for plants to turn a vibrant green in early summer, 2) for the moon to look bluish and pale or plants to turn a pale, sickly green, or 3) for sick or exhausted people to look pale, literally "blue-greenish." The word ao refers to both blue and green, so in Japanese this wide range of meanings is natural.

Because winter has come and frost now whitens many plants, I take Issa to be using meaning 2 here and closely linking two areas of paleness -- the frost and the food -- by using the word "too." Since hexagram 27 is about changing one's awareness and taking action, there is probably the further suggestion that the man's face is also pale (meaning 3 above) because of his bad eating habits. The man having breakfast surely senses he's not completely healthy, and he realizes he's losing his appetite, since he feels the various kinds of food (na) on the small dishes on his tray look as pale as the frost outside. In Issa's time an ordinary commoner's breakfast usually consisted of brown rice, miso soybean soup, and several small dishes of pickled vegetables, beans, tofu, and/or seaweed. Since it's winter, it's unlikely there are many raw leafy greens on the man's tray, though leaves of mustard spinach (komatsuna), daikon radishes, and leeks were sometimes used in miso soup in winter. The overall paleness of the man's complexion, his food, and the frost outside will, if the man is wise, cause him to make basic changes in his eating habits.

Chris Drake


. Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 Issa in Edo .


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