Continuing commentary on the initial reading and study of the I Ching….
Learning the basics of the I Ching, Taoism, and how cause and effect creates change in all things. It was like a call to beginnings and endings telling me that what I was doing was not what I was supposed to be doing and that what was important was not where I am, but who I am supposed to yet become. Later in 1994 I would leave my employment in Massachusetts and move to Florida for a new job in Boynton Beach.
Number 6 of the I Ching
Finding Joy
As with all things that must know their way, leaving things undone due to flights of fancy can lead to one’s undoing. Learn from your mistakes and know that what has come will come again.
Be patient, know and understand that staying close to the Tao keeps one protected. Stray and bad things can occur. Find purpose and meaning in what you do and what needs done will get done. Both good and bad are the same. However, knowing the outcome leads one to know the way of virtue.
Accept faults and accept the true fate. Once admitted you are accepted again. Remember what is now taken for granted and loosely kept can easily be taken back again.
What is fundamental is that the eternal oneness of all things will change. Yin become yang. Yang becomes yin. Leaving things undone opens chi to the unknown. Letting nature find its course leads one to finding the joy in all things.
An original composition and interpretation of the Chinese Classic the I Ching (6 THE COURT / Heaven over Water). 2/7/94
So much about how we define boundaries tell the boundaries of how we chose to live. So much of what I’ve learned in the intervening years I attribute to Chuang Tzu and learning to live with change with the I Ching as the starting point. Becoming accustoming to the way of Tao and accepting my true fate.
Chuang Tzu saw the Tao about becoming one with becoming a sage.
The paradox was seeing some people having the talent of the sage, but not the Tao of the sage. While others can have the Tao of the sage, but not the skills of the sage. The Tao becomes an awareness which heightens that which has already been experienced and understood, or vice versa. Chuang Tzu makes it clear that anyone relying on anything deemed necessary by the worlds standards is never going to approach the Tao. It would only be by abandoning the rational models of understanding that true understanding comes. Much can be made of what we can remember and are here to build on. Much later I would gain a far better understanding of the importance of our memories.
This is a basic tenet of Taoism that for me took years and writing and living to fully appreciate. To illustrate this Chuang Tzu refers to a story of an old tree. Later I’ll tell the story move fully.
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