Yi-Blog

Every time I hear or read about "throwing the I Ching the wrong way" I feel puke coming up in my throat. Get a clue, people, specially journalists that should know better about doing their home-work.


Eli Stone -- New York Magazine TV Review

According to Eli Stone, the hotshot San Francisco lawyer whose vivid hallucinations may be coded messages from a higher power, some clarity would be helpful: “God needs to be a little less oblique.” This, of course, has been a plaint of saints and sinners ever since our species first looked into its own entrails. Why must oracles reply in riddles? How come the undead so often sound like Carlos Castaneda? What if we threw the I Ching in the wrong direction? From Calista Flockhart in Ally McBeal to Jennifer Love Hewitt in Ghost Whisperer, thin young women in very short skirts hear voices, see visions, and get hysterical. All of this could have been avoided with plain English. As Little Baron Snorck von Chulnt explained in Louis Zukofsky’s comic novel Little, “If you want me to understand, you’d better speak in a different anguish.”

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I found this interesting blog, by Manyul Im, while reading Sam Crane's blog. Then I found a nice discussion about the concept of "Junzi". Below is my own comment to the thread. (more as a record of my wandering brain droppings than for its actual usefulness...)


Gentlemen Prefer Bronze « Manyul Im’s Chinese Philosophy Blog

Hi,

I found this site by pure coincidence and being mentioned in Sam Crane’s blog.

Regarding this particular ‘junzi’ discussion, I’m very surprised that no mention whatsoever has been made regarding such concept, and it its numerous appearances, in the text of the Yijing. This is a subject of innumerable discussions regarding the proper translation of the term among serious Yixue students. I believe Richard Wilhelm, in his translation of the classic, spoiled our collective Western mindset by translating it as “Superior Man”. A more contemporary translation among Yixue students gears towards the consensus of “Jun1 zi3″ meaning “noble one” and/or “young noble,” both of these carrying its own interpretation depending on the context of the hexagram, one being used as an adjective and the other as a noun. Of course, we thread on thin ice when trying to properly translate a term with a very ancient conceptual use. It isn’t as simple as picking up a dictionary and looking for the characters’ meaning. We must try to discern its original contextual meaning, going back more than 2500 years.

In the overall text of the Yijing (as opposed to the bare Zhouyi) somebody recently made an interesting observation and pointed to an otherwise obvious distinction–and thus hard to notice–between the term appearing in the Yaoci of many hexagram lines and the term appearing in the Da Xiang:

quote

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The second is surely the confucian «person of noble character», but the JunZi of which you’re speaking is earlier and less perfect. (the one in the Yaoci; my note)

unquote

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All the best and I’ll bookmark your site.

Luis

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It appears the Yijing is a book of choice for Chinese prisoners, a tradition that, according to legend and history, goes back to one of the founders of the Zhou Dinasty, some 3000 years ago. Yes, I can see how the Yi can keep one from going insane in such a situation...

CHINA – HONG KONG Ching Cheong:“Once you're caught in” that spiral, suicide “can be the end” - Asia News

He found comfort in reading philosophical and religious writings, including the Bible, Buddhist classics and the I Ching, an ancient Chinese text also called the Book of Changes. He also tried to keep in touch with what was happening “outside.”

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If change can be so easily understood or seen, the holy sages need not write down its patterns and images in the Book of Changes (Yijing, the Yi) for posterity. Neither would the great Chinese sages, the wise and the learned, need to devote much time in studying this ancient Chinese classic, if it was not other than profound.

Technorati Tags: I Ching, Yijing

Allan Lian posted an interesting note about the Yijing and what really takes to study the classic: A Lifetime

It is also good to note that, while it is a good idea to read and learn about the Yi, it is also a good idea to know one's limits in its knowledge. Many people, with a only few years of reading and using the Yi, feel otherwise compelled to, and capable of, holding debates about it with those that have spent most of their life dedicated to its study. Even those life-timers, if sincere, will tell you that they are but mere students of something that cannot be exhausted.

A touch of Ancients, Buddhas, Immortals and Zhouyi

Like any earnest and sincere student, try to remain hidden until you are ready to appear in the field, or the Kung Fu version to ‘descend the mountain’ (xia shan), so to speak, to enter into discourses with likeminded fellows. (Think of the first and second lines of Qian / The Creative) If our basics and foundations are not strong enough, we could be easily influenced by incorrect teachings of others in the World Wide Web or by some New Age translations.