What Is the I Ching?

http://www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb-china-archive/what-i-ching

by lermontov • 10 years ago

46 31 10 years ago

pmoriarty3• 10 years ago

Does anyone here use the I Ching for divination? If so, how is that working out for you?

hristov• 10 years ago

I used it a couple of times. One time my ex-girlfriend asked me to use it on her, but she did not tell me what her question was. I am pretty sure the question was about our relationship. Anyways, the result was the worst I-ching hexagram you could possibly get. The one about the walls of the castle sinking into the mud and the enemy approaching. Well, that relationship ended but we are still friends.

I also consulted it about a possible career change I was contemplating. The result talked about revolution. It seemed a rather pertinent result for the question at least. I did not end up making that particular career change. Perhaps the I-ching poems persuaded me not to make the change, because they talked about how a revolution is a very grave matter that must be attempted only in dire circumstances.

joe_the_user2• 10 years ago

A few years ago, I had a friend who became addicted to I Ching divination and wound-up making every major and minor decision based on I Ching dice rolls.

For him, it worked out terribly, in the sense of pushing closer to a psychotic state.

From that experience, it's hard for me appreciate the poetic vagueness of this stuff given that same poetic vagueness helps sell Western Astrology.

pmoriarty3• 10 years ago

That sounds like something out of a novel called "The Dice Man"[1], in which the protagonist decides to base all of his actions on the roll of the dice.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Dice-Man-Luke-Rhinehart/dp/0879518642

armitron2• 10 years ago

The fact that the Yijing pushed him towards a psychotic state, means that the process WORKED or was beginning to show results.

Psychosis and mystical experience are after all closely linked if not objectively identical.

The Yijing, when used properly (as a tool for self-exploration and psychonautics and not for fortunetelling or the chasing of idle fantasies) works similarly to the Tarot or other symbolic systems that operate on the human psyche. There comes a point (with repeated use and appropriate conditioning/reinforcement) that these systems really open up the subconscious and can lead to mystical unions or profound annihilatory experiences (ego death).

So it sounds to me that your friend had no idea about these things and simply could not handle the "results". When you play with fire, you take precautions or you get burned..

gaur2• 10 years ago

If so, how is that working out for you?

Randomly.

keithpeter• 10 years ago

Quote from OA

"One could say that the I Ching is a mirror of one’s own concerns or expectations.

feed a random signal in then examine the outputs. Results will tell you something about the dynamics of the system that processes the signal.

"But it’s like one of the bronze mirrors from the Shang dynasty, now covered in a dark blue-green patina so that it doesn’t reflect at all."

Perhaps the input signal from the hexagrams relates to a culture so remote from the modern world that it tells us little about ourselves now.

TheOtherHobbes• 10 years ago

I once used Philip K Dick for divination, and that had some very unexpected results.

The I Ching always seemed rather Rorschach-y. But that could be because I've seen suggestions that the popular Wilhelm/Baynes translation is rather Westernised and some way from the original meanings.

It's probably like trying to make sense of Shakespeare if you grew up in China and didn't start learning English until you were an adult. The language isn't just poetic - it's metaphorical, idiomatic, and allusive, and it's probably impossible for non-natives to truly understand it.

stephengillie• 10 years ago

The key for me laid in interpreting correctly the hexgrams, in the context of my own current life. Keeping my mind in the context of my current life, not my desired life, was the most difficult part.

formula1• 10 years ago

I remember in highschool picking up a copy of the i ching. I found the poetry in simplicity to be really meaningful to me and could feel and relate to it. Something like water and fire I always found humorous because you can see fire as a hollow shell while water flaky yet connected. I think the I ching has a lot to offer and similar works that base their philosophies in trying to make the world less complicated. However, its place and impact in the world probably will not be fully felt as, from a religious/philosophical marketing perspective, it tends to be more of a cute idea than something to devote a life to.

danharaj• 10 years ago

David Hinton is, with Arthur Waley and Burton Watson, the rare example of a literary Sinologist—that is, a classical scholar thoroughly conversant with, and connected to, contemporary literature in English.

Just wanted to recommend both Waley and Watson's work, which i thoroughly enjoy. I especially enjoy Watson's full translation of the Zhuangzi.

cturner• 10 years ago

The novel _Man in the High Castle_ references this system, and was supposedly written with reference to it. [No idea about the tv series, doesn't seem possible to get it in the UK]

BSD 4.4 had a game in it that I'd guess simulated the yarrow generation. I wasn't able to get it to compile on a modern system. (https://github.com/weiss/original-bsd/tree/master/games/chin...)

pmoriarty3• 10 years ago

Excerpts from an interview with Philip K Dick[1]:

VERTEX: Do you use the I Ching as a plotting device in your work?

DICK: Once. I used it in The Man in the High Castle because a number of characters used it. In each case when they asked a question, I threw the coins and wrote the hexagram lines they got. That governed the direction of the book. Like in the end when Juliana Frink is deciding whether or not to tell Hawthorne Abensen that he is the target of assassins, the answer indicated that she should. Now if it had said not to tell him, I would have had her not go there. But I would not do that in any other book.

VERTEX: What is the importance of the I Ching in your own life?

DICK: Well, the I Ching gives advice beyond the particular, advice that transcends the immediate situation. The answers have an universal quality. For instance: "The mighty are humbled and the humbled are raised." If you use the I Ching long enough and continually enough, it will begin to change and shape you as a person. It will make you into a Taoist, whether or not you have ever heard the word, whether or not you want to be.

...

DICK: I've been using the I Ching since 1961, and this is what I use it for, to show me a way of conduct in a certain situation. Now first of all it will analyze the situation for you more accurately than you have. It may be different than what you think. Then it will give you the advice. And through these lines a torturous, complicated path emerges through which the person escapes the tragedy of matrydom and the tragedy of selling out. He finds the great sense of Taoism, the middle way. I turn to it when I have that kind of conflict.

---

And from an interview two years later[2]:

Phil: I don't use the I Ching anymore. I'll tell ya, the I Ching told me more lies than anybody else I've ever known. The I Ching has a personality and it's very devious and very treacherous. And it feeds ya just what you want to hear. And it's really spaced out and burned out more people than I would care to name. Like a friend is somebody who doesn't tell you what you want to hear. A friend tells you what's true. A toady is the old word for somebody who told you what you wanted to hear. The Kings all had their toadies around them who told them what they wanted to hear. The King said, am I the greatest King in the world? Yeah, you're the greatest King in the world, yeah. Well, this is what the I Ching does. It tells you what you want to hear and it's not a true friend. One time I really zapped it. I asked it if it was the devil. And it said yes. And then I asked it if it spoke for God, and it said no. It said I am a complete liar. I mean that was the interpretation. In other words I set it up. I set it up. I asked two questions simultaneously and it said I speak with forked tongue, is what it said. And then it said, oops, I didn't mean to say that. But it had already –

[1] http://www.philipkdickfans.com/literary-criticism/frank-view...

[2] http://www.philipkdickfans.com/literary-criticism/interviews...

adrianN• 10 years ago

The amount of agency he imputes to the I Ching somehow feels crazy to me.

devNoise• 10 years ago

It was present in the Amazon series, but not as significant as the novel. For the series, it seems that only the Japanese used it. Tagomi, the trade minister was seen to be a strong practitioner in the series. Where in the novel it seems to be used by all people in the Pacific States of America.

jff• 10 years ago

This repo worked for me on a modern Debian install: https://github.com/floren/ching

yread• 10 years ago

Friend of mine once lost some important documents. So she went to an I Ching guy and he calculated for 15 minutes or so the question of where are these documents. The answer was that they are lost or stolen. And that it's possible that a small girl or woman took them away. Not even 10 minutes after that she got a call that her mother found them, they were just stashed in a drawer. And she still deeply believes!

revelation• 10 years ago

We like to think it's a recent phenomenon, but as this article points out, even Leibniz was spammed with conspiracy theorists and tinfoil hats.

gaur2• 10 years ago

In the 1600s, the mayor of Magdeburg [0] stuck a narwhal horn on the skull of a wooly rhino, and thereby convinced Leibniz that unicorns existed.

The same mayor also invented the first vacuum pump.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Guericke

lomnakkus• 10 years ago

If you think of it as art then it's very impressive. As a reliable method of predicting the future[1]... not so much.

[1] Wouldn't we all like that?

kough• 10 years ago

If you like the idea of the I Ching, you might also like this version: http://where-you-are.com/sheila-heti . It's a "mini ching" presented as a dogital art project - I found the writing, illustrations, and form to work very nicely together.

ytjohn• 10 years ago

'The electronic I Ching calculator was badly made. It had probably been manufactured in whichever of the South-East Asian countries was busy tooling up to do to South Korea what South Korea was busy doing to Japan. Glue technology had obviously not progressed in that country to the point where things could be successfully held together with it. Already the back had half fallen off and needed to be stuck back on with Sellotape.'

'It was much like an ordinary pocket calculator, except that the LCD screen was a little larger than usual, in order to accommodate the abridged judgments of King Wen on each of the sixty-four hexagrams, and also the commentaries of his son, the Duke of Chou, on each of the lines of the hexagram. These were unusual texts to see marching across the display of a pocket calculator, particularly as they had been translated from the Chinese via the Japanese and seemed to have enjoyed many adventures on the way.'

'The device also functioned as an ordinary calculator, but only to a limited degree. It could handle any calculation which returned an answer of anything up to "4".'

'"1 + 1" it could manage ("2"), and "1 + 2" ("3") and "2 + 2" ("4") or "tan 74" ("3.4874145"), but anything above "4" it represented merely as "A Suffusion of Yellow". Dirk was not certain if this was a programming error or an insight beyond his ability to fathom, but he was crazy about it anyway, enough to hand over £20 of ready cash for the thing.'

girzel• 10 years ago

"A Suffusion of Yellow" is a phrase which I have never forgotten.

splitdisk• 10 years ago

An I Ching throwing program was the first program I wrote on my own, and is still an exercise I like to go through when teaching myself a new programming language.

yborg• 10 years ago

I recommend physicist Kerson Huang's translation in "I Ching: The Oracle". Basically stripped of all of the classical commentary that is often attached to the I Ching, I found it very approachable.

What Is the I Ching?

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