What the Book of History Says About Divination
January 31, 2010
The Book of History has a section with instructions on divination given as part of a speech by King Wu (son of King Wen and first emperor of the Zhou dynasty; reigned 1046 b.c.e–1043 b.c.e.).
“Using divination to examine doubts requires that we choose and appoint officers to divine with tortoise shells or yarrow stalks and train them in the methods of divination. . . . [Details of tortoise divination are given.] . . . From the trigrams there are inner symbols and outer symbols. Altogether, there are seven [kinds of omens]: the five given by the tortoise, and the two given by the yarrow stalks [ie, divination through the I Ching]. The omens indicate what is fortunate and unfortunate according to the changes.”
Then King Wu indicates a sequence of interpretation:
- Three diviners interpret the symbols under the supervision of two other diviners.
- If there are doubts, the king should consider the results personally and then consult with ministers, officers, and the common people.
- If there are still doubts, consult with the keepers of the tortoise and the yarrow stalks.
He goes on to give this sequence of possible outcomes:
- If the tortoise, yarrow stalks, the ministers, officers, and common people and the king all agree, that is called the great concord.
- If the tortoise and yarrow stalks both agree with one another, but the ministers, officers, and common people do not agree, it is still a fortunate omen.
- If the tortoise, yarrow stalks, the ministers, officers, and common people all agree, but the king does not agree, that is still fortunate.
- If the king and the tortoise omens agree, but the yarrow stalks, ministers, officers, and the common people oppose it, then domestic administrative affairs will be fortunate, but affairs abroad will be unlucky.
- When both the tortoise and the yarrow stalks are in opposition, then the king should not take that action in order to meet with fortune. If he proceeds anyway, there will be misfortune.
It’s interesting that the king includes the common people in the calculation. That means that a divination is not final in and of itself. It shows here that even in ancient times divination was a means to decide and the discussion and opinion were to be taken into account. It also allows for the king to make some decisions, even when others don’t agree, or allows for the king to oppose a decision even if the divination and all advisors are in favor of it.
That gives us more guidance, and far more flexibility to view a reading of the I Ching as just something we have to follow. It’s not a condemnation nor is it a guarantee of an outcome. We still have to involve the people close to us and we still have to make the ultimate decision.
The Duke of Zhou, Part 4
January 30, 2010
Was the Duke of Zhou really such a good person?
This is a question no Chinese thinks to ask. He is held up as a hero and students are expected to emulate him.
It’s a peculiar part of Western culture that we see so many of our leaders as hypocrites and as fallible. I have to admit that every day seems to bring a new fallen political, sports, or cultural leader. It’s easy to think that there are just two kinds of people: the despicable and the soon-to-be-discovered-as- despicable. Haven’t I myself said that I have never found a spiritual leader worth following?
But I do have to report that I have met Chinese who are overwhelmingly idealistic and principled to the point of fault. None of these have been in great positions of power, and perhaps that’s necessary. But I do know that people have been brought up to be moral, self-sacrificing, and almost painfully principled.
One of my friends, for example, is the daughter of a Chinese general who left his family to fend for themselves, but who obeyed the call to go to the front whenever summoned. His sense of patriotism outweighed even his love for his family. My grandfather was another example, a man who kept meticulous accounts and notes of all his correspondence and who informally passed on letters and money between China and the United States. There are many good people, although this often goes with tragedy or a failure to take care of their own families.
The point is that whether the Duke of Zhou, Confucius, King Wen, or any of these other culture-heroes were “really” that good, they are still worth emulating.
The Duke of Zhou, Part 3
January 29, 2010
The Duke of Zhou of Zhou ended up serving as regent for seven years. During that time, he fought a war against two of his brothers, who conspired with other feudal lords and the remnants of the conquered Shang dynasty to seize power for themselves. The war was concluded in five years. One brother was executed and the other banished.
The Mandate of Heaven
The Duke of Zhou formulated the mandate of heaven, a concept that still resonates within the Chinese mind. Under this idea, a ruler has power because heaven grants a mandate. But this mandate can be withdrawn, and then the ruler is overthrown because the mandate has been lost. In the past, natural disasters, like the storms mentioned previously, falling stars, or eclipses were regarded as possible signs of heaven’s displeasure.
The Duke of Zhou is credited with the authorship of many of the poems in the Book of Songs, formulated the Book of Rites, is credited with codifying the classical music of the time, and he was also deeply concerned with astronomy, mathematics, and other kinds of technology. According to legend, he gave a delegation from what is now Vietnam a compass so he could find his way home.
Confucius and the Duke of Zhou
Confucius regarded the Duke of Zhou as a hero to follow. Once, he said, “I no longer dream of the Duke of Zhou.” People take it to mean that he no longer had a dream of the Duke of Zhou’s ideas of good governance, but I think it’s significant that Confucius would dream of the Duke of Zhou (about five hundred years separated them) and it indicates what a presence the duke was to Confucius.
A Well-Known Humorous Joke
By the way, the idea of Confucius dreaming about the Duke of Zhou is the genesis of one of China’s humorous stories: a teacher dozed in class each day, and whenever he woke up, he told his students that he had been visiting the Duke of Zhou. One day, when a student fell asleep and was severely reprimanded, the boy said that he had been visiting the Duke of Zhou.
“And what did the Duke say?” demanded the teacher with sarcasm and vehemence.
“I asked if our teacher ever came to visit, and he said he had never met such a fellow.”
Nowadays, “Dreaming of the Duke of Zhou,” or “Seeing the Duke of Zhou,” is a euphemism for sleeping in class.
The Duke of Zhou, Part 2
January 28, 2010
King Wu died later and his young son was put on the throne. Others in the imperial family spoke out against the Duke of Zhou, even though the Duke was to act as regent. (It was this relationship that inspired the poem in The Living I Ching for Hexagram 27.) In order to avoid any appearance that he might usurp the king, and perhaps also to keep closer to his enemies, the Duke moved to a separate capital in the east. There was an insurgent faction, led by two of the Duke’s brothers, and he waged war against them.
However, the young King Cheng was still unsure of the Duke of Zhou, and he listened to the intrigues against the Duke.
One autumn, there were unseasonable thunderstorms and lightning. The grain was flattened. Trees were uprooted by windstorms. The king went to the temple to divine.
He found the Metal Bound Coffer and the records of the Duke’s divination from two years before. There he saw how the Duke had offered himself in sacrifice to keep King Wu alive.
The king asked the diviners about it, and they confirmed the divination, but said that the Duke had ordered them not to speak of it.
King Cheng then said with tears in his eyes:
“There is no need to divine. In the past, the Duke of Zhou worked diligently for the royal household, but I, a young man, did not understand it. Now heaven displays the Duke of Zhou’s merits through its rage. I, an ignorant child, must go to meet him myself. The propriety of our country should be thus.”
According to the Book of History: “King Cheng went out of the city as the rain was falling. The wind’s direction turned, and the grain rose up again. Taigong (the general), and the Duke of Zhou ordered the crops that had been crushed by the falling trees to be replanted, and after that year, there was a great harvest.”
This is a well-known story. The king did not need to confirm anything through divination. He saw his error and did not need to resort to any other method of consideration. The story also underscores the humility that the I Ching advocates: that the Duke of Zhou was willing to sublimate himself to his nephew for two years, and that his nephew was humble enough to see his own mistake.
The Duke of Zhou, Part 1
January 27, 2010
Zhougong or The Duke of Zhou
Yesterday, I wrote about the Metal Bound Coffer, so I thought it would be good to go back and review this. The Chinese have kept many of its earliest documents intact in the Book of History. One section of the Book of History contains the Books of Zhou and these records tell the story of the Metal Bound Coffer. The following is a summation:
In the second year after the Zhou conquered the Shang, King Wu (the son of King Wen, one of the major formulators of the I Ching) fell seriously ill. Taigong (the primary general), and the Duke of Zhou (the commentator on the Lines), discussed making a divination.
The Duke of Zhou then proposed that they pray to their former kings—in other words—their ancestors. He cleaned a place on the earth, raised three altars and built a high platform to the south of them. He stood on the platform, facing north, offered gems on the altars, held a jade tablet (used when facing emperors or deities) and prayed to the spirits of three previous kings of the dynasty (Kings Tai, Ji, and Wen).
The Duke of Zhou ordered the following to be written on tablets:
“Your eldest grandson, Jifa (King Wu), is suffering from a dangerous sickness. If you, the three former kings, have the charge of protecting him from heaven, do not let him die.
“If you intend that he should die, let me, Jidan (the Duke of Zhou) substitute for him. I have the ability to serve spirits. Your eldest grandson does not have the abilities and arts that I have and he is not able to serve the spirits. . . .”
The Duke of Zhou divined with three tortoise shells. All the omens were auspicious. He opened the tablet-coffer with a key. All the omens were again auspicious. The Duke therefore determined that the king would recover.
The Duke then put the record of his divination into the Metal Bound Coffer. The king recovered the next day.
Interpretation
January 25, 2010
Interpretation is one of the primary issues with the I Ching.
Even in the classic, imperial times, there were specialists who interpreted the I Ching and other forms of divination. In fact, one of the very earliest Chinese historical documents we have is from the Metal Bound Coffer, which held some divinations made for the Duke of Zhou (the author of the Lines in the I Ching). The divination would have been made about 1043 b.c.e. Even this sage who himself wrote commentaries relied on professional diviners.
Why would anyone have a professional diviner unless interpretation was necessary? And interpretation implies two things: that the answer won’t be immediately self-evident, and that there is variability to the interpretation. We have never had any oracle that has said with unfailing accuracy, “Yes, you should marry Jill.” All oracles are mystical.
We have to be our own interpreters today, for the same reasons we have to be our own doctors, cooks, priests, friend, and so on. That doesn’t mean we can’t have other people in our lives who do these things, but we cannot abdicate the responsibility for being engaged in our own lives and making all the decisions. We can go to professionals and specialists, yes. But we have to decide how their work is going to fit into our lives. In terms of the I Ching, you might go to a professional diviner, but you also have to learn to use the I Ching directly yourself. You have to put yourself into the position of getting directly stimulated, even inspired, by the I Ching.
But there’s a second intriguing question: what if there is more than one interpretation? What if using the I Ching is not about getting the “right” interpretation? What if there are a multiplicity of meanings, and that we’re meant to involve ourselves with these possibilities and then make a decision?
In this light, then, the I Ching isn’t meant to give us the one right answer, because there is no one right answer. The I Ching is meant to give us the opportunity to mull over the many possible answers. Then, even like the Duke of Zhou, we seal the divination away and make our own decision.Interpretation is one of the primary issues with the I Ching.
Even in the classic, imperial times, there were specialists who interpreted the I Ching and other forms of divination. In fact, one of the very earliest Chinese historical documents we have is from the Metal Bound Coffer, which held some divinations made for the Duke of Zhou (the author of the Lines in the I Ching). The divination would have been made about 1043 b.c.e. Even this sage who himself wrote commentaries relied on professional diviners.
Why would anyone have a professional diviner unless interpretation was necessary? And interpretation implies two things: that the answer won’t be immediately self-evident, and that there is variability to the interpretation. We have never had any oracle that has said with unfailing accuracy, “Yes, you should marry Jill.” All oracles are mystical.
We have to be our own interpreters today, for the same reasons we have to be our own doctors, cooks, priests, friend, and so on. That doesn’t mean we can’t have other people in our lives who do these things, but we cannot abdicate the responsibility for being engaged in our own lives and making all the decisions. We can go to professionals and specialists, yes. But we have to decide how their work is going to fit into our lives. In terms of the I Ching, you might go to a professional diviner, but you also have to learn to use the I Ching directly yourself. You have to put yourself into the position of getting directly stimulated, even inspired, by the I Ching.
But there’s a second intriguing question: what if there is more than one interpretation? What if using the I Ching is not about getting the “right” interpretation? What if there are a multiplicity of meanings, and that we’re meant to involve ourselves with these possibilities and then make a decision?
In this light, then, the I Ching isn’t meant to give us the one right answer, because there is no one right answer. The I Ching is meant to give us the opportunity to mull over the many possible answers. Then, even like the Duke of Zhou, we seal the divination away and make our own decision.
Adversity
January 25, 2010
If you’re a parent, you’ve struggled with how much to protect your children and how much to let them fall on their own. We’ve certainly seen the full range of parenting, from the stage mothers who put their children in kiddie beauty pageants to the millionaires who refuse to give their children any inheritance at all. We’ve seen children of crack mothers who are raising themselves on the streets, and we’ve seen children who are never without a chaperone until the day that they marry.
We want our children to be tough, but we deeply recognize, even it’s only subconscious, that becoming tough comes at a cost. No one becomes tough without also becoming scarred.
Take boxers, for example. Even though they wear gloves, mouthpieces, and head gear, they’re going to take a pounding, even in the gym. And the matches are not without risk. When Muhammed Ali fought Joe Frazier, Ali said of the blows he took: “It was like death. Closest thing to dyin’ that I know of.”
We all want our children to be tough, but toughness has a cost.
The I Ching speaks frequently of good fortune and bad fortune. Naturally, the usual wisdom is that we all want good fortune and we want to avoid bad fortune. I certainly won’t be volunteering for any misfortunes—but what if they’re necessary? In other words, no one becomes great without adversity. Without the challenge, we will never be spurred to meet crisis, find a greater inner strength, or develop the wisdom to be far sighted.
The wise are to be pitied because they have had enough adversity to make them wise.
Cheating and Failure
January 24, 2010
I read an interesting article today. Chinese researchers were apparently falsifying so much data that the leading journal, The Lancet, will no longer accept articles. The journal has called or the Chinese government to address the dozens of papers that have been proved false. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LA21Ad01.html
What prompts people to cheat on such a wide scale? Even though there should clearly be ethics involved, the researchers are part of the same sort of people who added melamine to pet food, or who allowed substandard materials to be built into the schools that collapsed in earthquakes. It’s corruption, and apparently none of the cultural opposition to that worked here. Neither professional standards nor personal honesty entered into the considerations. Instead, laziness and a desire to win took precedence.
Needless to say, the I Ching emphasizes the need for ethics and morals at nearly every turn. But what we might need to focus on today is this: being a loser.
That hurts, doesn’t it? It seems almost universal to reject being a loser. Everyone wants to be a winner. Everyone wants to be rich, beautiful, and adored. But what we have to learn to accept graciously is being poor, ugly, and unnoticed.
If we are moral, ethical, and hard working, it won’t buy us fame and wealth. Fame sometimes comes to people regardless of whether they have worked for them. But for all of us who work hard but are still struggling, we need reminding that this effort is noble: the reward for being honest and moral is the fact that we can live with ourselves.
If we don’t do that, then we have the temptation to falsify data, to make claims that we can’t support, or to pretend to be someone we aren’t. Stick to the dao. Stick to the ideals of the I Ching. You might not get rich and famous, but you won’t be shamed in front of the entire world either.
The Man Who Shot the Pope
January 22, 2010
Mehmet Ali Agea, the man who shot Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981 was released from prison on January 18, 2010. In a statement, he said, “. . . I proclaim the end of he world in this century. All the world will be destroyed, every human being will die. I am not God, I am not son of God. I am Christ eternal.”
He went on to say that the Gospel was filled with mistakes and that he would write the perfect version.
The reason I bring this up is that we would all say that Agea was delusional. As a society, we don’t believe that any person is a god. Agea shot the pope, proving in some way that even the pope is not God. So collectively, we say that anyone who declares him- or herself to be divine is crazy. They are no more or less human than the rest of us.
On the other hand, when we cast the I Ching or when we aspire to spiritual heights, we must somehow touch what is divine. If we are to say that the divine is real—and not just some mental construct or metaphor—then we have to somehow be getting in touch with it for the act to make any sense at all. In other words, the I Ching, meditation, and all other spiritual techniques are useless unless they truly can help us access higher levels of consciousness. What, then is the difference between us and Agea?
Some people might say, well, we aim for divinity, but we are forever falling short onto the ground of what it means to be human. No one gets to be a god, but it’s uplifting to imagine that we can get there.
Others play this ingenious trick: we’re only divine when we’re meditating, and then, as soon as we get up, we’re subject to the contradictions of the world and are fallibly human again.
Still others say that we can only get into divine states of grace sometimes and that we pass back out again.
Then some might question our definition of divinity at all: who says that to be a god means that you’re any different than human? Gods make mistakes too.
Casting the I Ching means to be your own diviner. Practicing Daoism means that you try to become an immortal. A spiritual technique should be rejected unless it works. How then do you reconcile being human yet aspiring to the divine?
Perseverance
January 21, 2010
I have a sentimental fondness for the Wilhelm/Baynes edition of the I Ching (Princeton University Press, 3rd edition, 1967). It was the first translation of the I Ching I found, and it’s a beautiful book in its own right. As I learned more, however, I was saddened to find that there are some flaws to the translation. Perhaps that’s inevitable since it’s a translation into English by Cary F. Baynes from Richard Wilhelm’s German translation.
We’ve talked about yuan heng li zhen, and what a central phrase that is to the I Ching. The Wilhelm/Baynes translation of this phrase is “supreme success, perseverance furthers.” I guess li (harvest, benefit) and zhen (chastity, purity) are reversed— zhen is translated as perseverance and li is receives the meaning of benefit.
Understanding the phrase yuan heng li zhen as I do now, I couldn’t translate the phrase in the same way (and few other translations do either). But I studied from the Wilhelm/Baynes version for so long and it was the first version I loved, so I still remember it.
In a way, this undercuts the whole idea of “authenticity.” It may not be necessary to always know the “real” version. There is great wisdom and beauty to the Wilhelm/Baynes version—even if there isn’t a Chinese text to directly support it. That’s why I believe that a plurality of interpretations of the I Ching is valid. I believe that the oracle “knows,” that even through the screen of double-translations, there is a current of truth to the words.
This all brings me to the word “perseverance.” Yes, this word isn’t supported in the Chinese text, but it is supported in Chinese culture. A society in which farmers till decade after decade, martial arts is cultivated over decades, poetry is pursued by copying poems repeatedly, or a jade carver works for a lifetime on one piece, or an immigrant builds up fortune and encourages education so that there is benefit through generations, certainly knows perseverance.
Perseverance is a beautiful virtue. It is hard to come by. It is often contradictory in our world of immediate gratification. But sometimes, nothing is more powerful. And sometimes, nothing is more reassuring.
