The I Ching, Abstract Models, and that which Doesn’t Change

[Anonymous]

Has anyone ever gotten a satisfactory explanation of what the I Ching is really about? Not me.

What if it just isn’t that complicated? Maybe it is a really simple idea that is so simple it has profound implications. Maybe not.

I had one of my brain farts during practice this morning: the I Ching is just a model of the body. The trigrams are nothing more than symbols of our body’s manifestation. That body has space all around it and inside. Deep inside.

Cut through the first seven layers and you find the space in the center. That space connects to the space outside. They are the same. They are connected.

When we perform a palm change, we are manifesting a certain configuration of our chi represented by a trigram. The space inside and outside are always there and are unchanging. It is that which doesn’t change.

Or, maybe this was just a bad piece of cheese.

[Anonymous]

To pile onto the steaming pile, what if the four phases just represents what to do with the inside and outside space?

What if when you are talking about the four, you are just using two lines either yang or yin to represent what to do with the inside space and outside space? So, yang/yang (greater yang) tells you to expand both. Yin/yin (greater yin) tells you to condense both. Yang/yin (lesser yang) says expand the outside while condensing the inside. Yin/yang (lesser yin) says condense the outside while expanding the inside space.

Right or wrong it would explain why no one knows what Si Xiang, the four phases, really refers to because how many people do you know that have found and can work with the space inside and outside of their bodies?

Who knows?

[Anonymous]

But, if the space inside and outside are essentially the same, all of this playing around takes on new meaning. You stumble on the dispersion mode that Bruce taught me years ago. One way you perceive this is as though you are present in each piece of the space. The meaning of inside and outside isn’t centered on the physical body any more. The body and what’s inside and outside are like a large scale model of what is going on at every microscopic point. It ceases to be either yang or yin and expansion and condensation are the same thing. It is neither yang nor yin.

[Author]

Posts