Explore—Travel—Take Flight
|or| Travel

Now is not the time for a nuanced view of life. If you think too much, you will become bogged down in minutia. That having been said, plan your travels carefully and rely upon your intuition to guide you. Get moving! Staying in one place brings misfortune. (Bright-Fey 141)

 

Travel succeeds a little. Travel bodes well if correct.

Yin 1: When travel is fussy, this is what brings on disaster.

Yin 2: Traveling to the inn holding one’s money at one’s breast, one gets one’s attendants to be upright.

Yang 3: On a journey, burning the inn and losing the faithfulness of attendants is dangerous.

Yang 4: Traveling to one’s place, one gets one’s money and tools, but one’s heart is not happy.

Yin 5: Shoot a pheasant, and it perishes at one’s arrow. In the end one is entitled because of good repute.

Yang 6: The bird burns its nest. The traveler first laughs, later cries. Losing the ox while at ease bodes ill. (Cleary 358-364)

A time of great abundance invites and inevitably produces temptation and the eventual disintegration of virtue within a culture as the individuals who make up said society decay via indulgence in vicious excesses. This can be likened to a house set ablaze. In the case of the Travel hexagram, that is the image of the mountain under flames. The former trigram is stillness and stability, like the security of a household. The later, fire, is ego, attention, and intellect—and it is always the case that a culture eventually forgets the values of it predecessors and becomes arrogant, believing that, because of the abundance provided by their ancestors, that they moderns of their era are superior, more moral and enlightened.

It is not the case that we or any people of any time are more enlightened than the people of the past, and we can only believe ourselves to be if our vision becomes so short-sighted that we light our own abodes on fire for the sake of warmth and light. We will attain our ends—for a night—and only after we awaken, cold among ashes, do we realize the foreseeable future shall be truly and horribly benighted.

When the house is fully afire, leaving is the only option if one wants to survive. And when a culture is likewise burning, so too must we abandon it for another set of norms and values. This decision must be made quickly. Every second within the burning house is another lungful of lethal smog. However, despite the need for decisiveness, one must still aim. We must take into account where it is we are going so that, once we’re on the road, our journey will lead us somewhere better than the doom of yet another firestorm.

In situations like these, one can only hope he has cultivated his character enough to trust his intuition to guide him. If he has, then he can venture forward with faith and relaxation, believing in himself and his ethics and that his part in the great disaster has been avoided.

It is only the hesitator who suffers much more than is necessary. Clinging to the old culture even as it is burning means that, even if one later leaves and builds a new house to replace the ashes, He will have burned his hands, his money, and a great deal of his relationships with his friends and family. The rebuild will be bitter, and his house will be empty. This is the metaphor of the first Yin and fourth Yang. Though they correspond and compliment each other, both remained too long in positions of weakness when leaving those positions was what was proper.

The second Yin yields to the circumstances instead. By doing so, she manages to stay balanced and find shelter and friends amidst the loss and transition. Furthermore, her generosity and resistance to panic engenders moral uprightness in her companions. This leads her to correspond with the fifth Yin, who, while also yielding, is nonetheless able to hit-the-mark (a metaphor for accordance with the Tao) because of help by the second Yin and the surrounding Yangs—and this is all because of the reputation earned through generosity born from faith and courage.

The third and sixth Yangs are two forms of excess and stubbornness. In the former case, we have the accelerationist who doubles down on his extant hierarchy of values and, figuratively speaking, keeps himself and all his attendants locked inside the burning house. Denying the fire, he does not even try to put it out, but instead continues to chop wood and collect kindling, believing himself to be the responsible man in so doing. The latter Yang is the reckless progressive, the incarnation of Icarus who is all too eager to fly high and close to the sun. Ill-tempered, he rejoices in the necessary tragedy of the destruction of his father’s house. He even revels in the pained braying of his father’s oxen as they immolate in their stables. The ox in China is a symbol of strong docility, which is a culturally particular conception of discipline—conforming to an external set of standards as to improve oneself and serve a useful function. He who rejoices at the burning of his family house and livestock—that is, his ancestors accumulated wealth, wisdom, and honor—will find himself weeping once the fires have taken their course, for they will leave him bereft of any course of his own.

The Way is a Path, a Road, a vacuity requiring emptiness, which in turns requires a burning away of the brush and deadwood and rot of what once was. However, just because it is sometimes necessary to light a fire, it does not make it any less destructive. Likewise, travel is adventure, but adventure is also danger, pain, suffering, and loss. There is not good without bad, no justice without evil, no creation or life without pain and death. Keep this in mind, and walk with care and measure—because one must yet march if he is to remain on the Great Course.

I Ching; The Book of Changes, with commentaries by Cheng Yi, translated by Thomas Cleary, Shambala Library, 2003.

I Ching: The Book of Changes; An authentic Taoist translation, translated by John Bright-Fey, Sweetwater Press, 2006.