MEDITATIONS: I CHING; THE BOOK OF CHANGES, CANTO FORTY-FIVE

Call Together—Assemble—Collect
|or| Gathering

It is time to pay homage to wisdom and experience. Focus your intent and keep your eye on the prize. Work alone but do not count on your past successes or reputation. Mindfully observe yourself as you work to accomplish your goals. (Bright-Fey 119)

Gathering leads to success; the king comes to have a shrine.
It is beneficial to see great people, who will get you through. It is beneficial to be correct.
Making a great sacrifice is auspicious. It is beneficial to go somewhere.

Yin 1: If there is faithfulness without its end, there is confusion and mobbing. If you call out, the whole bunch will laugh, but do not worry—it is blameless to go.

Yin 2: Drawing is auspicious, impeccable. If you are sincere, it is beneficial to perform a simple ceremony.

Yin 3: Trying to gather, one laments, and gains nothing. To go is blameless, but there is a little regret.

Yang 4: Great fortune means no fault.

Yang 5: Gathering, one has the position, without fault. If one is not trusted, let the basis be perpetually stable, and regret vanishes.

Yin 6: Sighing and weeping. No blame. (Cleary 277-287)

 Water accumulates on top of the earth to form a lake. Likewise, joy accumulates via myriad meetings of members of a society when internally those individuals’ hearts are receptive to the Way and those great people modelling an accord with it. That is to say, just as meeting must be done within the constraints of propriety, gathering likewise—itself being an extension of meeting—must exclude immorality and ineptitude in order for there to be room to include the virtuous and able.

In this, there is the seeming of a paradox: gathering together, one must be considerate of his relationship to others; but one must accomplish his consideration by attending primarily to himself.

There is no contradiction here. Just as a group is made up of members, a gathering is composed of many individuals. Morality begins with each and every one of them separately cultivating their characters toward a single, unifying value—hence the Taoist translation bidding one to simultaneously pay homage to the wisdom of the past while toiling by ones lonesome. “The king” mentioned from the Confucian translation is the symbol of a unified people. “The shrine” is the value held in highest regard. Together, the individual subjects of a kingdom, each on his own, becomes a single nation by way of a common good.

Under these circumstances, when culture is homogeneous and values shared, sacrifices will be most rewarded. This is because the future is stable and thereby predictable as a consequence of societal direction being unified—as opposed to a society stuck in a rut, wheels spinning, doing nothing but slinging mud and spattering the cart—a society in cultural war with itself. Unification means people understand and relate to one another. Because they understand and relate, they can build trust. Trust is the stuff which allows one to invest without wasting time, energy, and resources on securing ones investments. Such security measures are very costly, and some robberies will inevitably slip through the cracks no matter how tightly one grasps.

To cultivate trust among disparate individuals, they need to share values, and to share values, they need to aim at the same thing. They require a common ideal, and this ideal comes in the form of cultural heroes, myths, legends, historical and religious figures. These are the great men who model morality for the masses. When people meet, each individual aspiring to live up to the standards set by great men, the gathering will carry everyone forward. The people as a whole, each in his own accord with the Way, will harmonize with the Great Course.

But, of course, there are many avenues down which a man might stray.

The first Yin warns of excessive “faithfulness,” which in context means something like group adherence or loyalty. This is a message for the members of the masses who occupy low societal positions: aim at virtue, not the approval of the group. Mistaking the latter for the former results in a mob mentality, what is also known as groupthink. The problem is that groups don’t think, they act impulsively and without regard to their individual moral responsibilities—those are relegated to the illusory construct that is group. Worse yet, he who does dare think and deviate from the group consensus, “calling out” to he who is higher—represented by the corresponding and complementary fourth Yang—will be derided and outcast. It is a mercy, then, that people in the first Yin’s position can escape by way of following good influences and leaders and moving away from the braying mob.

The second Yin, in a balanced position, is better able to draw in good people and to be drawn in by them. People like this, insofar as they are sincere, are not corruptible by the bullying of the masses. They do not need to put on elaborate airs. A simple ceremony, meaning a genuine sacrifice made for the sake of pursuing that which is highest—and NOT for signaling one’s virtue to others—will suffice.

But those who go too far in their yielding, as was warned against, will suffer at the hands of the mob gathered together. One should not subjugate himself to his neighbors. That only results in everyone becoming slaves. Man ought only be subject to that which is the object—that-is-which-is, the objective, the transcendent, God, the Great Course, whatever name one ascribes to it. The point is to avoid becoming confused and losing oneself in the world. If one starts down this dark path, he ought to turn around and aim upward. Though he will not escape without regret, he can at least work to shed the shame he has heaped on himself thus far.

The fourth Yang stands in a complicated position. He is in close association with a strong and virtuous leadership, and he has proven a good model to the first Yin with whom he corresponds. However, he is Yang in a Yin position. Therefore, there will inevitably be some excesses in his firmness. This is a fault which can turn a virtuous and voluntary gathering into a resentful, forced assembly. In order for the good models represented by the fourth Yang to be faultless, they must be “great” in the sense of “large” or “encompassing. They must include all those below fairly. Each must receive his due for his personal sacrifices which were made aiming at the fourth and fifth Yangs in the first place. In short, the fourth Yang must keep his promises to the Yins under his purview if he wants to earn their trust necessary for a society to be joyous.

The fifth Yang is firm and full of virtue. Naturally, the people should see leadership like this and seek to emulate it. However, what ought to be is not always the case. The fifth Yang may encounter a situation in which the Yins under him lead each other astray. If that happens, the leadership should stay the course and continue modeling virtue. Though it may not seem the case at the time, if the fifth Yang remains consistent in his accord with the Way, those beneath him will eventually come to see the truth in his mode of being and voluntarily conform. Those will be the people represented by the second Yin at first, then the first Yin, and even the third Yin will fall into line after a time of shame and suffering. The fifth Yang, those strong leaders, need only to keep faith.

Then there are those represented by the sixth Yin. She is the epitome as well as the end of joy. People like this, in a time of gathering, are those who like to gather and rule for they joy of ruling over those who have gathered. They seek fame, power, and wealth for the pleasure of obtaining those things, and they are inevitably despised once their ways are discovered. These people are the transient psychopaths, those who lie their way into positions of authority and status. For a time, they can occupy high positions, but ultimately they will find themselves frustrated by rejection of those who have figured them out—frustration, or else terror, for when the braying mob they cultivate turns on them, they will have no one else but themselves to blame.

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.