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

Enclose—Confine—Exhaust
|or| Exhaustion

Now is the time to laugh in the face of adversity. Above all, embrace an optimistic and hopeful disposition. Uneasiness obscures your vision and clouds your judgement. Meditate and embrace relaxation and ease. Stay composed. (Bright-Fey 123)

To come through exhaustion correctly is good fortune for great people, without blame. Complain, and you will not be believed.

Yin 1: Sitting exhausted on a tree stump, gone into a dark ravine, one is unseen for three years.

Yang 2: When one is exhausted of wine and food, the regal robe then comes. It is beneficial to perform a ceremony. An expedition bodes ill. There is no blame.

Yin 3: Exhausted at rocks, leaning on brambles, going into the home you do not see the wife. Misfortune.

Yang 4: Coming slowly, exhausted in a metal car, ashamed. There is an end.

Yang 5: Nose and feet cut off, exhausted among the gentry. Then gradually there is joy. It is beneficial to perform a ceremony.

Yin 6: Exhausted amidst vines on a dizzying precipice. Realizing that an action will be regretted, it bodes well to go on an expedition. (Cleary 292-301)

 Water beneath the lake has seeped underground, leaving the surface dry and barren. Thus does this hexagram represent the necessary exhaustion consequent of constant expansion—meeting becoming gathering, gathering becoming rising, and now rising resulting in a fall.

Water is the danger of passion, and in Exhaustion, it is the interior state beneath an outward expression of joy and pleasure drying up till the lake is nothing but sand.

There are few right and many wrong ways to face adversity. The latter tend to be entanglements born from our desires. Passions ever tempt the human race into dark and shadowy places. The first Yin is like this. She represents those who become embittered by the loss of comforts and privileges so tenuously maintained by prior generations. But the tree whose roots reach deep into the past has been cleaved into kindling. It is now reduced to a stump: an uncomfortable seat on which to rest and a thing bereft of nurturing fruit or sheltering foliage. The first Yin and those akin to her, so exposed to the cruel world, flee into dark ravines—those being regrettable and demeaning means to cling to lost pleasures. This produces a feedback loop. She who complains, aggrieved by reality, will act out of accord with (or even in opposition to) the Way. With nowhere to hide her shame, she must flee again into even darker nooks and crannies—baser, more shameful pleasures—till she has drown herself in vice.

Contrast the first Yin with the second Yang. He rests in a balanced position, though also a low one. He is a great and virtuous person born into a time and place which strips him of what would normally be the natural rewards for his benevolence and sincerity. Despite the unfair conditions imposed upon him, however, he holds to his duties and ethics. That is the meaning of conducting a simple ceremony. It is simple because even a small sacrifice made genuinely is more virtuous than a grandiose display made to impress others. By making his offerings with complete commitment and without resentment, the second Yang becomes fit to receive the regal robe—that is the acknowledgement of those in positions of influence and leadership. But he must be patient and wait for this acknowledgement to come to him. It may take a long time, perhaps longer than his life, but to try to force the Way to accord with him will only bring failure and shame. He must have, hold, and show faith to make it through this time of exhaustion.

But if one, even a great person, fails to temper his passions, he will find himself in the position of the third Yin. She rests in a place of excess, at the extreme end of passion and danger. She is not strong enough to fulfill her Yang position by herself. Worse yet, she has no helpers. She has no correspondent Yang in the sixth position and thus cannot hope to rise beyond the two Yangs—the rocks—above her. Likewise, behind is Yang sternness and consistency. Such discipline and stoicism to her seems as comforting as a bramble of thorns. She cannot go forward or backward, nor can she remain where she is, exposed as was the first Yin resting on the tree stump. This is likened to going home to an empty house, one’s wife gone. Misfortune is an understatement. Cheng Yi puts it more sharply. “When it is impossible to go forward of backward, or to stay put, there is no choice but to die.”

The fourth Yang, though strong, rests within a weak position in the body of a dried and desolate lake. These are the lesser officials, people of influence and power among the society, who have failed to properly correspond to the masses represented by the first Yin. Unlike the second Yang, he who known not to try to go anywhere, the fourth Yang is trapped inside institutional inertia. This is the metal car. The fourth Yang cannot break out of an iron cage, nor can he stop its slow, painful, and futile progress toward an end that cannot hope to bear anything but misfortune. The only fortune is that the fruitless expedition must come to an end.

Corresponding to the second Yang, the fifth, he who rests in the position of leadership, is both strong and balanced—and, in addition to this, he is situated in the proper place for Yang energy. That, however, does not save him from exhaustion. The nose and feet—organs high and low—are severed from his body politic. He surrounded by incompetents. His ministers and cultural leaders can’t connect with the people, and beyond his reach is the sixth Yin, she who is most entangled by her unattained desires. Despite all this, the fifth Yang commits to a sincerely ceremony. He pays respect to the traditions of his ancestors and takes it upon himself to acknowledge the stoic sages represented by the second Yang. Thus does the drought begin to reverse itself and joy begin to well again up from the barren sands.

Lastly, there is the sixth Yin. She represents those beyond the scope of society and government. She alone has gone to such an extreme in search of happiness that trying to change her situation is what is proper. If she is so fortunate to recognize the error of her path, she can yet change direction. She can escape the tangle of thorn laden vines that are insatiable desires, and she can begin the process of transforming her values to be in accordance with the Great Course.

“Now is the time to laugh in the face of adversity.”

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.