MEDITATIONS: I CHING; THE BOOK OF CHANGES, CANTO FOUR

Conceal—Cover—New
|OR| Immaturity

Look for opportunities to appreciate the points of view of others. Do not get lost in mindless activities and curb your desire to play too much. Tay relax, alert, flexible, and calm. (Bright-Fey 37)

The immature develop. It is not that I seek the innocent, the innocent seek me. The first augury informs, repetition slurs; slurring is not informative. It is beneficial if correct.

Yin 1: To develop the immature, it is advantageous to use punishments on people; having got rid of restrictions, develop conscience.

Yang 2: Embracing the immature is auspicious, taking a wife is auspicious; the child takes over the family.

Yin 3: Do not take the girl to see the moneyed man, or she will lose herself, to no benefit.

Yin 4: It is regrettable to be stuck in immaturity.

Yin 5: Innocence is auspicious.

Yang 6: When attacking ignorance it is not beneficial to be hostile; it is beneficial to prevent hostilities. (Cleary 13-18)

The mountain looms tall before the lake below: Outwardly, the immature individual should cultivate rigidity and patience. He should constrain the passions and desires stirring within, for they will drown him who is yet immature, who has yet learned to stay calm and swim.

This is to say that the immature should cover their natural impulsiveness with the forms of other, wiser individuals. This is learning how to follow and to obey orders. It is a necessary step in forming a boy into a man. Without it, he will fall pray to his vices via pleasurable indulgences and other idle wastes of time.

The first step of this initial section of road is the abolition of bad habits, the purgation of lingering elements of infancy. For human beings are born much too early and are so cursed with desires fit for helpless, needy infants. These impulses toward pleasure and away from pain are mediated by culture, but culture can only be learned in the vacuum of old proclivities. In modern psychological terms, one might say that innate heuristic models must be conditioned out of the animal so that new heuristic models can be operantly conditioned into it. This purgation occurs by way of punishment. As unpleasant as that fact is, it is the case that the prevention of vice must come before the cultivation of virtue. The first step in an addict’s recovery is to stop using, just as the first step in a thief’s redemption of the cessation of theft.

Only once evil behaviors are stopped can one begin to cultivate his conscience. If one is engaged in indulgences, he will numb himself from the pain of his own self-awareness. Without some form of opiate, metaphorical or otherwise, a man or even a society can begin to become conscious enough to hear the voice of conscience. Then is it proper to begin learning the difference between right and wrong, propriety and impropriety.

At the stage of learning, both the student and the master ought to take on an attitude of affirmation. It is easy to become disdainful of those below or resentful of those above. However, just as a husband and wife form a family through the product of their union—namely children who themselves eventually propagate thus forming the building blocks of tribes, clans, and eventually civilizations—so too do students and teachers produce better people more fit for their functions in the world. In other words, the immature should be seen for their potential, not for their current manifestation.

But the immature ought to be wary; there are many perils along the road. It is easy to don the wrong mask and to lose oneself to temptation. This is like the young woman who gets infatuated with the moneyed man. If she sells her sole for security and wealth, she will be mere property, as replaceable as any other object. Likewise, if the young man chases after wealth or distractions or any other form of corrupting temptation, he will sacrifice the divine in him. He will be enthused by nothing. Eventually, he will become embittered. He will come to resent his family, himself, and even the career from which he obtained his wealth.

In the end, the one who loses himself who succumbs to the very passions he should be constraining within. It is better to be innocent, to stay far away from debauchery and adulteration. For the immature is like a child, yet capable of self-control, and so he should make himself like a camel, laden by the burdens of a more mature will.

That all being said, one can go too far in his repression of the immature passions. It is yet another immature temptation to attack those who succumb to their desires; however, to give in to such an impulse is to become akin to a schoolyard bully. It is merely the pleasurable feeling of fulfilling a Will to Power which motivates such hostilities. This is true even within the context of the self. It does not help for one to whip himself for every small infraction, just as it does not help to whip others. Instead, it is best to remove the possibility of falling into vicious action until the habit is broken. If this is not possible, then the punishments used must be singular and dispassionate. They must function as a deterrent, to be used once or twice and then not needed again.

The key is calmness, a moment of inaction and reflection before a thing is done. And in this moment, one ought to see in the water the image of a mountain, majestic and immovable.

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.