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

Family—Deportment—Relationship
|or| People in the Home

 Now is the time to embrace simplicity of action and clarity of mind. Write down your goals and honor your desire to accomplish them. It is not the time to strike out and forcefully move forward. Be gracious in leadership, gentle in correcting others, and patient when listening to others. Above all, be gentle and optimistic with yourself. (Bright-Fey 103)

For people in the home, it is beneficial for the women to be correct.

Yang 1: Protect the home, and regret vanishes.

Yin 2: Nothing is accomplished. Correctness in the kitchen is auspicious.

Yang 3: When people in the family are too strict, it is auspicious to repent of severity. When the womenfolk are frivolous, it will end in shame.

Yin 4: Enriching the home is very auspicious.

Yang 5: The king comes to have a home; there is good fortune without worry.

Yang 6: With sincerity and dignity the end is auspicious. (Cleary 219-225)

In times of damaged illumination, during which the light of reason and spiritual enlightenment is driven underground, virtue must be cultivated from the inside out. This is as true for the individual as it is for society. In the former context, cultivation means meditation and the orienting of one’s values toward the Way. In the latter context, cultivation begins with the proper ordering of the family.

That is why this canto is called People in the Home. Such people living together are a family, which is a miniature model of the community, which in turns serves as a model for the city or nation state at large. A disordered family produces children out of accord with the Way—out of accord with the will of God, if you’re religious; reality, if you’re secular. Failure to accord with the Way is by definition discord. It is disharmony, that is, an inability or refusal to relate harmoniously with other people. The short had for this is war: physical or cultural, it begins in the home.

But what is the proper order of a family?

The I Ching takes on an ancient, traditionalist view—unsurprising for a book more than two thousand years old. Perhaps also surprising to the mere materialist is that this perspective aligns quite nicely with modern evolutionary psychological lens.

The chapter begins by asserting that the foundation of propriety in the family is either marked or determined by the moral virtue of women. What? But is this not the wisdom adopted and built upon by the patriarch Confucian scholars? It is, and this assertion does not contradict classic Confucian patriarchal values. Indeed, no counter-intuitive Taoist intuition is needed to understand why the linchpin of family morality lies within the hearts of women.

Evolutionarily speaking, for human beings, women of the judges in the game of sexual selection. Men compete for social status, and women pick from the best performing men. It has always been this way. Even in arranged marriages, the arrangement was such that the man selected was picked because of some status, wealth, power, or promising talent which would benefit the wife and her children and the extended family. At bottom, multi-generational reproductive successes is the mold which shapes man in God’s image.

Therefore, it is women who bear the first and most vital responsibility of deciding who should be steering the ship. If she picks well, then her household will accrue a wealth of morality and maybe even material fortune. Picking well means that she will be happy to fulfill her duties to her husband and children, which frees her of resentment and regret which would normally accompany being placed in a subservient position.

But it is not only the wife and mother with duties and responsibilities. The husband and father also must protect and regulate his family. That is the meaning of the first Yang. Cheng Yi clarifies that “protect” means something like “protect with good laws.” The bottom most position of this Yang indicates that intrafamily relationships should be governed by such firm regulations at the outside for regret to be avoided or otherwise removed.

Why is this the duty of the husband and not the wife? Yang is the masculine principle, firm and unwavering. It does not yield under pressure. Yin, the feminine principle, is pliable and accommodative. When it comes to consistent enforcement of morality, feelings take on a dialectical relationship with ethical principles. When push comes to shove, one must take priority over the other, which means that only masculinity with its propensity for consistency and firmness is appropriate for the objective application of rules and relations uncontaminated by circumstance or sentiment.

That is not to say that feminine adaptability does not have its place. The second Yin rests in a balanced position because she operates within her proper station. “The Kitchen” acts as a stereotypical symbol for the domain of the power of women. While men are legislative, women are both judicial and executive within the home. This is a vital role, though from the outside it seems insignificant and servile. As discussed in the opening, it is anything but—hence why, despite nothing seeming to get accomplished, the virtue of women in their spaces bodes well.

Without the vital role of the feminine being upheld, there will inevitably a tyranny of the masculine. That is the warning of the third Yang. There must be a balance. Excess strictness will lead to bitterness and resentment, and that resentment will in turn lead to justified disobedience by the wife. However, despite its validity, the disobedience will not lead the family back to success. The proper order will become reversed, and from excess strictness will come excess indulgence. This in turn leads to the destruction of proper understanding of the roles between men and women as well as parents and children. The whole family falls apart soon after, and then the society collapses after that.

Those are all matters of the family relating to itself in the body of fire, light, and enlightenment. Ahead is the body of wind discussing how the family relates to bodies outside of it.

The fourth Yin is the surrender to the necessity of serving the interests of the family. In most cases, this means the accrual of wealth and resources so that the members of the family are secure. The wants of the individuals in the family must take second priority to these unified, collective needs. Everyone must do things which they do not desire to do and must sacrifice something in order to make room for his or her relationship with the others. This means that the husband must go out into the world and work. I means that the wife must foster good relations with the neighbors, and the children become respectable members of their communities. Doing so is the path of good fortune, because according with the neighbors and community is making harmony with them as they are part of the Great Course.

Following from yielding to the needs of family and community, the well chosen masculine leader, the fifth Yang, can come to found his own house—meaning a physical home as much as an established family name, reputation, and legacy. In this way, the husband becomes king of his own little country, and his wife and children subjects secure and happy in their positions and duties.

The final Yang caps the extreme end of the external manifestation of proper family relations. That it is Yang and not Yin suggests that the Aristotelean mean lies somewhere close to strictness, firmness and severity than it does to indulgence and accommodation. This only makes sense, as the family is the place of the cultivation of virtue. Morality requires constraint, for it is the opposite of sin, vice, and evil. That is why truth and integrity are necessary and sufficient to cultivate all that has been discussed here of family matters. Truth is that-which-is, not how we feel about it. Integrity is acting in accordance with what we think is true, which is the has as being sincere and conducting ourselves such that we feel dignified.

Enlightenment inside the family is what brings the breath of life in contact with the heavens.

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.