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

Return—Revolve–Restore
or |Retun|

Look for opportunities to exercise self-control and strengthen your will. Avoid those who would indulge your weakness and obsessions. Above all, stand firm. Even in the face of great opposition and jealousy, stand firm. (Bright-Fey 77)

Returning, arriving, exiting and entering without affliction. When companions come, there is no fault.
Repeatedly returning, the path returns in seven days. It is beneficial to have somewhere to go.

Yang 1: Returning without having gone far, without coming to regret, is very auspicious.

Yin 2: Good return is auspicious.

Yin 3: Repeated return is blameless in danger.

Yin 4: Centered action returns alone.

Yin 5: In earnest return there is no regret.

Yin 6: Straying from return bodes ill. There is calamity and error. Mobilize the army, and there will be a great defeat in the end. In terms of the nation, this bodes ill for the leadership. There will be no successful expedition even in ten years. (Cleary 133-139)

Progress is not linear. Just as history does not arc on a trajectory toward justice, neither do institution nor the people who compose them. Society and the human spirit develop in interconnected cycles. The adornment of culture, though a beneficial aspect of Yang, only covers the outer-body. It is shallow, and thus it is vulnerable to being stripped away by Yin yielding to temptation and counter-culture. But the cycle continues. Yin cannot dominate forever. The decadent conditions will produce the hardship requisite for strength. Yang is produced as a consequence of the aims of Yin—thus must Yang return, again and again.

In this Hexagram, thunder rumbles under the earth. The masculine spirit is becoming restless. It wants to express itself through the virtues of cultivated characters. However, the external environment is still overwhelmingly Yin. Temptations are indulged in as if the institutions are mother-goddesses and the people all her infants.

During these initial stages of the return of proper order, and not just propriety as an adornment, it is best to protect oneself from influences whose end effects are infantilization. This is the exercise of willpower as a means of cultivating discipline. Though this action will be lambasted as selfish by those who are made to feel guilty by ones successes and lack of shame, the truth that it is the one Path forward in accord with the Great Course during such a tumultuous time.

“Entering and exiting without affliction,” the path “repeatedly returning,” and it being “beneficial to have somewhere to go,” all describe the inevitable process: one comes and goes without being lured or gulled by vice; and if he were to succumb, the calling of his conscience and the subtly shifting moral tide will present him he opportunity to humble himself, admit error, and resume moving in the right direction. If he does not succumb, then he must retreat somewhere—into self-development—until the time can come when enough strong Yang spirits have arisen not just on the outside, but fully within there souls. These will be those people who have few if any regrets and who have not “gone far” in their indulgences.

As mentioned in the first Yang, the return of Yang principles is not equally distributed. The Second and third Yins signify that there will be those who are receptive to the good influence of others, but there will also be those who have strayed farther from the Path and who will suffer more and gain less because of said repeated straying. These latter types walk a dangerous line, and as many will be lost forever as who will eventually find themselves.

The fourth Yin describes people of the forever type—those weak individuals in positions of weakness. Though they may eventually return, they are likely to do so alone, having been left behind by the Yins following Yang and spurned by the indulgent Yins more like her. Only by according with the principles set out by the first Yang can one avoid this fate, as does the fifth Yin. A balanced leader is earnest in his convictions, and though he is weak, and though he shall be attacked from all angles, he will have no regrets, no guilt conscience. He will have done his part in returning order, honor, piety, and benevolence to a people in need of it.

But to double down on self-indulgence, as does the top and final Yin. This cannot be enough warned against. That road leads only to disaster: firstly as a consequence of immoral action, then as a knock-on effect caused by the vulnerability to calamity created by the willful fostering of weakness.

No adventure can succeed without the hero, and there is no hero if the boy is not challenged and made into a man.

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.