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

Offering—Exalted—Nourishment
|or| Great Accumulation

Be on guard for self-generated feelings of repression and insignificance. Look for opportunities to be charitable to others and allow the remarkable Tao to instruct you in correct and virtuous behavior. Avoid group-think or being swept away by the emotions of a crowd. Now is the time to embrace solitude. (Bright-Fey 81)

Great accumulation is beneficial if correct. Not eating at home is auspicious. It is beneficial to cross great rivers.

Yang 1: There is danger. It is beneficial to desist.

Yang 2: The axle is removed from the car.

Yang 3: A good horse gives chase. It is beneficial to be steadfast and upright in difficulty. Daily practicing charioteering and defense, it is beneficial to go somewhere.

Yin 4: A horn guard on a young bull is very auspicious.

Yin 5: The tusks of a gelded boar are auspicious.

Yang 6: What is the road of the sky? Going through freely. (Cleary 146-152)

The mountain is stable and still, unchanging; and within the mountain incubates heaven, the creative. Externally, habits, culture, and the institutions given rise from them remain the same, while internally, the Tao gives birth to ten-thousand things—a metaphor for the great accumulation of spiritual and material wealth which spring forth from the celebration of one’s history, culture, ethnicity, nation, and beliefs.

To assist in understanding this, the western mind should heed the explanation by Cheng Yi. In his commentaries on “Great Accumulation,” he describes a double meaning lost in translation. For “great accumulation” in the minds of the ancient Chinese also means “stopping.” This may not seem intuitive to a native English speaker. If that is the case, than think of it this way: to accumulate anything, one must stop moving at set roots. One’s relationship with a particular land or place can only be cultivated if time and energy is spent there. The same can be said of one’s relationships with other people. This is true even of oneself. He who is never able to rest in a single identity can never know himself, for tomorrow he might be somebody else—or, more likely, he will never become any one thing, which would require the sacrifice of fluid potentiality.

Therefore, in order to accumulate wisdom, virtue, trust, or even just material wealth, one must halt progress for a time. He must take an attitude of faith toward himself, his ancestry, and his society. It is with this faith that he shirks off feelings of self-doubt and meaninglessness. For only the transient itinerant views all people and places as interchange. The man with a family, friends, and community does not succumb to existential angst, because he matters to a certain people of a certain place.

The communal aspect is touches upon in the introductory verse of the hexagram. It says, “Not eating at home is auspicious,” and, “It is beneficial to cross great rivers.” Eating outside of home here means to share a meal with others. Crossing great rivers means something similar, to bridge the divide between individuals and groups. The global man, belonging nowhere in particular, is ironically isolated from the peoples and places he visits. He is not connected with them. He does not break bread with them nor help them build intergenerational values or wealth. It is only the committed son, husband, and father, friend and cousin, who is present and invested such to bring benefit to those other who share in his culture.

The first and second Yangs represent the expansive, revolutionary, messianic impulse which drives young men to attempt to improve the world around them. Though noble in intention, there is danger in this. Energy absent direction and guidance inevitably launches one like a wayward arrow. He flies high and far but misses the mark and finds himself lost, perhaps further from the way than when he started. That is why the first and second Yangs are stopped by their fourth and fifth Yin correspondents. The constraints provided by a particular cultural Way guide each individual in his cultivation of an accord with the more universal Great Course. That is why it is beneficial to desist in the beginning; and it is why it is fortunate for one’s cart to lose its axel. Before one can develop, me must stop—he must make “No Error.”

At the height of the heaven trigram, once one has yielded for a time to one’s culture and developed discipline, virtue, and personal power—strength sufficient to bring one’s will into being—only then is it beneficial to contribute to or change one’s culture. Wisdom and experience must come first. If one as an individual gets knocked down by the slightest difficulty, if he cannot stand on his own, then how does he suppose to know what is best for others? He does not even know what is good for himself. He is like an unfit horse. He can’t even run at a gallop, yet he expects to pull a laden cart. Someone save him! Remove the axel!

That is why the fourth and fifth Yins are benevolent despite their oppression. A horn guard on a young bull does disable him from taking full advantage of his youthful masculine ferocity. Likewise a wild boar that his gelded loses the rage and aggression which make it a formidable foe. But such is necessary when integrating wild animals into civilization.

After a time, once beneficial traditions have piled up in a great accumulation, only then is it proper for the wisest men, those who have risen to high positions by the fruits of their actions, to implement incremental change. Like a sage on a mountain peak, these are the kind of people qualified to critique the very cultures which they themselves have helped to honor and cultivate. These people will be few and far between, and they shall be free from groups fractious ideology, for their personal Ways will be in accord with the winding course of the Way itself. Following the Tao—the Way, the Truth, the Universal, the transcendent, the objective, the will of God, etc.—they will create greater harmony by way of their actions, bringing their people’s greatly accumulated wisdom with them as they resume progress along the Road.

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.