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

Outline—Brighten—Elegance
|or| Adornment

Look for an opportunity to rest and be at peace with yourself. Now is the time to romance your soul and cultivate your inner life. Harmonize your bodymind and indulge in simple pleasures. (Bright-Fey 73)

Adornment is successful, contributing a little bit to getting somewhere.

Yang 1: Adorning the feet, one abandons the car and walks.

Yin 2: Adornment is following.

Yang 3: Adorned, luxuriant, it bodes well to always be correct.

Yin 4: To be adorned, yet plain, the white horse is swift. Denying the enemy, it mates.

Yin 5: Adornment in the hills and gardens. The roll of silk is cut up. It is humiliating, but after all there is good fortune.

Yang 6: Plain adornment is blameless. (Cleary 122-128)

The mountain looms, its silhouette illuminated by the enlightenment of fire—this is the symbol represented by the twenty-second hexagram, and it stands for the instituting of culture predicated on awareness-of and attention-on what is highest. Externally, cultural norms become traditions which bring a people together—a coming together initiated by “biting through,” the purging of evil. Internally, those capable of discernment between nourishment and decadence are those who set the aforementioned cultural standards through their embodied virtues of prudence and temperance.

This canto is called Adornment, and it makes use of the same metaphor throughout in order to describe culture and its relationship to a people. Laws, mores, morals, norms, and traditions are all attributions which have some influence on the underlying essence that is the humans to whom they belong. Seen in this way, culture is like a coat or a pair of boots—the latter simile applying happily to Cheng Yi’s commentary on the first Yang.

Within the trigram of fire, there is firmness in the lowest position. This is likened to a sage or otherwise enlightened person who occupies a position without power or influence. Most people of virtuous character occupy just such positions throughout most of their lives. Despite their lack of direct influence on the culture at large, those lowly yet wise souls exercise virtuous discrimination the same as those with wisdom above. They adorn their feet, meaning they adopt the cultural norms insofar as they serve to enable them to walk their Paths. In so doing, they abandon the car—the bandwagon, Cheng Yi clarifies. The worldly masses jump aboard the cultural cart and follow along blindly, seeing walking—deviation from the popular culture—as slow, shameful, and signifying low status.

However, it is the judicious adoption of current cultural values which makes the enlightened few leaders of their own lives and not mere followers of others’ life paths. The second Yin warns of this. Adornment, culture, is always something inherited. It is, in this way, always a kind of following of others as opposed to a development of self. One can conform to what is expected of him according to someone else, but it will not harmonize his essential nature with the Great Course.

That is why the third Yang offers an additional warning. “Adorned, luxuriant” represents being steeped in one’s culture. It is risky to take too much pride in the chance circumstances of being born to a particular time and place. One is likely to attribute virtue to his person where really it is merely the clothes in which he is dressed. This type of groupish arrogance should be combated by the conscious practice of humility and propriety. “Correctness,” the text calls it, the embodiment of virtue both in body and mind—body being both health and behavior, mind being thought and intention. And it should here be said, these elements are not truly separate in a person.

Ascending to the external expression, the mountain takes over from the symbol of fire. The fourth Yin, the proper correspondent of the first Yang, is the adoption of simple and practical aspects of culture in the same vein as the wise of low position. This is the white mare swiftly evading the temptation of the enemy third Yang interposed between her and her proper mate. When the plain, nourishing elements of a culture are celebrated—and not the decadent and fashionable aspects—then new and beneficial traditions are born into the old culture.

The influence of traditions born through prudent discrimination can, over time, pervade even those in positions of power. Though the leadership may still be weak as the society recovers from its age of obstruction, finally the leaders themselves might find means for self-development. Before, there were only opportunities for delegation of responsibility to those who were capable. Now, however, the I Ching speaks of leaders as rolls of uncut silk. Though it is embarrassing to subject oneself to the tutelage of another from a lower position, an emperor can only make himself good clothes if he is willing to follow the tailor’s advice.

Humility continues to be the key virtue in the final Yang. “Plain adornment is blameless,” that is to say, cultural practices which are based in reality protect a society from the flights of fantasy which plague a people who mistake their particular tastes for moral propriety. Adornment, for it to help facilitate virtue and good fortune, must be properly fitted to the wearer. Likewise, culture must accord with the Way if it is to serve its function.

Be wary of self-aggrandizing beliefs. The Way, like a Great Coursing river, seeks first the lowest, humblest point and then flows from there, nourishing everything.

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.