WEBVTT - I Ching: The Book of Changes 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:05.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how stup 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:14.560 works dot com. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:16.640 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:18.840 McCormick and Robert. I've got a question for you about 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:22.880 childhood divination practices. Did you ever do this thing when 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:25.799 you were a kid that I definitely did where you 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:28.400 were worried about some question you wanted an answer like 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:30.720 am I going to get in trouble because I said 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:33.760 butt head on the playground? And what you do is 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:37.560 you go to some book, probably the Bible or any book, 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:40.320 but especially the Bible, and you just open to a 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:43.040 random page and you close your eyes and you put 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:45.760 your finger on a verse, and then you look down 0:00:46.240 --> 0:00:49.920 and it says, now Jehoram, the son of Ahab, began 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:53.720 to reign over Israel and Samaria the eighteenth year of Jehosaphat, 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:57.440 king of Judah, and reigned twelve years. That's the problem 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:01.000 about randomly generated Bible quote patients is that you might 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:04.000 get something really juicy and thoughtful and helpful. You might 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:08.640 get something that's just an incident of hideous violence from 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:12.680 the ancient past or some sort of of psychedelic prophecy, 0:01:12.800 --> 0:01:14.840 you're very likely to get a list of progen a 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:18.080 or something like that, exactly. Yeah, and now I never 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:20.240 I don't think I ever did this with the intent 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:23.920 of getting some sort of meaning or guidance from the book. 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:26.280 But I certainly did it out of out of boredom 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:31.320 at times, because growing up in church, you're not everything 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:33.240 going on up there is going to be really interesting 0:01:33.240 --> 0:01:35.080 to a young person. So you you only have so 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:37.240 many things you can turn to. You can poke around 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:39.400 in the hymnal, you can poke around in the Bible, 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:42.000 or you can doodle a little bit on the program, 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:43.520 but you can only get away with so much of that. 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:45.920 So you turn to the Bible, and there's there's a 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:48.240 lot of of interesting stuff in there, a lot of 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:51.720 boring stuff in there, just depending on where your fingertip 0:01:51.960 --> 0:01:54.760 happens to land. Well, yeah, just after that verse I mentioned. 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:57.240 I mentioned verse from Second Kings because it seems like 0:01:57.360 --> 0:01:59.520 very often when you split the Bible in half, you 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:02.440 go some where like in the later Middle Old Testament, 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:05.040 with a lot of that those kinds of verses that 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:07.600 are not super helpful. But right after that you'd get 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:09.800 and he wrought evil in the side of the Lord, 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:11.959 but not like his father and like his mother, for 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:14.600 he put away the image of Baal that his father 0:02:14.680 --> 0:02:17.400 had made. Somehow that seems a little more relevant to 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:20.000 saying butt head on the playground, maybe like the but 0:02:20.200 --> 0:02:23.440 the ble is the butt head you've done something worthy 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:27.839 of guilt. Yeah, you simply miscast your initial divination there, 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:30.079 you know, like you just needed to be a one 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:32.720 degreeed to laughter the right. Well, it highlights the fact 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:38.280 that some divination actually does feel more relevant than other divination, 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:42.560 even though we would probably say that no divination actually 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:47.400 has access to future or special knowledge, right, Yeah, Like 0:02:48.000 --> 0:02:50.600 when one example that comes to mind that lines up 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:52.520 with this is is something I used to do as 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:56.080 an adult, is that we just randomly pull up a 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:59.639 date on the writer's Almanac and see what the poem 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:03.120 for that day happened to be. Uh. This is was 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:07.040 a radio program about literary history, and each day that 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:09.720 they aired it, it would have a certain poem by 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:12.480 by you know, a poet living or dad. You know, 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:15.960 it varied, and since each poem is generally going to 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:19.960 speak to the human condition in in some way, shape 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:23.040 or form, there's almost always going to be something you 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:25.519 can gain from. It's something you can compare to your 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:28.840 own experience, and at times that might feel rather poignant 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:33.040 and perfect and just cosmically aligned. And because we have 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:37.360 such powers of interpretation, we can very easily do that. 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:38.920 I mean, I feel like if I had been trying 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:41.840 really hard, I wouldn't need like a good verse like 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:45.760 the one about baal and reeking wickedness, And I wouldn't 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:48.040 even need a good poem. I could probably make some 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:50.920 kind of sense out of that weird lineage passage, right, 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:53.960 And you could make sense out of pretty much any 0:03:54.000 --> 0:03:56.680 poem they throw at you, right, yeah, Yeah, if you 0:03:56.840 --> 0:03:59.360 if you try hard enough, if you sort of twist 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:02.120 the meaning enough, you can you can find something in 0:04:02.120 --> 0:04:04.840 just about any poem to apply to you. And certainly 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:09.360 you see plenty of examples of pastors and other clergical 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:13.160 individuals out there who who are following, say a liturgical calendar, 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:15.600 and they have a certain passage that they're given for 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:19.640 a given Sunday that they have to transform into a message. 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:22.800 And UH, as a skilled preacher, will be able to 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:26.520 do that. But in a divinatory context, I wonder, why 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:28.560 are we so good at this? And why do we 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:32.080 keep doing it. Why are we so intolerant of uncertainty 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:35.279 that throughout history we always keep coming back to these 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:40.200 methods of seeking secret information from outside ourselves. Yeah, it's 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:42.760 the thing that we fear the most in life, and 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:45.960 yet we summon it in trying to figure out how 0:04:45.960 --> 0:04:49.440 we're going to tackle uncertainty. Yeah, and also like, why 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:51.800 do we keep doing it on the assumption, like you 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:53.720 and I, I know are not going to be advocating 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:57.159 the magic powers of any divination method in this episode, 0:04:57.520 --> 0:05:00.960 So on the assumption that the information provide through divination 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:04.520 is no better than chance at being correct, why do 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:08.120 we keep doing it? Is there something actually adaptive or 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:12.000 powerful or useful about this process even though it doesn't 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:15.640 actually have magic access to the future. Well, it simply 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:18.720 makes choices easier at times. I think we've all been 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:22.400 in a situation where, uh, maybe it's not as simple 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:25.279 as like who who's gonna serve first in a game 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:29.960 of tennis? But it becomes too much of an effort 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:32.720 to say, decide who's going to pick up the tab 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:35.280 at a bar? Right, it becomes too much of an argument. 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:39.200 There are too many social considerations to take into place. Uh, 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:42.440 it's much easier just to make it random, just a 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:46.320 complete random act. Flip a coin, paper rocks, is, there's whatever, 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:49.960 and just come up with with the with with an answer, 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:51.599 and then you don't have to think about it anymore. 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:54.200 You got it. The cognitive load has just been dumped. 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:58.279 I think that is a great answer, like the laziness perspective, 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:00.880 and we know mother nature is quite lazy, and anything 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:04.279 we can do to reduce cognitive loads and take the 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:07.159 effort out of the process, that can be helpful. Yeah, 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:09.039 it's at the end of the day, you have decision 0:06:09.080 --> 0:06:11.240 fatigue from all the other decisions you've made, and you 0:06:11.400 --> 0:06:14.680 just can't decide if it's going to be, you know, 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:18.800 macaroni or crab cakes for dinner. Let randomness, Let let 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:20.919 a coin, a flip of a coin decided for me. 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:23.920 And yet there are some contradictions in there, aren't there? 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:27.119 Because that seems to make sense for trivial decisions where 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:29.640 you don't want to be bothered by stuff. But people 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:33.839 use divination methods and you know, casting of lots and 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:36.480 all all that kind of stuff and opening the Bible 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:39.880 to a random verse to make the most important decisions 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:44.159 in their lives. That that's almost when you've most find 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:47.480 yourself seeking this, when you're really desperate, when you really 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:49.600 need to know something, when you really don't know what 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:52.880 to do about something important, then people seek the wisdom 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:56.320 of the gods. That's an interesting contradiction, and I want 0:06:56.360 --> 0:06:58.720 to come back to that later. A second thing that 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:01.200 I think is interesting give in the idea that we're 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:03.480 not going to be advocating that any books have magic 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:05.920 powers or have the power to predict to the future, 0:07:06.040 --> 0:07:11.280 is that, nevertheless, some divination methods seem better, more powerful, 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:14.480 and more profound than others, even though none of them 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:18.640 are actually magic. For example, your average newspaper horoscope is 0:07:18.800 --> 0:07:21.400 it's kind of hilarious to most of us, right, if 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:24.239 you've done some research on the forer effect in making 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:27.480 vague statements that seem like they apply specifically to you, 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:30.760 but in fact they applied almost everybody. You can see 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:35.040 these just the newspaper horoscopes just riddled with them, right. 0:07:35.200 --> 0:07:37.520 Or another example would be and there's an even worse 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:41.040 example because there's even less methodology behind it, but the 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:44.760 fortune cookie, which would which we've many of us have 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:48.200 grown up obtaining at Chinese restaurants, is of course, not 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:53.760 even a legitimate Chinese cultural artifact. Sometimes it delightful. Nevertheless, 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:55.240 it can't be the life. Well, it can be fun. 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:58.400 I mean, everybody loves a fortune cookie. It's it's it's 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:00.680 a cookie and it has this shot of paper in 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:02.880 it that you can talk about with your friends or 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:07.880 make a joke about. But it's pretty lightweight and inauthentic 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:11.840 when it comes to considering Chinese divination. Well, to get 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:14.960 into Chinese divination, I want to say that while we're 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:18.280 highlighting divination methods that even while we fully acknowledge they're 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:21.000 not magic and they are really just start effects of 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:24.760 culture that play on our psychological vulnerabilities, some feel like 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:26.960 they get at something deeper. And I think, for me, 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:31.000 the prime example of this would be the Chinese classic 0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:34.640 the Eaching, the Guided Divination Book, also known as the 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:37.240 Book of Changes, and that's what we're gonna be talking 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:39.280 about today now. I do want to drive home that 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:42.520 if you ever looked up the Eaching and started to 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:44.560 read about it, and then you get intimidated by this 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:48.720 big block of symbols, well trust us, because we're gonna 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:51.319 we're gonna guide you through the Eaching here and We're 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:53.600 not gonna get too far into the weeds on the 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:57.720 particulars of Chinese divination and sorcery, right, we wanted to 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:00.120 look more at like the idea of the eaching, how 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:02.560 it works in its most basic sense, how it fits 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:06.440 into the psychology of the human practice of divination, and 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:10.160 why so many thinkers, from ancient Chinese philosophers to Carl 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:14.080 Young have believed it to contain such profundity despite the 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:17.280 fact that it doesn't actually predict the future. It doesn't. 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:19.760 It's not magic. It doesn't predict the future. But it 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:24.040 does do something interesting. And what does it do well? 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:26.840 As the name implies that it speaks to change in 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:30.440 our lives and in the universe, as the as the 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:33.920 title the Book of Changes implies. Uh, there's a There's 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:36.240 a wonderful quote I want to read from Alan Watts, 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:39.880 who who spoke and wrote at length about the eaching. 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:43.360 He said, it's almost a mapping of the thinking processes 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:45.680 of man. Yeah, he has a lot of interesting thoughts 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:48.480 about it, especially in the context of thinking about the 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:53.040 Yin and yang imagery in Chinese culture. But Watts also 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:58.520 compares the functioning of the each ing to the logic 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:02.680 gates to the you know, buy aary logic in technology, Yeah, totally. 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:05.640 I mean, in essence, the Book of Changes is just 0:10:05.720 --> 0:10:08.559 an ancient book of Chinese divination. Right. You seek the 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:11.720 answer to a question, and you have a process and 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:14.800 the book will help give you some kind of answer. Right. 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:16.560 But it's also much of the more than that, and 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:18.760 it I think it lacks a true parallel in the 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:21.600 West in terms of its influence. So one could perhaps 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:24.240 make a case for the Bible. But the Bible is 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.839 not explicitly intended as a book of divination, right, But 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:31.000 I'm speaking beyond like near divination, just in terms of 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:34.920 how important the work is. It's like a root text 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:38.840 for a civilization. It's it's hard. I mean, you could 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:41.400 make a case for the Bible, but but but I 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:43.280 feel like that's not really a direct one to one 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:47.200 between the I Ching and whatever version of the Bible 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:51.760 one is presenting. So this is a classical text that 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:55.960 was recorded in the ninth century BC, and it contains 0:10:56.160 --> 0:11:00.160 the verses that incorporate divination terms and images. It was 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:05.240 used by diviners to read sticks or stalks of yarrow 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:08.240 plant that were cast six at a time so that 0:11:08.320 --> 0:11:10.880 they fell in the shape of a hexagram, and the 0:11:11.160 --> 0:11:15.400 practice would have involved lore, art, and mathematics in interpreting it. 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:20.120 So it's considered one of the great five Chinese classical texts, 0:11:20.120 --> 0:11:22.120 and and it serves as a root text for both 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:26.480 Taoism and Confucianism, and beyond that, it also influenced Chinese 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:29.480 science and states craft. Uh. In other words, it's a 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:32.760 fundamental work of Chinese culture. And in fact, it alone 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:36.440 among all the Confucian classics, escaped the book burnings of 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:39.719 Chin Chi Wong, who we recently discussed at link in 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:42.240 an episode. Do you know why it survived? Is there 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:46.720 a reasoning behind that or that just an accident? My 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:49.040 understanding is that there may be more to it, But 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:51.400 it was it was just such a fundamental text. It 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:53.400 was just again it was it is a root text. 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:55.720 You could not just rip it out of the culture, 0:11:55.880 --> 0:11:59.160 no matter how many other things you were ripping apart. So, like, 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:01.520 even if you're a person who's devoted to a racing 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:05.240 history and establishing a new world, you there are some 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:08.480 books that maybe seem so pivotal and so important to 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:11.040 you as a tool that you can't get rid of them. Right, Yeah, 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:12.640 it's it's like you can rip down the house, but 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:18.960 this is the foundation. So German sinologist Richard Wilhelm, who 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:22.880 lived through ninety he was a key individual in the 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:27.559 history of Western scholarship on the Eaching, as was his 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:31.680 son as well. Uh. He wrote that there were pros 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:35.240 and cons to the book's importance. On one hand, quote 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:38.559 it forced Chinese philosophical thinking more and more into a 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:42.440 rigid formalization. Yet he also points out they quote apart 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:46.520 from this mechanistic number of mysticism, a living stream of 0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:51.560 deep human wisdom was constantly flowing through the channel of 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:55.280 this book into everyday life, giving to China's great civilization. 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:59.280 The rightness of wisdom distilled through the ages. Well being 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:02.640 a book and not just being say, you know, a 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:05.600 method of casting animal bones or something like that, but 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:09.040 having written content, we we do have to acknowledge that 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:14.199 it does contain inherent directional nous, right because it has 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:17.400 written words. There are things that this book says and 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:21.000 things that this book does not say. And that's different 0:13:21.120 --> 0:13:24.240 from a totally like a totally free form type of 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:27.959 divination that could say anything at any time, right right, 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:30.880 the sort of magic eight ball kind of scenario right, Well, no, 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:32.640 I mean in a ball has a has a number 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:35.480 of messages to like the eight ball has written content. 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:40.200 I guess it's less it's less literary, but no, I 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:43.520 mean I'm thinking like as opposed to just sitting somewhere 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:45.320 and saying, like, all right, what is what are the 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.320 gods telling me? That could go in any direction? When 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:50.640 you've got a book to guide you. The book says 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:53.760 some things in it and it doesn't say other things 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:56.800 constrains you, right, So it would be different than say, 0:13:56.840 --> 0:14:00.800 setting in Central Park in New York City and say alright, God, 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:03.760 give me a sign, and then you look around until 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:06.960 you notice something that seems like it might be a 0:14:07.000 --> 0:14:09.640 message from the divine And it could be anything. It 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:12.679 could be a peculiar looking dog, a child looks at 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:15.760 you with a with a with a weird eye, or 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:18.079 there's a you know, a large child eating corn on 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:20.320 the cob. But you know that the portant could be anything. 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:22.680 But I like where your brain went with that. But 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:27.320 that was seeing the Robert Lamb reference for our Hodgman fans, 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:30.040 that was one of the portant City lays out one 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:31.920 the weird eye or the corn on the corn of 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:34.240 the cop Okay, yeah, I believe that was one of 0:14:34.240 --> 0:14:37.800 the signs of Ragnarok approaching. Now, is there a hexagram 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:41.320 in the each ing of the child with the weird eye? Oh? 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:43.840 I don't know. There might be child with weird eye turning. 0:14:44.920 --> 0:14:46.840 All right, well we should actually explain a little bit 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:49.200 more of the specifics of how the book works. So 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:52.480 if you are an ancient Chinese philosopher and you want 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:55.880 to know something about the future, you want the answer 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:58.440 to a question in your life, how would you use 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:01.440 the book? All right? So at this point we really 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:05.840 just need sort of break down the process of the eaching, 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:09.320 how it works. So, what's the most basic question you 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:11.640 could ask of a god or the universe or what 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:14.960 have you, or say a coin you could ask the 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:19.280 same question. You could ask it a yes or no question. Yeah, 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:23.320 basic binary situation here, uh, and we can you can 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:25.800 ask this a virtually anything. You could stare at the 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:28.960 park and say, all right, give me a sign God 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:31.800 you have answer to my question is a yes, and 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:33.760 then you wait till you see the child with the corn. 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:37.680 In a way, it's the most efficient sort of information 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:40.600 dense way of consulting anything, just to ask it yes. 0:15:40.680 --> 0:15:42.760 Or no question right yeah, And at the at the 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:45.000 heart the Book of Changes comes down to this yes 0:15:45.040 --> 0:15:49.200 no binary. So the cast sticks form lines, and a 0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:53.280 single unbroken line is a yes, while a broken line 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:57.000 is a no. But pretty early on the ancient diviners 0:15:57.000 --> 0:16:01.400 added additional details to these divined answers a second line, 0:16:01.760 --> 0:16:07.280 so now you could have such answers as essentially yes, yes, no, no, yes, no, no, yes, 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:12.200 and then a third line produces the eight trigrams. That's 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:14.920 the that's that's the symbol. When you look at those 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:18.440 charts of all these weird lines and you're intimidated by 0:16:18.440 --> 0:16:20.520 the by the eaching, that's what you're looking at, the 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:24.440 trigrams and as as. And also if you've if you've 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:28.400 ever seen an image of the young symbol and it's 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:32.840 surrounded by these different line based symbols than those are 0:16:32.960 --> 0:16:37.000 the trigrams. You typically you'll see that on just the 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:40.960 the the logo for S Martial Arts Studio in any 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:44.720 given small town in America. M But but that also 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:47.520 underlines just how widespread these are in Chinese culture and 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:50.960 things that are inspired by Chinese culture. Would you say 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:53.800 it's so widespread that it makes it even into lots 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:56.000 of imagery where the people employing it don't even know 0:16:56.080 --> 0:17:00.440 what it's from. Oh, without doubt. So, as will Ham 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:04.119 points out, quote, these eight triagrams were conceived as images 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:06.919 of all that happens in Heaven and Earth. At the 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:08.879 same time, they were held to be in a state 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:13.400 of continual transition, one changing into another, just as transition 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:17.000 from one phenomenon to another is continually taking place in 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:19.520 the physical world. And that's the central idea of the 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:24.680 Book of Change, a universe defined by changing transitional states. Yeah, 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:27.440 I would say that it seems that the primary ideas 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:31.320 within the Book of Changes are duality and binaries, and 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:35.080 then constant flux between them. Right right there, there are 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:38.360 two ways things can be, and you're always going back 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:42.040 and forth between those two ways, right, Does that make sense? Yeah, 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:45.280 totally so. So again, we have these eight triagrams at 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:48.040 this point, and then each one takes on additional meanings. 0:17:48.480 --> 0:17:50.800 Uh so, one is the father, the other than mother, 0:17:50.880 --> 0:17:53.320 then first son, second son, third son, and then the 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:56.359 three daughters. One is Heaven, one is Earth. When his 0:17:56.440 --> 0:18:01.439 thunderwater mountain, wind would fire lake, other attributes such as 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:07.480 strength or resting or penetration or or joyfulness. And then 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:10.359 these you take these these tigrooms and then you use 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:12.679 them in combination with each other, producing a total of 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:17.280 sixty four signs six lines each. Change one line in 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:20.720 one of these, and you change the situation they represent, uh, 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:23.040 you know, such as the earth or thunder. So we're 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:27.720 left with a series of situations expressed as line based symbols, 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:31.800 and the movement of these lines change the situation. And 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:34.960 in response to each situation, there's a right and a 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:36.960 wrong course of action. And this is where the Book 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:39.840 of Changes transforms from a mere book of divination to 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:43.159 a book of wisdom. What should I do about the 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:46.479 situation just revealed to me? Now that's interesting, So the 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:48.959 book this is another way in which the content of 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:52.800 the book actually matters. It's not just a process for 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:56.520 giving you random answers to yes or no questions. It 0:18:56.640 --> 0:19:01.680 also tells you something about the situation and wreck men's behavior. Yeah, 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:04.520 it's pretty big. It's it's it's not merely revealed fate. 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:08.159 You have a role to play, and the germinal phase 0:19:08.160 --> 0:19:10.480 and all of this is key. This is when things 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:14.280 are most susceptible to change, which matches up with our 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:16.600 experience of reality, you know, and out of this we 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:19.280 get the idea of the dow the course of things, 0:19:19.600 --> 0:19:23.119 the great stirring represented in the yenyang symbol UH, and 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:28.879 it was used by sorcerers, diviners, Confucius, Daoist statesman, scientists, 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:31.960 and more, with writings popping up and vanishing over the 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:36.560 ages devoted to the various interpretations and new writings, some 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:38.800 of which we will discuss here, continue to pop up. 0:19:38.840 --> 0:19:42.880 Is new individuals and new cultures discover the Book of Changes. 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:44.600 All right, on that note, we're going to take a 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:46.879 quick break, and when we come back we will bust 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:51.520 out an example of the eaching consultation before discussing it 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:56.639 in greater depth than alright, we're back, alright, So today 0:19:56.640 --> 0:20:00.280 we've been talking about the eaching, this ancient Chinese method 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:03.639 of divination, the Book of Changes and UH and some 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:07.920 interesting psychological characteristics of it, how it works. But we 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:10.240 we should show you what it feels like to consult 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:13.520 the eaching and get some results. So one example I 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:16.000 came up with last night. For a while, I've been 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:18.119 working on a writing project and I just asked the 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:21.480 eaching last night whether I would get any good writing done. 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:24.000 This coming weekend, because you never know is stuff going 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:26.760 to come up that's gonna draw you away, distract you, 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:29.600 or am I going to be productive? So I did 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:32.320 a virtual version that allows you to use virtual coin 0:20:32.359 --> 0:20:35.040 flips to generate the hexagram number, so I didn't actually 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:37.240 have to flip coins or throw sticks. Yeah, there are 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:39.159 a number of different websites that allow you to do this, 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:41.639 and some even give you the choice where you can 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:45.080 you can physically flip your own coins and record it 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:48.160 on the website, which if you if you're like me 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:52.120 and you you play role playing games, you prefer actual 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:55.360 dice as opposed to just pure like it seems wrong 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:58.959 to trust the computer world completely. I want my my 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:03.080 physical uncertainty to take place on the table. Well, there's 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:05.720 definitely a way in which if you actually believe there's 0:21:05.760 --> 0:21:09.720 something magic about the process, then you people very often 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:14.120 default to wanting physical tokens for for magical kind of significance. 0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:17.400 It's harder to feel like something magic is happening inside 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:21.960 the computer just generating random numbers. But either way, let's 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:24.040 say I don't believe anything magic is going on. I 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:28.680 don't I use the computer and it generates hexagram eighteen 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:33.639 repairing decay. So that bodes well for my writing project. 0:21:33.760 --> 0:21:37.320 But okay, so I see repairing decay. Interesting. No, the 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:39.919 Chinese word here is goo, which is a type of 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:43.680 venom based poison made from like combining I think scorpions 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:47.639 in different insects or worms. Yeah. Yeah. Anyone who listened 0:21:47.680 --> 0:21:49.960 to the episode I did with Christian about poisons a 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:54.000