...[T]he sage-kings created music to give expression to the winds coming from the eight directions and to appease the feelings of the people. This is the reason why the sound of music is calm and not harmful, and is harmonious without being licentious. As it enters the ear and affects the heart, everyone becomes calm and peaceful.

...Alas! Ancient music appeased the heart but modern music enhances desires. Ancient music spread a civilizing influence, but modern music increases discontent. To hope for perfect government without restoring ancient and changing modern music... more

A while ago, there was a thing about the word tong on this blog right here. It's a word that can mean "similar" or "a society" or "a gathering place" (as well as "gang"), and a tong ren -- a tong person -- can be a business associate, or a member of the same society, or it can mean a gathering together of like-minded people. That's what this hexagram is about.

So, let's dissect it systematically.

What's on the top? The outer... more

I'd just written something about fireworks here, but it got eaten by the net-wights. Let's see if their cyber-bellies are full of my words now. This post is therefore a careful reconstruction of a previous post.

OK, so, there's the thing with fireworks that they're used a lot as a metaphor for Chinese-American stuff, since they're so darn... well, Chinese and American. But most people don't get into the history of fireworks as a cooking accident. (My kids... more

Last time, we looked at Earth over Heaven -- the dark forces on the outside, and the light forces within, creating a sign meaning "peace." Here, we're looking at the opposite of peace. Not war, but stagnation -- a situation where nothing happens. The great depart and the small approach, and virtue has to remain hidden. As Wilhelm's discussion of the Judgement says:

The dark power is within, the light power is without. Weakness is within, harshness without. Within are the inferior, and without are the superior. The way of inferior people is in ascent; the way... more

My parents were immigrants to America. And now, my kids are too.

There's been a lot of talk recently over immigration laws. A lot of protests in the street over who should be allowed where and under what circumstances.

So, I thought it might be valuable to look over an important chunk of American history, written into law, about the kind of immigrant family mine has become. I'm always surprised when I run into adoptive parents who haven't heard of... more

Peace. Nice, isn't it? All... peaceful and stuff.

Yeah.

The Judgement verse for this hexagram tells us it's a good one:

Peace. The small departs, The great approaches.

That sounds peaceful.

And this impression is clarified by the Image verse:

Heaven and earth unite: the image of Peace. Thus the ruler Divides and completes the course of heaven and earth; He furthers and regulates the gifts of heaven and earth, And so aids the people.

But wait, dude! the careful... more

Master Lü-tsu said, In comparison with heaven and earth, man is like a mayfly. But compared to the great Way, heaven and earth, too, are like a bubble and a shadow. Only the primal spirit and the true nature overcome time and space.

The energy of the seed, like heaven and earth, is transitory, but the primal spirit is beyond polar differences. Here is the place whence heaven and earth derive their being. When students understand how to grasp the primal spirit, they overcome the polar opposites of light and darkness and tarry no longer in the three worlds [heaven, earth,... more

I like old pictures.

I like China.

I really like this blog, which is all old pictures of China.

It hasn't been updated recently, but still. Gorgeous stuff. Taken by the blogger's grandparents between 1910 and 1937.

More of his pictures are here, part of this archive of old images of China.

For those of you simply sick and tired of China (or who enjoy nightmare scenarios of what-to-expect-while-traveling), check... more

O.K., we're at the 10th hexagram in the I Ching, and we're (hopefully) pretty clear on how these things work. They've stopped being all Chinese and started being, well, decipherable. To recap, you've got six lines, with two different ways to look at them: as a set of two trigrams (which are explained in the Judgement and the Image verses) or as individual lines representing relationships between yin and yang (as explained in the, uh, Lines verses).

So, this hexagram, we're told in the Judgement, represents a person successfully treading... more

Since we just celebrated Memorial Day in the United States (and we did, didn't we?), when we meditate on the sacrifices of Our Heroic Soldiers (which for whatever reason always makes me think of World War II first, for which you can probably thank Sergeant Rock comics), I thought it might be interesting to look at Our Forgotten Allies over in China.

It is interesting too... I mean, check out where the fighting started in World War II. Most Americans kind of assume WWII started when Japan bombed Pearl... more