![]() ![]() Someone who worked at one of the big Zen institutes in San Francisco told me that they were visited by a highly regarded Japanese teacher who walked in on a large room full of silent meditators, hung out for a while, then angrily yelled "You're all looking for God" and stormed out. My guess (could be totally wrong) is that people will eventually rediscover their own traditions. Presumably these will give way to other trends over time. In fact both of the two great spiritual trends going on right now - the other being aggressive atheism - seem like attempts to fill the same void. On the narrower point of California Buddhism and similar spiritual trends, these do seem to me to be all about rebellion against Western religion, so they're tied up (often unconsciously) in issues that have nothing to do with the models they seek to emulate. Our civilization - heck, my life - has improved immeasurably by exposure to the Sanskrit and Chinese classics. For example, I consider the Wilhelm-Baynes I Ching to be a masterpiece. Not only has much come West, much of value has come West. (Also - an irrelevant pet peeve - he or his publishers came up with one of the most obnoxiously hubristic titles I've ever seen in "The Gospel According to Jesus"). The I Ching or Zhouyi the Book of Changes is a collection of practical wisdom used as oracular statements and pertaining to every conceivable situation. I like Mitchell's translations, but when he strays into editorializing he makes me cringe. It's by far the most prominent recent English Dao. It's in Chapter 27 of Stephen Mitchell's translation. ![]() The creation of the eight Pa Kua or trigrams at the root of the sixty-four principles, are ascribed to the legendary Fu-hsi, who ruled during the third. It is based on the ancient idea of Yin and Yang and is appreciated by the Confucians and Taoists alike. What came west was a Western version of the East. The Book of Changes, called the I Ching, is one of the world's oldest works of literature. Beyond the jargon The lines Change Trigrams Trigrams in hexagrams How to cast a reading. But these imports have been inexorably and fundamentally transformed on being drawn into our vaccuum.Ī writer I like put it this way: The East never came west. Close What is the I Ching Its name and age Its nature How the I Ching works. Prior to WWII this was mostly drawing on Hindu traditions after WWII, from the Beats on, Buddhism. Much of this is about the 20th century collapse of Western religious institutions, corresponding exactly, I think, with a hunger for alternative traditions to fill the resulting vaccuum. What it was really about was managing the pain from frostbite cleaning stone floors with freezing cold water in the winter and welts from being struck on the back by senior monks with big sticks. (I talked to an American guy who spent a year at a 12th century Zen monastery in Japan. That is so hilariously consumeristically hedonistically oxymoronic, it's delightful. ![]() My favorite example of this phenomenon is the label I saw on a fancy candle at a friend's house: "Zensual". You're right! I never noticed that before. ![]()
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