One cries out for a just resolution.
This can only come if we quietly observe
proper principles. Avoid placing demands
on the universe, and success
will come.
second line
from The I Ching, or Book of Changes
💜
Posts Tagged → compassion
proper ☯️ principles
A healthy family, a healthy country,
a healthy world – all grow
outward from a single
superior person.
The hexagram Chia Jen concerns the proper foundation of human communities. The I Ching teaches that all clans must have a superior person at their center if they are to prosper and succeed. Therefore, in order to improve our family, company, nation, or world community, we must begin by improving ourselves.
If you will observe healthy families you will always see present in them three qualities: love, faithfulness, and correctness. When we truly love others, we are naturally kind, gentle, and patient with them. When we are faithful to others, we place proper principles and conduct above temporary influences like anger, desire, or greed. And when we practice correctness, we spiritually nourish ourselves and all those around us. When all three qualities are cultivated, a healthy clan springs naturally into being.
The difference between paying lip service to these ideals and practicing them is profound. If you advocate high ideals and actions to others but do not embody them yourself, your influence will disintegrate for lack of a proper foundation. Therefore, in order to inspire superior qualities in others, you must first instill them in yourself.
Concentrate not upon influencing others or external events but upon strengthening your inner devotion to proper principles. When modesty, acceptance, equanimity, and gentleness become deeply ingrained in your character, they will flow steadily out from from you.
Soon you will find yourself enmeshed in a web of healthy relationships, and in this there is great good fortune.
The I Ching, or Book of Changes
Hexagram 37, Chia Jen, The Family (The Clan)
Further guidance from the
Wei Wu Wei Ching:
Don’t try
to escape from
the movements of the world.
Remain in the midst of everything,
focused into the empty space
at the center of
your self.
Pouring your
whole being there without pause,
alert, quietly smiling, you detach from
clamor and chaos and become
independent and free.
From here you can
teach yourself
everything.
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when will this sunken world rise
these days
down here beneath the solar sea
the tidal flow of light etching the edges
of the continents we conjugate the colors
and the distances consult the oracles
decipher shadows dream the moment
when this sunken world
will rise
the great crocodile
I tell those around me
that if you turn away from the core,
your soul, you will fall into an unliving stupor.
The great crocodile comes and crushes your ship.
Eyes go one way, ears another; your intelligence
skews beyond reason. This disaster
can visit anyone.
When your ability
to choose comes back, your identity
will strengthen; ear and eye will realign;
and you can again be a friend,
a lover, a devotee.
the proper response to conflict
The proper response
to conflict, whether it lies within or
without us, is disengagement.
Whenever we allow ourselves to be drawn off balance, away from the strength of quiet integrity, we are in conflict. It matters not whether the confrontation is between competing values in one’s own mind or with another person: it is the inner departure from clarity and equanimity that leaves us with feelings of despair and vulnerability. The only remedy is to disengage from the problem and return to quiet contemplation of what is correct.
Conflict provokes strong feelings of doubt, fear, anxiety, and impatience to resolve the situation. If you act under the influence of these inferior emotions, you will severely complicate the misfortune. By following the prescription of the Sage and returning to a position of neutrality, acceptance, and detachment, you are able to meet opposing forces halfway: not recoiling in anger and condemnation, not pressing forward for some unnatural change in things, but waiting calmly in the center until the Higher Power provides the correct solution.
The I Ching teaches us that all conflict is, in the end, inner conflict. When you see it beginning, you are obliged not to pursue it, for this only compounds your own misfortune. If you cannot regain your equanimity on your own, then seek the assistance of a just and impartial person in resolving the difficulty. The only way to live free of conflict is to hold steadfastly to proper principles in all things. Through balance, patience, and devotion to inner truth we rise above every challenge.
The I Ching, or Book of Changes
ebooks & apps of the Tao the Ching, I Ching,
Wei wu Wei Ching, Hua hu Ching, and
Art of War for iPad/Phone, Kindle,
You
can now buy
the I Ching as part of a
five-app bundle of Taoist classics
for iPhone or iPad for less than
the cost of one hardcover
book.