Semantic Restructuring is the pursuit of enlightenment, enlivenment, empowerment through the creative re-arranging of the building blocks of meaning. For a better description, Start Here.
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Bateson, books, cogling, context, CPB, embodiment, framing, I Ching, paradox, perception influence, prisdem, semantic punctuation, sensation, techniques, unconscious
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Stillness without, radiance within; that is, Ken, the eldest son, the mountain as the outer face of the hexagram, Li, the middle daughter, radiance and fire as the inner face. The notes in the Willhelm/Baynes mention that Confucious was once uncomfortable on obtaining this hexagram, due to the danger of getting caught up in the form and forgetting the function. There are contexts and subtleties that we simply can't understand in the same way these things were understood thousands of years ago. That is why so often in this journey I return to basic, basic, basics. Stillness without, radiance within. Surely that describes a state of grace, and surely that is a state to seek. But one does not perform the work of the world from that state. Instead it is a place to visit, to refresh and restore one's spirit. Too many curliques and the ornament comes to outweigh the structure.
Soon it will change.
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I don't know where I first read this one, but I suppose I've most often read it in Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age". I have searched around for it before, but never found it. Today I caught up with page 144 of the book, on which is quoted from Chapter 15 of The Anelects:
Yu. When good government prevailed in his state, he was like an arrow. When bad government prevailed, he was like an arrow. A superior man indeed is Chu Po-yu! When good government prevails in his state, he is to be found in office. When bad government prevails, he can roll his principles up, and keep them in his breast."(emphasis added)
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Ken is the name of the trigram of the eldest son, it is also the trigram for mountain, and incorporates stillness and boundary. The trigram is binary 4, and this hexagram is binary 36. Note again how the increment of one unit has caused a flip of three lines; such is the nature of Change in the book of Changes.
A doubled trigram, of course, represents a condition in which the inner and outer aspects are aligned. The inner face of this hexagram is stillness and boundaries, as is the outer. This congruence between inner and outer aspects is a feature in itself, occuring 8 out of 64 times, once for each of the trigrams.
That said, the hexagram Ken signifies stillness and boundaries, just like the trigram. The text speaks in particular of bringing stillness to the back, and it is hard to imagine the rest of the body flouncing about whilst the back is thus stilled. To my eye, there is another relationship, that of the spine in the body to a ridge of mountains on land, like refering to the Rockies as the spine of the continent. Living as I have for the past few years nestled up to the San Gabriel foothills, I have come to appreciate this hexagram more than I ever could have growing up in Long Beach. But while the shore of the ocean or a lake or even the path of a river can be used as a logical boundary, mountains are different. If they are less binding today, thanks to rail travel and air travel, mountains are still barriers with which to reckon.
Perhaps one of the least understood aspects of what folks call "setting boundaries" is that announcing one is going to set boundaries largely defeats the purpose. When one draws a line in the sand, it is usually seen as a challenge (and, indeed, it is most often done as a challenge). But when one actually sets a boundary, rather than merely announcing it, one seeks to emulate the mountains, still, calm, impassive and unpassable, discouraging challenge rather than inviting it.
Ken, then, is the hexagram for stillness and boundary, within and without. Soon it will change.
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