I Ching?

[John Doe]

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

[Ilya Kralinsky]

Ha! I felt it compulsory reading were I to understand Asian philosophies, and I found it quite funny. This is one of those things ... I suppose the best comparison comes in a statement I made in the writing section of this board, where I said a Frankenstein creation of literary brilliance and crowd-pleasing story-telling would be the ideal. In a civilization that indulged in ancestor worship and superstition, I think I Ching proved a way to introduce Taoism to a greater population by appealing to royalty concerned with a pre-destined set of future events to ensure their continued rule -- to give a sense of certainty about an uncertain future. It is poetic, it is a great work, but it was relied upon as a fortune-telling device.

I Ching, is, in fact, a worthy companion of Tao Te Ching, a compilation of Taoist thought attributed to Lao Tzu, and The Art of War by Sun Tzu is a good companion, as well. The whole notion of Taoism is similar to Buddhism and achieving a state of steady void, in that Taoism examines power, its flow in nature, the equal balance of all things (like karma), and conforming to the natural order of things through wu-hsin and wu-wei (non-thinking and non-doing). This is not to say one should not think or do, but it is a philosophy which stresses that, once we are trained fully in proper procedure of living and doing, we should surrender the notion of our consciousness standing over our thinking and doing process with a club, as Alan Watts once said.

Let's take the idea of a sweep kick, which I practice over and over and over. I think about the reach to the target, I think about what muscles are engaged, how the balance shifts slightly enough to not telegraph, how the foot lifts, how the leg swings, and how to properly rotate the body to maximally penetrate the target. After I've done this 20,000 or 30,000 times, there should be an easy ability for the strike to strike all on its own. If anything, where Buddhism seems like the first psychotherapy, Taoism is like the first neuroassociative conditioning model.

I'll explain more on that in a bit. Wonderful question, by the way. I'd forgotten the old Book of Changes.