Stopping disputes
One catches up by being careful not to disturb others. taoscopy.com
The Family37
Focus on nurturing harmony in your community or family. Cultivate stability and mutual support by fostering open communication and shared values.
↓ Line 1
The foundation of the family is strong. By maintaining order and discipline, harmony is achieved.
↓ Line 2
Focus on responsibilities and duties within the family. Consistent effort leads to success.
↓ Line 5
Leadership and responsibility within the family bring about positive outcomes.
↓ Repair18
Address issues; repair what's been neglected. Embrace responsibility to restore and improve.
Original Readings
37 The Family
Other titles: Family Life, Clan, Home, Linkage, Dwelling People, The Psyche, "May indicate a situation where the family can and should help." -- D.F. Hook
Judgment
Legge: For the regulation of The Family, what is most advantageous is that the wife be firm and correct.
Wilhelm/Baynes: The Family . The perseverance of the woman furthers.
Ritsema/Karcher: Dwelling People. Harvesting: woman Trial. [This hexagram describes your situation in terms of living and working with others in a common space. It emphasizes that caring for your relation with those who share this space and for the space itself is the adequate way to handle it. To be in accord with the time, you are told to: dwell with people!]
Shaughnessy: Family members: Beneficial for the maiden to determine.
Cleary (1): For people in the home it is beneficial that the woman be chaste. [In the human body, the vitality, spirit, soul, psyche, and intent all belong to yin and all take orders from the human mentality … When you refine away the human mind, the mind of tao spontaneously becomes manifest.]
Wu:The Family indicates that it is advantageous for a woman to be persevering. [This is a hexagram with its emphasis on women. Both constituent trigrams are feminine … Hence those who endeavor to be firm and correct will have advantages.]
The Image
Legge: Wind rising out of fire -- the image of The Family. The superior man speaks the truth and is consistent in his behavior.
Wilhelm/Baynes: Wind comes forth from fire: The image of The Family. Thus the superior man has substance in his words and duration in his way of life.
Blofeld: This hexagram symbolizes wind rising from fire. The Superior Man's speech is full of substance and he behaves with constancy.
Liu: The wind coming out of the fire symbolizes The Family. The speech of the superior man should have substance, and his conduct be enduring.
Ritsema/Karcher: Wind originating-from fire issuing-forth. Dwelling People. A chun tzu uses words to possess beings and-also movement to possess perseverance.
Cleary (1): Wind emerges from fire, members of a family. Thus is there factuality in the speech of superior people, consistency in their deeds.
Cleary (2): … Developed people are factual in speech, consistent in action.
Wu: Wind comes forth from fire; this is The Family. Thus the jun zi speaks with facts and acts with perseverance.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: In Family the wife is in her correct place in the lower trigram, and the husband in his correct place in the upper. That spouses occupy their correct positions shows the correct relationship between heaven and earth. The parents rule the family: let the father indeed be father, and the son son; let the elder brother be indeed elder brother, and the younger brother younger; let the husband indeed be husband, and the wife wife -- then the family will be in its correct state. Bring the family to that state, and all under heaven will be established.
Legge: The written Chinese character for Family simply means "a household," or "the members of a family." The lesson of the hexagram is the regulation of the family, effected by the cooperation of the husband and wife in their several spheres, and only needing it to become universal to secure the good order of the kingdom. The important place accorded to the wife is seen in the short sentence in the Judgment -- that she be firm and correct, and do her part well is essential for the family's proper regulation.
The wife is represented by line two and the husband is her proper correlate in line five. The relationship between heaven and earth is analogous to the relationship between husband and wife.
The second sentence of the Confucian commentary, more closely rendered, would be: "That in the family there is an authoritative ruler is a way of naming father and mother." This means that the assertion of authority in a family should be a correct balance of force and gentleness.
Anthony: The Family symbolizes correct relationships between people – the family unit, the spiritual family (the Sage and the student), and human groups generally. When these most basic relationships are correct, the world is made correct through the force of inner truth, through cultivation of the feminine component of our nature, and through persevering in a virtually menial position (from our ego’s viewpoint) so that our work can come to fruition. All this means to forgo striving and self-assertion, and to allow ourself to be led, while persevering in gentleness and devotion to our path.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Judgment: For the correct regulation of the psyche, what is most important is that the ego must be firm and correct.
The Superior Man lives his allegiance to the ideals of the Work.
Applying the Hermetic Axiom: "as above, so below," the relationships within a family are analogous to the relationships within a city-state, or a kingdom, and vice- versa:
Society centuries before the time of Confucius had been organized on the basis of family. In the early days of the Chou dynasty fiefs had been allotted to the feudal lords in a system of planned colonization. These feudal lords, linked to one another and to the royal house by marriage ties, took their families, retainers, peasants, artisans and soldiers to form self-sufficient colonies based on an agricultural economy and governed from well-fortified walled cities. These large family groupings of the nobility were preserved only so long as the relationships of parents to children, brothers to brothers, and masters to servants were effectively controlled. D.H. Smith -- Confucius
If the ideal city is like a family, then the analogy also holds for an individual -- here the comparison goes directly from city to psyche:
Have we any greater evil for a city than what splits it and makes it many instead of one? Or a greater good than what binds it together and makes it one? ... Then is that city best governed which is most like a single human being? Plato -- The Republic
Psychologically interpreted, the hexagram of The Family symbolizes the psyche, and the Confucian commentary tells us that when its inner components all assume their proper roles and functions, then the Work will come into fruition. ("All under heaven will be established.") The identical idea has been stated in Gnostic thought:
Jesus said to them: "When you make eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in the place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, and an image in the place of an image, then shall you enter the Kingdom. The Gnostic Gospel According to Thomas
The husband is the analogue of heaven or the Self, and the wife is the analogue of earth or the ego. When the ego assumes its correct role as the magnetic servant of the Work, then inner transformations can take place. I have paraphrased the Judgment in terms of the necessity of the ego to follow the dictates of the Work, but one could alternately phrase it in terms of keeping emotional responses under control. For the wife to be "firm and correct" is to ensure that emotions, drives and appetites are not allowed to make decisions -- they are servants, not masters. This is the essence of the Work, and arguably the most reiterated idea in theI Ching.
The patient should be encouraged to use his mind, through observation and discrimination, to bring clearly into his awareness the irrational aspect of his drives and emotions, and also the possible drawbacks and harmfulness to himself and others of their uncontrolled manifestation … To act on the spur of an impulse, a drive or an intense emotion can very often produce undesirable effects which one afterwards regrets … Therefore, he should learn – by repeated experiment and effort – to “insert” between impulse and action a stage of reflection, of mental consideration of a situation, and of critical analysis of his impulse, trying to realize its origin, its source. R. Assagioli – Psychosynthesis
The thirty-seventh hexagram teaches us that the way to manage the emotions is no different than the proper management of aFamily. No wise parent can teach a child self-discipline by adopting the child's point of view: permissiveness, either with our children or our own primitive drives and passions, is a sure formula for disintegration. The Work demands that the ego hold the line on this issue -- indeed, it is the ego's only legitimate function.
We are dominated by everything with which our [ego] becomes identified. We can dominate and control everything from which we disidentify ourselves. R. Assagioli -- Psychosynthesis
Line 1
Legge: The first line, dynamic, shows its subject establishing restrictive regulations in his household. Occasion for repentance will disappear.
Wilhelm/Baynes: Firm seclusion within the family. Remorse disappears.
Blofeld: The family dwelling stands within an enclosure -- regret vanishes.
Liu: He sets up a rule for his family. Remorse disappears. [People can expect success in their plans.]
Shaughnessy: The gate has a family; regret is gone.
Cleary (1): Guarding the home, regret vanishes.
Wu: A family lives by the principle. There will be no regret.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: He establishes rules before any change has taken place in their wills. Wilhelm/Baynes: The will has not yet changed. Blofeld: The first part of this passage symbolizes determination which has never swerved. Ritsema/Karcher: Purpose not-yet transformed indeed. Cleary (2): The aim does not change. Wu: The goal has not been changed.
Legge: Line one is dynamic in a dynamic place. It suggests the necessity of strict rule in governing the family. Regulations must be established, and their observance strictly insisted on.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Siu: At the outset, the man establishes firm rules of order and relationships in the household. Overindulgence of a young child leads to the difficult task of breaking the child's will later on.
Wing: At the very beginning of relationships or endeavors, you establish firm roles and well-defined systems, then all will go well. Even occasions that might give rise to arguments will pass without remorse.
Editor: A house symbolizes the whole psyche, so a household is all of the entities which make it up -- thoughts, feelings, appetites, passions, etc. The idea here is that one must maintain consistency and order in the situation at hand, and not allow any deviation from that order. Implied is the injunction not to indulge in inappropriate expressions of emotion. The line can sometimes mean that you have everything you need to succeed within you: you don't have to seek outside for what you already possess.
Therefore when the light circulates, the energies of the whole body appear before its throne, as, when a holy king has established the capital and has laid down the fundamental rules of order, all the states approach with tribute; or as, when the master is quiet and calm, men- servants and maids obey his orders of their own accord, and each does his work. The Secret of the Golden Flower
A. Put your house in order. Maintain discipline, define your parameters, and organize your priorities.
B. Restrict and control the expression of autonomous forces within the psyche. Do not deviate from established order.
C. You already have everything you require to attain your goals.
Line 2
Legge: The second line, magnetic, shows its subject taking nothing on herself, but in her central place attending to the preparation of the food. Through her firm correctness there will be good fortune.
Wilhelm/Baynes: She should not follow her whims. She must attend within to the food. Perseverance brings good fortune.
Blofeld: This is a time when nothing can be brought to completion; however, within the household, righteous persistence brings good fortune.
Liu: Her duties are to keep the household and prepare the food; she should not pursue her fancies. Persistence leads to good fortune.
Ritsema/Karcher: Without direction, releasing. Locating the center, feeding. Trial: significant.
Shaughnessy: There is no place to follow, in the middle of the food; determination is auspicious.
Cleary (1): Not concentrating on anything, being chaste in the kitchen is auspicious.
Cleary (2): Not concentrating on anything but household duties, it bodes well to be chaste.
Wu: There is nothing suitable to do outside of the family. There will be good fortune to prepare meals inside.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: The good fortune is due to the docility of its subject operating with humility. Wilhelm/Baynes: The good fortune depends upon devotion and gentleness. Blofeld: Namely, good fortune arising from compliance and gentleness. Ritsema/Karcher: Yielding uses Ground indeed. Cleary (2): What bodes well is docile obedience. Wu: The good fortune comes from the subject’s modesty.
Legge: Line two is magnetic, in the proper and central place in the lower trigram. It fitly represents the wife, and describes her special sphere and duty. She should be unassuming in regard to all beyond her sphere, always being firm and correct. Docility is suggested by the magnetic line. The humility comes from the upper trigram, whose attribute is Pliant Flexibility
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Siu: The good fortune of the family lies primarily in the unassuming role of the wife, who looks after the welfare of the family and food for the sacrifice. Similarly, in governmental affairs the state of public welfare depends primarily upon the unassuming civil servant who confines himself to the duties at hand.
Wing: Don't succumb to impulses now. Seek nothing by force. Restrain such actions that are not part of the business at hand. Good fortune comes when the immediate needs of The Family are met.
Editor: The image is a clear picture of a magnetic element remaining in its proper place. That is, the "female" components -- emotions, feelings, etc., must remain within the psyche to nourish its growth, evolution and eventual transformation. An inappropriate expression of emotion invariably spells disaster for the Work. Since the polarity of the ego is always magnetic in relation to the dynamic Self, the line can also refer to keeping the ego in its proper sphere of influence.
Our emotions are probably untrustworthy when it comes to providing us with a basis for action. Fear and aggression, for instance, were useful during thousands of years of prehistory when our ancestors had to battle for survival against savage and cunning enemies. But today, these same emotions, when unrecognized and unchecked, lead to such dangerous acts as the relentless stockpiling of nuclear arms, or the unnecessary expansion of territorial borders. R.M. Restak -- The Brain: The Last Frontier
A. Tend to your proper business -- do not step outside your sphere of duty.
B. Control your emotional responses to nourish the evolution and integration of psychic processes.
Line 5
Legge: The fifth line, dynamic, shows the influence of the king extending to his family. There need be no anxiety -- there will be good fortune.
Wilhelm/Baynes: As a king he approaches his family. Fear not. Good fortune.
Blofeld: The King draws near to his family (i.e. the nation) -- no cause for worry; good fortune!
Liu: The King extends his love to the family (country) without worry. Good fortune.
Ritsema/Karcher: The king imagines possessing a Dwelling. Beings: care significant.
Shaughnessy: The king approaches his family; do not pity; going is auspicious.
Cleary (1): The king comes to have a home; no worry – it is fortunate.
Cleary (2): The king has a great home. Do not worry; it is auspicious.
Wu: The king succeeds in making the nation like a family. It is auspicious, without worries.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: The relationship between them is that of mutual love. Wilhelm/Baynes: They associate with one another in love. Blofeld: This means that the ruler and his people meet together with love in their hearts. [This may be interpreted to mean that we enjoy the affection of our superiors or bestow affection on our juniors and those in our charge.] Ritsema/Karcher: Mingling mutual affection indeed. Cleary (2): With communication and mutual love. Wu: Because the people love and respect one another.
Legge: The subject of the dynamic fifth line appears as the king. This may be the husband spoken of as also a king, or the real king whose merit is revealed first in his family. The central place here tempers the display of strength and power. The mention of "mutual love" is unusual in Chinese writings, and must be considered remarkable here. "The husband," says Ch'eng-tzu, "loves his helpmate in the house; the wife loves him who is the pattern for the family."
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Siu: The father is not feared by the family. Like a richly endowed king, he governs through mutual affection and tempers the display of his powers.
Wing: A magnanimous and loving relationship exists between the leader and his followers. There is no reason to fear openness in these kinds of relationships. Good fortune comes through a beneficial influence.
Editor: This line can be problematic and is occasionally received under less than lucid circumstances. The "influence of the king" can be interpreted psychologically as the action of the Self in the inner dimensions and hence a reassurance that things are going as they should, even if they don't appear that way to our limited viewpoint in Spacetime.
God is bound to act, to pour Himself into thee as soon as He shall find thee ready. Meister Eckhart
A. A superior element influences subordinate elements for the overall benefit of the whole.
B. Relax, don't worry -- "Someone up there likes you."
C. Proper influence comes from affectionate regard, not tyranny.
D. Nourish your inner harmony -- attend to your legitimate needs.
18 Repair
Other titles: Work On What Has Been Spoiled, The Symbol of Destruction, Decay, Arresting of Decay, Work after Spoiling, Fixing, Rectifying, Corrupting, Branch, Degeneration, Misdeeds "Can refer to heredity and psychological traits.” -- D. F. Hook
Judgment
Legge: Successful progress is indicated for those who properly repair what has been spoiled. It is advantageous to cross the great stream. One should consider carefully the events three days before the turning point and the tasks remaining for three days afterward.
Wilhelm/Baynes:Work On What Has Been Spoiled has supreme success. It furthers one to cross the great water. Before the starting point, three days. After the starting point, three days.
Blofeld:Decay augurs sublime success and the advantage of crossing the great river (or sea). [I.e. of going on a journey or of going forward with one's plans.] What has happened once will surely happen again (literally, "three days before the commencement; three days after the commencement"). [It would have been hard to make sense of these words, were it not that the Confucian Commentary on the Text clearly explains them; hence the liberty I have taken with the Text.]
Liu: Work after spoiling. Great success. It is of benefit to cross the great water. Before starting, three days. After starting, three days. [This hexagram implies that, although conditions are bad now, improvement can be expected.]
Ritsema/Karcher: Corrupting, Spring Growing. Harvesting: wading the Great River. Before seedburst three days, after seedburst three days. [This hexagram describes your situation in terms of disorder, perversion and putrefaction. It emphasizes that letting things rot away so they become obsolete is the adequate way to handle it...]
Shaughnessy: Branch: Prime auspiciousness; receipt. Beneficial to ford the great river; preceding jia by three days, following jia by three days.
Cleary (1): Correcting degeneration is greatly developmental. It is beneficial to cross great rivers. Three days before the start, three days after the start. [The way to correct degeneracy is not in empty tranquility without action; it is necessary to work in the midst of great danger and difficulty, to act in the dragon’s pool and the tiger’s lair. Only then can one restore one’s original being, cultivating it into something indestructible.]
Cleary (2): From degeneration comes great development, etc.
Wu: Misdeeds is great and pervasive. It will be advantageous to cross the big river. It would be advisable to begin an undertaking three days before Jia and examine the ongoing progress three days thereafter.
The Image
Legge: The image of wind below the mountain forms Repair. The superior man, in accordance with this, stimulates the virtue of the people.
Wilhelm/Baynes: The wind blows low on the mountain: the image of Decay. Thus the superior man stirs up the people and strengthens their spirit.
Blofeld: This hexagram symbolizes wind blowing at the foot of a mountain. The Superior Man, by stimulating people's hearts, nourishes their virtue.
Liu: Wind blowing around the foot of the mountain symbolizes Work after Spoiling. The superior man encourages people to cultivate virtue.
Ritsema/Karcher: Below mountain possessing wind. Corrupting. A chun tzu uses rousing the commoners to nurture actualizing-tao. [Actualize-tao: ...ability to follow the course traced by the ongoing process of the cosmos... Linked with acquire, TE: acquiring that which makes a being become what it is meant to be.]
Cleary (1): There is wind in the mountains; degeneration. Thus superior people rouse the people and nurture virtue.
Cleary (2): … Leaders thus arouse the people to nurture virtue.
Wu: There is wind at the foot of the mountain; this is Misdeeds. Thus the jun zi arouses the people and nurtures his own virtue.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: The dynamic trigram is above, and the magnetic trigram is below. Pliancy is below, and Stopping above: these suggest troubled conditions verging on ruin. But Repair brings order to all under heaven, and he who advances will encounter the business to be done. The end of confusion is the beginning of order; such is the procedure of heaven.
Legge: Repair means the performance of painful but necessary duties. It shows a situation in which things are going to ruin, as if through poison or venomous worms. In order to justify the auspice of progress and success, the duty of the figure is to rectify this and restore conditions to health. This will require a major effort, such as crossing the great stream, and the careful differentiation of the causes of the problem, as well as the measures taken to fix it. The attribute of the lower trigram is Pliancy, and the upper represents Stoppage or Arrest. Hence, the feeble pliancy of decadence is stopped cold by the immovable mountain. The three days before and after the turning point symbolize the careful attention and differentiation necessary for any rectification to succeed.
On the Image, Ch'eng-tzu says: "When the wind encounters the mountain, it is driven back, and the things about are all scattered in disorder; such is the emblem of the state denoted by Repair." The nourishing of virtue appears especially in line six -- all the other lines belong to the helping of the people.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Judgment:Repair means to set your house in order. Analyze your choices before the renovation and evaluate their consequences afterward.
The Superior Man orders his thoughts and feelings, reforms old attitudes, and strengthens his will. (Psychologically, to "stimulate the virtue of the people" (Legge) is to rectify the components of a complex.)
To imagine any truly objective state of perception we must include all that exists: the entire cosmos. Each differentiation of this, from atom to galaxy, is one slice out of an infinite whole. As a portion of the entirety, we are always linked with our ancestors in an infinite web of relationships which includes our family history, our racial-cultural-historical heritage and Homo sapiens as a species. Though seldom aware of them, it is useful to remember these links. Emanating from an unfathomable complexity, their karmically-charged morphogenetic fields are constantly shaping our lives. It follows that, although we perceive ourselves as separate from our ancestors, the separation is a subjective experience which is true only in a temporally limited sense.
Every line of Repair, except two and six, shows a son dealing with the troubles caused by his father. This reminds us of the biblical curse:
For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. Exodus 20: 5
The father archetype has a wide range of meanings: this extends from the Primal Spirit ("God the Father"), to a prior cause or intent in the psyche which has engendered a present condition. Psychologically interpreted, it is this latter reading which usually applies. If a "father" symbolizes the cause, then a "son" is the effect. If the effect is imperfect, then to rectify it is also to rectify the original intent.
To a large extent our lives consist of well-intentioned but misguided choices which create less than perfect consequences. To modify our attitude or behavior so that it corrects errors in our original intent is to "deal with the troubles caused by the father."
For example: In a misconceived expression of affection, a parent allows his child unrestricted access to candy. As a consequence of this choice, the kid's teeth become rotten, and the only logical way to correct the original error is to now curtail his intake of sugar. The fact that this new choice will create stress in the relationship between parent and child is just a consequence of the original choice and has no bearing at all on what is correct in the situation.
In some situations this hexagram may be interpreted as a response to a karmic chain of cause and effect:
To harmonize with the Wisdom Teachings, the scripture should read that the karma of the "father" is visited upon the "child" unto the fourth incarnation, not generation. The mistakes you made in the last four incarnations may be visited upon you in the form of karma flowing out of the heart seed atom in the present incarnation. Thus what you "fathered," or created, in your last incarnation may be the source ("parent") of your karma today. You are a child of that parent today. You have inherited from that parent -- the you of the past, not your physical parents -- all of your characteristics, weaknesses and strengths. Earlyne Chaney -- The Mystery of Death and Dying
The interpretation of any oracle response can only be as profound as our minds are prepared to accept. As moderns we find it difficult to empathize with "ancestor worship," yet properly understood, it can provide useful insights into the Work. In the unconscious realm all time is immediate, not sequential, and the Objective Psyche consists of a non- temporal web of forces shading from personal to universal. This means that if we have a complex engendered in us by our father, for example, we can reasonably assume that he was passing on what he received from his own parents. In this way, the unresolved complexes of the ancestors shape our own personalities: they live in and through us right now, even if they had their birth in forefathers long forgotten. This is a kind of near-immortality: individuals may die, but beliefs, attitudes, complexes live as long as they have receptive vessels to inhabit. (This is probably the engine of karma.) To the extent that an ancestral chain of causality still motivates our choices, we are totally responsible for "setting right what has been spoiled by the father."
SUGGESTIONS FOR MEDITATION
Most people have some level of unfinished business with their parents: psychologists would have little to do if this weren't true. It can be a healing ritual to set up an altar to a deceased parent and meditate there on the stresses that still remain between you. To approach the situation without judgment, to realize (non-logically) that forces pre-existing you provoked the condition as much as your parent did, will elicit much insight. Be especially aware of the presence of the past and the illusion of linear time. (Is it possible somehow to be your own great-grandfather?) Ancestor “worship” of this sort can be profoundly therapeutic.