#yijing

[current23]

choose your own adventure :)

[cynicalmusings]

a golden little yijing moment i unearthed in my drafts:

“It is true that there is nothing which makes you, in essence, more significant than anybody else. The distinction is that you are more significant to me. If you want me to tell you why precisely… well, why do we care for anybody?” Jing Yuan’s eyes slid over to Yiju. “I’m sure you would like to answer that love is a survival mechanism, ultimately evolved to improve our own chances of survival, and there is certainly truth to that. It’s entirely possible—one may venture to say probable—that there is somebody out there who is a better match for me, and likewise for you; yet we have our unique history, and our unique experiences, and in the entirety of the universe, the history we share belongs to ourselves only. If the universe is truly all a matter of random events and chance encounters, does that not make the fact that we found each other even more beautiful?”

“More beautiful, perhaps. Or, just as likely, as mundane and unremarkable as any two people who ever encounter each other.” 

Jing Yuan sighed. “You do not have any faith in anything, do you, Yiju?”

At this, the hints of a smile curled at Yiju’s lips. “For once, Jing Yuan,” they said, “you’re wrong.”

Jing Yuan drew closer, intrigued. “Oh?”

“A few years ago, you would have been correct. It’s true I don’t have faith in the Aeons, no, nor people, but… I recently found something I could rely on.” Yiju placed a light hand on his chest, above where his heart resided. “I have faith in you. In your goodness. In your ability to keep moving forward without losing your kindness.”

For a moment, Jing Yuan’s lips parted, but no words came out. Then he smiled and closed his hand around theirs, so that both rested above his heartbeat. “Whether you believe it to be unremarkable or not,” he said, “I am honoured to have happened to stumble across you, Yiju.”

Yiju lowered their eyes, observing their interlocked fingers. Quietly, they murmured, “The feeling is mutual, Jing Yuan.”

[altered-statuses]

♀ Symbol of the air-world and the earth-world (Birds and serpents.) In the centre a flower with a golden star.

The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life 太乙金華宗旨, translated and explained by Richard Wilhelm with a commentary by C.G. Jung (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc. 1931/1962)

[tarotandnonsense]

Me: I don’t know Zhou-dynasty Old Chinese or Mishnaic Hebrew.

Also me: I bet I could crank out an academic translation of the Zhou Changes and the Book of Formation.

[k-star-holic]

'Razzie Award for Worst Picture Evil' Ji Chang-wook "highly affectionate...BB, do it resolutely well"

[blessedrestlessness]

By Waylon Wraith

[wisdom-and-such]

Srivijaya the 7th century Buddhist Empire of Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam.

“Little physical evidence of Srivijaya remains. There had been no continuous knowledge of the history of Srivijaya even in Indonesia and Malaysia; its’ forgotten past has been resurrected by foreign scholars. 

Srivijaya was considered to be one of the major centres of learning for the Buddhist world. In the 7th century, Yijing, a Buddhist monk who travelled between China and India to copy sacred texts mentioned the high quality of Sanskrit education in Palembang (Srivijaya), and recommended that anyone who wanted to go to the university at Nalanda (north India) should stay in Palembang for a year or two to learn “how to behave properly”.

[jasonpym]

Made up of the pig radical (豕 shǐ) and the pig’s head component (彑 jì, also written 彐*). 

彖 originally meant pig, and is just a variation on the oracle bone script of 豕 shǐ.

There is a lovely folk etymology that says this was character meant ‘wild boar’, and the 彑 on top is the wild boar’s crest of hair, distinguishing it from the domesticated pig. Unfortunately there is no textual evidence for this (there’s no reliable source for the oracle bone script above), and if it does come from a pictogram it’s the image of an animal on a leash (from the bronze script).

Either way, 彖 now has nothing to do with pigs or wild boars, and in modern Chinese is only used to mean:

彖辭(辞) tuàn cí to foretell the future using the trigrams of the Book of Changes (易經).

  * Which is why when they simplified ‘green’ they changed it from 綠 lǜ to 绿.