颐
GUA 27 · YI
HUNGRY MOUTH
Overall Image (大象)
Beneath the mountain is thunder
Hungry mouth
The noble young one, accordingly,
is careful with words and expressions
And moderate in drinking and eating▼
Overall Image (大象)
Beneath the mountain is thunder
Hungry mouth
The noble young one, accordingly,
is careful with words and expressions
And moderate in drinking and eating
Thunder lies deep in the mountain: a rumbling deep in the belly, or a great potential for energy. The volcano awaits an abundance of pressure. The light waits in the food for its freedom. In unexplored mines, on the hoof, in the silos, in a life unexamined, energy lurks in its latent forms, locked up as a potential. Then there are the nutrients to go along with the calories. Now just add an appetite and an open mouth to feed, and then there can be nourishment. The wise attend the gaping mouth, food going in, speech coming out, since food for thought can be wholesome or toxic as well. We can choose our menus and our hungers too, according to what we would nourish.
Main Judgment (Nourishment) (卦辞)
Persistence is promising
Study the hungry mouth
From the searching mouth to the feeding▼
Main Judgment (Nourishment) (卦辞)
Persistence is promising
Study the hungry mouth
From the searching mouth to the feeding
Getting to know the true and false hungers and choosing to feed what is best and right, the wise will make agreements between their competing needs and select what goes into their makeup. Concern for the fuel is regard for the flame. Know others by their hungers and wants and infer what they seek to nourish by what they chase around with jaws agape and snapping. Who and what a body becomes is made up out of this diet. Who and what the mind becomes is assembled out of experience. Who and what spirit becomes is also a part of the food chain. There are those who eat all things in sight and those who’ll believe every thing that they hear. There are diners with excellent taste and those who just pick to be picky. Then there are the nervous birds and those who will worry themselves halfway to death over whether a meal is healthy. The attractions of combustible substances, those matters at hand that are richest in energy, or in exothermic potential or delicious implication, drive us forward through life. It’s just the way things are set up, along the whole length of the food chain. We need to get out there, hunt and kill things, to turn them into us.
Key Words (关键词)
Appetites, hungers, drives; sustenance, nutrition, nurture, provision, nourishment▼
Key Words (关键词)
Appetites, hungers, drives; sustenance, nutrition, nurture, provision, nourishment
Meeting needs, furnishing necessities, self-reliance, self-assertion, competence Choices of menu, diet, good taste, selecting the input for output, fostering health Finding the genuine & productive appetites, starving the false; potential energy Appetite and its gratification, nutrition as a science, fostering growth and the true Nutrient and energy cycles, raw material and fuel; hungering properly; G.I.G.O.
Structure & Connections
Structure Class
No Family
This classification indicates the hexagram's role in the 12 Sovereign Cycle (Earthly Branches) or its structural family.
Astrology
note:Caput Draconis in Fire
planet:North Node
element:Fire
Tarot
card:Princess of Wands
suit:Wands
Qabalah
note:Assiah of Atziluth
sphere:Assiah
The Lines
11st • YangForsaking your spirit tortoise*
Looking at me with hungry mouth hanging open
Disappointing▼
1
1st • YangForsaking your spirit tortoise*
Looking at me with hungry mouth hanging open
Disappointing
27.1x Looking at me (with) hungry mouth hanging open:
Truly lacking (as) a basis for respect
You already have most of the answers you need. We are born with a great wisdom, a wonderful hunger and thirst. The humans whom we know best have been studying the human dao for a hundred thousand years. These lessons have worked their way into our genes and tastes. Give a toddler too many choices of dishes, spread across the whole spectrum of foods, and in weeks, with no coaching, he will learn to select perfect meals, with hunger for all the right foods and no appetite for the wrong ones. But a modest amount of sufficiency unto ourselves is a critical part of this process. We must at least get up and walk to our prey. What else should we put into gaping, drooling holes? The medicine tortoise, the one long life that we live, is a feast for the right predators. Thankfully this tortoise is less than fleet of foot: one may catch up.
22nd • YangSubverted appetites
Dismissing the customary,
Going into the hills hungering
Going boldly into failure▼
2
2nd • YangSubverted appetites
Dismissing the customary,
Going into the hills hungering
Going boldly into failure
27.2x Six second goes boldly (into) failure:
Behavior (that) strays from its kind
He listens to his belly, then listens to his head. While down in the valley, he hungers for food on the summit. Up on the summit, he misses the food in the valley. He runs around a lot this way, but it does not lead to fitness. He only feeds his inadequacies, while talents double over with hunger. There is really only one of him, but it doesn’t agree with itself. It doesn’t go hunting together. It’s more like begging than hunting, or being eaten alive by a hunger. Good taste agrees with good appetite and knows it must munch on what is at hand, or be as a sheep on the prowl, after greener grasses, or as be mutton for a greater hunger. It might be best to starve the bad hungers now and then learn to hunger first for things needed, and then for things wanted and last for things he’s told he should want - even if the economy is hungry for his needs.
33rd • YangDismissing the appetites
Persistence has pitfalls
For ten years not to be functional
Is not a direction with merit▼
3
3rd • YangDismissing the appetites
Persistence has pitfalls
For ten years not to be functional
Is not a direction with merit
27.3x (For) ten years not to be functional:
A path greatly sideways
His tastes want to run towards something a bit more exotic, such as maybe to go beyond food to live on water and light, like special, holy water and moonbeam light. How glamorous that would be, how elegant and ethereal. Malnutrition of the spirit begins in the body forgotten. To fast several days can be a great thing. But we don’t mistake our belly’s growling for some totem animal power, or the lightness in our heads for the light of understanding. We cannot thrive by feeding mind nothing but thoughts about spirit. The mind will starve, or it develops without basic parts. Great spirit, like that of swift horses, runs throughout the being. Spit out this mouthful of crazy ideas, don’t swallow that: light hides in food. Go with your gut, but use your head too. Fad and fashion diets are not for real people. They are not fueling anyone.
44th • YangTop-heavy appetite is promising
The tiger searches, staring and glaring
With its passion to hunt and give chase
Not wrong▼
4
4th • YangTop-heavy appetite is promising
The tiger searches, staring and glaring
With its passion to hunt and give chase
Not wrong
27.4x Top-heavy appetite holds promise:
Ascending extends (what is) known
He goes to great lengths, and heights, as a hunter, commanding the broadest views. Power being the rate at which energy is transformed, a higher power will mean that much will be transformed. Each and every one of those furry, little creatures would love to be the tiger’s happy, woodland friend. It isn’t the tiger’s fault they are on the menu instead. He has no choice but to follow his nature. Back in the good old days, he would hunt for a weak and stupid human, and back then we were all well-served by his natural menu selection. He was always objective about this - he could not rely on pet food and the rare volunteers. He won’t be given snacks or treats for being so cute. Humanity shares the predator nature. Some make apologies, some give thanks, but the best is to live the best life, to honor the meal, not waste it in futile existence.
55th • YangDismissing the customary
To abide in persistence is promising
But not suited to crossing great streams▼
5
5th • YangDismissing the customary
To abide in persistence is promising
But not suited to crossing great streams
27.5x To abide in persistence holds promise:
Accepting in order to follow the superior
Behind another’s successful example, he experiments with diet, trying out new ways of doing the familiar. For a time life will be out of balance. It is not a time to witness things fairly, or to go fast forward with health, especially not across the great water. He forages in new fields where the taste is confusing, searches for missing nutrients, each one of which praises itself as the basic substance of life. The body with life at stake wants patience and time to decide and needs to work out new ways to appraise the wants and their satisfactions. First is the necessary, then the sufficient, then the higher wants. The structure will be reconfigured once the basis has changed. There will be subtle signs to look out for. To study this well means reducing the variables by keeping things simple. It is not a time to make promises or to feed expectations.
6Top • YangAt the source of the appetites
Brutal but promising
Worthwhile to cross the great stream▼
6
Top • YangAt the source of the appetites
Brutal but promising
Worthwhile to cross the great stream
27.6x (At) the source of the appetites (with) a brutal promise:
(There are) well-earned rewards
Like the priest on a mission to cannibal land, he sets himself up to provide, to give to those who seek in hunger below, knowing, we hope, to not drop his own meaty self into their gaping jaws. Within his own frame of reference, he might not be so pretentious at all, and note that his health has him roaming about, wanting to share. Some tribes across the great water will make no distinction twixt body and soul and already know flesh is bread and blood wine. Let him first expect to learn as much as he plans to teach and to keep his wit trained on their hungers. Being fuel for flame often means getting burned; giving oneself often means being taken or even refused. The top of the food chain is always food for someone. To give them fish or to make them dependent leaves him no way home: they will bite that hand, then eat him alive.
Reference in Original Text & Resources
This content is derived from Bradford Hatcher's THE BOOK OF CHANGES: Yijing, Word By Word.
Original text for Hexagram 27 begins on Page 222-230.
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