Using the I Ching: Exposing the “Image”

One of the best examples of the clarity that the Anthony and Moog text has added to our understanding of the I Ching can be found in how the authors treat the traditional “Image” portion of the text: they ignore it.

But they also explain why, and this is where the clarity comes in: the Image is a Confucian overlay on the original text that is riddled with prejudice, ideology, and (as the title suggests) the obsession with appearances — image.

China is known for being a particularly image-fixed culture (though I personally think the Chinese are hardly unique in this respect — image is a problem for all of us). Witness the current preparations for the opening of the Beijing Olympics, which range from garish to positively brutal. They seem to imagine that it is possible to “go green” for just six weeks while the entire world (they again imagine) is focused solely on their nation. Healing, either of the self or the environment, is not a mechanical or automatic process: you can’t throw a switch and clear the air, only to continue befouling it again once attention passes. This is both aberrant policy and lazy psychology.

So in the readings that you’ll find here, there will be no discussion of the Confucian “Image” section of the hexagrams. Indeed, our business here is to draw on the insight of the cosmic teaching voice that speaks through the I Ching to learn how to expel self-images, be they of the personal or the cultural variety. As Lao Tzu says in Chapter 12 of the Tao Te Ching:

Rampant color impairs vision;
A profusion of sound obstructs the ear;
Gluttonous tastes poison the mouth;
Attachment to belief warps the self;
Predatory impulse reviles the treasure.

The Sage uses the outer to point to the inner;
By exposing the image, it shows us ourselves.