Moving Through Change

When work, family and your own body keep changing, what do you stand on?

Original

I Ching · Qian · Wenyan, line 3知至至之，可與幾也；知終終之，可與存義也。是故居上位而不驕，在下位而不憂。Analects 7.17子曰：「加我數年，五十以學易，可以無大過矣。」Mencius 7B6舜之飯糗茹草也，若將終身焉；及其為天子也，被袗衣，鼓琴，二女果，若固有之。Zhuangzi 22仲尼曰：「古之人，外化而內不化；今之人，內化而外不化。與物化者，一不化者也。」

In plain words

Know how a thing is arriving, and help it arrive: with such a person you can talk about first signs. Know how it is ending, and let it end: with such a person you can keep to what is right. So in a high place he is not proud, and in a low place he does not fret.

Confucius said, “Give me a few more years, let me study the Changes at fifty, and I could be free of great mistakes.”

When Shun lived on dry rations and wild greens, he seemed ready to live that way all his life. When he became Son of Heaven, in embroidered robes, playing the zither, with Yao's two daughters attending him, he seemed as if he had always had it.

Confucius said, “The ancients changed on the outside and not within. People today change within and not on the outside. Those who can change along with things are the ones who, inside, stay one and unchanged.”

Key words

時shíThe shape of the whole situation. Each hexagram is a “time”; Mencius calls Confucius the sage of timeliness.
幾jīThe first faint sign of what is coming; see it early and there's still time to adjust.
化huàTo change, transform. Zhuangzi: change on the outside, not within.

Reading it step by step

This page opens our third theme: living it. The first nine pages were about ideas: Heaven, fate, human nature, sincerity, ritual, profit and rightness, love. From here on we carry them into ordinary days. And the first thing ordinary days bring is change: a new job, a move, children growing up, parents growing old, a body that no longer does what it used to.

The very name of the I Ching means change. Change is the first thing humans ever noticed: sun and moon coming and going, cold and heat, birth, age, sickness, death. If change is how Heaven works, what should a person do? That is the I Ching's question, and both the Confucians and the Daoists took it up.

First: the I Ching says, see your time and your place. Each hexagram is a situation, its “time”. Each of its six lines is a place to stand in that situation, a “position”. Where you stand changes what the situation asks of you. The commentary on the third line of Qian says: know how a thing is arriving and help it arrive; know how it is ending and let it end, while keeping to what is right. Then a high place won't make you proud, nor a low one anxious. Change has a pattern, and a person can adjust to it.

Second: the Confucians say, circumstances change; the right road doesn't. Confucius said that if he studied the Changes at fifty he would make no great mistakes. Not to tell fortunes, but to read the moment and know when to step forward or back. Mencius called him the sage of timeliness: quick when it was time to be quick, slow when it was time to be slow, staying or leaving as the moment asked. And he drew Shun eating wild greens as if he'd do it all his life, then wearing a ruler's robes as if he'd always had them. Worlds apart, and the same man, treating people the same way.

Third: Zhuangzi says, bend outside, stay steady inside. He puts the line in Confucius' mouth: the ancients changed outwardly and stayed unchanged within; people today do the reverse, stubborn outside and blown about inside. The two roads meet here. Neither argues with the weather; both look after the traveller. The difference: the Confucian holds on to his duties to others, the Daoist to a heart that won't be stirred up.

changes with the time

stays the same

I Ching · Wenyan

advance, retreat, keep, lose

never loses the right road

Mencius · Shun

wild greens ↔ royal robes

the same man throughout

Zhuangzi

change outside

steady inside

Circumstances change; something in the person stays.

Say a reorganisation moves you from manager back onto the team. The I Ching: see your new position clearly, and don't pretend you're still up there. Mencius: in any seat, do the work well and treat people straight. Zhuangzi: the title on your card changed; your heart needn't cave in with it. And on the day you're promoted, remember that the time came round. You didn't grow.

The road changes. Steady the one who walks it.

One line to carry

The road changes. Steady the one who walks it.

Today's question

What change are you living through now? In that “time”, what is your “position”? Name one thing you've decided will not change with it.

Quick check

What do the I Ching, Mencius' picture of Shun and Zhuangzi's “change outside, not within” have in common?

Next pageWhere Joy Comes FromPage 11

III · Living It — Moving through change, where joy comes from, who to become

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