Yi Jing Ethics: Lessons of a Daoist Master from the Wudang Mountains
Xing De and Johan Hausen (translator). Purple Cloud Press, 2023, hardback and paperback, xv + 89 pp. $12.00–$18.00. Hardback ISBN-13 978-1-991081-04-9.
Xing De (born 1964), better known as Li Shifu, has been the abbot of the Five Immortals Temple in the Wudang Mountains since 2000. This short book comes out of his face-to-face teaching of the Yijing and was taken down as he spoke by the translator Johan Hausen. Johan has set up the Purple Cloud Press and has already published a number of Daoist works. Yi Jing Ethics is the first of a projected series of books on the Yi. The current book mentions the 'six-lines method' in passing, which appears to be the main method taught by Li Shifu, but it is not covered in this book and will probably be in a future book specifically on stems and branches.
I greatly enjoyed Yi Jing Ethics. There is an introduction, three chapters, and extensive endnotes. I like Master Li's somewhat reluctant attitude towards teaching the Yi, threatening that this may be the last time he talks about it. He is also reluctant to give readings for local people, particularly when it involves using the oracle (often in the form of trigram divination) to find lost objects. He tells some fascinating stories in chapter 3 about how his advice on where to look for lost goats or a cow led to the people who received it accusing their neighbours of theft and then naming Master Li as the person who said it. The two parties troop up the mountain and Master Li has to say he didn't name anyone, showing them the notes from his divinations. He goes so far as to say that a diviner divining for others should sometimes be vaguer than they are capable of to avoid such situations, even to the extent of giving deliberately poor readings: 'If you cast badly, people will stop seeking you out' (p 47). He means that as a good thing.
I enjoy the way he moves away from any desire to teach it and any desire to give readings, as if talking about it in this book is a way to forget it. He clearly doesn't like the idea of students using the oracle for 'economic reasons' (p 9), and that is why he wonders whether he wants to teach it any more. This comes through in the ethical matters discussed too. One shouldn't try to get rich through the Yijing, if you do it for others just do it no more than two or three times a day so you can make enough to buy a meal, or can get travel money. He presents it as a useful skill to have if you're a traveller on the road.
The introduction suggests the main purpose of the Yi is to help you unite with the dao. After that, you don't really need to use it any more. Sages don't need the book, for all the Yi teaches the sage's way. The aim is to 'transcend the Yi Jing in order to look back at it with true understanding' (p 11). It does appear to be the case that the longer you study the Yi, the less you actually use it for personal divination. You tend to already know the answer, that's should a question or dilemma ever actually arise. Still, one keeps one's hand in and asks from time to time. Though Johan says he hasn't seen Li Shifu asking about anything for himself.
There are hints of the use of the Yi in healing practices. This appears to be the central use to which divination is put at the Five Immortals Temple, but this book doesn't cover it. This will be in a future work. The current book deals with an overall way of going about a divination practice. Though there is the notion that asking the oracle a question about medical matters initiates the healing process, so obviously a magical dimension is coming out here. The idea that the Yijing creates situations, rather than simply describing something coming. In a Daoist context there is of course belief in a pantheon of major and minor deities. I can't say as I've ever employed the services of the 'Hexagram-Casting Infant and the Hexagram-Everting Husband' (pp 38–41), though I have been known to offer incense to Guandi, the Chinese god of war, before divining.
The first chapter covers Yijing virtues and karma. Karma in Daoist circles is that inherited from the past three generations of your own family, as opposed to being something from supposed former lives. According to Xing De, further than three generations back is karma-free. The ancestral dimension has been there since ancient times, when one divined by making heat cracks in turtle shell or bovine scapula to discover whether an ancestor (a former king usually) might be cursing you, due to the fact that you'd forgotten your duty to offer them sacrifices.
The second chapter goes into a ritualistic approach to consulting the Yijing by coins, involving 'nine requirements'. There are some detailed incantations that one can employ.
The third chapter gives a selection of legends and stories. The personal stories of Li Shifu's divinations for people are fascinating. Also interesting that he accepts in payment what people are able to afford or gifts, in one case mentioned he divined for cigarettes (p 51). I don't know whether he smokes, or just accepted what was offered. He warns against charging exorbitant sums for readings, as it will lead to a loss of one's orientation to the dao. The ethical stance is that one should be directed to reducing suffering and helping people, not having any will for gain. 'One must let go of a Heart-Mind of fame and gain' as it says in Tai Shang's Treatise on Action and Response, with a commentary by Xing De, a previous work from Purple Cloud Press that is available to download [PDF].
Yi Jing Ethics is a great book to read on a sunny afternoon under a tree. Li Shifu's energy comes across in a rare glimpse of a Daoist renunciate's view of the Yi told in an easy and charming style.
PS: Johan told me that Xing De smokes a lot: 'He jokes to his students, that they should be happy he smokes because if he stopped he would never be seen again.'
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