There was happy and sad news last week. The happy news was that the New York Yankees qualified for the Major League Baseball playoffs, for the thirteenth consecutive year. The sad news was that they did not win the American League East division, which they had won for the prior nine consecutive years. I will focus on the good news here and look forward to the first playoff game against the Cleveland Indians on Thursday. But I must address a lingering issue. As some of you may remember (all of those I Ching-reading Taoist Yankee fans out there) that the I Ching predicted, when I consulted it back on August 3, that the Yankees would win the AL East. Was the I Ching wrong?
We have to be careful when we consider prophecies that seem not to turn out the way we expected them. There are at least two key points to keep in mind.
1) What the I Ching gives us is a picture of where Way is tending, the direction in which fate is unfolding. There is always an element of human agency, however. If we listen to the oracle and figure out the best action to take - action that either conforms to the tendency revealed, if it is something we want, or pushes against that tendency, if it is something we would rather avoid - we can influence, through out behavior, how the prophecy turns out. This can also happen unintentionally. We might take some action or make some choice that brings unforeseen consequences. There is always that element of chance. Our fallible humanity adds an unpredictable ingredient to any oracular statements - and that is what makes life and prophesying so interesting.
In this case, the fact that the Yankees narrowed the gap with that other AL East team right down to the third to last game of the season was remarkable. The good ch'i was clearly flowing toward York York. The I Ching clearly predicted that. But the Yanks fell just short. That failure could have resulted from any of dozens of small actions or tactical decisions that turned a game or two against them. Fate was with them, but they could not quite take full advantage of that opportunity. It is that fallible humanity was all possess.
2) When considering prophecies that appear to come up short, we must also be sensitive to our own interpretive shortcomings. The oracle provided a certain message, but did I, as the reader, understand it in the proper manner?
In going back, I can see at least one other way to read the hexagrams (and there are probably other alternatives), one that suggests continued success for the Yankees, perhaps.
In the original reading, the first hexagram was, "Biting Through," and it had this to say:
This hexagram represents an open mouth...with an obstruction (in the fourth place) between the teeth. As a result the lips cannot meet. To bring them together one must bite energetically through the obstacle. Since the hexagram is made up of the trigrams for thunder and lightening, it indicates how obstacles are forcibly removed in nature. Energetic biting through overcomes the obstacle that prevents joining of the lips; the storm with its thunder and lightening overcomes the disturbing tension in nature...
When I saw this back in August, I interpreted the "obstacle" to be overcome as the Boston Red Sox, the team against which the Yankees were competing for the AL East title. That might have been incorrect. The I Ching might have been pointing to a different obstacle, one internal to the Yankees themselves. A more Mencian reading - since Mencius tells us to look inside ourselves when things are going wrong - would suggest that the Yankees needed to overcome their own self-doubt and fear; they needed to simply do what they were capable of doing, fulfill their obligations to themselves and their teammates. And they did. The ultimate success, therefore, may still lie ahead.
When I asked the oracle two months ago, if New York would win the AL East, it replied that the Yankees will have success. At that time, I thought this meant we would win the division; now, I can see that it could point to bigger things: an AL pennant or a World Series championship.
Go Yanks!
That's a really well-done analysis of the I Ching. I'm quite new to using the Oracle myself, but it definitely seems to confirm my experience with it and other methods of divination. People who are looking for "THE ANSWER" to any particular situation are generally going to be disappointed. I've spoken to a Daoist or two about using the I Ching, and they've all stressed the interelation of human agency, chance, and the "inertia" of past events.
Posted by: gukseon | October 03, 2007 at 06:54 PM