It's about time!

 

shíjiān -- "time"

#Daoist-time #shijian #daoism #yijing #IChing

It's about time (and timing)!

Perhaps the most significant realization I've experienced about the Daoist worldview is that we live in a world not of nouns but instead a world of verbals.

For example: In Western languages, we call objects--rocks, birds, people, etc.--nouns. But we can also turn action words--verbs--into nouns by adding "-ing" to the end. So "to stand" is a verb action, but "standing" acts as a noun to describe the ongoing state of that verb by turning it into a noun--i.e., a verbal.

From this perspective, I'm not really Mark, rather I'm "Marking," the snapshot-now version of me in the current moment of my ongoing transformation from womb to tomb, just as everyone and everything around me does the same.

Why is such a perspective shift important? Because it alters our awareness to recognize the constantly animating energy of qi manifesting through the Dào. 

Ames & Hall call the interactive dance for yin-becoming-yang and yang-becoming-yin "the mutuality of opposites"--opposites like my "womb to tomb" example above: "In the fullness of time, any and all of the qualities that define each event will yield themselves up to their opposites" (Daodejing 27).

But our creative participation is a matter of timing, our awareness of when participation in the transformative dance between ourselves and everything/everyone around us can be the most productive.

It's all about timing.

For example, perhaps one of the best uses of Yijing is demonstrated in the comments about the oracle's yao (the lines offering advice) for each hexagram (guà), which present the sequential stages of a given situation, and what that timing tells us about our best course of action for that situation at that moment.

Both Ming-Dao's and Huang's respective translations of Yijing pay particular attention to these stages. Then Huang's version goes even further, showing how to deduce the stage the reader is currently in as well as how to deduce the likely outcome of the situation, providing the participant acts in accordance with the timing of the sequence of stages.

In fact, it's unusual to read any of the 64 guà and not to encounter advice about the importance of timing your actions.

This preoccupation with timing isn't limited to the Yijing, of course. Transformative time and timing are deeply embedded in the Daoist understanding of the cosmos. 

Ames and Hall stress how fundamental time is for understanding the Dào:

"For ancient China, time pervades everything and is not to be denied. Time is not independent of things, but a fundamental aspect of them. Unlike traditions that devalue both time and change in pursuit of the timeless and eternal, in classical China things are always transforming" (14).

But that focus doesn't mean time is preordained: Remember that we are also creative participants. The Dào becomes a flexible dance partner, allowing us to lead as well as follow in the dance of life. That dynamic is, in fact, a key element of Way-Making. 

The next blog entry explores the Daoist explanation for how the Dào is simultaneously both creator and creation.