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I CHING GUA FOR THE NEW MOON IN CAPRICORN
We not only rang in a New Year at midnight on January 1, we also experienced a New Moon at 7:14 AM Eastern time on the First. Lots of new energy to begin the year!
As one of my practices I cast an I Ching Gua (a hexagram of yin and yang lines) on each new moon to “read” the energies that are coming in for us. The I Ching or “book of change” can be used as a divination tool, not so much to predict what is coming but to get a sense of the energies of change that may be coming up through the month. This is another of the many “intuitive tools” that are available to us to help us sense beyond the usual three-dimensional ways through our five senses.
To help with the interpretation of the Gua I rely on a book by Taoist Master Alfred Huang: The Complete I Ching. I find his translation to be thorough, detailed and clear. Of course there is plenty of room for my own reading of the Gua because the words and meanings of the I Ching can be open and obscure.
For January the Gua I cast using a 50-yarrow stalk method generated this hexagram:
The “x” and circles through the 3rd, 4th and 6th lines indicate they are “changing lines.” Master Huang recommends reading only the middle changing line when there are three. So, only the 4th line is used to generate a new, changed Gua as pictured below.
But first we need to understand “Hindrance.” This Gua is made up of two trigrams, Earth is the lower one and Heaven is the upper. This is not a particularly auspicious Gua because Heaven is above and drawing away from the Earth. There is a block here against progress. It is the opposite of “Advance” which is the preceding Gua in the I Ching sequence. But this is a natural flow: after advancing there comes hindrance. And, naturally, after a time of hindrance there can be further advance.
For me the energy here is to pause, for a short time. The Hindrance-Energy is on the way out with 2013. (Note the volatility of this initial Gua with three changing line.) Yet, there is no need to leap into anything big early in the New Year.
Using only the middle line, the 4th, as the changing line yields this Gua:
The Guan here is the same word as in Guan Yin the Goddess of Compassion. The literal meaning of her name is “Watching Sound.” In this sense Guan means meditating or concentrating.
The message for me is to meditate on any actions for the month and proceed with caution. In all things be an example. Watch yourself and also remember you are being watched by others. Contemplate before action. This Gua is approached from Hindrance. While the energy barriers are lifting and Hindrance is shifting there is no need for haste. Be considerate.
A further way to interpret a Gua is to form a new one from the 2nd, 3rd and 4th lines as the lower trigram and the 3rd, 4th and 5th lines as the upper trigram. This yields the “mutual gua” – in this case Bo, Falling away. This too holds a sense of warning energy. Conserve what you have. This New Moon will wax to fullness and then wane again. Proceed with caution during the waning moon.
Hindrance quickly yields to Watching early in the month. Meditate on all action. As the Chinese say about Pi: pi ji tai lai, which means: “Out of the depths of misfortune comes bliss. At the end of Hindrance appears Advance.”
Enjoy this moon-cycle and the start of this fabulous New Year however you wish to interpret the energies captured by the I Ching!
PS: My friend and astrologer, Gloria Hesseloff, had this to say about this Capricorn New Moon: “2014 invites us to continue ‘planting the seeds’ for the next 26,000 years, or at least the next few generations.” Planting seeds for generations certainly requires thoughtful patience!
My Authentic Buddhist Self
I’m not very fond of labels. Maybe it’s because I prefer to go through life flexibly, avoiding being “type-cast” in any particular role. Perhaps this keeps me in flow, ready for change, evolving through the lives I have lived, even in this one life-time! Or does it keep me from commitment?
I grew up in a so called Christian home. We didn’t so much think of ourselves as Christian at that time; everyone was one so there was no need to distinguish ourselves with the label. When filling out forms and the “religion question” was asked I checked the “Christian” box; this was automatic but I’m not so sure how authentic it was.
The University, Peace Corps and life experiences, not the least of which was initiation into Transcendental Meditation in 1969, moved me smartly beyond the Christian label. I wasn’t anti-Christian; I had just moved beyond the dogma and form I had grown up with.
I was ordained in December 2000 as an “Interfaith Minister” through Pebble Hill Interfaith Community Church in Pennsylvania. Yes, this is a label but it seemed broad enough to fit my approach to “stay loose.” And my ordination wasn’t so much to earn a title as to continue the search for an identity. My course of studies helped me along that path but I did not conclude anything other than to continue the search.
What am I searching for? Certainly not a label. But I am looking for an authentic identity. Don’t we all want to know who we are?
Rosemary and I have written a lot about this subject, “Purpose.” It really does come down to this in the end. Don’t we all long to know “why”?
It has come to this: in these days when we have written about authenticity it is time to go inside and seek the clear answer to the question. I have studied, practiced, remembered, sat for hours, been in silence, bowed to statues and other iconic art, chanted, risen in the dark before dawn to the call of the Han, considered the vows, all the while feeling the familiarity of it. And I have resisted. It is time now to embrace who I truly am.
For much of my life now I have been a practicing Zen Buddhist without taking the full vows and without the label. But I’m not a Zen Buddhist. What I have been truly resisting, or perhaps more accurately not fully realizing and embracing, is the call to study and practice Tibetan Buddhism, Vajrayana, The Diamond Path.
Why the resistance? In part I’ve thought of the Vajrayana as ornate, overly ceremonial and complex; I like the simple, clear Zen-way of things. In part I have resisted Tantra as a practice overly foreign and strange; I prefer the straightforward, easily comprehended approach to practice. And, in part, I have walked the Vajra Path in previous lives; I’ve done that, don’t need to do that, learn that again in this life.
Then I began to receive visions in my meditations; visions of the very ornate and overly ceremonial practices and technologies of Trantra. I began, again, to read the Kalachakra Tranta Rite of Initiation, this time with clarity and excitement. I researched when His Holiness is conferring the initiation again: 2014 in Ladakh! And I began having visions of doing this!
It has taken me my whole life to return, again, to something familiar, something genuine, something that has been calling to me to come back. I’ve known I’m a Buddhist at heart. And now I am embracing the truth that I am a follower of the Trantric Path. Perhaps in some mysterious way this is my ultimate label.
You will be reading more about this journey I’m setting off on in the coming weeks and months. It is a journey home to my authentic self!
MONDAY’S POEM: What is Reality?
I ended last week with an exploration of reality. Today’s poem is part of that exploration. I love what both the Heart Sutra and Chapter 11 of the Taoteching have to say about emptiness and form. They say it better than I can ever hope to but here, joining my experience with the magic of crystals and these wonderful sources of deep wisdom is what I have to offer on the subject:
What is Reality?
Is it in the crystalline structure of quartz,
Laced molecules frozen in a matrix
Of beauty, depth, meaning, space and time?
Is it in the atoms of silicon and oxygen
Who breathe life into shapes, designs, pictures,
Faces, vibrations and voices echoing through time?
Is it in the structures of the atoms, whirling bits
Of nothing winking in and out of existence,
Vibrating from nothing to something to nothing in no-time?
Or, is it like the spokes of a wheel that disappear
Around the spinning hub, a matter of perception?
What is real, the spokes or the empty hub?
The still spoke is real. The spinning spoke is not real,
Beyond perception. Form is no other than emptiness,
Emptiness no other than form!
Prajna Paramita!
©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
The Emptiness of Inherent Reality
In yesterday’s post I wrote about the “belief in crystals” and stated that in the first place “crystals are real” and therefore, are not subject to belief. They just are part of this Earth-plane we inhabit. I also wrote: Not only are crystals helping me clear stuck beliefs, they are helping me understand the deeper nature of reality. Interestingly this deeper nature of reality is nothing but a belief system. The existence of crystals in the “real” Earth-plane is actually a belief.
We live in a consensus-based reality that we view as real but may not be as real as we would like to believe!
I am immersed in a deep look, with the help of crystals, into the Kalachakra Tantra Rite of Initiation by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama and Jeffery Hopkins. The core of the book is based on the rite of initiation conducted by His Holiness in Madison, Wisconsin in 1981. I have had this book for a long time. I have attempted to read it before but was never able to get into it. Now I’m plowing through it with ease and excitement. Maybe some of my former beliefs are giving way to allow in the wisdom of this Tantra.
I am far from new to Buddhist thought. I have studied and practiced a form of Zen Buddhism for much of my life. I have worked with and read several texts on the Heart Sutra and have memorized a version of it from Zen Mountain Monastery where it is chanted daily. I have been chanting the sutra nearly daily for more than a decade. But this does not mean that I have fully penetrated the enormous implications of this holy text. I am getting closer! And it is likely the study of a life-time!
The main theme in the Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra is the emptiness of the five conditions of life, of reality: form, sensation, conception, discrimination and awareness. The practice and realization of this wisdom, this emptiness is what relieves suffering, sickness, old age and death and leads to the liberation from the wheel of samsara. This is the Perfection of Wisdom, the Prajna Paramita.
This can be summed up in the simple yet profound phrase: the emptiness of inherent reality. Of course, this too is a belief. But it is a belief that can lead to liberation from all suffering, all the misery that the Buddha witnessed as a young prince and led him on this journey to enlightenment.
I too am on a journey to this Heart of Perfect Wisdom, the Prajna Paramita. A major step along this journey is the Kalachakra Tantra Rite of Initiation. (I’ll write a full review of the book in a future post.) One of the key gateways on this journey is my suspension of belief in inherent, independent reality. And this can be particularly challenging living in modern western society where we are bombarded minute to minute by the commercial, material world of consumption of all forms of consensus reality. What would happen if we all suddenly stopped believing in the very underpinnings of life as we believe it?
With the realization of the emptiness of inherent reality comes Wisdom and Compassion – the two prongs of Buddhist philosophy. The Kalachakra Tantra is a path to this deeper understanding, this liberating belief. It is a path I have taken and will be reporting on here along the way!
Om Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha!
I Ching Gua for the New Moon in Sagittarius
There was a New Moon this past Monday, December 2 at 7:22 pm when the Moon moved into alignment with the Sun in Sagittarius. As I like to do during these important celestial events I cast an I Ching Gua, the hexagram of open (yin) and closed (yang) lines. Reading the I Ching each month is a great way to learn this ancient divination tool and offers insight into the shifting energies as we move through the calendar, the wheel of the Zodiac, the Sun’s position as we progress around it and the Moon’s position relative to Earth and Sun. All these incredible influences are at work in our lives whether we choose to believe in astrology or not!
As always the energies and the yarrow stalks I use to cast the hexagram (gua) are in alignment and reveal significant information about how I am relating to these energies. My hope is that you too can relate to the gua, the sense of their meanings and how you see the alignment of your own processes with all these influences that surround you.
Here is the initial gua I cast. Heng meaning “long lasting,” consists of Zhen (thunder, the top trigram) over Xun (wind, the bottom trigram). Notice that the bottom line is a 6, meaning it is a changing line moving from a yin line to a 9, or yang line. This is where the change occurs, remembering that I Ching means the book of change.
Long lasting here means endurance; it can refer to a marriage of long endurance, a mature marriage or relationship. However, because the initial line is a yin or weak line in a beginning place (the bottom of the gua) it may be premature to expect a long lasting situation or relationship to appear. Patience is indicated. Master Alfred Huang, whose book, The Complete I Ching, I use as my main reference, says: “Everlasting relationships take time to cultivate.”
The approached gua, the hexagram that results when the bottom 6 moves to a 9, or yang line, is Da Zhuang meaning “great strength.” This hexagram retains Zhen or thunder on top and replaces the bottom trigram with Qian or Heaven. Thunder here indicates movement and Heaven below indicates strength; together they indicate strength in motion, or “a positive advance for further achievement.” Strength here does not necessarily mean physical strength but moral strength. From Confucius’ commentary on the decision we read:
What is great should be righteous.
When righteousness is great,
The truth of Heaven and Earth can be seen.
Use great strength wisely and cautiously. Don’t overdo it; rely on moral rather than physical strength.
It is interesting to note that for the last New Moon in Scorpio I cast Da Zhuang as the initial gua which then moved to Guai or “eliminating.” (See the November 4 post). The mutual gua for the approached gua this New Moon in Sagittarius is Guai. We seem to be moving in a tight circle about Great Strength!
PS: a wonderful astrologer friend, Gloria Hesseloff, posted this about the New Moon in Sagittarius: This is the time to question our basic assumptions and be open to new revelations and possibilities. It can be so much fun to look at life with new eyes! Doesn’t this New Moon fit so perfectly with the momentous times we are experiencing during this Shift of dire beauty? I love this phrase “shift of dire beauty”! As we examine our beliefs and assumptions the I Ching seems to be telling us to eliminate old beliefs that no longer serve, enter into new beliefs cautiously and let them grow and become long lasting with patience; they will become strong through perseverance.
You are a Multi-Dimensional Being! – Richard’s Commentary
Rosemary’s post begins with a message from The Divine Feminine in which they say:
We are The Divine Feminine and speak to you from the Realm of The Divine Feminine. This is one of the Dimensions that you have been hearing about.
There is nothing scary about dimensions or the beings that inhabit them. Our role in coming into your life is to assist you in your path of personal growth.
So, in casting about for my response today, to this message about being “multi-dimensional” I decided to take them at their word to see if I could hear a message from them. Actually I have received one or two messages from this “realm” in the past when I ask them for help, guidance or support. So, why not ask them to comment, through me, on their own message with additional illumination?
And I received a very interesting message of my own from this realm. I repeat much of it here because it demonstrates my own multi-dimensionality and perhaps it can model for you how you, too, can access this or other extra-dimensional realms if you ask!
From The Divine Feminine:
Dear one, of course we will speak to you! You are our beloved. You care for us as you care for Rosemary. You know there is a male component to us, just as there is to Rosemary. You mirror that component for us just as we mirror the feminine component of you. This is what your blog, Men and the Goddess, is all about. You men need us as that mirror. We are the Yin to your Yang, the Moon to your Sun. You need us to absorb, reflect, soften and affirm your very being. We need you for your strength, your action, your sending out the energy that animates it all.
The Goddess is in you just as the God is in us. We are inseparable yet dual. We inter-penetrate one another, affirm one another, in fact, manifest one another. And there is the problem with the dual nature of existence, of consciousness, just as there is a necessity to it. Often there is an imbalance in our natures. In you men, when the masculine over-powers the feminine, there is too much action, too much aggression. When the feminine over-powers the masculine there is too much inaction, too much passivity. The mirror image of this imbalance is true for women.
Balanced men offer the greatest hope for human survival and the evolution of consciousness. Balanced women offer the same hope. Partnership between such men and women offer extraordinary gifts to humanity. You, in partnership with Rosemary, model this balanced duality of purpose and power. Together you begin to restore balance in the energetic realm.
Now, this is not to dismiss The Divine Masculine. They too need their outlet and their balance. It is true that we are now in the forefront because the balance toward the masculine power has been so over-weighted as to almost lose sight of purpose! But as the work proceeds to restore this balance a restoration of appropriate masculine power will be needed for right action to emerge. This is your work. This is your calling. The work you envision with men is part of this restoration of balance. Working with the Tao and Qi is a way to help with balance. The ancient wisdom of China holds the keys to balance. They, the Taoists knew the importance of The Feminine, The Divine Feminine.
Keep to the path. Always return to balance.
And so it is.
Well, I did ask! Now I have to be congruent with the message I received! How does this message speak to you?
MONDAY’S POEM: Eanna, Goddess of Beer
Early on when I began this blog I was studying Inanna, Queen of Heaven and War for the Sumerians. The recent issue of Archeology had an article on the latest finds in Uruk, perhaps the oldest and largest City-State of Sumer. The article referred to Eanna as the temple to the Goddess and also referred to her as “Eanna.” I like the sound of Eanna and like to think of her as one of the earliest of The Divine Feminine. In a separate article in the same issue of the journal there is a craft brewery attempting to replicate a recipe for beer from Sumer. I am confident Eanna was not only Goddess of Heaven and War but surely of the harvest, and beer!
Eanna, Goddess of Beer
The harvest is in,
The golden grains
Carefully fanned
And filed by field.
The scribes record
In clay to remind
Through millennia
The wealth that mattered.
The brew is set,
The jars are new and clean
To receive and store
The precious liquid gold.
The set-aside
Is of the best,
Saved in perfect
Vessels marked.
The day of lowest Sun,
The longest night all year
Is time to commune and celebrate
Eanna, Goddess of beer.
©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
PS: Apologies to Ninkasi, the Goddess of Beer from about 5000 years ago, whose poem is the source of the recipe for Sumerian beer.
Happy Birthday to YOU!!! – Richard’s Commentary
And I can also say Happy Birthday to the Moon today! She is new in Virgo. This just occurred at 7:38 am Eastern time.
Do you celebrate the New Moon each “moonth”? Are you aware of the phases of the moon and her travels through the night sky? The Ancients paid a great deal of attention to this goddess of the heavens. She lighted the way of night travelers, guided the seasons and times to plant, provided a calendar, effected tides and seafaring, and offered a rhythm to life and the basis of myth and wonder.
From modern research we know that life would be very different, if it existed at all, if it weren’t for our moon. Her influence on the planet and our lives is profound. So, I pay a lot of attention to her phases and my interaction with her. If you’ve been reading my posts for a while you’ll know, for example, that I cast an I Ching Gua (a hexagram of yin and yang lines) at each new moon to divine an energy for the up-coming month. (I’ll post that tomorrow.) I also celebrate the new moon as a new beginning, as a birthday of sorts, very much in keeping with Rosemary’s message this week. So, on this new moon day consider her advice:
Happy Birthday to YOU!!! Today is your birthday. You get to choose who you are today, right now, in this moment. You don’t even have to be the same as you were when you woke up this morning. OR you can decide that you like the YOU who woke up and you re-decide to celebrate YOU! Either way, it’s your birthday today.
It is a good time to start something new. I’m going to plant some fall vegetables in my garden today. And Rosemary and I are going to review our business plan and model to determine what’s working and what can be improved. It’s a new day as well as a new moon!
And this new moon is in the sign of Virgo. This too has special meaning. A dear friend and astrologer, Gloria Hesseloff, titled in her newsletter for the New Moon: Work is Love made Visible, using a line from a poem by Kahil Gibran. The Virgo Moon calls us to a higher work. Gloria writes:
Virgo energy challenges you to release any obstacles to finding your sacred work. Integrating this goal with the radical changes that Pluto and Uranus are demanding of us right now, ask yourself, “What changes do I need to make to my daily life routines and patterns (Virgo attributes) so I can be an instrument of the Divine?
Virgo energy asks you to become highly competent in a skill that is of value to others. Then generously offer it as your high service. Your specific gifts are truly needed at this significant moment in history.
Today is your birthday! Celebrate with me as I celebrate this New Moon and “the first day of the rest of my life”! We are always at choice. I choose to make my love visible through my work.
New Moon in Leo I Ching Divination
The New Moon in Leo occurred on Tuesday, August 6 at 5:51 pm EDT this year. We had completed the heavy lifting of our move to Severna Park the day before. We were united with all of our stuff for the first time in over two years. Of course we didn’t know where everything was yet (still don’t) as the job of sorting and searching, finding places for things and finalizing what we need and what we can store or purge in another round of down-sizing proceeds. As we look at the stacks and array of boxes to be opened and managed the task seems daunting.
With this background it is no surprise that I cast a highly appropriate initial Gua for the month ahead! At least I was able to find my yarrow stalks and my current favorite “bible” on the I Ching, Alfred Huang’s The Complete I Ching.
Here is the hexagram I cast as the starting point:
Notice it is made up of two identical trigrams; the name in Chinese is Dui or Lake in English. Master Huang says this word means something more like a swamp or marsh, similar to rice paddies. When put together the hexagram is also named Dui. The meaning of the hexagram is Joyful.
Notice that the initial, lowest line has a circle in the middle of it; this was cast as a nine and means it is the changing line for this Gua; it changes from a yang, closed line to a yin, open line yielding a new Gua with a very different meaning. So, as the month opens I have a joyful period to experience. I equate this to the joy of being reunited with all my stuff, of setting up a new household where everything is where I want it to be, even those items that need to be stored or purged. Rosemary and I are both in a state of great joy that we now have a new home to both live in and work from.
The specific meaning of the changing line gives another layer of meaning; the yao text refers to “inner harmony” as the basis for joy. This is excellent advice. Yes, while all the surroundings are lining up to bring joy, the primary source of joy is always inside. As long as I remain harmonious inside, all the boxes and frustration of sorting and deciding can remain incidental to the overall state of being joyful.
How are you being joyful this August? Seek inner harmony and all external circumstances can drop away.
Now for the approached gua, the one formed when the initial yao changes from yang to yin:
This is Kun or Exhausting. No surprise here! After the strenuous move and all the sorting, deciding, arranging and purging I do expect to experience a level of exhaustion. This gua also refers to other resources, like money. It will be easy to over-spend as we are joyful about settling in and enjoying our new spaces.
Symbolically, the lower trigram moved from Lake to Kan or Water. With Water under Lake the lake drains away, resources diminish.
According to Master Huang, the Sage rides out these periods of low energy and drained resources, realizing this time too shall pass. The advice here is conserve what little energy remains. Go inside to consider next moves. Wait out the period of exhaustion; there will be plenty of opportunity ahead.
How do you deal with exhausting states? The advice of this gua is to conserve and wait.
As another note the mutual gua for Kun is Jia Ren or Household! The mutual gua holds additional meaning for the reading. I am again not surprised that Household comes up; for me at this time my household is both the source of joy and exhaustion!
How is your household bringing you both joyful and exhausting experiences?
Guru Purnima 2013
Rosemary and I spent a wonderful 20 hours in Trenton, NJ this past Sunday. We drove up from Annapolis that morning to join our friends from Colorado to celebrate the Guru, and in particular, Sri Karunamayi Vijayeshwari Devi. We have been followers of Sri Karunamayi, Amma, for years and visit her as often as we can as she travels the US on an annual tour.
The July full moon is the occasion of the celebration of the Guru and is known as Guru Purnima. It is an incredible festival in honor of all Gurus through time and our individual Gurus through our spiritual lives. We have been to several of these now and each celebration, held in a different city each year, seems grander than the last.
The Guru Purnima this year included a rare, once-in-a-life-time puja, or special honoring and offering for deities. This year Amma offered the Sahastra Linga Maha Puja as part of the Guru Purnima celebration. This Puja is conducted only once every 60 years and we were privileged enough to be in Trenton to experience it. This Puja is an offering to Shiva; 1,116 clay Shiva Lingas were used in the ritual. Words cannot describe the experience. But imagine a ritual that can clear away all karma, not only of this life-time but of all life-times!
Am I now clean, clear and ready for Enlightenment? Well, all I know is something happened in that honoring and celebration of Shiva and the Gurus. It was a magical time and the transformation energy was at a peak at the conclusion of the Puja and as we then entered the honoring ceremony. As we honored beloved Amma I also conjured all of my spiritual teachers and gurus that have helped me on my way, my path to spiritual awakening. I have been blessed by many. And they all seemed to join me during this event and were there with the 400 gathered souls to recognize and honor all Teachers.
Why is any of this important? Yesterday my comment on Rosemary’s Exploration on Self-Protection included a suggestion that we protect ourselves from misguided choices. The prescription to avoid these choices is to rely on our intuitive powers to make the choices that lead us onward and upward, on our paths to awakening. Intuition, from the Latin ‘intueri’, means “to look inside.” To use our intuition is to seek a priori knowledge to inform our choices. And this brings me to the key teaching of Amma, repeated yet again in her “Guru Purnima Message”. I have included some of her words here because they are beautiful and they are highly instructive:
Your body is not the external body, the mental body, or the intellectual body. It is the fourth body, which is the eternal Self, ultimate pure spiritual consciousness. You have to connect with your Self to unleash the light within you. Self-realization should be the ultimate goal of every human birth. How can you make progress towards that goal? Meditate.
The Holy rishis and even the gods are seen often in meditative posture. What are they meditating on? They are meditating on their own Self, the Atman, the soul. All the divine souls are merged into one. There is no discrimination for the divine soul.
Meditation is the only path to connect with the Self and attain eternal bliss. That is the path Amma wants all of Her children to follow. Once you start meditating, pride with give way to liberality; I-ness, Me-ness will give way to We-ness; selfishness will give way to selflessness. You will love everyone and hate no one. You will not criticize others but accept everyone for who they are. You will start developing faith in all religions. You will come out of your small boundaries and will be on your way to ultimate spiritual consciousness.
Meditate. Look inside. Access intuition. From that place you are completely protected from poor choice. And you step on the path to eternal bliss!
Jai Karunamayi!
Men and The Goddess 