Yang-Yang-Rén-Yin
Like a man drilling into something hard.
With a ring of sound, it goes through.
1
A round thing boring into an inner crack.
Danger.
What rolls was never made to cut.
2
Press for what is right by the smallest means.
Let it set the track of the mandate.
The great warning is delivered quietly.
3
Tongs and bolt, gripping and gripping.
Not upright.
The salary is sought by the bent road.
4
The word presses in as far as the bone.
The hour is right for it.
It went straight because the road was straight.
5
Blundering, blundering,
pressing the hill for its sweetness.
What is handed over is spoiled.
6
Pressing and pressing at heaven itself.
Upright, and going along with it.
What yields is what gets kept.
7
River halberds coming loose, coming loose.
An encounter.
The road has no room for both.
8
A red tongue sets the city burning.
They spit water from a narrow jar
The curse is undone by the mouth that made it.
9
Pressing his suit to the floating cloud.
He follows it down.
Whatever he climbed was weather.
THE IMAGE
A bronze drill and delicate stylus touching a luminous jade disc with acoustic resonance rings and subtle sparks, testing hardness and boundary.
THE COMMENTARY
You are pressing into something. This may be a boundary, an obstacle, another person’s resistance, a difficult truth, or a situation that will not open merely because you want it to.
Persistence can be appropriate, but Trespass asks whether your manner of pressing fits what you are trying to enter. Force applied badly damages both tool and target. A small, exact intervention may accomplish what repeated pressure cannot.
There are times when a word must penetrate, a claim must be made, or resistance must be met directly. There are also times when insistence becomes intrusion and ambition begins pursuing what has no substance. The wisdom here lies in knowing what deserves persistence, how much pressure is enough, and when the thing you are pursuing is only a cloud.
This figure is one of 81 in Taixuanjing for Today, a book by Joe Perez that renders Yang Xiong’s Canon of Supreme Mystery in original verse, with expanded commentary, essays, and full instructions for casting the oracle yourself.