Yang-Yin-Yang-Yin
The yang breath stirs and opens in the east.
The Lord proceeds out of the gathered harmony, and things differ in their forms.
1
The small fault turns and attacks itself.
It comes out straight.
No one else has noticed yet.
2
What he likes
will fetch him what he hates.
The gap opens a little at a time.
3
Saying always: it will be lost, it will be lost.
He arrives at the bright place.
Fear was the wall he built.
4
He overdoes the small goodnesses.
It does not carry.
Small is where it stops.
5
He walks past the gate and turns back in.
He picks up the road down the middle.
The turning was short enough to make.
6
A great stumble.
He goes past his own gate and does not go in.
The house stands open behind him.
7
Eggs stacked one on another, shaking.
Afraid, and upright, and safe.
He built the safety out of the danger.
8
Feet stumbling over each other, the stride lurching and leaping.
The inscription worn away, the elk gone.
He steps past it and does not come back.
9
He walks past the burnt-out city.
Something is putting out green shoots in it.
He went past the fault and came up living.
THE IMAGE
A pair of ceremonial bronze calipers and a carpenter’s straight plumb-line measuring a split path in a stone courtyard, with diverging mountain streams flowing into contrasting valleys.
THE COMMENTARY
Differences are opening. They may begin as small discrepancies in judgment, taste, expectation, timing, or conduct, but the oracle asks you to notice how far a slight deviation may eventually travel.
Divergence is not necessarily a call to eliminate difference. Some departures correct themselves, some reveal a better path, and some become dangerous only because they are ignored. The important thing is to distinguish a useful variation from a growing misalignment.
This figure especially concerns the moment when one still has room to turn back. A small error recognized early may become the very means of returning to the center. What matters is not never departing from the path, but noticing when the difference has become large enough to change where the path is going.
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.