Yin-Yang-Rén-Rén
The yang breath is pure hardness, tireless and tireless.
There is nothing among the ten thousand things that is not a strong beam.
1
Strong all through the middle, and not straight.
There is nothing it can be used for.
There is nothing to be planned with him.
2
The phoenix goes up with its long feathers trailing.
The gentleman is in his own hour.
In the end there is nobody who can stop him.
3
The pillar is not on center. The beam does not lift.
The great house stands there thin.
The base was never made straight.
4
He hears, and he sees.
On his left and his right, men standing firm.
Others are already coming toward him.
5
The gentleman is a strong beam by what he is.
The small man is a strong beam by what he can lift.
Give the second one the position and the fault grows.
6
He masters the strong beam that is himself.
Heaven goes out from him without an edge.
There is no wall anywhere in the good of it.
7
The metal is hard and the flesh is soft.
Blood goes out across the fields.
The law has cut further than it needed.
8
He puts strength into what is failing.
He pushes at what is weak.
He does it to himself first.
9
The great mountain comes up by the roots.
Beam and pillar snap.
The man goes down; it was the fierceness that did it.
THE IMAGE
An athletic warrior and master archer drawing back a laminated horn-and-mulberry composite bow atop a rocky promontory, standing resolute against howling coastal gales, surrounded by disciplined stonecutters splitting granite slabs.
THE COMMENTARY
Great strength is available, but the oracle is less concerned with whether you possess power than with whether that power is properly aligned. A strong beam is useful only when it stands where the structure actually needs it.
Strength can support, protect, build, and carry burdens others cannot manage. It can also become excessive enforcement, misplaced authority, or sheer fierceness that ultimately destroys the structure it was meant to uphold.
The challenge now is mastery of your own force. If you can govern your strength, others may safely rely on it. If strength governs you, every problem begins to look like something that should be pushed, subdued, or broken.
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.