Rén-Yang-Rén-Yin
Yin and yang grind against each other.
Things are worn and pulled apart — as if right, as if wrong.
1
He doubts, going round and round.
The straight line is gone out of him.
There is nothing here that could be settled.
2
He doubts, and turns the question round onto himself.
What he can rely on is not far off.
He went back to the part of him that is quiet.
3
He does not know and he makes himself say it brightly.
Grief settles in, and settles further.
It is dark at the root, where he made the claim.
4
He doubts, and goes and reads the old cases.
What he meets there is straight, and holds.
He asked before he moved.
5
A red-gold colour, shining.
He thinks there is real metal inside it.
The crooked thing has taken the straight thing’s place.
6
The oath is straight and people can listen to it.
Where they still doubt, he gives them his whole self.
That is what makes an order an order.
7
Ghost or soul, he cannot tell, and he only sighs.
He shoots at the bird in the tree, the fox in its hole.
He is listening with his eyes and looking with his ears.
8
His doubt goes over and a guest comes with a shield.
Three years and nobody looses an arrow.
There is enough here to be respectful about.
9
He doubts and there is nothing he trusts.
He draws the bow, he sights the deer.
Nothing. He will never be called anything.
THE IMAGE
A traveler on a foggy mountain path pausing before a fork in the road, consulting a bronze compass and examining faint footprints in the damp earth while distant lanterns flicker.
THE COMMENTARY
Certainty is unavailable, and trying to manufacture it may do more harm than admitting uncertainty. Two interpretations, directions, or possibilities may be pulling against one another without yet revealing which deserves your confidence.
Doubt can be corrosive when it becomes endless circling, but it can also protect you from acting on an assumption that has not earned belief. The oracle asks you to investigate rather than merely worry.
Turn the question toward yourself as well as outward toward circumstances. Seek precedents, evidence, trustworthy people, and the quiet place where your own motives become easier to distinguish. The goal is not absolute certainty, but enough clarity to act without pretending to know what you do not.
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.