Rén-Rén-Rén-Yin
The great yin freezes hard and shrinks back, hurt, on the outside.
The faint yang pushes at the dark and puts its back into it, within.
1
He works hard at his planning, inside.
Nothing about it is straight.
The middle of him was crooked before he started.
2
The work has kindness in it, and it does not stop.
Plain, and plainly meant.
It came out of something, not out of nothing.
3
A small child with its hair still tied in tufts.
It cries and cries.
Nobody comes to carry it.
4
He puts his strength into it.
He does the low work and forgets to eat.
Only a big man can do that and stay big.
5
Wild, and lame, and lame again.
The harm is close and the good is a long way off.
He is hurrying in the wrong direction.
6
The work is done and it stands.
It comes close to heaven.
Something came down to put its shoulder to it.
7
He hauls the ox and not by the nose.
He has it by the tail.
Everything is being done backwards.
8
He works at it step by careful step, mind clear.
The thicket in front of him does not turn him back.
He spends himself, and the country is what he spends it on.
9
Toiling and toiling.
He carries the cart down into the water and the boat up the mountain.
All of it is the labour and none of it is the work.
THE IMAGE
A devoted master artisan and scholar carving complex astronomical rings and cosmological bamboo records by warm candlelight inside a snow-sheltered library pavilion.
THE COMMENTARY
Much effort is being demanded. Work, duty, persistence, or struggle may occupy nearly the whole field, and the central question is whether the labor is truly accomplishing what it is meant to accomplish.
Toil is not automatically virtue. Hard work can be generous, disciplined, and transformative, but it can also become frantic misdirection, self-punishment, or the exhausting performance of effort without useful result.
Look carefully at method as well as intensity. The right work may still be difficult, but its difficulty has direction. The wrong work consumes the same strength while carrying boats up mountains and carts into rivers.
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.