Yang-Rén-Yang-Rén
The yang breath harmonises and shakes.
Circling warmth releases things; they shed what is withered and split their husks.
1
It moves and has no name for itself.
It is finished, and it is nameless.
There is nothing here that a name would fit.
2
He moves toward his own reflection.
There is nothing in it to watch.
There is nothing in it to hear.
3
Wind moves, thunder gets up.
It goes with whatever stands highest.
This movement is going somewhere.
4
He moves up onto the hills and mounds.
He loses the friends he had in the marsh.
Whatever is under him he is now above.
5
The fat softens and runs.
The four countries come level with each other.
There is no edge to the gladness.
6
Thunder inside the courtyard.
The harmony goes and the straightness goes.
Both of them leave by the same door.
7
It thunders and thunders and humiliates no one.
It rinses the disgrace out of its mouth.
There is no boundary to what can be washed.
8
Thunder at the sound of profit.
He topples, he falls flat, he dies.
He had been walking with it all along.
9
Prison now, and grain afterward.
In the end the fetters come off.
The harm was let go of somewhere back there.
THE IMAGE
A bronze padlock springing open and uncoiling heavy iron chains on a stone terrace, releasing a pair of white cranes that spread their wings into the open morning sky, with spring thaw melting mountain ice into clear flowing streams.
THE COMMENTARY
Something can be let go. Tension, obligation, resentment, restriction, grief, confusion, or an old form may have reached the point where holding it together requires more effort than releasing it.
Release is movement after constriction. What has been bound begins to loosen, and this can bring relief, energy, and renewed circulation. Yet release is not always gentle: what has been contained may emerge with force once the restraint is removed.
The oracle asks what is ready to fall away and what must remain after it does. Freedom is most useful when it restores right movement rather than becoming another form of disorder.
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.