Yang-Rén-Yin-Yin
The yang breath wounds and shears away.
The yin cannot cure its own sickness, and things come level.
1
He carries a second self in the dark.
He holds the levelling inside him.
The change is happening where no one looks.
2
The dark levels things.
Heaven’s net comes down over it.
The mesh is wide and nothing gets through.
3
Soft. The infant cries and cries.
Three days and the throat is not hoarse.
Something at the middle of it is at peace.
4
They file down their teeth.
What is left is a company of drinkers.
The meal is nothing to speak well of.
5
The middle comes level.
Nothing in it goes wrong.
There are many roads out of here.
6
The hut is levelled.
Where the house stood there is an empty mound.
What was got here has gone.
7
Softness that has dried, weakness that presses.
The wood comes apart, the metal is mown down.
Level. The soft one is the one still standing.
8
They saw off its horns.
Danger.
The power it had is the wound it has.
9
He levels with the very old.
Honour the sick years and it goes well.
Everything here hangs on which way it faces.
THE IMAGE
A tranquil, boundless emerald plain and smooth calm lake under a serene spring sky, where road rollers have leveled the stone highway so carriages glide without jolt or hazard.
THE COMMENTARY
Something is being brought down, evened out, stripped of distinction, or returned toward a common level. This may feel like loss if you have been elevated, but like relief if imbalance has been weighing on the situation.
Levelling removes exaggeration. Rank, pride, excess, difference, and even strength itself may be pared back until the essential structure becomes visible again. What survives this process is usually what was less dependent on advantage than it first appeared.
Do not assume that becoming level means becoming diminished. Sometimes the ground has to be made even before anything stable can be built upon it.
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.