Yin-Yang-Rén-Yang
The yang is at its kindest.
Wholeness is unmixed, thick and steady, and things are all at peace with their own.
1
He is intimate with someone not of his own skin.
Their intentions grind past each other.
There is a fence in the middle of it.
2
He is trusted on the inside.
What they want, they take from being close.
Nobody gets in between them.
3
He does not keep his own brood joined.
The wasp comes and carries them off.
There is nobody left to stand at the door.
4
The guests are made close by the rite.
The eating and drinking go by rule.
Host and guest arrive at the same place.
5
He is not open-handed where he owed it.
The ones standing near him start to go.
There is no direction left with his own kind in it.
6
Open-handed, and open-handed again.
He holds the Dipper at the middle.
The stars come round him without being called.
7
He holds the position high and stiff.
What he actually does is small.
The power in him does not reach the height.
8
Kin close as lung to liver, and only dry rations between them.
The trunk was sound.
The gentleman goes; nothing here was going to use him.
9
He is close to people the way a child is.
Nothing in it is upright.
It comes back down to its own root.
THE IMAGE
An ancestral hall and multi-generational courtyard home where elders, parents, and children gather around a banquet table laden with seasonal fruits, offering wine libations with heartfelt filial reverence.
THE COMMENTARY
The question concerns belonging: who is truly yours, where mutual obligation lies, and what makes people more than accidental companions. Kinship may refer to family, friendship, partnership, community, or any bond in which lives become meaningfully joined.
Closeness alone does not create kinship. People can share blood and remain estranged, or begin as strangers and become bound through trust, generosity, and repeated acts of recognition. The oracle asks what actually holds the relationship together.
Take care of the bonds nearest to you, but do not make belonging so narrow that it becomes exclusion. Healthy kinship creates a center strong enough to welcome others without forgetting what mutual responsibility requires.
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.