Yin-Yin-Rén-Yang
The yin breath begins to come, the yang begins to go.
Going and coming, they meet on the road.
1
In the dark he meets a god and a teacher.
It comes to him asleep, and it is upright.
What was thought reached something that thinks.
2
Blundering, blundering, the way a child meets things.
Nothing in it is settled.
He is nobody’s son that anyone can name.
3
He does not go out and he does not come after.
Man and woman find each other properly.
Whoever advertises has already lost it.
4
Swaggering, and he meets the rain.
Danger.
What he walked into he brought with him.
5
Out hunting, he meets the game.
Nobody can stop him taking it.
The effort was worth making.
6
The spider sets out its net, spread wide,
and what comes into it is a wasp.
Big, and he cannot take it.
7
He lifts his horns.
His lord and father have met with disgrace.
He goes straight at it, and the death is not the appointed one.
8
Two rhinoceroses fight and one horn goes.
It cannot win now.
What it lost was the thing that guarded it.
9
Someone knocks against his horn.
Meeting him from below, he breaks his foot.
How was anyone going to stand up to that?
THE IMAGE
An enlightened chancellor dressed as a commoner encountering a hidden hermit sage carving wooden flutes beneath a blooming catalpa tree beside a mountain stream.
THE COMMENTARY
An unexpected meeting may alter the course of events. Something enters from outside your plan: a person, insight, difficulty, opportunity, or force whose importance becomes clear only through contact.
Encounter is different from deliberate pursuit. Much of its wisdom lies in how you meet what arrives rather than in how successfully you arrange the arrival. Some encounters should be received; others reveal danger precisely because you were not prepared for what came into your path.
Remain open without being indiscriminate. An encounter can carry instruction, partnership, reward, conflict, or loss, and its meaning may depend less on what appears than on the quality of your response.
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.