Yin-Rén-Yin-Rén
The yin knows itself the minister, the yang knows itself the lord.
Between them nothing changes in ten thousand ages.
1
He wears the god’s marking-line and walks on the sacred rule.
With one thing he answers ten thousand.
The sun over him does not go down.
2
What stays constant in there is a small thing.
A low woman keeps the inner rooms.
Upright, and still it stands near the edge.
3
The sun holds to what it does.
Three years and nothing bites a piece out of it.
Nothing has come between it and the looking.
4
The moon does not hold to it.
Somewhere it drops the road it was on.
It is full and then it is not.
5
One thread running down, one running across.
This is what heaven and earth keep doing.
Lord and minister are the same weaving.
6
He gets seven and takes nine instead.
Something soft has bent the hard part.
He let go of the full and climbed onto the failing.
7
The going and coming pours past like water.
What was constant is thinning out.
He carries the straight thing on top of the crooked.
8
He has a standing illness and does not call it illness.
The fault finishes forming and nobody asks about it.
What is not asked about cannot be answered.
9
He treats his sickness as a sickness.
Shaman and doctor do not miss.
The curing began when he named it.
THE IMAGE
An ancient cedar tree towering steadfast on a high stone ridge beside an ancient stone sundial, where the shadow marks the eternal, orderly passage of the solar hours with unswerving precision.
THE COMMENTARY
Something needs to endure. The question concerns what remains true through changing moods, circumstances, pressures, and seasons rather than what can be achieved in a single impressive moment.
Constancy is not rigid repetition. A lasting way adapts without abandoning its governing principle, just as a pattern can continue through many variations without ceasing to be itself. The oracle asks what deserves this kind of fidelity.
Look carefully at what you have been calling stable. Some habits endure because they are sound; others persist because no one has examined them. True constancy strengthens life over time rather than merely continuing because it has always continued.
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.