Rén-Yin-Yang-Yang
The yin holds the yang in mind and the yang holds the yin.
What they want is down in the dark palace.
1
He sinks his ear against the inner door.
Nothing straight comes through it.
What he is doing has no shape a person could keep.
2
He sinks the look into himself and sees what is there.
Better than a one-eyed man watching sideways.
What he found was straight, and it was good.
3
He goes under into the beautiful things.
The straight line goes out of him.
He is making himself deaf, he is making himself blind.
4
The young phoenix looks down over the country.
It eats the bitter thing and stays straight.
It is choosing which direction to come down in.
5
The eagle climbs, and its belly is looking down.
It flies high for the sake of something rotten.
It starts well and it raises nothing.
6
He sees the grain piled up, catching the light.
He hands it over to the king without shaving it.
The road he took is the visible one.
7
His eyes are as good as anyone’s ever were.
He sees red meat, and what he gets is owls.
He took it because he could see it.
8
He looks about him and finds the medicine.
Now the journey is worth making.
The going and the cure are the same movement.
9
He has heaped the people’s fat up like a ridge of hills.
The blood comes up as far as his forehead.
There is a body in front of him and a funeral behind.
THE IMAGE
A deep, tranquil jade-green mountain pool fed by a gentle waterfall, where autumn leaves rest undisturbed upon the riverbed and white stones glow serenely in the clear depths.
THE COMMENTARY
Attention is moving below the surface. The matter may require introspection, investigation, withdrawal from appearances, or willingness to descend into motives and realities that are not immediately visible.
Sinking can produce insight when it takes you inward toward what is true. It becomes dangerous when fascination, appetite, or secrecy pulls you so deeply into something that ordinary judgment disappears.
Ask what you are looking for beneath the surface. Descend far enough to understand, but not so far that you lose the ability to return with what you have learned.
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.