Rén-Yin-Yang-Yin
The yin leaves the inside and stands without; the yang leaves the outside and comes within.
Here the ten thousand things are finished.
1
He is careful about who is matched with whom.
Straight at the beginning, quiet afterward.
The house is governed at the door.
2
He goes crooked toward the woman who runs the house.
He takes the long way round to the yellow wood.
Everything peaceful is now a long way off.
3
The bride is matched, and there is weeping.
Sorrow comes down the western stair.
Somebody is being replaced, and she is still standing there.
4
He likes it small and he likes it dangerous.
He loses the quilted coat off his back.
There is nothing here anyone would boast of.
5
The dragon comes all the way down into the mud.
This is the hour to take a wife.
The high one goes under and meets his equal there.
6
At dusk the thing is still flying, and it takes its wings indoors.
He would like to fill the whole palace.
He fills it, and the woman he wanted is not in it.
7
Weeds come up out of the dry wall.
A white-headed man brings a young wife into the house.
Everything alive is pleased to find its own kind.
8
Inside the house he cannot manage her.
The household goes to waste and the country follows.
He is wading somewhere nobody has measured.
9
The rain comes down onto the ground.
It cannot hold back and it cannot flood.
The wet has a measure built into it.
THE IMAGE
An inner sanctum of an ancient mountain cloister warmed by a glowing charcoal brazier, where a scholar-monk sits in quiet contemplation beside a window looking out at falling autumn leaves.
THE COMMENTARY
The matter belongs close to home. Private relationships, intimacy, family arrangements, partnership, domestic order, or the hidden structure beneath public life may be more important than outward appearances suggest.
The Inner Rooms concerns matching: who belongs with whom, who carries which responsibility, and whether those joined inside a shared life truly meet one another there. Disorder in intimate arrangements can eventually spread far beyond the household.
Pay attention to what is happening behind the public face of the situation. The deepest completion often depends on whether inner relationships are rightly ordered, mutually sustaining, and capable of receiving each person as they actually are.
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.