Yang-Yang-Yin-Yin
The yang breath spreads thin over the deep.
Things grow modest and make themselves small.
1
In the dark, making oneself small.
So slight it slips past modesty.
The humility no one sees.
2
Making oneself small and not arriving.
Nursing the worry of it.
The modesty is not sincere.
3
Move by the finest increment.
This is the ruler’s own method.
Small gain, and the gain is upright.
4
Poor and poorer.
Someone shakes them out of it recklessly.
Rescue is not the same as rectitude.
5
The earth hollows itself
and sinks below the river.
This is what people call holy.
6
The small hold themselves brimful.
Full now, tipped over later.
What is there in that to call abundance?
7
Poverty run all the way to its bottom.
Useful now to see wealth.
Poverty is what wealth sends for.
8
Poor and not poor.
No one shakes them out of it.
What is there in that to honour?
9
Fine rain soaking and soaking,
wetting a dried-out ditch.
On the third day it reaches the valley.
THE IMAGE
A serene low-lying lake bed beneath misty mountain streams where gentle yang mist gathers in quiet humility.
THE COMMENTARY
Make yourself smaller than the situation. This is not a call to self-denial for its own sake, but to restraint, proportion, and the willingness to proceed without demanding that everything become large, visible, or impressive.
There may be strength in doing less, asking for less, or taking only the next necessary step. What is modest can pass through places where ambition gets caught. Yet Few also distinguishes genuine humility from self-diminishment, poverty of spirit, or the performance of modesty. Becoming small is useful only when it brings you closer to what is true.
Do not despise what arrives by increments. Small gains accumulate, dry ground is restored by fine rain, and what seems insufficient today may be exactly the scale at which renewal can begin.
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.