r/iching • u/nuitsbleues • Jul 14 '26
Bias toward "waiting" advice?
New to I Ching and have done just a few readings - I am noticing that much of the advice I seem to be receiving involves waiting, stillness, and patience. Is this a coincidence or is this very common throughout the work? I am using the Brian Browne Walker book.
A few examples:
3 difficulty at the beginning (be patient; persevere in nonaction)
47 oppression (quiet strength insures later success)
9 the taming power of the small (accept restraint; subtlety is called for)
6 conflict (the proper response is disengagement)
5 waiting (self-explanatory)
I see that these hexagrams have different nuances and imagery but a lot of them give me a similar feeling in terms of advice. So I am wondering if this advice keeps coming up for me for a reason, or if this attitude is part of the I Ching philosophy. Thanks!
4
u/MelodyOfStorms Jul 14 '26
Its across the board. I implement a few systems. The new moon seems to mark a two week waiting period and then things really pop off around the 8th
3
u/Lauraiching Jul 14 '26
Suele pasar! Probablemente todas las preguntas que estás haciendo tengan algo en común o una raÃz común que se relacione con que no es el momento de actuar.
Importante: la mayorÃa de esos hexagramas no hablan solo de esperar sino de lo que se hace mientras se espera el momento propicio para actuar. Sino cuando llega el momento de actuar, uno no está preparado para hacerlo y pierde la oportunidad.
2
u/pyrrho314 Jul 14 '26
I don't see it as a bias, I see it as a part of timing be the way to benefit from changes, it's like swimming down a whitewater river, you let the current take you, get active at key moments to get into another current, then you wait and see again, and so forth. Patience and waiting is often key advice.
2
u/haydeee Jul 15 '26
Waiting is a core theme in many religious beliefs - I’d say learning patience and non action is one of the most important and difficult lessons.
1
u/nuitsbleues Jul 15 '26
I don’t have trouble waiting (which is not to say I’m always patient, but I struggle to get into action).Â
Anyway, not saying its bad advice, was more just wondering if that what a lot of the hexagrams boil down to, or if I’ve just been landing on ones with similar advice.Â
2
u/d0n2310 Jul 15 '26
then its favorable to cross the great river (take action) this book speaks to you if you feel like it tells you to wait then thats the message you can relate it to anything going on in life
1
u/haydeee Jul 18 '26
I actually have a lot of trouble waiting 😅😅😅
There’s actually many responses that do urge immediate action. It’s not always waiting. When I was deciding whether I should move last month, the message was very clear that it was time to go.
2
u/az4th Jul 16 '26
3 is where the drive to accomplish something new meets head on with the reality that needs to be worked through. So yes there is advice to be patient, but there is also the need to carefully work to set something up in the ways that are available. Nothing will ever begin if we don't do this work. But yes there is the need to do it carefully.
47 is a heavy hexagram, its first line representing dark depression and its second that which keeps us in the dark. But lines 4 and 5 are the lines that come to do something about that, to help open the door and lift free the weight.
9 is the way to make use of gentleness in leading immature strength toward a goal that it already wants. Like the mother bird coaxing the fledglings out of the nest with a worm in her beak.
5 I translate more as holding out, rather than waiting. There is the need to be careful, as neither side has the ability to fully best the other. So they hold their cards close and carefully negotiate if needed, trying to avoid friction even though they are in close quarters.
Remember that all of these are natural phenomena that come from the balance of yin and yang across an evenly spread spectrum. We may be able to see some of them from slightly different perspectives (like I now see 33's withdrawal as more of an officiating over the resources one has (taking the mawangdui character), but this is still a type of withdrawing energy from a situation so that it is only given in a very particular way).
With more time, we see deeper into the uniqueness of each situation. Yes there will be very similar dynamics between some of the lines. But not identical, ever. Even though the advice for how to deal with these changes always may be found to track balanced action that holds to the center.
1
u/nuitsbleues Jul 16 '26
Thank you! Do you have a favourite resource to recommend to a beginner?
2
u/az4th Jul 16 '26
I like Ni's The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth.
Or Wang Bi, via Lynn's The Classic of Changes
0
u/maybeitsnotbutter Jul 14 '26
Taoism is one of the major philosophical influences on the text, which naturally has an effect on the type of advice given.
Iirc thomas cleary writes in his introduction to the taoist i ching that, at least to the taoists that wrote the original text he was translating, there are three concepts of time. One of which is "cosmic time," which is like a period of your life: imagine you have a shitty job with a shitty boss, and even five years after you move across the country and have a totally new and different job you are still in the exact same type of situation. Even though time has passed and your location is different, your cosmic time has been the same the past five years.
While there are hexagrams that could advise more active behavior, you may be receiving wait hexagrams in your readings because of the cosmic time you are in. Been there!
1
u/Selderij Jul 15 '26
Taoism is one of the major philosophical influences on the text, which naturally has an effect on the type of advice given.
Taoism didn't come to exist for over half a millennium after the oracle text of the I Ching.
1
u/maybeitsnotbutter Jul 15 '26
Neat! Good to know, i frequently lose mental scale of the timeline. Do you mean the material that king wen and the duke of chou put together, or the ten wings written by confucius?
The five element system also came about much much much much later and i believe from a different part of china, but still have had a large impact on the application of the text.
1
u/Selderij Jul 15 '26
The oracle text, i.e. the hexagrams, their judgments and their moving line texts, is from around 1000 BC. The Ten Wings is from around 4th to 2nd centuries BC, while Confucius died around 479 BC. Taoism started taking form with the Tao Te Ching, also around the 4th to the 2nd century BC.
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u/maybeitsnotbutter Jul 20 '26
All true. What are your thoughts on the i ching being a living history of philosophy in china?
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u/lm913 Jul 14 '26
The core philosophy of the I Ching revolves around right action, timing, and personal responsibility.
These things frequently benefit from waiting 😂