28 Excess > 13 U.N. > 43 Breakthrough > 49 Revolution < 44 Contact from below
Wilhelm translates Tong Ren as Fellowship with Men, and Blofeld translates it as Lovers, Beloved, Friends, Like-Minded Persons, Universal Brotherhood. In Chinese, tong means similar, alike, the same. Ren means person or people. When the two characters are put together as a unit, it means to treat people alike. In ancient China, tong ren also meant people with the same interests. Herein, Tong Ren is translated as Seeking Harmony. It has the connotation of forming alliances. To break through a tough situation, people need to work together in harmony, as in an alliance.
The ideograph of the first character, tong, consists of three parts. The first part looks like an upright rectangle without the bottom line, symbolizing a door frame or a house. Within the house, there is a single horizontal stroke representing the number one. Underneath this is a little square symbolizing a mouth. In ancient China, people were counted by mouths. For instance, if someone wanted to know how many people there were in your family, they would ask “How many mouths are there in your family?” The three parts of the ideograph come together to depict a group of people gathered together as a single unit. Here, the mouth indicates that they are thinking or speaking as one. The Chinese can feel the harmony in the group. The ideograph of the second character, ren, suggests a person standing.
The image of this gua is Heaven above, Fire below. Heaven suggests ascension. The flame of fire moves upward. Fire approaching Heaven gives an image of people with the same interests working together in harmony. There is only one yielding line, at the second place. The ancient sage saw this as a picture of harmony; the one at the second place treated the other five elements at different places equally, with the same attitude. An ancient Chinese maxim says, “People in the same boat help each other, sharing weal and woe.” According to the I Ching, however, there is no absolute sameness. The ancient sages passed on the secret of obtaining harmony, that is, seeking common ground on major issues while reserving differences on minor ones. Tong Ren teaches that the wise classify people according to their natures, not for the purpose of treating them differently, but to seek common ground. If there is common ground, each one is able to act in harmony with the others. The ancient Chinese dreamed day and night that the world would belong to the majority and the government would serve the common interest of its countrymen. This is Seeking Harmony.
Articles about this have been popping up with increasing frequency of late, so I decided to see what the Yi has to say about it. The Notes section of the Reading highlight quite a few unusual particulars about how closely all the hexagrams are to each other both visually and in terms of the binary values. Given how tightly linked they all are, I take that as a sign that, yes indeed, we will soon be in a Brave New (metamorphized #49) World. The Nuclear #44 sounds a cautionary note at the heart of the entire dynamic. It denotes leadership from below because the only yin line is the ruler of the Hexagram and because it is at the bottom. Rulership is better at the ideal #5 level.
In traditional societies, merchants and technicians didn’t rule society although they might enjoy great prestige and wealth. Values are more important than profits or material accomplishment. But we do not live in such times. In any case, my takeaway from the Reading is that a one-digital-world dynamic is basically a done deal.
Not in the Reading but an afterthought: based on the movement of the single yin line in Primary’s #13 to Future Influence’s #43, namely from Line 2 to line 6, possibly it will take place in about four years, possibly shortly after New Year’s since #43 represents the second month of the New Year. So perhaps February 2027. If this blog is still around then, we shall review this Reading then!
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