The I Ching, Change, Awareness

The I Ching (Yijing) is a very old and very interesting book. In an earlier entry I talked about Yin and Yang. And that is precisely what the I Ching is about. Yin and Yang are two variables. The I Ching is a book of relationships between those variables. The name I Ching means Book of Changes. According to legend a prehistoric emperor name Fu Xi created Eight Diagrams or trigrams, three lined figures that depicted Yin as a broken line and Yang as an unbroken line. (Yes these are the Eight Diagrams referred to in Baguazhang the martial art. In Chinese the words for Eight Diagrams is Ba Gua.

Change is an important theme in all the internal martial arts. We accept and realize that we cannot be strong all the time. We have periods of strength an periods of weakness, we have times of good fortune and times of ill fortune. Cleaving to one side or the other is not an option. Not because we aren't good enough or strong enough but because the universe isn't built around standing still. Everything is in motion. Tides ebb and tides flow. No bad situation is hopeless and no good situation will last forever. The real art lies in recognizing this fact and using it to our advantage. When things are good, enjoy them... but put aside something for when times are bad.

As I tell my students when they train the applications "Never stand there and congratulate yourself with an 'Ooh I got them!' Because your attacker will take advantage of it. Always move forward, keep attacking until the threat is neutralized." This applies not only to martial arts but to life itself. Am I saying I have it down? Not at all. I get depressed, I get sad... I spend too much money sometimes. But the key is that the more I practice changing myself with the changes that occur, the less those things happen. And that's the key here really.

Awareness makes us better able to cope with change. Remember you cannot control the situation most of the time but you can control your reaction to it.