I haven't received notices on the last few posts so I'm a little behind. I've missed you guys in the last month, good to see the thread still going! Two unrelated things:
1) Lex Hixon in Coming Home, gives his own experience using the I Ching in a chapter called "Conversations with an Ancient Chinese Sage." Good stuff. I still can't get into it.
2) Ursula Le Guin's "anarchist" interpretation of the Tao te Ching is a mixture of disappointments and happy surprises, here is one:
Sacred Power (Chapter 32)
the way goes on forever nameless.
Uncut wood, nothing important.
yet nobody under heaven
dares try to carve it.
If rulers and leaders could use it
the ten thousand things
would gather in homage.
heaven and earth would drop sweet dew
and people, without being ordered,
would be fair to one another.
To order, to govern,
is to begin naming;
when names proliferate
its time to stop.
If you know when to stop
you're in no danger.
The Way in the world
is as a stream to a valley,
a river to the sea.
Incidentally, the more I get into Stephen Mitchell's interpretation, the more I enjoy it. True, he does not know Chinese, but I think he has the spirit of the Tao in him.
_________________
Nun: I believe I am God.
Meister Eckhart: Praise be to God!