Work the 'small plot of land' that is you (Hexagram / Principle 9)


Like one who farms for her own sustenance and survival, cultivate the 'land' of your life, one tender shoot at a time. From seed to harvest, from harvest to seed ... Cultivate your life with gentle, thorough attention.

Your life is the land, the livestock, the grain. How will you tend it?

Hexagram 9, often known as SMALL RESTRAINT and THE TAMING POWER OF THE SMALL, has had me stymied for thirty years -- It's the very last hexagram I've come to understand. (Do you have a hexagram or two that you just don't get, one whose meaning just eludes you -- one that gets under your skin and bugs you?)

If you think you can't be small and powerful, you've never been in bed with a mosquito.

There's the essence of Hexagram 9.

Small clouds are gathering rain; not yet ... not yet ... and yet, the rain will come.

That's the nature of Tao -- all things emerge, relate, and dissipate in their time; it is the nature of Nature. Rain will come, somewhere, sometime.

Rein in your horse. Tend to your land. Prepare for rain and remain calmly prepared, even as today the skies are fair.

Comments

tao1776 said…
enjoying my visit(s)!!

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