Hexagram 50 The Ting

Cooking one’s life as the offering.

The Creative, meaningful.

Spiritual influence benefiting all.

 Structure: 

·          Wood below 6, fire above 7; nourishing and penetration below, clarity and spirit above. 

·          Flame kindled by wood and wind.  Wood nourishes the flame, the spirit. 

·          With clarity, the ability to be open and empty.  With nourishing, fulfillment. 

Image:  The fire burns the sacrifice of our highest worldly values and transforms them into the spiritual path.  Fire, the image of the spirit and clarity, burns away worldly concerns and self-cherishing.  The ting serves as the means to food offerings to the ancestors. 

Burning fuel generates heat to cook food.  The ancients used the ting, an ancient Chinese ceremonial bronze vessel, to serve food and make offering to ancestors. While the Well (Hexagram 48) represents the nourishing of all people, this hexagram describes fostering and nourishing those who benefit others. 

Cooking changes things into something new.  When wood penetrates fire, it cooks foods.  Sages cook their lives within the fire of the spirit to offer their lives to the sacred by making visible the sacred within the world. The sage obediently follows the spirit within and clearly manifests the spirit outwardly.

The Way of humanity[1] fulfills its function by transforming worldly people into sages, who then live their lives in ways that manifest the spirit within the world.   Sages sacrifice the highest earthly values to the sacred.  Presence serves as the holding environment in which worldly[2] values are transformed into a sacred offering.  Through its interconnected practices, the Way of humanity cooks our lives, freeing us from our willingness to harm others for self-benefit and attachment to worldly concerns.[3] 

Like a sacred vessel, presence holds us on the path.  The sage uses obedience to the spirit and the clarity of awareness to transform its confusion into wisdom. Our devotion to the spirit serves to nourish the flame of the spirit.  Combined, virtuous[4] actions and devotion to the spirit mutually reinforce each other and connect the visible to the invisible.  Our lives become spiritual nourishment for others and an offering to the sacred mystery. 

The fire above depends upon a constant supply of wood below.  Likewise, our awareness of the spirit and transformation of what harms perpetually renews and illumines our lives.  Sages are constantly renewed by remaining open to the spirit, which pervades and nourishes all being.    

Sages hold spiritual nourishment, which they offer to those open to spiritual wisdom, the wise and virtuous.  With penetrating, supportive understanding and using their own lives as an example, sages teach and create opportunities for the spiritual practice of others within the world. 

The sage, approachable and modest in nature, finds capable partners who complement and aid it in its work.  Transformative effects result from the joint efforts of leaders and sages to bring forth the new, the most beneficial way of social reorganization.  The actions of fire and wood are mutually reinforcing:  leadership becomes sharp and knowing, and the sage acts through gentleness and adaptability.

The truly sacred does not manifest itself apart from life.  Sages manifest the spirit through how they live. To follow the holy is true veneration of the spirit.   The will of the spirit as revealed through accomplished sages should be accepted in humility.  This brings awakening and true understanding, and leads to great benefit for all and the Earth.

Life must be kept alight.  The sage transforms its life so that the spirit constantly illumines it. Sages stabilize their proper position between the spirit and the ten thousand things, the whole and the part.  From that place, the wise enter the mystery of the cosmos gradually and practice their understanding within the world.  All that is visible must grow itself and extend into the realm of the invisible to receive true purpose and meaning and take root in the sacred. 

 

Line 1:  Before using the ting, the cook turns it over to empty the vessel of unwanted remains.  At the beginning of the spiritual path, the wise reduce their faults and renounces worldly concerns, holding to the values of the spiritual path.  Thus, they emerge from what has obstructed them from the spirit and obtain the wholeness they had sought. 

Line 2:  To fulfill their lives, sages achieve something significant. When the selfless line limits itself to actual achievements that benefit all, it may experience envy and the disfavor of others, but that does not affect the line. 

The line goes its own way, freeing itself of entanglements and holding firmly to the spirit.  It fears nothing and fulfills the purpose of life by creating what nourishes the worthy and benefits all. 

Line 3:  The wise line finds itself in a place where nobody notices its great virtues, which blocks the line’s effectiveness, and all its good qualities go to waste.  The line regrets its isolation caused by its excessive adamancy and turns inward to further increase its inner clarity, flexibility, and devotion to the spirit.  In time, the line develops its capacities sufficiently to resolve its difficulties.

The contents of the ting are not consumed.  The line changes, and the barriers dissolve.  The line sees to it that it possesses something truly spiritual.  When the time comes, the line resolves its isolation from others and accomplishes its work. 

 Line 4:  The line represents those responsible for important affairs, which require the efforts of wise and knowledgeable people.  However, the line partners with the weak first line, representing those who do not have the capacity to do important work.  Such people spoil the efforts of this line and cause harm.  With this kind of help, the effort fails, like the ting breaking a leg and spilling its offering.  The line’s blame is partnering with the unwise.

The ting gets overturned, spoiling the prepared offering.  The line has the blame for failing to accomplish its task and ruining the good work prepared.  This comes about because it does not commit itself to the path due to a disastrous split between character and position, knowledge and aspiration, strength and responsibility. 

Confucius: “Weak character coupled with honored place, meager knowledge with large plans, limited powers with heavy responsibilities will seldom escape disaster.”

Line 5:  The selfless line remains open to spiritual wisdom.  Sages have spiritual substance within, which they use to fulfill their function to benefit all.   

Line 6:  The line represents the ting’s carrying handle, which allows its portability and usefulness, the fullness of achievement. The line has no status but has great value.

The cauldron fulfills its function through serving its contents.  In imparting wisdom, the sage remains firm and positive, balancing activity with stillness.  The sage remains firm within and acts gently, mild and pure like jade.

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[1] The Way of humanity embodies the laws of Tao that govern the human being in relationship to the spirit, with each other and with the Earth. It is the path of love that creatively responds to the experiences of life in ways that benefit all.  Sages shape their experience through the human virtues of caring for all, moral discipline, justice, and wisdom to bring to life the spirit within the world, materializing the invisible.  Sages find their purpose and meaning by obeying the spiritual command to reduce inner faults and manifest the sacred within the world.  Suffering ends when we have the lived experience that the self and other are the same and experience expresses the sacred mystery.

[2] World does not refer to nature but to how people live within nature.  The world –  civilization, culture, economics, history, society, beliefs, worldly influences – is embedded as a subsystem within the natural system.

[3] Worldly concerns are the amoral ways in which the selfish willingly harm others for self-benefit and then ignore the suffering they cause.  Selfish individuals seek power and domination over others and willingly use violence to do so.  The selfish accumulate wealth through the unlimited exploitation and ultimate destruction of people, other life forms, and the Earth.  The selfish seek the attention of others.  The selfish consume as much as they can and seek constant distractions from facing the harms they caused others, all life, and the Earth.   

[4] Virtues shape our behavior and align us with the spirit.  The Tao brings forth the good and great, which we experience as love. The Tao causes all life to develop and flow within natural limits, regulating and organizing love, which we call a moral discipline that benefits all.  The Tao transforms life so that each attains its true nature, a power that we call justice that ensures that all life has the means to achieve its potential according to its being.  The Tao harmonizes all life within interbeing, which we call wisdom, and separates what endures from what perishes.  The completed sage uses these virtues to shape the world.