Richard T. Kaser - I Ching in Ten Minutes

Everything changes,
nothing remains without change.

The Teaching of Buddha

I Ching is the ancient Chinese oracle of chance and change. For thousands of years people in the Far East have tossed coins or counted sticks to find the answers to their everyday problems and to gain insight into the meaning of their lives. For Westerners, however, the I Ching method can seem difficult and the guidance of the traditional texts, crypticbut no more.

I Ching in Ten Minutes is a book for beginnersand for those who tried I Ching once, but gave upor for anyone who wants a new perspective on the ancient oracle. Ten minutes from now, you yourself will be using the I Ching to ask questions about work, love, money, strategywhatever you care about, whatever you want to know aboutand youll be getting answers in plain English.

All you need to get started are three coins. Reach into your pocket, fanny pack, or purse right now and dig them out. Ill wait

In nine minutes you will be tossing your coins. You will be looking to see which way they have landed. Andjudging by the number of heads and tails that have turned upyoull be getting a clue to your first answer.

The clue is nothing more, and nothing less, than a linethe kind of line you jot down with your pencil to emphasize a worda solid line like this: , or a broken line like this: .

These lines are like building blocksthey stack up on top of one another. If you toss your coins twice, youll have two linesand again, three linesand again and again and again, and youll have six lines. Your resulting I Ching diagrams will look like this:

Theres only one last thing you need to know. Some I Ching lines are changing. Some solid lines are changing into broken lines: . Some broken lines are changing into solid lines: . And this, my friend, is what makes I Ching so unique and dynamic.

Just like you and me and everything else in the Universe, the I Ching is constantly copingconstantly adjustingconstantly evolvingconstantly adaptingconstantly changing. This perhaps is the very reason the method itself has endured, surviving for over five thousand years.

I Ching in Ten Minutes puts the ancient oracle to the task of doing what it does best: helping you understand and meet the challenge of changehelping you think about the changes occurring around you, within you, to you, and through youhelping you cope with the fickle finger of fateand most important, helping you realize and achieve the destiny that only you can create for yourself.

In eight minutes, Ill set you loose with it. But first let me give you a couple of pointers on how to use this book.

One way to proceed is to start at the beginning with Reading #1 and just play along with I Ching in Ten Minutes. If you choose this routeand the choice, my friend, is yoursyou will receive a guided tour of all the I Ching diagrams. Andheres the best partfrom the very start you will get to ask specific questions (and get specific answers!) about your love life, home life, work life, or even past liveswhatever you want to know about. Youll start out with simple one-line diagrams and work your way up to classic six-line I Ching hexagrams.

Taken together, the 16 Readings will provide you with a complete and thorough fortune and more than a few insights about how you fit into the world and your environment. These Readings can be done time and again, as circumstances change, with many and various results. And youll be surprised how quickly you can go from start to finish! Whenever you have a big issue to decide, you can run it through the book to see how it computes. But, if you prefer, you can also freestyle your way through I Ching in Ten Minutes.

Each Reading is self-contained. Once you get the feel for tossing coins, you are welcome to jump from place to place in the book, as the spirit or the need moves you. Just consult the Contents or the Index for a list of all the questions that are specifically dealt with in the book. These tools will help you zero in on the particular Reading you want to do today.

Yet another way to proceed is to start in the middle. Whenever you decide that youre ready to fly solo, just turn to Reading #16, where you will find complete instructions for conducting Readings on your own. Then, using the Master Answer section on page 176, you can forge your own path with the I Ching.

For those who are familiar with the I Ching, you are welcome to use the method you already know. Once you have cast your diagrams, just look up your answers in the back of the book in the same way you would use a normal I Ching book. (Note, however, that Ive rearranged the hexagrams for easier look-up.)

Whichever way you choose to go, within six minutes youll be asking questions. To save five minutes, skip the rest of this Preface, and go for it! But if you want to know where I Ching in Ten Minutes is coming from and how it is able to do what it does, read on

The I Ching method used here has come to us across vast language barriers, cultural boundaries, sheer distance, and thousands of years. Legend says that many moons ago, the basic diagrams were revealed to a wise king through the markings on the back of a turtle, which crawled from a sacred river one daya gift from the gods.

Scholars say the I Ching system was developed over thousands of years by successive generations of thinkers, until it has evolved into the system we know todaya system so refined, so complete, and so universal that it has been used by ancient soothsayers and modern scientists alikeplus a whole lot of philosophers in between, including Confucius himself.

Most books on the subject, in fact, take their inspiration from the famous Confucian classic, The Book of Changes, written about 2,500 years ago. I Ching in Ten Minutes comes at it from a slightly different angle, and if youve got four minutes, Ill tell you why and how

First for the why: The first time I tossed my coins, I was simply amazed! My high school buddy decided to read my coins one night. Though I have forgotten exactly what he said 20 years ago, I cant forget the feeling that I had, or how much I understood and believed my answers that night. The point is, it really, really workedat least for usat least that one time. And thus began my quest for the I Ching Book that would teach me how to do this on my own.

What I found along the way was a great body of scholarly workvarious translations, numerous interpretations, broad theories, lots of footnotes, many schools of thought, and even a few software packages. But even after digging into it all-and it was indeed fascinating!I still had trouble relating to the I Ching diagrams and understanding the answers I was receiving. I was still hunting for that easy I Ching Book with the everyday answers.

I never did find the book. But I did eventually learn how to work with the I Ching. How? I guess you could say, I just caught on to the I Ching when I found myself back at the basics. The key came from a book on Chinese history, where I read thataccording to the inscriptions on ancient tortoiseshellsthe most frequently asked question of the soothsayer had been: Will it rain tomorrow?