27–Mountain over Thunder: Jaws / Nourishing

The Decision in various translations

Wing: “Correct persistence brings good fortune. Pay attention to what is being nourished, and be certain that what is asked for is above reproach.”

Huang:
Nourishing.
Being steadfast and upright:
good fortune
Watch your nourishment:
Pay attention to what is in your mouth

Hinton: “Beneath the mountains, thunder: that is the Jaws of It All. Using it, the noble-minded instill their words and voices with caution, their food and drink with simplicity.”

The Image in various translations

Pearson: “Below the mountain thunder: the image of the jaws. You should use care in your speech and restraint in your eating and drinking.”

Hinton: “In the jaws of it all, good fortune is inexhaustible indeed. Looking into the jaws of it all with that heron’s-eye gaze, we each hunt out food to fill our bellies.”

Confucian Commentary

Translated by Hinton: “Like heaven and earth fostering the ten thousand things, a great sage fosters wise elders and thereby brings wisdom to the ten thousand people, How vast, how utterly vast it is: the jaws of it all following their proper season.” This echoes the first hexagram for “Heaven”, “How vast and wondrous the heaven of origins!”

The Yao Lines

The Yao Lines describe how misfortune follows if we only nourish the self; we need to nourish others. King Wen, when he had overthrown the Shang emperor, not only nourished his own Zhao people, but also the defeated Shang peoples, during the famine.

Huang emphasizes nourishing includes nurturing the spiritual and the need to nourish all society, not just the family.

I particularly enjoy Hinton’s translation of these Yao Lines:

1. If you abandon divine oracle bones for that heron’s eye gaze at our lives in the dangling jaws of it all, calamity with prevail.

4. Throw over the jaws of it all, and good fortune will prevail. Stare into it, with the wild-eyed gaze of a tiger full of slashing hunger and setting out on the hunt, and you never go astray.

6. From the jaws of it all comes affliction and good fortune. Crossing a great river brings forth wide bounty.

Personal Reflections

When I threw this hexagram, my husband had developed a serious infection of the jaw, so I was in no mood to see the connection to “nourishing.” But I was captivated by Pearson’s translation “the jaws of it all” and Hinton’s phrase, “How vast, how utterly vast it is: the jaws of it all following their proper season!”

The translations about the “jaws of it all” felt to me like they should have a soundtrack of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or John Adams’ “Grand Pianola Music”

How useful to think of ourselves within the entire living ecology! Hinton translates, “If you abandon divine oracle bones for that heron’s eye gaze at our lives in the dangling jaws of it all, calamity will prevail.” In my mind, the “divine oracle bones” are not literal divination, but a broad and spiritual perspective on things. If we abandon a broad perspective of where we fit in life, think only on our personal situation dangling in the jaws of it all, calamity does indeed prevail.

I love Huang’s straight-forward translation, “Pay attention to what is in your mouth.” This, too, I take not simply as advice to watch my diet but to pay attention to where I am in the grand food chain, consuming resources and being consumed by my world. And, of course, the advice is to watch both food and words in my mouth.

At the time I too had a dental appointment so used my x-rays to be the jaws of it all.

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