There's No Way Out But Through
When events proceed to their extremes they give birth to their opposites.
I own several copies of the I Ching. Mostly digital. But I do own one physical copy. Alfred Huang’s 2010 translation, The Complete I Ching. I play with it as a divination tool, but I read it mostly for its philosophy. I’m not an expert by any means, but I’ve read several editions now, and they all agree that the I Ching is foundational to most Chinese philosophy. That includes Chan Buddhism (which became Zen when it reached Japan), Confucianism, and Taoism.
Huang is, according to his bio, a “professor of Taoist philosophy and a third-generation master of Wu-style Tai Chi Chuan, Chi Kung, and Oriental Meditation.” He was born in 1921. If he’s still alive, and I believe he is, that makes him about 104 years old. The guy has seen a lot of shit. A lot of really bad shit. In fact, he did more than see it—he lived it…
“The Communists came and did not like me because I believe in God and democracy, and I like America,” Master Huang recalled. “In 1957, I was sentenced to nine years of house arrest and hard labor and in 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, I was put in prison and sentenced to death because I had openly denounced Mao’s philosophy and challenged his authority.”
He spent 13 years of confinement on death row in a dark, four-and-a-half by nine-foot cell with three other people.
“Executions happened outside every day,” Master Huang said, “but I survived and I still had strong beliefs.”
Here’s an excerpt from the preface to The Complete I Ching that I keep coming back to a lot lately. For reasons…
After the Communists took over China in 1949, the I Ching was denounced as a book of feudalism and superstition. It was banished from the market, and reading it was not allowed. In the early 1960s, before the so-called Cultural Revolution, Dr. Ting Jihua, a most eminent Chinese physician in Shanghai; professor Liu Yenwen, a well-known professor of Chinese classical literature; and I attended the revered Master Yin’s private gatherings, where he taught us the I Ching. It was absolutely an underground activity. At that time, all of us had been labeled as antirevolutionary right-wing advocates. If our meetings had been discovered by any Communist Party member or the police, we would no doubt have been imprisoned. Master Yin was more than eighty years old. He sensed that a calamity would soon befall China and he wished to pass his teachings on before he died. He offered on his own initiative to teach us the esoteric knowledge of the I Ching, which he had inherited from his own revered master. As we studied, the situation in China grew worse, and our hearts grew heavier and heavier. We realized that many families would be broken up and countless people would be persecuted.
Although we knew that after the long night there would come the dawn, the dawn did not come soon enough. In two years Master Yin and Dr. Ting passed away one after the other. Professor Liu lost his desire to live. He attempted suicide several times. Although I encouraged him to persevere, deep in my heart I knew that those who died were the blessed ones. They had ended their sufferings and were able to enjoy everlasting peace. Those who were still living had to face unimaginable suffering and strive for survival.
According to the I Ching, every country has its destiny and every person has his or her fate, but everyone still has freedom to make his own choices. Of the four scholars, I was the youngest. The others were of my father’s generation. Being with them I realized that I had much to learn and experience. From the bottom of my heart I chose to live, to live as long as I could and see the destiny of China, no matter what hardships I might endure. In July 1957 I was forced to do manual labor every day, and in September 1966 I was put into jail. During nine years in jail, I was interrogated almost every day about my “counterrevolutionary” activities. Because I graduated from a missionary school and had been the principal of a Christian high school, my captors pressed me to confess that I was an American spy. On every occasion I denied the charges against me. At last they became desperate, and sentenced me to death. However, because I was a popular figure with the Chinese people, they did not dare to follow through with the death sentence immediately, although they repeatedly told me that I would be put to death.
During twenty-two years of confinement, even though I could not remember the sixty-four gua (hexagrams), I fully comprehended the Tao of I, the essence of the I Ching, which holds that when events proceed to their extremes, they give birth to their opposites. Every day I read the official six-page newspaper as carefully as I could, not missing a single word. As I saw the situation of my country deteriorating, my heart became lighter. I knew after the long darkness there would be a dawn. When the darkness grew darker and darker, the dawn drew closer and closer.
In September of 1979—after two heart attacks and about five billion cigarettes—Mao Zedong, First Chairman of the People's Republic of China, finally pissed off into oblivion, leaving the world a better place for his absence. Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court of China found Huang innocent of his make-believe crimes. He was released from prison weighing just 80 pounds. Shortly thereafter, the svelte 58 year old relocated the U.S. where horrors such as he had endured could never ever ever happen.
I don’t think I’m a particularly strong person. Idealistic, sure. Loudmouthed, definitely. But strong? Well, that remains to be seen. And, honestly, I hope I never have to find out. Definitely not the way that Alfred Huang did. After 22 years of imprisonment and hard labor, I’m pretty sure I’d be the weight of dust.
But, if I do have to find out—as it’s becoming clear many U.S. citizens and residents will—I’m grateful to have Huang’s mindset as a blanket. All of this will pass. It will. And something else will come next. Death and rebirth is a universal constant. Nothing new and beautiful can exist but for the destruction of what once was. But that doesn’t tell us anything about how hard it will be to live through (or not live through) the transition.
If nothing else, though, I can take solace in knowing that if events do in fact have to proceed to their extremes before they can give birth to their opposites, then we’re likely on the path to something wonderful. Shit’s getting extremier and extremier by the minute. So, hopefully my son, and all of our children, will get to be a benefactors of this current piece-of-shit situation.
