Giang sơn nào anh hùng nấy (To each hero, his own realm) ~ Annon

I was Pissed!!!

I spent YEARS looking at the placement of the I Ching.  It was maddening in its complexity.  I tried this way.  I tried that way.  I stood on my head.  I looked at it upside down.  I spent countless hours digging up old information, scouring the world for new information, translating different languages, talking to every random person I could find who claimed to know the I Ching through meditation, through medication, through channeling, through random reincarnations, through their brother’s possessed transistor radio.

You name it, I tried it—only to find the same old words staring at me in the face.  I was obsessed, but stuck, staring at tiny random whorls and pockmarks on a wall that was as ancient as dirt and wondering if they were made by design or by chance dust devils.   The 64 hexagrams seemed to be so randomly placed that I just couldn’t figure out the pattern for it.  What is the system?  Is it random?  Why is there no reason and rhyme for its accepted ancient pattern?

Finally, in a burst of frustration, I shattered the I Ching into bits and pieces.  I hacked it with my sword of mental energies.  I tore it up into shreds of its former glory.  I blew it up into little confetti pieces.  And breathing hard, I saw the pieces dance and flutter on a gentle breeze in the afternoon sun.  And as the pieces floated down onto the ground in shiny drops of self-contained totality.  I realized that I hadn’t destroyed it at all.  I merely took a single I Ching and created a hundred other completely intact I Chings!

That was when I knew I was looking at a hologram.