Famous Mountain
According to Pantheon, Sima Qian is the most famous Chinese historian with an HPI (Historical Popularity Index) of 77.97. His biography has been translated into 111 different languages. Sima Qian is considered the father of Chinese historiography for his Records of the Grand Historian, a general history of China covering more than two thousand years beginning from the rise of the legendary Yellow Emperor and the Three Sovereigns to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han in the author’s own time.
Sima Qian offended Emperor Wu of Han by defending the loyalty of his colleague. As a result, he was castrated. Upon his release from prison, Sima Qian chose to live on as a palace eunuch to complete his book with no intention of publishing it. In a letter to his friend, he wrote, “I shall deposit it in a famous mountain and let the folks who will appreciate the book to find it.”. Let me retell his story using the Tai Ji group of hexagrams. He reinvented himself as a palace eunuch to embark on a new journey. The primary hexagram is [24] Return. The complement [44] Encounter is the opportunity of a lifetime to hit a home run. He did. Turn [44] upside down to [43] Resolution. In [43], five yang lines try to push out the top yin. The keyword is a breakthrough. The grand historian’s book was a breakthrough. Turn [24] upside down to [23] Splitting Apart. The ruling line of [23] is the top yang line, which is about to be replaced by yin. The ruling line of [23] says, “The largest fruit remains uneaten. The superior person receives a carriage. The house of the inferior person is split apart.” The largest fruit remains uneaten. When it falls to the ground, it spreads the seeds of new growth. In this context, the largest fruit is the Records of the Grand Historian. The book was not meant to be a best seller. It was meant for posterity. The junzi sees the cup as half full, hence receiving a carriage. The little person sees the cup as half empty as he only sees things falling apart.
There were two versions of the I Ching before Zhouyi. Both were lost. One of the two is believed to be in circulation in the Shang dynasty. We could call the Shang version Shangyi, more widely known as the Return-to-Storage Yi. In Shangyi the leading trigram is Kun, and the last trigram is Qian. The famous mountain is more aligned with Shangyi than with Zhouyi.
.net
The famous mountain today is the Internet. My two projects are stored in the net. Even though I had toyed with the idea of publishing my work, I decided to emulate the grand historian. A couple of years before my retirement from full-time work, I asked the oracle whether I was ready for retirement. The oracle told me [24] Return with the second line changing. Balkin says, “Turning back to the right path can be difficult. It is often easier to make the right choices when you are in good company, or when you have good role models to look up to. Listen to people whom you trust and respect and follow their example. Ask yourself what people whom you admire would do. This will improve your judgment and help bring you success.” Following this advice, I found two role models, Confucius and Newton. Now Sima Qian.