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Thomas Brooks

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The Nonviolent Atonement by J. Denny Weaver

Dance Hall of the Dead by Tony Hillerman

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Thomas Brooks is Currently Reading

Thomas Brooks is currently reading

The Scarlet Letter

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

bookshelves: currently-reading

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— Oct 18, 2026 11:06PM

Oct 12, 2026 02:46PM

Thomas Brooks is currently reading

The Complete I Ching - 10th Anniversary Edition: The Definitive Translation by Taoist Master Alfred Huang 2nd , Revised edition by Huang, Taoist Master Alfred (2010) Hardcover

by Unknown Author

bookshelves: currently-reading, asian-history, commentary, mysticism, spirituality

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Thomas Brooks said: " This has become quite a journey. I have approached the book by doing some casting for the daily reading (gua). Like a lectionary the reading is determined as something separate from simply reading page one and consecutively each succeeding page until This has become quite a journey. I have approached the book by doing some casting for the daily reading (gua). Like a lectionary the reading is determined as something separate from simply reading page one and consecutively each succeeding page until you finish the book. I'm not using Yarrow sticks; that could be quite tedious. Instead, starting with the bottom I cast a dice; if the number is odd, I make a straight line - if it is even I make a broken line - -, and work my way up from the bottom until I have six entries giving me the hexagram which determines the gua I will read for the day. I then cast a single die to determine the moving line - the reading within the reading that is supposed to be specific for the day. If, I had already read the gua cast, I go the beginning and read the first gua I haven't read yet - In this way, I work through all 64 gua.

One wonderful aspect of Huang's translation for non-native speakers is that he gives a description of the meaning behind each (Classical Chinese) character associated with the 64 gua. For instance in Gua #15 Qian * humbleness (each Gua like a chapter begins with a number the name of the Gua in in Chinese and it's English translation, and then an illustration of the Chinese character for the gua. For those unfamiliar with Chinese the Chinese do not work with an alphabet as in other languages, but rather an enormous amount of characters or ideographs - each one a single word or idea in the Chinese language. Here is a list of various ways of counting the number of characters contained in the Chinese language.

Characters in the historic Kangxi Dictionary (1716) 47,035

故宫博物院
Characters in some much larger modern historical dictionaries 50,000–100,000+

China's official standard character list 8,105

中华人民共和国教育部政府门户网站
Characters sufficient for much ordinary reading 2,000–3,500

As an example - A little later in the commentary we find this description of the character for #15: "The ideograph of this gua consists of two parts. The picture of a man's face with an open mouth forms the left portion of the ideograph, it represents an act of speaking. In the ideograph os the sixth gua, Contention, this image represents conflict. Here it suggests humility. On the right side of the ideograph there are two bundles of wheat standing side by side and a hand with three open fingers in the middle of the two bundles. this says in the Commentary on the Symbol, "the superior person decreases what is excessive and increases what is scarce. He weighs things and makes them balance. This is the true meaning of Humbleness. When the two parts of the ideograph are combined they indicate that the act of making them balance should be expressed and manifested in one's daily life.

Many see the IChing as a divination tool by which one is casting a fortune. But there is another way of approaching this Taoist (The Way) text. It is simply a book of wisdom not unlike Proverbs, or the Psalms, or any of the other Hokmah books of the Bible. It gives someone a place to begin in reflecting on their existence. Which can be quite useful. When reading the I Ching (apparently pronounced eee Ching, as a Chinese acquaintance informed me when I tried to speak of this important Asiah work) scripture often comes to mind - I have written those observations in the margins of the book and think a lectionary of our Western Canon in an IChing format might be quite useful. A place to go when wondering what scripture should I read today. I'm not the first Christian to approach the I Ching. Obviously! Thomas Merton did so, as well as China's modern hero (Both the PRC as well as Taiwan) Sun Yat Sen; yes Sun Yat Sen consulted the I Ching, and yes, Sun Yat Sen was a Christian.

Taoist Master Alfred Huang has done an excellent job of translating; more than that he suffered during the Cultural Revolution; for his work with this text he was labeled an anti-revolutionary. Almost like talmudic study Huang references the two great English translations before him - noting the differences and his choice in translating each gua. I briefly looked through two other I Ching English translations in a bookstore. All of them have a chart in the back for determining which gua should be read. His is the only one which translates each trigram into English (i.e. earth, heaven, fire, water.thunder, mountain, wind, lake). The trigrams for earth, heaven, Fire and Water can be found on the South Korean Flag. In the eighteen eighties when the Korean diplomatic mission to Japan needed a flag for proceeding with the diplomatic effort they came up with this flag. At the time before Japan turned on Korea - it was received in Tokyo with much approval and celebration. The I Ching is clearly something that transcends the Asian Pacific States. And worthy of the investigation by any interested in East Asian affairs. I should finish a first reading of this work by November 12.

There is commentary by Confucius (a problematic translation of the sages name given to us by the Jesuits - doesn't it sound like something that would have come out of the Latin Vulgate, and not something delivered to us from the Chinese culture itself). Though and I seem to remember this translation acknowledging this historical fact, it is highly doubtful that Confucius actually wrote this particular commentary. Even his famous Analects have been written down from the memory of his disciples. So like the detuero Pauline letters we have in the I Ching someone trying to speak in Confucius's voice. ...more "

Oct 18, 2026 11:28PM · see review

Thomas Brooks is currently reading

Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)

by Martha Wells (Goodreads Author)

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Oct 08, 2026 03:26AM

See all 66 books that Thomas Brooks is reading…

Thomas Brooks’s Quotes

“Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there’s got to be a way through it.”
― Michael J. Fox

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