Customer Reviews

I Ching in Ten Minutes

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is an excellent source if you want to grasp the concept of the I Ching. I teach a high school world cultures course and this book was perfect for giving the students an example of Chinese culture. This book is not for people who want a detailed study but for those who are curious about I Ching and wish to learn about it.

The title made me doubt at first, but this book is a great way to start on the I Ching. It does NOT give any history behind the I Ching or the hexagrams, so if you want to know about such things, don't get it. However, if you know about it or already have a good idea and just want to use it without getting into the whole Taoism behind the actual belief, this is the perfect book to buy. It is simple and easy to follow. I recomend it to any one starting out but is turned off by lenghty explanations designed for far more enlightened beings or at least more educated ones.

This book is of no use at all if you want to get acquainted with the Chinese Book of Changes. Although Kaser uses the trigrams of the I Ching, he gives fancy names to the hexagrams which are alien to the I Ching; he gives a very narrow interpretation of the original Chinese text without naming the original at all. It's like writing a book with guys named Abraham and Jesus, and call it the Bible.

There are far better books to start with.

The book is very interesting and useful.
It presents a thorough description and an explanation of the I-Ching.
Its originality is that it gives a possible answer to a yes/no question that the I-ching formally does not answer.
The book was in very good condition and it was promptly sent.

What I like about this book is the author's willingness to creatively apply the age-old wisdom of the I Ching to modern times. It lends a new twist, and an almost jolly interpretation to the hexagrams that is lacking in many other renditions. I've been using the I Ching for decades, and the standard reference - for me - has 'always' been the Wilhelm-Baynes translation (which I highly recommend, especially if you are unfamiliar with the I Ching). I don't think this book was ever intended to be a replacement for that venerable work, or even a departure from it. It is a light, humorous, entertaining and downright fun-to-read treatment of an old, deeply inspired wisdom. Just keep a copy of the Wilhelm-Baynes translation next to it; it will help you appreciate the gleeful, creative spirit of this book. Worth the price just for the entertainment alone.

You can tell even from the title of the work, that the nature of the author's approach to the subject is designed to sell books and not teach the reader anything useful about the I-Ching. A ten minute divination is of no use to anyone but a two bit fortune teller on a street corner trying to make a buck.