The I Ching or Book of Changes (60 page)
Later commentaries add the following: it is straight, it is the dragon, the upper garment, the word.
The Receptive is the earth, the mother. It is cloth, a kettle, frugality, it is level, it is a cow with a calf,
a large wagon, form, the multitude, a shaft. Among the various kinds of soil, it is the black.
The first of these symbols are intelligible at a glance. Cloth is something spread out; the earth is covered with life as with a garment. In the kettle, things are cooked until they are done; similarly, the earth is the great melting pot of life. Frugality is a fundamental characteristic of nature. “It is level” means that the earth knows no partiality. A cow with a calf is a symbol of fertility. The large wagon symbolizes the fact that the earth carries all living things. Form and ornament are the opposite of content, which finds expression in the Creative. The multitude, plurality, is the opposite of the oneness of the Creative. The shaft is the body of the tree, from which the branches spring, as all life sprouts forth from the earth. Black is intensified darkness.
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The Arousing is thunder, the dragon. It is dark yellow, it is a spreading out, a great road, the eldest son. It is decisive and vehement; it is bamboo that is green and young, it is reed and rush.
Among horses it signifies those which can neigh well, those with white hind legs, those which gallop, those with a star on the forehead.
Among useful plants it is the pod-bearing ones. Finally, it is the strong, that which grows luxuriantly.
Dark yellow is a mixture of the dark heavens and the yellow earth. A “spreading out” (perhaps to be read “blossoms”) suggests the luxuriant growth of spring, which covers the earth with a garment of plants. A great road suggests the universal way to life in the spring. Bamboo, reed, and rush are especially fast-growing plants. The neighing of horses denotes their relationship to thunder. White hind legs gleam from afar as the horses run. The gallop is the liveliest gait. The seedlings of pod-bearing plants retain the pods.
The Gentle is wood, wind, the eldest daughter, the guideline, work; it is the white, the long, the high; it is advance and retreat, the undecided, odor.
Among men it means the gray-haired; it means those with broad foreheads; it means those with much white in their eyes; it means those close to gain, so that in the market they get threefold value. Finally, it is the sign of vehemence.
The first of these meanings need no further explanation. The guideline belongs to this trigram in that it refers to a windlike dissemination of commands. White is the color of the yin principle. Here yin is in the lowest place at the beginning. Wood grows long; the wind goes up to great heights. Advance and retreat refer to the changeableness of the wind; indecision and the odor wafted by the wind belong in this same context. Gray-haired, scanty-haired people have a great deal of white in their hair. People with much white in their eyes are arrogant and vehement; those who are eager for gain are likewise vehement, so that finally the trigram turns into its opposite and represents vehemence, Chên.
The Abysmal is water, ditches, ambush, bending and straightening out, bow and wheel.
Among men it means the melancholy, those with sick hearts, those with earache.
It is the blood sign; it is red.
Among horses it means those with beautiful backs, those with wild courage, those which let their heads hang, those with thin hoofs, those which stumble.
Among chariots it means those with many defects.
It is penetration, the moon.
It means thieves.
Among varieties of wood it means those which are firm and have much pith.
The first of these attributes are again self-explanatory. Bending and straightening out are implied by the winding course of water; this leads to the thought of something bent, of bow and wheel. Melancholy is expressed by the fact that one strong line is hemmed in between two weak lines; thus also sickness of the heart. The trigram signifies toil and also the ear. Pains in the ear come from laborious listening.
Blood is the fluid of the body, therefore the symbolic color of K’an is red, though a somewhat brighter red than that of Ch’ien, the Creative. Because of its penetrating quality K’an, when applied to a carriage, is made to symbolize a broken-down
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vehicle that serves as a wagon. Penetration is suggested by the penetrating line in the middle wedged in between the two weak lines. As a water element, K’an means the moon, which therefore appears as masculine. Persons who secretly penetrate a place and sneak away are thieves. The pithiness of wood is also connected with the attribute of penetration.
The Clinging is fire, the sun, lightning, the middle daughter.
It means coats of mail and helmets; it means lances and weapons. Among men it means the big-bellied.
It is the sign of dryness. It means the tortoise, the crab, the snail, the mussel, the hawkbill tortoise.
Among trees it means those which dry out in the upper part of the trunk.
Where the various symbols are not self-explanatory, they are suggested by the meaning of fire, of heat and dryness, and further by the character of the trigram, which is firm without and hollow, or yielding, within. This aspect accounts for the weapons, the fat belly, the shell-bearing creatures, and the hollow trees beginning to wither at the top.
Keeping Still is the mountain; it is a bypath; it means little stones, doors and openings, fruits and seeds, eunuchs and watchmen, the fingers; it is the
dog, the rat, and the various kinds of black-billed birds.
Among trees it signifies the firm and gnarled.
A bypath is suggested by the mountain path, and so are stones. A gate is suggested by the form of the trigram. Fruits and seeds are the link between the end and the beginning of plants. Eunuchs are doorkeepers, and watchmen guard the streets; both protect and watch. The fingers serve to hold fast, the dog keeps guard, the rat gnaws, birds with black beaks grip things easily; likewise, gnarled tree trunks possess the greatest power of resistance.
The Joyous is the lake, the youngest daughter; it is a sorceress; it is mouth and tongue. It means smashing and breaking apart; it means dropping off and bursting open. Among the kinds of soil it is the hard and salty. It is the concubine. It is the sheep.
The sorceress is a woman who speaks. The trigram is open above, hence it denotes mouth and tongue. It stands in the west and is therefore connected with the idea of autumn, destruction, hence the smashing and breaking apart, the dropping off and bursting open of ripe fruits. Where lakes have dried up, the ground is hard and salty. The concubine derives from the idea of the youngest daughter. The sheep, outwardly weak and inwardly stubborn, is suggested by the form of the trigram, as already mentioned. (It should be noted that in China sheep and goats are regarded as practically the same animal and have the same name.)
Ta Chuan: The Great Treatise [Great Commentary]
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(also called Hsi Tz’u Chuan, Commentary on the Appended Judgments)
PART I
CHAPTER I. The Changes in the Universe and in the Book of Changes
1. Heaven is high, the earth is low; thus the Creative and the Receptive are determined. In correspondence with this difference between low and high, inferior and superior places are established.
Movement and rest have their definite laws; according to these, firm and yielding lines are differentiated.
Events follow definite trends, each according to its nature. Things are distinguished from one another in definite classes. In this way good fortune and misfortune come about. In the heavens phenomena take form; on earth shapes take form. In this way change and transformation become manifest.
In the Book of Changes a distinction is made between three kinds of change: nonchange, cyclic change, and sequent change.
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Nonchange is the background, as it were, against
which change is made possible. For in regard to any change there must be some fixed point to which the change can be referred; otherwise there can be no definite order and everything is dissolved in chaotic movement. This point of reference must be established, and this always requires a choice and a decision. It makes possible a system of co-ordinates into which everything else can be fitted. Consequently at the beginning of the world, as at the beginning of thought, there is the decision, the fixing of the point of reference. Theoretically any point of reference is possible, but experience teaches that at the dawn of consciousness one stands already inclosed within definite, prepotent systems of relationships. The problem then is to choose one’s point of reference so that it coincides with the point of reference for cosmic events. For only then can the world created by one’s decision escape being dashed to pieces against prepotent systems of relationships with which it would otherwise come into conflict. Obviously the premise for such a decision is the belief that in the last analysis the world is a system of homogeneous relationships —that it is a cosmos, not a chaos. This belief is the foundation of Chinese philosophy, as of all philosophy. The ultimate frame of reference for all that changes is the nonchanging.
The Book of Changes takes as the foundation for this system of relationships the distinction between heaven and earth. There is heaven, the upper world of light, which, though incorporeal, firmly regulates and determines everything that happens, and over against heaven there is the earth, the lower, dark world, corporeal, and dependent in its movements upon the phenomena of heaven. With this differentiation of above and below there is posited, in one way or another, a difference in value, so that the one principle, heaven, is the more exalted and honored, while the other, earth, is regarded as lesser and lower. These two cardinal principles of all existence are then symbolized in the two fundamental hexagrams of the Book of Changes, THE CREATIVE and THE RECEPTIVE. In the last analysis, this cannot be called a dualism. The two principles are united by a relation based on homogeneity; they do not
combat but complement each other. The difference in level creates a potential, as it were, by virtue of which movement and living expression of energy become possible.
This association of high and low with value differentiations leads to the differentiation of superior and inferior. This is expressed symbolically in the hexagrams of the Book of Changes, which are considered to have high and low, superior and inferior places. Each hexagram consists of six places, of which the odd-numbered ones are superior and the even-numbered ones inferior.
There is another difference bound up with this one. In the heavens constant movement and change prevail; on earth fixed and apparently lasting conditions are to be observed. On closer scrutiny, this is only delusion. In the philosophy of the Book of Changes nothing is regarded as being absolutely at rest; rest is merely an intermediate state of movement, or latent movement. However, there are points at which the movement becomes visible. This is symbolized by the fact that the hexagrams are built up of both firm and yielding lines. The firm, the strong, is designated as the principle of movement, the yielding as the principle of rest. The firm is represented by an undivided line, corresponding with the light principle, the yielding by a divided line that corresponds with the dark principle.
The fact that the character of the line (firm, yielding) combines with the character of the place (superior, inferior) results in a great multiplicity of possible situations. This serves to symbolize a third nexus of events in the world. There are conditions of equilibrium, in which a certain harmony prevails, and conditions of disturbed equilibrium, in which confusion prevails. The reason is that there is a system of order pervading the entire world. When, in accordance with this order, each thing is in its appropriate place, harmony is established. Such a tendency toward order can be observed in nature. The places attract related elements, as it were, so that harmony may come about. However, a parallel tendency is also at work. Not only are things determined by their tendency toward order: they move also by virtue of forces imparted to them, so to speak, mechanically from the outside. Hence it is not possible for equilibrium to be attained under all circumstances, for
deviations may occur, bringing with them confusion and disorder. In the sphere of human affairs, the condition of harmony assures good fortune, that of disharmony predicates misfortune. These complexes of occurrences can be represented by the combinations of lines and places, as pointed out above.
Another law is to be noted. Owing to changes of the sun, moon, and stars, phenomena take form in the heavens. These phenomena obey definite laws. Bound up with them, shapes come into being on earth, in accordance with identical laws. Therefore the processes on earth—blossom and fruit, growth and decay—can be calculated if we know the laws of time. If we know the laws of change, we can precalculate in regard to it, and freedom of action thereupon becomes possible. Changes are the imperceptible tendencies to divergence that, when they have reached a certain point, become visible and bring about transformations.
These are the immutable laws under which, according to Chinese thought, changes are consummated. It is the purpose of the Book of Changes to demonstrate these laws by means of the laws of change operating in the respective hexagrams. Once we succeed in completely reproducing these laws, we acquire a comprehensive view of events; we can understand past and future equally well and bring this knowledge to bear in our actions.