Yijing

The Chinese text Yijing, also known as the I Ching or Book of Changes, exemplifies the process by which great and enduring philosophical and religious texts (classics) evolve in one cultural environment and are then transmitted to, and often transformed by, other environments. Originating in China as a primitive divination text three thousand years ago, the Yijing found its way to many parts of eastern Asia from about the sixth century CE onward. Beginning in the seventeenth century, it traveled to Europe and eventually the Americas.Today, translated into several dozen languages, the Yijing continues to be consulted by millions of people throughout the world.

What sort of a text is the Yijing, and how did it come to exert such a pervasive global influence? The ancient “basic text” consists of sixty-four six-line symbols known as “hexagrams” (gua). The theory of the Yijing is that these hexagrams represent the basic circumstances of change in the universe and that by consulting the text with a reverent spirit, one can select a hexagram that will provide guidance for the present and the future.

Each hexagram has a name (guaming) that refers to a physical object, an activity, a state, a situation, a quality, an emotion, or a relationship; thus Ding (Cauldron), Dun (Retreat), Meng (Youthful Ignorance), Yu (Enthusiasm), Song (Conflict), Tongren (Human Fellowship), and so forth. In addition, each hexagram possesses a short, cryptic description of several words, called a “judgment” (tuan or guaci). Finally, each line of every hexagram has a brief written explanation (yaoci) of that line’s developmental position and symbolism. Through a sophisticated analysis of line relationships and other variables, a person could not only “know fate” (zhiming) but also “establish fate” (liming)—that is, devise a successful strategy for dealing with any cosmically mandated situation.

The “Ten Wings ”

During the early Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) a set of poetic commentaries known as the “Ten Wings” became permanently attached to the Yijing, and the text received imperial sanction as one of the five major Confucian classics. These Ten Wings—particularly the so-called Great Commentary (Dazhuan or Xici zhuan)—articulated the Yijing’s implicit cosmology (a branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of the universe) and invested the classic with a new philosophical flavor and an attractive literary style. The worldview of this amplified version of the Yijing emphasized correlative thinking, a humane cosmological outlook, and a fundamental unity between heaven, Earth, and people. For the next two thousand years or so the Yijing held pride of place in China as the “first of the [Confucian] classics.”

In the fashion of classic texts in other major civilizations, the Yijing had a profound effect on Chinese culture from the Han dynasty to the end of the imperial era (1912 CE) in areas such as philosophy, religion, art, literature, political life, social customs, and even science. Thinkers of every philosophical persuasion—Confucians, Daoists, and Buddhists alike—found inspiration in the language, symbolism, imagery, cosmology, epistemology (the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge), ontology (a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being), and ethics of the Yijing. The Yijing also inspired a landslide of artistic and literary productions and provided an analytical vocabulary that proved extraordinarily serviceable in a wide variety of realms. During premodern times Chinese “scientists” used hexagram symbolism and Yijingderived numerology (the study of the occult significance of numbers) and mathematics to explain a wide range of natural processes and phenomena in fields of knowledge that are today’s physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, meteorology, and geology.

The Yijing’s great prestige and multifaceted cultural role in China commended it to a number of civilizations on the Chinese periphery—notably, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and Tibet. In all of these environments the Yijing enjoyed an exalted reputation and was employed in a variety of cultural realms. Not surprisingly, through time the Yijing came to be used and understood in ways that reflected the particular needs and interests of the “host” environment, and in the process the Yijing became less of an alien “Chinese” document and more of a “domestic” one.Thus, for example, its symbolism came to be used in Japan to express distinctively Japanese sensibilities, such as those connected with the tea ceremony and flower arranging. This process of domestication also allowed a scholar such as Jiun Sonja (1718-1804), who claimed that “every word of the Ekikyo [Yijing] is interesting and significant,” to argue that “the whole book has been completely borrowed [by the Chinese] from us [the Japanese]” (Ng 2000, 107).

Similar processes of appropriation and adaptation took place in the West. A group of seventeenthcentury Jesuit priests known as “Figurists” made the earliest effort to bring the Yijing to the attention of Europeans (and at the same time to bring the Bible to the attention of the Chinese). The most prominent among these priests was Father Joachim Bouvet (c. 1660-1732). A significant part of the Figurist mission was to show, by fancy philological (relating to the study of literature and of disciplines relevant to literature or to language as used in literature) footwork, that the Bible and the Yijing were umbilically related. Thus, for instance, the three unbroken lines of the Qian (Heaven) trigram indicated an early Chinese awareness of the Trinity, and the hexagram Xu (Waiting), with its stark reference to “clouds rising up to Heaven,” symbolized the “glorious ascent of the Saviour.” Bouvet’s correspondence with the German mathematician Wilhelm Gottfried von Leibniz (1646-1716) led Leibniz to see striking similarities in the configuration of the “broken” and “unbroken” lines of the hexagrams in the Yijing and his own binary mathematical system.

In more recent times efforts to find a place for the Yijing in Western culture have continued unabated. During the 1960s in particular translations of the book appeared in many parts of the Western world (and elsewhere), embraced by countercultural enthusiasts alienated from their own political, social, and philosophical traditions and searching for fresh answers to timeless or pressing questions. Meanwhile, creative thinkers in the arts and the sciences have used the Yijing either as inspiration or as a transcultural validation of their own original ideas.

From Carl Jung ’s Foreword to the I Ching

As a man of science, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961) seems a curious choice to write a foreword to the 1949 edition of the I Ching (Yijing). However, as he explains in the excerpt below, “chance” is a powerful influence that should not be ignored.

I do not know Chinese and have never been in China. I can assure my reader that it is not altogether easy to find the right access to this monument of Chinese thought, which departs so completely from our ways of thinking. In order to understand what such a book is all about, it is imperative to cast off certain prejudices of the Western mind. It is a curious fact that such a gifted and intelligent people as the Chinese has never developed what we call science. Our science, however, is based upon the principle of causality, and causality is considered to be an axiomatic truth. But a great change in our standpoint is setting in. What Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason failed to do, is being accomplished by modern physics. The axioms of causality are being shaken to their foundations: we know now that what we term natural laws are merely statistical truths and thus must necessarily allow for exceptions. We have not sufficiently taken into account as yet that we need the laboratory with its incisive restrictions in order to demonstrate the invariable validity of natural law. If we leave things to nature, we see a very different picture: every process is partially or totally interfered with by chance, so much so that under natural circumstances a course of events absolutely conforming to specific laws is almost an exception.

The Chinese mind, as I see it at work in the I Ching, seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspect of events. What we call coincidence seems to be the chief concern of this peculiar mind, and what we worship as causality passes almost unnoticed.We must admit that there is something to be said for the immense importance of chance. An incalculable amount of human effort is directed to combating and restricting the nuisance or danger represented by chance.Theoretical considerations of cause and effect often look pale and dusty in comparison to the practical results of chance.

Source: Jung, C. G. (1949). Foreword to the I Ching. Retrieved August 31, 2004, from http://www.iging.com/intro/foreword.htm

Influence on the West

The Yijing thus influenced many realms of modernWestern life, from the psychology of Carl Jung to the architecture of I. M. Pei.The choreographers Merce Cunningham and Carolyn Carlson have found inspiration in the Yijing, as have such noted composers as John Cage and Udo Kasemets. It has been a significant element in the art of people such as Eric Morris and the writings of a wide range of Western authors, including Philip K. Dick, Allen Ginsberg, Octavio Paz, Raymond Queneau, and Fritjof Capra. In the realm of “pop” culture the Yijing has served as a vehicle for the expression of a wide array of ideologies, outlooks, and orientations, from feminism (A Woman’s I Ching) to sports (Golf Ching).

Extract from the Yijing (Book I,Part Ⅱ)

THE JUDGMENT

INNER TRUTH. Pigs and fishes.

Good fortune.

It furthers one to cross the great water.

Perseverance furthers.

Pigs and fishes are the least intelligent of all animals and therefore the most difficult to influence. The force of inner truth must grow great indeed before its influence can extend to such creatures. In dealing with persons as intractable and as difficult to influence as a pig or a fish, the whole secret of success depends on finding the right way of approach. One must first rid oneself of all prejudice and, so to speak, let the psyche of the other person act on one without restraint. Then one will establish contact with him, understand and gain power over him. When a door has thus been opened, the force of one’s personality will influence him. If in this way one finds no obstacles insurmountable, one can undertake even the most dangerous things, such as crossing the great water, and succeed.

But it is important to understand upon what the force inner truth depends. This force is not identical with simple intimacy or a secret bond. Close ties may exist also among thieves; it is true that such a bond acts as a force but, since it is not invincible, it does not bring good fortune. All association on the basis of common interests holds only up to a certain point. Where the community of interest ceases, the holding together ceases also, and the closest friendship often changes into hate. Only when the bond is based on what is right, on steadfastness, will it remain so firm that it triumphs over everything.

THE IMAGE

Wind over lake: the image of INNER TRUTH.

Thus the superior man discusses criminal cases

In order to delay executions.

Wind stirs water by penetrating it. Thus the superior man, when obliged to judge the mistakes of men, tries to penetrate their minds with understanding, in order to gain a sympathetic appreciation of the circumstances. In ancient China, the entire administration of justice was guided by this principle. A deep understanding that knows how to pardon was considered the highest form of justice. This system was not without success, for its aim was to make so strong a moral impression that there was no reason to fear abuse of such mildness. For it sprang not from weakness but from a superior clarity.

Source: Wilhelm, R. (Trans.). (1967). The I Ching or Book of Changes (C. F. Baynes,Trans.; Book I, Part Ⅱ, 61 [Chung fu/Inner Truth). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

We may assume that the Yijing will continue to inspire creativity, in both East and West, for the same reasons it has inspired creativity in the past: its challenging and ambiguous basic text, which encourages interpretive ingenuity; its elaborate numerology and other forms of symbolic representation; its utility as a tool of divination; its philosophically sophisticated commentaries; its psychological potential (as a means of attaining self-knowledge); and its reputation for a kind of encyclopedic comprehensiveness. For those people who take the text seriously and approach it with intellectual depth and psychological insight, it will no doubt remain a stimulating document; then again, those people of a shallower intellectual or psychological disposition may put the Yijing to more superficial uses. In the words of a Chinese proverb, “The shallow man sees [the Yijing’s] shallowness, while the deep man sees [its] depth.”

Richard J. Smith

【Further Reading】：

Adler, J. (Trans.). (2002). Introduction to the study of the Classic of Changes (I-hsüeh ch’i-meng). New York: Global Scholarly Publications.

Hacker, E., Moore, S., & Patsco, L. (Eds.). (2002). I Ching: An annotated bibliography. London: Taylor and Francis.

Henderson, J. B. (1984). The development and decline of Chinese cosmology. New York: Columbia University Press.

Jullien, F. (1993). Figures de l’immanence: Pour une lecture philosophique du Yi King, le classique du changement [Figures of immanence: For a philosophical reading of the Yi King or classic of changes]. Paris: Grasset.

Lynn, R. J. (Trans.). (1994). The Classic of Changes: A new translation of the I Ching as interpreted by Wang Bi. New York: Columbia University Press.

McCaffree, J. E. (1982). Bible and I Ching relationships. Seattle, WA: South Sky Book Co.

Ng, B. W. (2000). The I Ching in Tokugawa thought and culture. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.

Nielsen, B. (2003). A companion to Yijing numerology and cosmology: Chinese studies of images and numbers from Han (202 BCE-220 CE) to Song (960-1279 CE). London: Routledge Curzon.

Rule, P. (1987). K’ung-tzu or Confucius?: The Jesuit interpretation of Confucianism. London: Allen and Unwin.

Ryan, J. A. (1996, January). Leibniz’s binary system and Shao Yong’s Yijing. Philosophy East and West, 46(1), 59-90.

Smith, R. J. (1998, Winter). The place of the Yijing (Classic of Changes) in world culture: Some historical and contemporary perspectives. Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 391-422.

Smith, R. J. (2003, Autumn). The Yijing (Classic of Changes) in global perspective: Some pedagogical reflections. Education about Asia, 8(2), 5-10.

Wilhelm, R. (Trans.). (1967). The I Ching or Book of Changes (C. F. Baynes, Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.