Key Concepts of Fate and Prediction in the Yijing - Chao Center for ...

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10these commentaries are quite heterogeneous in content. The first and second wings,together known as the “Commentary on the Judgments” (Tuanzhuan ) and the thirdand fourth, collectively titled the “Commentary on the Images” (Xiangzhuan )probably date from the sixth or fifth century BCE. They are almost certainly the oldestsystematic treatises on the basic text of the Changes. The Commentary on the Judgmentsexplains each judgment by referring to its phrases, its hexagram symbolism and/or thelocation of its yin and yang lines. The Commentary on the Images consists of twosubsections: a “Big Image Commentary,” which discusses the images associated with thetwo primary trigrams of each hexagram (lines 1-3 and lines 4-6 respectively), and a“Small Image Commentary,” which refers to the symbolism of the individual lines. Thetwo parts of the “Great Commentary” (Dazhuan ) also known as the “Commentaryon the Appended Statements” (Xici zhuan ) are generally described as the fifthand sixth wings. Using somewhat different rhetorical devices in each of its two sections,this commentary offers a sophisticated, although sometimes rather disjointed, discussionof both the metaphysics and the morality of the Changes, often citing Confucius forauthority.The rest of the Ten Wings lack the divided structure of the first six. The “Commentary onthe Words of the Text” (Wenyan zhuan ) addresses only the first two hexagramsof the basic text, and some scholars believe that it represents fragments of a much longerbut no longer extant work. The “Explaining the Trigrams” (Shuogua zhuan 説 )commentary attaches meanings to each of the eight trigrams that go well beyond the basicsignifications that they possessed in the early and middle Zhou period. The wing titled“Providing the Sequence of the Hexagrams” (Xugua zhuan ) aims at justifying thereceived order of the hexagrams, and the last, the “Hexagrams in Irregular Order” (Zaguazhuan ) offers definitions of hexagrams that it often casts in terms of contrastingpairs. Different editions of the Changes organize this material in different ways. Andsome scholars ignored some wings completely. Wang Fuzhi (1619-1692), for example,refused to accept the legitimacy of the “Providing the Sequence of the Hexagrams” wing.The Great Commentary is the most philosophically interesting of the Ten Wings. Itprobably assumed something close to its final form around 300 BCE, and from the Hanperiod to the present this document has received far more scholarly attention than anyother single wing. The primary goal of the Great Commentary was to explain how thehexagrams, trigrams and lines of the document duplicated the fundamental processes andrelationships occurring in nature, enabling those who consult the Yijing with sincerity andreverence to partake of a potent, illuminating, activating and transforming spirituality. Byparticipating fully in this spiritual experience, the reader could discern the patterns ofchange in the universe and act appropriately. As the Great Commentary states: “Lookingup, we use it [the Changes] to observe the configurations of Heaven, and, looking down,we use it to examine the patterns of Earth. Thus we understand the reasons underlyingwhat is hidden and what is clear. We trace things back to their origins then turn back totheir ends. Thus we understand the axiom of life and death. . . . . The Changes is withoutconsciousness and is without deliberate action. Being utterly still it does not initiate, butwhen stimulated it is commensurate with all the causes for everything that happens in the
11world. As such, it has to be the most spiritual thing in the world, for what else couldpossibly be up to this?”In other words, the Yijing showed how human beings could “fill in and pull together theDao of Heaven and Earth,” thus helping to create and maintain cosmic harmony throughtheir spiritual attunement to the patterns and processes of nature. By using the Changesresponsibly, humans could not only “know fate” () but also do something about it(i.e. establish fate; ).The process of consulting the Yijing involved careful contemplation of the “images”(xiang ) associated with, and reflected in, the lines, trigrams and hexagrams of thebasic text. According to the Great Commentary, sages like Fuxi (), “had the meansto perceive the mysteries of the world and, drawing comparisons to them with analogousthings, made images out of those things that seemed appropriate.” Thus, we are told that“the Changes is [nothing but] images” () and that the term “image means themaking of semblances [or representations]” (). Somewhat ironically, theword “image” appears nowhere in the basic text of the Yijing and only three times in theCommentary on the Judgments (hexagrams 23, 50 and 62).Initially, there were only “hexagram images” () “trigram images” () and “lineimages” ()—pure signs unmediated by language. But later on, hexagram names,judgments and line statements appeared in written form to help explain these abstractsignifications. Thus, words came to be used by subsequent “sages” to identify “images ofthings” (natural phenomena, such as Heaven and Earth, mountains, rivers, thunder, wind,fire, etc.), “images of affairs” (social and political phenomena, including institutions, war,famine, marriage, divorce, etc.), and “images of ideas” (thoughts, mental pictures, statesof mind, emotions, and any other sensory or extra-sensory experiences). Somecommentators likened images to “flowers in the mirror” or “the moon in the water”—thatis, reflections of things that “cannot be described as either fully present or fully absent.”Images were also closely connected with numbers (shu ) as a means by which tounderstand patterns of cosmic change. Indeed, the Great Commentary tells us that inconjunction with hexagrams, numbers “indicate how change and transformation arebrought about and how gods and spirits are activated.” Vague but provocative passagessuch as these would later inspire an enormous amount of scholarship designed to identifyand explain the complex relationship between “numbers and images” () but theprimary focus of the Ten Wings is on images. In fact, at certain points in the text thisemphasis seems to diminish the value of the written word itself. For example, the GreatCommentary avers that “Writing does not exhaust words, and words do not exhaustideas. . . . The sages [therefore] established images in order to express their ideasexhaustively . . . [and they] established the hexagrams in order to treat exhaustively thetrue innate tendencies of things.”Ideally, then, if one is able to grasp the meaning of the image, words becomeunnecessary. In fact, however, the ancient sages did their fair share of expositing. For
Page 2 and 3: 2repository of what has happened.
Page 4 and 5: 4GenJudgment: If one cleaves the ba
Page 6 and 7: 6divinations recorded in the Change
Page 8 and 9: 8immortality; Confucians, for their
Page 12 and 13: 12instance, the Great Commentary st
Page 14 and 15: 14GenJudgment: Restraint [or Stilli
Page 16 and 17: 16The so-called New Text (jinwen )
Page 18 and 19: 18these, Opening Up the Regularitie
Page 20 and 21: 20Thus, in virtually all of his com
Page 22 and 23: 22came to be attributed to a Daoist
Page 24 and 25: 24of things, predict the future, an
Page 26 and 27: 26gangsheng ). Xu examines in parti
Page 28 and 29: 28Let us now look at an example of
Page 30 and 31: 30contemporary Chinese scholars, as
Page 32: 32offers us additional interpretati

Key Concepts of Fate and Prediction in the Yijing - Chao Center for ...

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