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

15Commentary on the Images: “Restraint takes place with the torso,” which meansthat the person in question applies restraint to his own body.Line 5: Restraint takes place with the jowls, so the words of the person in question areordered, and regret vanishes.Commentary on the Images: “Restraint takes place with the jowls,” so the personin question is central and correct.Line 6: The person in question exercises Restraint with simple honesty, which results ingood fortune.Commentary on the Images: The good fortune that springs from “exercisingRestraint with simple honesty,” means that one will reach his proper end becauseof that simply honesty.Although these glosses from the Ten Wings certainly did not resolve all ambiguities oreliminate all future controversies regarding the possible meanings of Gen’s judgment andline statements, they did underscore a radical interpretive shift that transformed the Genhexagram from an apparent description of a ritualized sacrifice to a set of prescriptionsfor self control and ethical behavior.In short, the Ten Wings of the Yijing, even without the alternative readings provided bythe Mawangdui manuscript and other versions of the Changes, vastly enhanced itssymbolic repertoire. Although the content of the classic became “fixed” in 136 BCE, forthe next two thousand years scholars and diviners enjoyed an enormous amount oflatitude in interpreting the work. In the meantime, the Great Commentary became thelocus classicus for virtually all Chinese discussions of time, space and metaphysics,investing the Yijing with extraordinary philosophical authority. In addition, this amplifiedand state-sanctioned version of the Changes became a repository of concrete symbols andgeneral explanations that proved serviceable in such diverse realms of knowledge as art,literature, music, mathematics, science and medicine.Other Han-Based HermeneuticsApproaches to the Yijing—whether scholarly or divinatory—have naturally hinged onfactors such philosophical or religious affiliations, intellectual fashions, politics, socialstatus, gender, personal taste, family ties, and other variables of time, place andcircumstance. As Chinese society evolved, new ways of thinking about the classic arose,inexorably expanding the scope of interpretive possibilities to include virtually everyemerging realm of knowledge. Thus, over the course of more than two millennia,thousands of commentaries were written on the Changes, each amplifying the text andeach reflecting a distinctive technical, philological, religious, philosophical, literary,social or political point of view. Not surprisingly, then, the document came to beidentified by a number of Chinese scholars as a “mirror of history” as well as the “mirrorof men’s minds.”