Good Confucianism book (pdf) - Department of Physics

124 Confucians, “Confucian” Texts, the Qin DynastyTrigrams above, hexagram belowFigure 8.1 Trigrams and hexagrams in the Book of Changesafter the death of his mother, was considered scandalous and the lady hebecame engaged to had as bad a reputation as his late mother. The ZuoZhuan commentary has been dated to the fourth century BCE and is thework of a number of authors.The Book of Changes or Yi Jing is a book of divination. You may bemore familiar with the title in the Wade – Giles version, the I Ching . 19 Yimeans “ change, ” and the text is meant to be a description of the processof change. One learns how to avoid misfortune and how to take advantageof opportunities in that process of change. Divination is based on twolines, solid ______ and broken ___ ___. These lines are arranged in groupsof three, trigrams, beginning with the two basic trigrams, one of which isthree solid lines, the other three broken lines. The solid and broken linescan be interchanged to make a total of eight trigrams. These eight trigramsare then multiplied by themselves to make up the final 64 hexagrams orsix - line symbols (see figure 8.1 ). Each of the 64 hexagrams is meant torepresent some point in a constant, regular, cycle of change or progressionin both the universe and human activity. 20