The I Ching is also based on the idea of the primacy of cyclic energy flows, and it has been one of the most influential books in China for more than 2,000 years. It’s based on assumptions that resonance and cyclic flows of energy throughout nature. Such assumptions have also characterized Confucianism and ideas of yin-yang patterns and basic elements. All these traditions converged into a unique way of seeing the world, which is as deep as the Western tradition, so we’ll now explore the I Ching.
Richard Wilhelm wrote that the whole book developed over a period of about 1,000 years. It’s basically a collection of 64 sets of six parallel horizontal lines and commentaries that were added over many centuries. The lines are either continuous or broken in the middle. A broken line represents yin and a solid line stands for yang. So each set of six lines (a hexagram) represents a combination of yin and yang energies and an archetypal pattern of change. Together, the 64 hexagrams exemplify the cycle of all the basic patterns of change in the universe. The hexagrams have not been seen as distinct states, but as changing into each other within a complete cycle, as yin-yang and the five elemental energies have been.
The six lines have often been divided into two sets of three lines, and they represent basic processes.
This list shows how they were correlated with fundamental aspects of nature and society.
Qian, the creative, strong & vigorous, heaven, father
Kun, the receptive, yielding, earth, mother
Zhen, the arousing, inciting motion, thunder, first son
Kan, the abysmal, dangerous, plummeting water, middle son
Gen, keeping still, steadying, mountain, youngest son
Sun, the gentle, penetrating, wind, forest, first daughter
Li, the clinging, light-giving, fire/sun, middle daughter
Dui, the joyous, pleasing, lake/marsh, youngest daughter
All eight make up a complete circuit of the basic types of processes. The sons, for example, represent types of movement. The first son is the beginning of a process. The second is the danger that often threatens a new movement that hasn’t yet gathered full strength. The third is the completion of the course of events. To put this in a modern Western context, a newly expressed idea, like Copernicus’s discovery that the earth revolves around the sun, can be seen as the first son. The conservative reactions that resisted this idea are exemplified by the second son. The third son represents the establishment of this idea as scientific orthodoxy.
The daughters have their own personalities. The first represents gentle penetration that sometimes characterizes the beginning of a process (like the soft shoot of a plant initially rising from the soil), the second exemplifies the adaptability that middle children often need when they’re between a stronger older sibling and a cherished youngest child, and the third is the joy that the youngest daughter often brings and which people feel when they successfully complete a project.
The trigrams are in a cyclic flow rather than static Euclidean shapes; together they make up a complete process. Heaven/Father and Earth/Mother join and initially beget the first son. The second and third follow, and the sequence of the three represents the basic stages of movement: the beginning, the obstacles, and completion.
Historians have disagreed on whether the trigrams were defined first and then elaborated into hexagrams or whether the hexagrams emerged first and were then divided into two halves, but most modern specialists think the hexagrams were probably outlined first. According to Fung Yu-lan, in A History of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. 1, both were integrated into a system for all processes during the Western Zhou Dynasty (mid-11th century–771 BCE).
Trigrams and hexagrams are examined from the bottom up, and the lines represent the progress of a situation. For many centuries after the relationships between the lines were systemized, several layers of commentaries were written about them. Confucius was said to have read the I Ching so much that the thongs that bound it wore out three times. He and his followers were said to have written many of its most honored commentaries, and they placed it with the other main literary classics as teachers of the values that maintain civilization. They traveled to royal and ducal courts, claiming that studying and consulting it can harmonize a ruler with the universe’s basic patterns. Some modern scholars doubt that Confucius actually read the I Ching, but these stories have been canonical since the Han Dynasty.
Many traditional Chinese have used the I Ching for divination. When someone wants to know if she should initiate something, like a trip or a business venture, she can toss six sticks or coins, and the positions they land in represent the yin and yang patterns in a hexagram. This reveals the archetypal pattern of change that corresponds with her action. She thereby learns whether or not to begin it at that time.
We can thus see how the assumption of resonance between all domains in the cosmos is basic in the I Ching:
- The inquirer’s situation resonates with archetypal patterns in nature; it is not just an isolated state or a function of a separate individual.
- The archetypal patterns apply to many types of circumstances. Events are thus not separate occurrences; they cohere in and are correlated with these patterns.
- These 64 patterns are not distinct states. They flow into each other and make up a complete cyclic process, as yin-yang and wu xing do.
Some I Ching practitioners say that the inquirer has to be sincere. He cannot be detached and use it only to prove or disprove a hypothesis that it works. His heart must be in the inquiry; he has to feel a strong need to answer a question that means a lot to him, and he should believe that the I Ching works. Traditional Chinese have often assumed resonance between nature and a sincere person’s situation and feelings.
By the third century BCE, ideas about yin-yang, the five elemental energies, medicine, Confucian values, and the I Ching were integrated, and they reinforced each other into a general way of thinking. The world is essentially a unified and highly resonant system, and its main patterns that instigate change flow throughout the whole in a cyclic way whose phases transform into each other.