[The following blog was redacted from an Asian Philosophy paper I wrote at Melbourne University
Vast indeed is the Ultimate Tao,
Spontaneously itself, apparently without acting,
End of all ages and beginning of all ages,
Existing before Earth and existing before Heaven,
Silently embracing the whole of time,
Continuing uninterrupted through all aeons,
In the East it taught Father Confucius,
In the West it converted the 'Golden man' [the Buddha]
Taken as pattern by a hundred kings,
Transmitted by generations of sages,
It is the ancestor of all doctrines,
The mystery beyond all mysteries.
'PRIMORDIAL' THINKING IN THE I CHING
History and metaphysic of the 1 Ching
Historically, the oracles of the I Ching were compiled from the Zhou I (the Changes of Zhou). According to archaeological evidence, the Zhou I was based on primitive shamanic rites performed in conjunction with animal sacrifice. As related by the Shu Ching (the Book of History) and by the venerable Taoist, Chuang Tzu, the I Ching commemorated Zhou conquest of the Shang Empire.
Fearing the encroachments of the Ti peoples, the Zhou set forth from the sacred mountain, Shi Chan in modern Shensi province for the pastures of the Shang settlement across the Great River Yellow River ). Traversing its Western bank, King Wu led his army across the Yellow River into battle against the Shang kingdom and river cantonment. By dint of his engagement, Wu realised the aspirations of his father, King Wen and the hopes of the late Duke of Zhou. Since he had forfeited the universal Mandate of Heaven, Wen and the Duke decreed the assassination of the Shang Emperor who was dutifully beheaded by their successor, Wu. Subsequently, the auguries portending victory to King Wu were collected as the I Ching in order to recite annually the auguries at the Zhou ancestral temple.
'THINKING THROUGH' THE I CHING
Animated by the cultural heritage of the Shang Dynasty and its mantic practices, the I Ching expresses the primordial concerns of the Zhou Dynasty with Heaven (Tian),Earth and Mankind, and with the Cosmic Energy or Vital Force (Chi) which encompasses the revolution of Man's destiny (Ming). Throughout the sixty-four Hexagrams, the I Ching describes the struggles of fortune and change in the hub of a transformational universe. By way of their additional Judgments and Lines, the I Ching commentators propound the familiar themes of conflict and harmony as they are exposed to, and reflected through, Thinking and the vast ultimate Tao.
Deriving the six lines from the primal poles of the Yin _ roughly, the female or passive principle - and Yang - the male and active - the I Ching advises how the thinker or Inquirer may align himself with the Supreme Ultimate of existence, or cosmic Being (Tai Chi). G Damian-Knight contends that the oracles of the I Ching presupposed a space-time continuum between human thought and its divine consequences and mathematical permutations. Although Helmut Wilhelm disputes the Leibnizian basis of the I Ching system of calculation, Wilhelm admits that the I Ching is eloquent of both hierarchy and of Opposition through Change. Through the guides of approach and retreat, the I Ching encapsulates the essence of space: like the Ancient Greek concept of peripeteia, or wandering, the I Ching engages us with a collective representation and graphic illustration of living struggle and drama and, above all, of the primal fluency of Thinking. Thus Stephen L Field, in an article 011 the primal method of the I Ching, maintains this about I Ching and its relativistic thinking:
Yang is Heaven's beneficent power, while the Yin is Heaven's chastising power. These interact through opposition and the "microcosm" of chance... So the chance appearance of a given line in a given position, which resulted in a given omen, was analogous to a real-life transformation or occurrence of a supernatural event. The hexagram omen, as such, was a microcosmic model of a unique moment in the life of the inquirer. This is relative, not absolute time. [My emphasis].
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE I CHING
An index of characters, the oracles of the I Ching function as signs indicating the approach and withdrawal of Heaven and Earth in respect of Man's fate. This is manifest in, and comprehended through, opposition and change. The relativity of Thinking is graphically depicted by virtue of the Eight Trigrams. For example, the primary trigram Ch 'ien is 'creative', 'strong' and comes from Heaven, whereas its opposite K 'un is 'yielding' or 'passive' and stems from Earth. There are also Chen, K'an, Ken, Sun, Li and Tui symbolising 'active', ‘dangerous', 'keeping still', 'gentle’, 'conscious' and ‘joyful' respectively. The preceding divisions then sub-divide into the individual lines of the hexagram. Each line represents a specific attitude of Thinking: thus, the bottom line enumerates the 'senses' of a particular inquirer; the second line is labelled 'thinking " thus isolating Thinking in the I Ching from abstract, absolutist Thinking; the third line manifests 'feeling '; the fourth, 'body' or what is deemed karma; and the fifth and sixth are epiphanies of 'soul' and 'spirit'. Philosophically, therefore, the I Ching shares primordial and pragmatic standpoints.
THE PRACTICAL MAGIC OF THINKING IN THE I CHING
Sages who consulted the I Ching were responding to the call of Being through the flow of their Ch’i. Tending spatially not temporarily toward change, nevertheless, sages used their De (virtuosity or intuition) to comport themselves toward the disparate, jarring phenomena and situations of nature. The Being expressed in the I Ching is Immanent, not transcendent. At the same time, the I Ching refers to the Judgments, Nothing to Further, Perserverance, No Blame, Humiliation and No Remorse to ascribe attitudes of becoming to Thinking. Unfurling through the individual will, the I Ching considers the sum-total of isolated thoughts as they are embodied by Shengdao’s, total course of world affairs. This is expressed through the elliptical power of Tai Chi.
THE WAY OF THE SAGE
Hence, the venerable sage of the I Ching is instructed to align his or her Chi - his or her potentiality or soul-force - with nature. Nature is the Protectress, the guarantor of Thinking, Being and Truth33 . Yet, the I Ching has an eminently practical purpose.
In brief, the I Ching is a matrix between the individual and Heaven, which entities interact through the substance of Change. In the thought of Lao-tzu, every event - as content of consciousness - can revert, through extension, to its opposite and Being can metamorphose non-linearally through the sixty-four hexagrams of existential space. This attitude is evidenced in the Daoist maxim, the swimmer must swim with the current. Whether the product of daring or in response to an obstacle, the magician-sage (Fan Shi) is able to move with the tide and harness his Chi with practical wisdom.
JUNG ON THE I CHING MYSTERY: A PRACTICAL REVERLATION
Though buffeted by fortune and chance, Professor Carl Jung signifies in his celebrated foreword to the text that I Ching scholars and practitioners devote
an incalculable amount of human effort.:. to combating and restricting the nuisance or danger represented by chance.
Fascinated by empirical reality as opposed to ideal form, hypothesis and the abstract proofs of causality, Jung concludes that
While the Western mind carefully sifts, weighs,..selects, classifies, isolates, the Chinese picture of the moment.. encompasses everything down to the minutest nonsensical detail
This is the I Ching program, Jung understands, to exhaust the banality of the observed present and harness our powers through the future.
Jung concludes:
Thus it happens that when one throws the three coins, or counts through the forty-nine yarrow stalks these chance details enter into the picture of the moment of observation and form a part of it - a part that is insignificant to us yet most meaningful to the Chinese mind. With us it would be a banal and almost meaningless task (at least on the face of it) to say that whatever happens in a given moment possesses inevitably the quality peculiar to that moment. This is not an abstract argument but a very practical one.
The I Ching, I would argue, opens our Western rational mind to heavenly success through a practical philosophy of natural living.
REFERENCES
Phillip Rawson and Laszlo Legeza, 'Tao: the Chinese Philosophy of Time and Change', Thames and Hudson Ltd (reprint), London
Helmut Wilhelm, 'The Concept of Change in the Book of Changes in Man and Time: Papersfrom the Eranos Yearbooks, Joseph Campbell (Ed), Princeton University Princeton , 1983.
Ian P Macgreal (Ed), 'Great Thinkers of the Eastern World: the Major Thinkers and the Philosophical and the Religious Classics of China India Korea New York
John Passmore, '100 Years of Philosophy' (second edition), Duckworth, Cox and Wyman Ltd, London
I K Shchutskii, 'Researches on the I Ching', Princeton University Press , USA
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