How Ancient Chinese Cultures Influence Modern Chinese: #3 I-Ching 《易經》and Zhou Dynasty’s “Philosophy” about Changes
The Zhou Fang/Kingdom (?-1046 BCE) & the Zhou Dynasty/Empire (1046–221 BCE)
Dealing with fast changes & uncertainties in life
The Zhou Fang had a very different belief from the Shang in how to deal with life’s uncertainties. These beliefs are captured in the book I-Ching《易經》a.k.a. The Classic of Changes, which claims that the world goes through phases in repeating cycles — e.g. the 4 seasons and day and night — and these cycles impact human activities. However, it is not an empirical science but, as you will see, a model of the world that requires a special kind of divination.
Ancient scholars believed that King Ji Fa’s father, Count of the West Ji Chang 周伯姬昌 was the author (although modern scholars believe that this book was written after he died), and later Confucius and his students wrote a commentary for I-Ching. You get how influential this book was! So it should not surprise you that Zhou claimed that this book was their ”philosophy” for everything from political science, astrology, medicine, science of wars, martial arts to fine arts and religion. Today, it still impacts the way that many Chinese speakers understand the world, and many pay big money to learn this traditional art of divination.
Note that I-Ching only deals with short-term changes (i.e. within a few months) of this world. To help men to gain more control of a fast changing world, it attempts to answer:
- How are people doing or how an event is going currently?
- How might things change?
- Why would things change?
A traditional art of divination
Here is how I-Ching proposes to answer these questions:
A seeker conducts a divination, can ask a non-yes-no question (which is an improvement from Shang’s divination), and yields a revelation of the current situation, which is represented by one of the 64 possible states, or a Gua 卦 symbol of 6 so-called Yao 爻 lines, from the book. Then, he/she yields a revelation of how things might turn out differently in the near future, which is represented by another Gua that differs exactly by 1 line that serves as the revelation of what will trigger this change. (See figure below)
Concepts and philosophy about life
A Gua contains a few important Zhou concepts. Solid Yao lines represent yang while dashed ones represent ying. The top 3 lines, or Shan-gua 上卦 (literally: top half of a Gua), and the bottom half called Xia-gua 下卦 represent the states of heaven and earth respectively. For example, the 1st state listed in I-Ching is called the Qian Gua 乾卦, which contains 6 yang Yao’s and means that things are on track and all cycles repeat themselves as usual.
I-Ching claims that if one deals with the critical triggers appropriately, problems will go away and the person will find himself in the better of the 2 states and vice versa. Doesn’t this sound attractive? That is why many Chinese still rely on this method largely unchanged to guide them through uncertainties in life, and uncertainties have been the most talked-about characteristic of a Chinese’s political and economic life.
I-Ching cannot answer questions about long-term changes
What about long-term changes? Zhou believed that all that mattered was whether their SoH followed moral and ethical principles. This takes us to the next questions:
- What problems did Zhou face?
- And what did they do?
In my book, we will analyze historical facts and records to answer these questions together.
