I Ching

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It symbolises the cyclical interconnections of the Universe and is a guide to a personal path of balance and harmony (Wu Wei) that follows natural laws which Western scientific endeavour are slowly awakening to. This is followed by a long and interesting exegesis on the spiritual role and poetic image of mountains in the Chinese tradition.

Adler, Joseph A., trans. (2020). The Original Meaning of the Yijing: Commentary on the Scripture of Change. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-19124-1. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list ( link) Peterson, Willard J. (1982). "Making Connections: 'Commentary on the Attached Verbalizations' of the Book of Change". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 42 (1): 67–116. doi: 10.2307/2719121. JSTOR 2719121. Raphals, Lisa (2013). Divination and Prediction in Early China and Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. ISBN 978-1-107-01075-8. The core of the I Ching is a Western Zhou divination text called the Changes of Zhou ( Chinese: 周易; pinyin: Zhōu yì). [3] Modern scholars suggest dates ranging between the 10th and 4th centuries BC for the assembly of the text in approximately its current form. [4] Based on a comparison of the language of the Zhou yi with dated bronze inscriptions, the American sinologist Edward Shaughnessy dated its compilation in its current form to the last quarter of the 9th century BC, during the early decades of the reign of King Xuan of Zhou ( r.c. 827–782BC). [5] A copy of the text in the Shanghai Museum corpus of bamboo and wooden slips (discovered in 1994) shows that the Zhou yi was used throughout all levels of Chinese society in its current form by 300 BC, but still contained small variations as late as the Warring States period (c. 475–221BC). [6] It is possible that other divination systems existed at this time; the Rites of Zhou name two other such systems, the Lianshan [ zh] and the Guicang. [7] Name and authorship [ edit ]

I agree with Western thinking that any number of answers to myquestion were possible, and I certainly cannot assert that anotheranswer would not have been equally significant. However, theanswer received was the first and only one; we know nothing ofother possible answers. It pleased and satisfied me. To askthe same question a second time would have been tactless and soI did not do it: "the master speaks but once." Theheavy-handed pedagogic approach that attempts to fit irrationalphenomena into a preconceived rational pattern is anathema tome. Indeed, such things as this answer should remain as theywere when they first emerged to view, for only then do we knowwhat nature does when left to herself undisturbed by the meddlesomenessof man. One ought not to go to cadavers to study life. Moreover,a repetition of the experiment is impossible, for the simple reasonthat the original situation cannot be reconstructed. Thereforein each instance there is only a first and single answer. Arguably the most important of the Ten Wings is the Great Commentary ( Dazhuan) or Xi ci, which dates to roughly 300 BC. [note 4] The Great Commentary describes the I Ching as a microcosm of the universe and a symbolic description of the processes of change. By partaking in the spiritual experience of the I Ching, the Great Commentary states, the individual can understand the deeper patterns of the universe. [26] Among other subjects, it explains how the eight trigrams proceeded from the eternal oneness of the universe through three bifurcations. [42] The other Wings provide different perspectives on essentially the same viewpoint, giving ancient, cosmic authority to the I Ching. [43] For example, the Wenyan provides a moral interpretation that parallels the first two hexagrams, 乾 (qián) and 坤 (kūn), with Heaven and Earth, [44] and the Shuogua attributes to the symbolic function of the hexagrams the ability to understand self, world, and destiny. [45] Throughout the Ten Wings, there are passages that seem to purposefully increase the ambiguity of the base text, pointing to a recognition of multiple layers of symbolism. [46]

When I hold workshops on the I Ching I’m always amazed at the sheer variety of I Ching books my students have amassed, often without ever fully understanding or accessing its wisdom.

Schuessler, Axel (2007). ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 978-1-4356-6587-3. Nielsen, Bent (2003). A Companion to Yi Jing Numerology and Cosmology: Chinese Studies of Images and Numbers from Han (202 BCE–220 CE) to Song (960–1279 CE). London: RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0-7007-1608-4. the Changes was the Images and Numbers ( Xiangshu象數) School. Focusing on the hexagram images and the

Yijing Foundations Class – A live online class offering a step-by-step guide to confident readings. Sign up to be notified when this is next available. Weinberger, Eliot (February 25, 2016). "What Is the I Ching?". The New York Review of Books. In China and in East Asia, it has been by far the most consulted of all books, in the belief that it can explain everything.... is surely the most popularly recognized Chinese book.

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Hon, Tze-ki 韓子奇 (2005). The Yijing and Chinese Politics: Classical Commentary and Literati Activism in the Northern Song Period, 960–1127. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-6311-7. In the West, the I Ching was discovered in the late seventeenth century by Jesuit missionaries in China, who decoded the text to reveal its Christian universal truth: hexagram number one was God; two was the second Adam, Jesus; three was the Trinity; eight was the members of Noah’s family; and so on. Leibniz enthusiastically found the universality of his binary system in the solid and broken lines. Hegel—who thought Confucius was not worth translating—considered the book “superficial”: “There is not to be found in one single instance a sensuous conception of universal natural or spiritual powers.” The I Ching has, it seems, met with a new, correct (yellow)understanding, that is, a new concept ( Begriff) bywhich it can be grasped. This concept is valuable (golden).There is indeed a new edition in English, making the book moreaccessible to the Western world than before. Another important principle examined within the I Ching is how to maintain this energetic vibration of inter-connectedness by encouraging the smooth harmonious flow of Qi within yourself, your life and the world around you. There is no name or word in the West that directly translates the word ‘Qi’. The label that is often used is ‘energy’ and although this is a useful description I think the terms ‘life-force / universal-force’ or ‘love’ are perhaps more holistic and apt in widening your understanding of this profound concept.

They are part of the whole or Oneness almost like a ‘cosmic web’ to be explored. Indeed, great insight and awareness can be gained by simply re-focusing your perception on the entirety rather than a single isolated part of the energy being contemplated or encountered (this principle relates to a profound Taoist teaching that was passed onto me when I was ordained and I have written several other articles on this particular subject). Smith 2012, p.22; Nelson 2011, p.377; Hon 2005, p.2; Shaughnessy 1983, p.105; Raphals 2013, p.337; Nylan 2001, p.220; Redmond & Hon 2014, p.37; Rutt 1996, p.26. The concepts of Yin-Yang and energetic balance and flow have a deep and meaningful relationship in your life and that of the Universe as a whole. Taoist thinking holds that everything in the Universe is generated from the Yin-Yang polarity and the flow between the two. And so it is that the philosophy of the I Ching welcomes change, movement, transformation, momentum and regeneration.Wilhelm, Richard; Baynes, Cary F. (5 December 2005). Dan Baruth (ed.). "Introduction to the I Ching" . Retrieved 8 June 2010. The contemporary scholar Shao Yong rearranged the hexagrams in a format that resembles modern binary numbers, although he did not intend his arrangement to be used mathematically. [67] This arrangement, sometimes called the binary sequence, later inspired Leibniz. If the meaning of the Book of Changes were easy to grasp, thework would need no foreword. But this is far from being the case,for there is so much that is obscure about it that Western scholarshave tended to dispose of it as a collection of "magic spells,"either too abstruse to be intelligible, or of no value whatsoever. Legge's translation of the I Ching, up to now the onlyversion available in English, has done little to make the workaccessible to Western minds. [1]Wilhelm, however, has made everyeffort to open the way to an understanding of the symbolism ofthe text. He was in a position to do this because he himselfwas taught the philosophy and the use of the I Ching bythe venerable sage Lao Nai-hsüan; moreover, he had over aperiod of many years put the peculiar technique of the oracleinto practice. His grasp of the living meaning of the text giveshis version of the I Ching a depth of perspective thatan exclusively academic knowledge of Chinese philosophy couldnever provide.