Explaining the Yijing to a Distant Friend: An Introduction to the Xici Zhuan
An introduction to the Xici Zhuan (Appended Statements) of the Zhouyi, written for a faraway reader. Beginning with the fundamental concepts of hexagrams, lines, yin-yang, and the high and the low, it clarifies the composition and reading of the Xici, dispels the most common misunderstandings of beginners and overseas readers, and paves the way for a close study of the twelve chapters of the Upper Xici.
II. How This Book Came to Be
The Xici itself relates the origins of this book, and relates them with great beauty. The second chapter of the Lower Xici says:
In ancient times, when Baoxi (Fuxi) ruled the world, he looked upward and observed the images in the heavens; he looked downward and observed the patterns on the earth. He observed the markings of birds and beasts and the suitabilities of the land. Nearby he took from his own body; afar he took from things. Thereupon he first created the eight trigrams, in order to penetrate the virtue of the bright spirits, and in order to classify the conditions of all things.
Baoxi, also known as Fuxi, is a legendary sage-king of the most remote antiquity. This passage tells us that the original symbols were not fabricated from nothing but were observed into being. He raised his head and looked at the constellations and clouds of the heavens; he bowed down and looked at the veins and textures of mountains and rivers; he looked at the patterns on the hides and plumage of birds and beasts, at the aptitudes of grasses and soils. From what was near he drew upon his own body; from what was far he drew upon all things. After long and deep looking, he drew eight symbols, using them to penetrate the principles of the hidden and the manifest, using them to classify the conditions of the myriad creatures. Note the sequence: first Heaven and Earth exist, then the observer appears; first comes observation, then come the symbols. The foundation of the Zhouyi is guan -- observation -- the prolonged, reverent, and meticulous gaze of a human being upon the world. This is the very first thing a beginner should know.
Once the eight trigrams were drawn, they were, according to tradition, further combined and elaborated into sixty-four hexagrams. By the end of the Shang dynasty and the rise of the Zhou, the statements beneath the hexagrams gradually became fixed. The Lower Xici says:
Did the Yi arise in the middle antiquity$3 Did its creators know anxiety and adversity$4
And again:
Did the Yi arise during the last age of the Yin (Shang) and the flourishing virtue of Zhou$5 Was it not in the time of King Wen and the tyrant Zhou (Zhouxin)$6 Therefore its statements convey peril.
The old tradition holds that King Wen of Zhou, imprisoned by the tyrant Zhouxin at Youli, elaborated the Zhouyi during his captivity. A captive king, his life and death in another's hands, facing an unfathomable destiny day and night -- the statements of this book carry just such a tone of deep concern and far-reaching vigilance. That is why the Xici says "its statements convey peril" (qi ci wei): those lines are alert, as if treading on thin ice above a chasm, teaching people to be cautious and to examine themselves, to think of danger even in times of safety. Readers of the Zhouyi often feel that this book possesses an extraordinary tenderness toward the human condition, an extraordinary lucidity about the way fortune and misfortune lean upon each other -- these are not words that could have been written by a person at ease. Anxiety and adversity are this book's birthmark.
Another five hundred years passed, and in the Spring and Autumn period, the Master -- the figure Western readers know as Confucius -- came to love this book deeply in his later years. The Analerta, chapter "Shu Er," records his words:
Give me a few more years -- if at fifty I study the Yi, I may be able to avoid great errors.
Give me a few more years; if I take up the study of the Yi at fifty, my life may be free of great mistakes. Note that the Master speaks of the benefit of studying the Yi not as seeking good fortune and avoiding calamity, not as foreknowing the future, but as "avoiding great errors" -- he transformed this book of divination into a book of self-cultivation and the reduction of faults. This turn set in motion the tradition of reading the Yi for the next two thousand years and more. The texts of the Ten Wings are traditionally attributed to the Master himself; viewed today, they contain many passages introduced by "the Master said" (zi yue) and are most likely records and elaborations of the Master's teachings composed by his later Confucian disciples during the Warring States period. But whoever held the brush, the perspective in the Xici that redirects divination toward moral meaning and draws the Dao of Heaven toward human affairs is unmistakably the Master's own method.
Thus the Zhouyi is a book of three rings of growth: the innermost ring is the symbols, born of the most ancient observation of images; the middle ring is the prognosticatory statements, born of the anxiety and adversity at the Shang-Zhou transition; the outermost ring is the commentarial text, born of the philosophical reasoning of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. Three rings of growth, each clearer than the last, are precisely the sediment of three eras of the Chinese mind. Let me also tell our friend from afar of a modern marvel: in the 1970s, from a Han-dynasty tomb at Mawangdui near Changsha, a copy of the Zhouyi written on silk was unearthed. Its hexagram sequence differs greatly from the received text, and the wording of the Xici also diverges considerably. This manuscript, buried over 2,100 years ago, saw the light of day once more; scholars were overjoyed. It proved that in the early stages of transmission this book had more than one form, and it proved that the received text we read today is the result of countless hands transmitting, collating, and choosing over long centuries. Our twelve lectures follow the received text; when significant textual variants arise, we note them in passing. An ancient book is like an ancient tree: beyond its growth rings there are scars and graftings -- these do not diminish its beauty but add to its authenticity. Master Zhuang, summing up the Six Classics, said: "The Yi is for expressing yin and yang." The Shi (Odes) speaks of aspiration, the Shu (Documents) of events, the Li (Rites) of conduct, the Yue (Music) of harmony, the Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals) of proper distinctions -- and the Yi speaks of yin and yang, of that grand rhythm of opening and closing, going and coming between Heaven and Earth.