The Essence of the Xici Shangzhuan: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Junzi's Settled Peace and the Order of the Yijing
This article offers a deep reading of the core proposition in the Xici Shangzhuan — 'What the junzi dwells in and finds peace in is the order of the Yi' — integrating the pre-Qin context, the Confucian scholarly lineage, and the structure of the Zhouyi to elucidate how the junzi, by embodying the Way of Heaven and Earth, takes the Yi as the foundation of settled existence, contemplates the images and savors the statements, and ultimately attains the state of 'auspiciousness with nothing unfavorable.'
General Preface
The Zhouyi (Book of Changes) inherits from above the wisdom of Fuxi's upward gazing and downward observation, passes through the middle contribution of King Wen's doubling of the trigrams and appending of statements, and extends below to the Master's (Kongzi's) scholarship of wearing through the binding thongs thrice. Its lineage runs deep and its principles are vast — no single era or single person could exhaust them. The Xici Zhuan (Commentary on the Appended Statements) is where the Master expounded the grand meaning of the Yi, brought to light what earlier sages had left implicit, penetrated the transformative nurturing of Heaven and Earth, and illuminated the auspiciousness and misfortune of human affairs.
The passage this article investigates comes from the Xici Shangzhuan (Upper Commentary on the Appended Statements). It reads:
"Therefore, what the junzi dwells in and finds peace in is the order of the Yi; what he delights in and savors are the statements of the lines. Therefore, when at rest the junzi contemplates its images and savors its statements; when in action he observes its changes and savors its divinations. Thus Heaven itself aids him — auspicious, with nothing unfavorable."
Though this passage is brief, its inner riches are immense. It touches upon the relationship between the junzi and the Yi, the dialectic of rest and action, the joint contemplation of image and statement, the mutual illumination of change and divination, and the ultimate state of "Heaven itself aids him — auspicious, with nothing unfavorable." One may say that this passage is one of the spiritual guiding principles of the entire Xici Zhuan and indeed of the entire Zhouyi — a key to understanding how the pre-Qin sages used the Yi for self-cultivation, governance, and communion with the Mandate of Heaven.
Our purpose in rereading this passage today is neither philological pedantry nor divinatory technique, but rather an attempt to return to the context of the pre-Qin and high antiquity, and to conduct a deep, comprehensive, systematic reading of this text from three dimensions: the exegesis of words, the elucidation of principles, and the corroboration of history.
This article will strictly follow documents from the pre-Qin period and the two Han dynasties, extensively citing original texts from the Zhouyi with its commentaries, the Shangshu (Book of Documents), the Shijing (Book of Odes), the Zuozhuan (Zuo Commentary), the Guoyu (Discourses of the States), the Lunyu (Analects), the Mengzi (Mencius), the Xunzi, the Laozi, the Zhuangzi, the Liji (Book of Rites), the Da Dai Liji, the Guanzi, the Hanfeizi, the Lushi Chunqiu, and the Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), striving for rigorous evidence, well-grounded argumentation, accessibility within depth, and the discovery of new insights.
The full text comprises twelve chapters, plus a General Preface and Supplementary Remarks. Each chapter is presented in turn for the reader's consideration.