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.'
Chapter Four: Detailed Exegesis — "When at Rest the Junzi Contemplates Its Images and Savors Its Statements"
"Rest" (ju) and "action" (dong) form a fundamental binary. During rest, one contemplates images (guan qi xiang) — the visual, holistic, intuitive apprehension of hexagram figures — and savors statements (wan qi ci) — the repeated, fine-grained experience of the textual content. "Contemplating" suits the graphic nature of images; "savoring" suits the verbal nature of statements. Together they mean grasping both the overall configuration and every detail.
The Xici Shangzhuan explains their complementarity: "The sages established images to fully express their thought... appended statements to fully express their words." Image and statement mutually illuminate each other.
The Zuozhuan provides vivid examples. In Duke Zhao, Year 12, Zifu Huibo showed that "a yellow lower garment — supreme good fortune" (Kun, six in the fifth) does not apply to disloyal enterprises — demonstrating that "contemplating images and savoring statements" requires deep understanding of internal logic, not mechanical matching.
"Rest" effort is the foundation for "action" application. As the Master said: "If a man can recite all three hundred poems of the Shijing yet cannot manage affairs competently or respond independently in diplomacy — though he has memorized many, what use is it$8" (Lunyu, "Zi Lu"). Master Xun added: "Without accumulating small steps, one cannot reach a thousand li" ("Exhortation to Learning").