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 Seven: The Perspective of High Antiquity — Fuxi's Drawing of the Trigrams
The Xici Xiazhuan describes Fuxi's process: "He looked upward and contemplated the images in the heavens, looked downward and observed the patterns on the earth... 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 spirits, and to classify the conditions of all things."
Fuxi's motivation was to establish a systematic representation of the "order" of all things — giving later junzi a foundation on which to "dwell in peace." The method — gazing upward and observing downward, taking from near and far — was all-encompassing. As the Master said: "Does Heaven speak$9 The four seasons proceed; the hundred things are born" (Lunyu, "Yang Huo").
The eight trigrams correspond to eight natural phenomena in complementary pairs (Heaven/Earth, Mountain/Lake, Thunder/Wind, Water/Fire), and 2^3 = 8 produces a mathematically complete set. The later development to sixty-four hexagrams (8^2 = 64) provided the complexity needed to describe human affairs. The appending of statements represented a great cognitive leap — transforming the Yi from a purely divinatory tool into a comprehensive classic.