Dwelling, One Observes the Images; Acting, One Observes the Changes -- Reading the Chapter "The Sage Established the Hexagrams and Observed the Images" from the Upper Xici
A line-by-line reading of the second chapter of the Upper Xici. The sage's four acts -- establishing the hexagrams, observing the images, appending the statements, clarifying fortune and misfortune -- run in exact reverse order to the noble person's four acts -- observing the images, savoring the statements, observing the changes, savoring the divination. The four clauses "is the image of..." form a chain tracing effect back to cause; "the repose in which he dwells" echoes the Doctrine of the Mean's "dwelling in ease, awaiting the Mandate"; and the chapter closes by quoting the top line of hexagram Da You, "From Heaven comes its aid," gathering the whole into the two words compliance and good faith. Grounded in Confucian and Daoist thought, and drawing on the Analects, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, and the Zuo Tradition, it explores how the noble person finds repose between Heaven and Earth and acts amid change.
1 One Chapter, Two Halves: The Sage Makes, the Noble Person Learns
1.1 The Skeleton of the Chapter
1.1.1 The First Half: The Sage's Four Acts
In this line -- "the sages established the hexagrams and observed the images; they appended statements to them and thereby clarified fortune and misfortune" -- the sage performs four acts: establishing the hexagrams, observing the images, appending the statements, and clarifying fortune and misfortune. Establishing the hexagrams means laying out the six lines; observing the images means examining the configuration these six lines display; appending the statements means attaching words beneath the hexagram and its lines; clarifying fortune and misfortune means letting these words make plain what is lost and what is gained. The four acts form a single process moving from the formless to the formed, from Heaven and Earth to human affairs.
On the four characters "established the hexagrams and observed the images," ancient commentators long disputed whether hexagrams were established first and images observed afterward, or images observed first and hexagrams established afterward. This essay will not linger on the dispute, but will note one point: both directions in fact hold, and both must hold. The Lower Xici says: "In ancient times, when Baoxi ruled the world, he looked upward and observed the images in the heavens, looked downward and observed the models on the earth, observed the markings of birds and beasts and the suitabilities of the land, took near at hand from his own body and far off from other things, and thereupon first created the eight trigrams." Here the images of Heaven and Earth are observed first, and only afterward do the hexagrams exist. But once a hexagram is established, it becomes in turn an image that can itself be observed. The sage observes the images of Heaven and Earth and establishes the hexagrams; he then observes the image of the hexagram and appends the statements. The image here serves as an intermediary, joined on one side to Heaven and Earth, and on the other to the written word.
"The firm and the yielding push against each other and generate change and transformation" completes the previous sentence. The previous sentence concerns what the sage makes; this one concerns the operation of the hexagrams and lines themselves. The firm is the yang line, the yielding is the yin line, and "push against each other" means they displace and succeed one another. Change and transformation are not something the sage adds in; they arise naturally from the firm and the yielding pushing against each other. The sage only establishes the hexagrams and appends the statements, thereby displaying this natural change. This point will be taken up again below, when we discuss the word "clarify."
1.1.2 The Second Half: The Noble Person's Four Acts
"Therefore, dwelling, the noble person observes the images and savors their statements; acting, he observes the changes and savors the divination." The noble person likewise performs four acts: observing the images, savoring the statements, observing the changes, and savoring the divination. These four acts fall into two groups, one belonging to "dwelling," the other to "acting." While dwelling, he examines the images of the hexagrams and lines, and savors their statements. While acting, he examines the changes among the line positions, and savors the results of divination.
These four acts employ the very same set of terms as the sage's four acts before them: image and statement, together with change, which arises from the pushing of the firm and the yielding, and divination, which arises from the clarifying of fortune and misfortune. What the sage makes is precisely what the noble person learns. This is no coincidence; the author of the Xici deliberately wrote the two halves as a matched pair.
Between the sage's four acts and the noble person's four acts are inserted two further clauses: "the repose in which the noble person dwells is the order of the Changes; that in which he delights and which he savors is the statements on the lines." These two clauses serve as a transition, describing the noble person's two attitudes toward the Changes: toward its order, repose; toward its statements, delight. Repose and delight are precisely the psychological foundation for "dwelling" and "acting" discussed below. This point will be treated at length in Chapters 5 and 6.
1.1.3 The Middle: Four Clauses of "Is the Image of..." and One Clause on "the Way of the Three Ultimates"
Between the first half and the second half stand five clauses: "Fortune and misfortune are the images of loss and gain. Regret and remorse are the images of anxious care. Change and transformation are the images of advance and withdrawal. The firm and the yielding are the images of day and night. The motion of the six lines is the Way of the Three Ultimates."
The first four clauses share a uniform pattern: "X is the image of Y." They function like a translation table, rendering four terms from the hexagram and line statements back into human affairs and the Way of Heaven. Fortune and misfortune are translated as loss and gain; regret and remorse as anxious care; change and transformation as advance and withdrawal; the firm and the yielding as day and night. With this table in hand, the reader of the statements can know what the statements are speaking of, and the observer of the images can know what the images point to. The fifth clause, "the motion of the six lines is the Way of the Three Ultimates," differs in form: it speaks of the underlying principle governing the operation of all six lines together, that is, the Way of the three ultimates -- Heaven, Earth, and Man.
This chapter uses the word "therefore" twice. The first "therefore" introduces the fourfold translation table; the second "therefore" introduces the noble person's dwelling and acting. The two occurrences of "therefore" divide the whole chapter into three sections: the sage's making of the Changes, the images within the Changes, and the noble person's use of the Changes. The three sections advance in layers, from creation to understanding to practice.
1.2 The Path Retraced
1.2.1 The Sage Moves from Image to Statement; the Noble Person Returns from Statement to Image
Placing the sage's four acts and the noble person's four acts side by side reveals an interesting directionality. The sage's path runs: observing the images of Heaven and Earth, establishing the hexagrams, appending the statements, clarifying fortune and misfortune. This moves from the wordless Heaven and Earth, to the worded statements, and on to the fortune and misfortune that the statements make plain. The noble person's path runs: dwelling, he observes the images and savors the statements; acting, he observes the changes and savors the divination. On the surface, the noble person too observes the images first and then savors the statements, seeming to move in the same direction as the sage. But the "image" before the noble person is no longer the original image of Heaven and Earth, but the hexagram-image already established by the sage; the "statement" before the noble person is the statement already appended by the sage. Starting from the hexagram-image and the written statement, the noble person seeks to return to that very Heaven and Earth which the sage once observed.
In other words, the sage moves forward along the path of creation, from Heaven and Earth to the written word; the noble person moves backward along that same path of creation, from the written word to Heaven and Earth. The sage generates the statement from the image; the noble person returns to the image from the statement. The sage clarifies fortune and misfortune by way of change and transformation; the noble person observes change and transformation by way of divination. To study the Changes is to retrace, in reverse, the path by which the sage made the Changes. This point is the key to understanding the whole chapter: the noble person's four acts are not four techniques, but a single path of retracing. Retracing back to where$1 Back to that very Heaven and Earth the sage observed, back to that original change and transformation in which the firm and the yielding push against each other and day and night succeed one another.
The Master (Confucius) said, "I transmit but do not create; I trust in and love antiquity." To transmit is to walk back along the path made by those who came before. The noble person's study of the Changes is transmission, not creation -- yet transmission, carried to its furthest point, arrives at the same Heaven and Earth that the sage once saw. This is why studying the Changes can bring about the result "from Heaven comes its aid": not because one has learned some secret formula, but because one has walked back to the original order of Heaven and Earth.
1.2.2 Cross-Verification with "The Sage's Way Has Four Aspects"
Later in the Upper Xici there is a passage that can be cross-verified with this chapter: "The Changes contains four aspects of the sage's Way: one who would speak esteems its statements; one who would act esteems its changes; one who would fashion implements esteems its images; one who would divine by milfoil esteems its results of divination." The four things named here -- statement, change, image, divination -- are precisely the four terms in this chapter's account of the noble person's four acts. This chapter says the noble person "observes the images and savors their statements," "observes the changes and savors the divination"; that other passage says the sage's Way consists in these same four things: statement, change, image, divination. Reading the two passages together, one can see that this chapter's four acts of the noble person are not four actions jotted down at random, but the four roads of the Changes itself.
That passage continues: "Thus when the noble person is about to act, about to undertake something, he inquires of it in words, and it receives his charge as an echo answers a sound." Here "about to act, about to undertake something" is precisely this chapter's "acting." That passage also says, "The Changes has no thought and no deliberate action; it is still and unmoving, and when stirred it penetrates all the affairs of the world" -- here "still and unmoving" is precisely this chapter's "dwelling." The two passages are outer and inner aspects of one another: this chapter begins from the noble person's daily practice, that passage begins from the very substance of the Changes, yet both speak of the same thing.
1.3 The Word "Clarify": Fortune and Misfortune Are Not Made
1.3.1 "Fortune and Misfortune Are Generated" and "Clarifying Fortune and Misfortune"
This chapter says the sage "appended statements to them and thereby clarified fortune and misfortune." Note the word "clarify." The first chapter of the Upper Xici says: "Directions gather together according to kind, and things divide into groups; thus fortune and misfortune are generated." Fortune and misfortune are "generated" -- generated out of the gathering of things by kind and their division into groups, generated out of the operation of things themselves. Here in this chapter, the sage only "clarifies" fortune and misfortune; he does not "generate" it, still less "fix" it. Fortune and misfortune are already present within things; what the sage does is simply to illuminate it with the written word, so that people may see it.
This single word dispels a common misunderstanding: the notion that the hexagram statement prescribes fortune or misfortune, and that once one divines a particular hexagram or line, one has been judged fortunate or unfortunate. It is not so. Fortune and misfortune reside in the affair, not in the statement; the statement merely gives voice to the fortune or misfortune already present within the affair. Take the same phrase, "it is advantageous to cross the great river" -- whether one crosses or not still rests with the person himself. The function of the sage's appending of statements is to make things clear to people, not to decide on their behalf.
The first chapter of the Upper Xici also says: "In Heaven it forms images; on Earth it forms shapes; thus change and transformation are made manifest." Change and transformation are "made manifest," that is, they appear. Change and transformation have always been operating within Heaven and Earth; it is only once they form images and shapes that people come to see them. This "made manifest" carries the same sense as this chapter's "clarify." The sage's establishing of the hexagrams lets people see the change and transformation already present within Heaven and Earth; the sage's appending of statements lets people understand the fortune and misfortune already present within things. The sage who made the Changes is not a creator of things, but an illuminator of them.
1.3.2 The Most High's "To Know the Constant Is Called Clarity"
The Most High (Laozi) said: "Attain the utmost emptiness; hold fast to stillness with all sincerity. The myriad things arise together, and by this I observe their return. All things, in their profusion, each return to their root. To return to the root is called stillness; this is called returning to one's fate. To return to one's fate is called the constant; to know the constant is called clarity." Here "clarity" means knowing the constant Way by which the myriad things operate. The myriad things arise together and each return to its root -- this is the constant. To know this constant is clarity. Clarity does not create anything new; it sees clearly what was already there.
Reading this line of the Most High against this chapter's "clarifying fortune and misfortune" makes the meaning still more transparent. The sage's clarifying of fortune and misfortune is the sage's knowing of the constant. That the firm and the yielding push against each other and generate change and transformation, that day and night succeed one another and form the years and months -- this is the constant. Things operate within this constant Way: to comply with it is to gain, to go against it is to lose, and this is precisely fortune and misfortune. The sage sees this constant Way and speaks it through the statements -- this is "clarifying." When the noble person reads the statements, he too is seeking to know this constant. The Most High also said, "Not to know the constant, and to act recklessly, is misfortune." Not knowing the constant and acting recklessly is the very source of misfortune. This accords entirely with the Changes' view of fortune and misfortune: misfortune is not a punishment imposed from outside, but the result of acting recklessly in ignorance of the constant.
So the word "clarify" at the head of this chapter has, all along, quietly determined the nature of the whole chapter. The Changes is not a book of prophecy; it is a book that makes things clear to people. The sage clarifies it, the noble person learns it, and what is clarified is one and the same constant Way. With this understanding in hand, when we go on to read the four clauses "is the image of..." below, we can see that they are not a glossary of divinatory terms, but four keys translating the constant Way into human affairs.