zhou y idao

8/13/2019 Zhou Y iDao

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Yi Dao

A Spiritual Path of Work, Study and Meditation

Based on the Ancient Chinese book the Yi Jing (I Ching)

Known in the West as the Book of Changes

Therefore the superior man, when living quietly, contemplates the emblems and studies theexplanations of them; when initiating any movement, he contemplates the changes (that are madein divining), and studies the prognostications from them. Thus 'is help extended to him from

Heaven; there will be good fortune, and advantage in every movement.'Xi Ci I , 2


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Folksy and Slightly Pretentious Preface

(If you just want to start using the beads see the

Read Me First chapter below)

It is traditional to start books about the Yi Jing by

saying that its the oldest Chinese book and

launching into a panegyric on its rich spiritual and

mystical heritage. Well, were not going to do that.

For one thing it isnt the oldest book from China,

several of the Confucian Classics and at least one

non-canonical book (the Bamboo Annals) have

sections predating the Yi Jing. And as to the

panegyric, I consider the Yi a book worthy of

dedicating many lifetimes to. Would that I believed

in reincarnation and could do so! Now on to a brief

introduction to Yi Dao, which is a materialist

approach to the Yi Jing. Yi Dao is a form ofRealism. Realism, in turn, is the path for all you out

there who are spiritual, but not religious. We have

beads and chanting and studious monastics (or at

least people who dress funny and keep unusual

hours), we just dont have an actual religion at the

heart of the whole thing.

Introduction

Reality is.

Thats a simple but challenging statement. There is

an observed reality and the only thing that distorts it

are the flaws and ripples in the glass through which

we see itour minds.

Reality was.

The universe has no need for a creator. There is no

need for giants, ghosts, pixies, imaginary friends or

gods. Reality got us here just fine without having to

resort to any blind watch makers, divine demiurges

or intelligent designers. Reality gets along just fine

without wishful thinking and fantasies. Im not

against fantasy. Imagination and play are precious

cargo that we bring with us from childhood. But it

is counterproductive to continue believing in Santa

Claus after you understand that people buy gifts for

their children at the store or make the toys

themselves.

Reality will be.

Every day more and more people in the world

discover that the world is real. They grow up. They

come to realize that there is a real universe and that

we are not at its very center. Only by reaching

beyond the words, behind the appliqus and painted

scenery boards that we paste on the front of reality,can we touch reality itself. For those so inclined, by

bringing the symbols of the ancient Yi Jing deep

within us we can reach an intimate understanding of

reality--enlightenment, if you like the term. The old

saying goes: A picture is worth a thousand words.

Well, a symbol is worth a thousand pictures. At the

same time that many discover reality, many more

take the easy way out and buy into a religion. They

take things on faith. But faith is easy, and reality is

hard. Yi Dao is the Easy Way. But thats a bit of an

inside joke. Its true that the daily practices of Yi

Dao only take a few minutes of meditation and a

little reading. But to face the universe, unblinking,

and acknowledge that we know little more about it

than its vastness, is hard.

Okay, now it really gets rough: Life is real.

Death is real. Life and death work together.

Galaxies die, stars die, civilizations die, and peopledie. The only thing that is eternal and infinite is the

totality of all that is real and the change that makes

that reality move. Using the small lens that we have

to work with, the human mind, we really cannot tell

if there is something beyond the limits of what we

define as the universe. But I would say that based

on the way things usually work out we will

eventually find the edge of the big bang heading


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outward and see something beyond itother big

bangs heading this way from the surrounding

universes. Or it may be that our perception cant

grasp what the universe is really like, that the whole

wide cosmos seems as it is to us only because we

cannot perceive it, and if we did perceive we would

find some horrid Lovecraftian asymmetry that

would send us into stark raving madness, perhapseven cause us to start believing wild ideas, for

instance that there is a stone firmament over the

earth with holes to let the rain through and stars

stuck to it with safety pins.

Because death is real, life moves from the crude

to the refined.

So there is a justification for all the sadness. There

are organisms that clone themselves rather thanreproduce by mixing it up between the Yin and

Yang. Those organisms are elaborate dead ends.

They never change; they never go beyond the niche

they are in. They might as well be rocks. It is the

constant re-throwing of the clay on the wheel that

produces a great work of art. It is by the constant

pounding motion of evolution that life moves

forward. But we dont understand the why or

wherefore of it. We know that the universe of today

is born of the death of trillions of stars that wentbefore, but we cannot conceive what the whole

project might be about. Religious thinkers, now that

they have, for the most part, stopped killing those

with differing opinions, would have us believe that

all this is part of a divine plan. Its possible that

there is a plan. There may even be a motivation, a

grand purpose. The entire universe could just as

easily exist as the product of a massive cosmic

entity trying to get the malt mix just right for a

batch of beer. We cannot perceive the scale of the

whole. That is where Yi Dao comes in. If we

meditate on the figures of the Yi Jing, a set of

figures which perfectly represent all of reality, then

at some point we may get a flash of inspiration and

get closer to understanding reality. At the very least

we may be able to get some of that cosmic beer

when its ready.

Consider a few moments from science in our day:

We know that all the elements in our world, the

very stuff we are made of, come from the hearts of

long dead stars. Iron, appropriately enough, comes

from a stage in a stars life where it collapses in and

explodes outward; a moment of deadly conflict,

appropriate to Mars, whose metal is traditionallyiron. But Mars the God is an entity dreamt up by

man to fill a need. Metallic iron and the planet Mars

are much more useful in science than tales of the

god Mars, but they make for lousy poetry. So we

need to keep a balance of loving and respecting

ancient traditions without allowing them to run our

livesor ruin our lives. But that concept of the

cycle of life of stars producing ever more complex

life in the universe is key. When we look at the

images that roll in from the mind-bending distancesof the cosmos and are told that here there is a

supernova destroying all within X number of light

years distance and there are two galaxies colliding

there is a natural human reaction of gut wrenching

fear. If it is all so easy, if life on billions of planets

and stars can be wiped out any moment by the blind

interplay of larger events in motion then we too are

in the path of destruction. We too may be swept

away at any moment. Indeed it does not take

anything so large and significant as a galactic

cataclysm. A mere asteroid a few kilometers across

hitting this planet can wipe out nearly all life and

has done so repeatedly in the past, apparently. But

in the cool, calm rationality of the Yi all of this is

the imperfection of perfection. All of this is part of

a grander scheme. The scale, grandeur and beauty

of it all are the subject of wonder, not of terror. To

attain to this level of detachment is a great

achievement on the path.

Dark matter and dark energyare they the latest

big answer? Perhaps people will read that phrase

in the future and smile. Maybe dark matter and dark

energy are the beginning of a grand scheme of

understanding reality. On the other hand maybe

they are the next ether, the next phlogiston (no,

Phlogiston is not one of those little Central Asian

republics with lots of people and no oil, look it up


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for goodness sake, it once was the next big thing

in science just like dark matter and dark energy are

today).

As Heraclitus said, everything flows, and in so

saying echoes Confucius. Yi Dao is about living

here and now, striving for years to be connected to

one place at one time and understand it all. Yi Daoseeks the next stop after Samadhi. Samadhi is to be

here now. Yi Dao is to be everywhere now.

On Accepting the World as It Is

Knowing reality and accepting it 'as is' is a key part

of Yi Dao, but stoically accepting fate is not

sufficient. The philosophers who wrote the Yi Jing

call on us to rejoice in the appointments of heaven.

We go beyond accepting reality as it iswe rejoice

in that knowledge. We exult in the absolute

unshakable solidity of being. This acceptance, this

Amor fati, is the key to the questions that our

materialist path answers, questions that all the

worlds religions puzzle over in vain: Why is the

world so arbitrary? Why is there evil and why do

bad things happen to good people? What is the

purpose of life? Why is there no evidence that the

Gods exist? Why is there suffering?

Because thatsthe way things are, thats why.

Im not kidding. Its just that simple. There is a term

that was popular for a time: tough love. We need

to have tough love for ourselves. We need to look

infinity in the eye, look into the gaping maw of

trillions upon trillions of galaxies stretching out

beyond our limited line of sight, and say: It is

beautiful, it is awe-inspiring, it is great and

significant and we are small and puny.but that is

all relative. It all IS. That is the key. That is the

wellspring. Reality IS. Nature IS. No amount of

religious posturing will make fairy tales and wishful

thinking actually become measurably true. That

simple idea, that things are as they are and not as we

imagine or wish them to be, marks the line between

a thought system that is based on fantasy and one

based on the real world as we perceive it.

Humanity is ready to put aside its childish

attachments to our cradle toys and look at the world

as it is. Or at least a few humans are ready to do so.

Lets face it, most people cannot handle the reality

of reality and will stay in the cotton wadding nest of

deception that they inherited from their parents and

their parents before them. But we are faced with the

same phenomena that send them scurrying to thepews, and our answers are different. For instance

we affirm that death is not from inherited sins; it is

a way to clear things out and bring out improved

organisms. Life is not a preface to an eternity of

real life. Life is here and now and it denies all the

machinations of religion through its very existence.

Suffering is neither a lesson, nor a gift, nor a result

of a reality we should escape, it is a part of reality

and we accept and embrace all of reality and fight to

eliminate suffering and seek to increase joy.

Life improves itself and refines itself and we have

no idea why. But we do know one thing: There are

natural laws and our understanding of those laws

improves and is refined just as life itself can be

improved.

What does all of this have to do with Yi Dao? In

fact, what is Zhou Yi Dao (Yi Dao for short)? Yi

Dao is a swirling fabric of contradictions that leadsto the perfect peace of understanding the world and

accepting it. Yi Dao is a system of materialist

thought, study and meditation that bases itself on a

3,000 year old scripture and rejects the very concept

of scripture. It is based on the Yi Jing (I Ching), one

of the most ancient books of divination in the world,

but it rejects the utility of predictive divination. Yi

Dao is a path for those who are spiritual, but not

religious. Yi Dao is what you make of it, because it

is a Path, and it is a Way, but it is not a faith and it

is not a religion. Yi Dao is utterly Chinese, but

invented by an American. It is thoroughly new, but

a natural outgrowth of something very ancient. The

only surprising thing about Yi Dao is that nobody

seems to have thought of using beads to keep track

of meditation before me, and precious few seem to

have used the figures of the Yi Jing as a visual

mantra.


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Okay, now the practical aspects of living the

spiritual path of Yi Dao.

Components of the Path

There are three elements of Yi Dao: Work, Study

and Meditation.

Work is no doubt familiar to many of you already.If you arent independently wealthy (andperhaps

even if you are) work is what you do to support

yourself and perhaps also is very central to who you

are. Some people work to pay for what they enjoy,

others enjoy their work. In both cases working, and

keeping up our obligations to family, community

and the wider world of society, is the foundation of

the Confucianist life and thus the basis of Yi Dao

(did I mention that we are based on Confucianism?

No? Well, that cat is out of the bag now. After all,

the Yi Jing is a Confucian classic). There is a

religious concept of being in the world, but not of

it. Thats not us. We are in the world and we are of

the world.

Study is to the Yi Dao practitioner what horseshoes

are to a smith. We labor at our studies and use what

we learn in our work. We study to improve

ourselves, to enjoy ourselves, and ultimately to

leave a legacy. Our study and its results effect all

that we leave behind, whether it is in the children

we raise, the people we teach or the people for

whom we write or otherwise create.

Meditation is what probably got you reading this,

and it is the core of Yi Dao, what distinguishes it

from other paths. Yi Dao meditation can be done in

the typical settings for meditationplacid forest,

peaceful shore, etc., far from the madding crowd.

But it is more typically practiced right in the middle

of that madding crowd. Before we go further on that

subject lets run through how to do Yi Dao

meditation, at least the techniques Ive been

working with.


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READ THIS FIRSTThe

Impatient Readers Guide to Yi Dao

To practice Yi Dao meditation all you need is a

human mind and the 64 hexagrams of the Yi Jing (I

Ching). I started running through the 64 Hexagrams

in their traditional King Wen order in my mind as

soon as I memorized the figures as a teenager. In

moments of pain or boredom or difficulty they have

been a great refuge and consolation. But its easy to

lose your place, so to keep track of your meditation

on the figures you can use an Yi Dao circlet and an

Yi Dao counter. These are items I have created for

myself over the last few years and am now ready to

distribute. The circlet is a type of mala or thinking

beads with 64 beads on it. The counter contains

two sets of eight counters, the cycle counters on theright and the greater circlet counters on the left. You

meditate on each hexagram and move your fingers

over the appropriate bead on the circlet, breathing in

for the bottom trigram and out slowly for the top

one.

Those meditating on the hexagrams of the Yi Jing

fall naturally into the following categories:

1. Those who dont know the Yi Jing and are

probably wondering what the heck all these

hexagrams and trigrams are. You need to

study the Yi Jing a little before you do Yi

Dao.

2. Those who know the Yi Jing, but have not

memorized the 64 Hexagrams.

3. Those who know the 64 hexagram images

by heart and can meditate on them without

the aid of a chart.

4. Those who are able to see all the figures atonce. I dont know if such people exist They

may only come to be after the Digital

Singularity. The goal of Yi Dao is the same

as the goal of science: to understand and

explain the universe, and I suspect being

able to see all of the figures at once is a big

step on that path, allowing the person who

can do it to perform complex visualizations

when thinking about the world, relationships

change, etc..

Yi Dao has very little rite and ceremony to it, but

there are daily practices and a rite of passage. The

daily practices are tracked in a daily journal and/or

blog. Each day an Yi Dao practitioner completes at

least one meditation on the 64 hexagrams,preferably in the morning when they have

performed their ablutions but not yet started work or

eating. Here is what I do:

Ring a bell.

Meditate on the 64 Hexagrams.

Ring a bell.

Do an Yi Jing reading that draws one or two texts asstudy texts for the day (I use the Nanjing method to

cut things down to one or two texts. See details in

the Appendix).

Read the Chinese text aloud, then the lesser image

of the text, the text again, the greater image for the

Hexagram as a whole, and the text a third time.

Obviously you may want to read the text in your

own language, and Chinese is not my native

language, so what I read is a book that hasinterlinear texts of the Pinyin transcription along

with the characters.

Record the lesson for the day in your journal/blog,

along with the other readings for the day. I keep

these readings brief (one of the meanings of Yi, in

Yi Jing, is easy).

Ring a bell.

Put everything away and start your day.

At some point during day I study the lesson text

from the Yi Jing. I dont view it as an omen for the

day, but I do often find it useful as a cautionary text

in dealing with people and events in the course of

the day.

In the evening I study other texts. The one I

consider standard is reading three verses of the


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Analects of Confucius (the Lun Yu of Kongzi).

There is no greater teacher that I have ever met in

my intellectual travels. His Analects introduced me

to the Yi, and for that I am eternally grateful. I

recommend getting several editions of the Analects

and reading as much commentary as you can. Many

of the sayings will mean nothing to you if you dont

absorb some of the historic and philosophic contextin which they were created.

It was traditional in ancient China to have a kind of

major and minor in the Confucian Classics. Every

scholar was supposed to know all the classics, but

there was still a concentration in one book with a

lesser focus in another, with the rest of the classics

getting much less work and attention. Another

tradition I find charming is that those who study the

Yi Jing traditionally start either in childhood orretirement. It is a book that requires a certain

amount of detachment from the world to grasp. So

in Yi Dao our major is the Book of Changes, and

our minor is the Analects, and the rest of the

classics round out our studies.

And thats it; the minimal practices. The rest

depends on the time you have and to what depth

you want to go in exploring Yi Dao meditation. You

can for instance add other readings of thecommentaries and appendices of the Yi, other

Confucian classics, or other philosophers, such as

Xunzi.

The rite of passage I mentioned above is this: When

an Yi Dao practitioner is ready to move from using

a chart to go through the hexagrams of the Yi to

keeping them in their minds eye they write out the

hexagrams. Sit down and write the figures in their

traditional King Wen order from memory without

making a single error and you have graduated.

The chart you create is then suitable for framing,but better used ceremonially at your morning

meditation. Even if you have the figures memorized

and use them throughout the day, at morning

meditation you keep a chart of the hexagrams in

front of you. Perhaps if we get really organized

well use writing out the hexagrams as a test for

entry into the ranks of initiates. Then we can haze

the heck out of those who have not memorized the

hexagrams, call them little brain, etc.Probably not

though.

A major alternative that someone could explore is

using the Fu Xi, binary order of the hexagrams to

meditate. There are some very interesting

possibilities in such a practice, since you will be

getting what amounts to a computers eye view of

the hexagrams. You could use the Ma Wang Dui

order as well. It is much simpler to memorize than

the King Wen order, and could allow you to do an

in-depth meditation on one of the most important

aspects of Yi Jing studies from its very outset: The

family attributes of the Eight Trigrams.


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Here is a picture of the current version of an Yi Dao circlet:


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Bi4 Shi1 Song4 Xu1 Meng2 Zhun1 Kun1 Qian2

Yu4 Qian1 Da4 You3 Tong2 Ren2 PI3 Tai4 L3 Xiao3 Xu4

Fu4 Bo1 Bi4 Shi4 He2 Guan1 Lin2 Gu3 Sui2

Heng2 Xian2 Li2 Kan3 Da4 Guo4 Yi2 Da4 Xu4 Wu2 Wang4

Jie3 Jian3 Kui2 Jia1Ren2 Ming2 Yi2 Jin4 Da4 Zhuang4 Dun4

Jing3 Kun4 Sheng1 Cui4 Gou4 Guai4 Yi4 Sun3

L3 Feng1 Gui1 Mei4 Jian4 Gen4 Zhen4 Ding3 Ge2

Wei4 Ji4 Ji4 Ji4 Xiao3 Guo4 Zhong1 Fu2 Jie2 Huan4 Dui4 Xun4


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The coins used in circlets are old Chinese cash

coins with a square hole in the middle. They rangein age from 200 to 2,000 years old.

The tower of the circlet consists of three elements,

the globe, representing the Tai Qi (Yin and Yang),the yak bone disk representing the four elements of

Elder and younger Yang and Yin and the coin,

representing the Ba Gua, the eight trigrams.

Miscellaneous Notes on Yi Dao

There is a lot of satisfaction knowing that the

system you are studying is directly connected to the

infinite beauty and majesty that is the universe.

Consider the fact that no matter where you go, atleast in this set of dimensions we inhabit, the 64

hexagrams of the Yi Jing cover all aspects of the

reality you are in. If you were stranded somewhere

in a habitable place a billion light years from here(try to think about how far that is some time), you

could take your Yi Dao circlet out and meditate toform a closer connection with the reality of that

place. But you can just as easily connect while

standing in line or listening to music far less than a

billion light years away.

The texts were attached to the figures of the Zhou

Yi 3,000 years ago and what we can determine oftheir meaning is very different from the Yi Jing of

2,300-2,500 years ago. Those texts are in turn moredifferent still from the relatively modern

interpretation of the Song Dynasty 1,000 years ago.Like the Well in hexagram 48. The town changes

around it, the well stays the same. To give the

western reader a better insight into what I mean bythe meaning of the text differing in different times,

imagine a single text which, interpreted one way is

the text of the Jewish Bible and interpreted anotherway is the Christian New Testament. Although the

text does not in fact vary by this much, the

variations there are sometimes are quite striking andeffectively create a book within the book. The coretext, a divination manual for a culture that still lived

on a mix of agriculture and hunting and was chiefly

concerned with matters of survival is in sharpcontrast with the finely tuned moral and

cosmological text of later years. Many of the terms

of the Yi as an ancient divination manual speak of

sacrifices, including human sacrifices. Those samewords carry a very different meaning in the

interpretation of the Yi in the Song Dynasty (and

the modern editions of the Yi Jing, including those

of Legge and Wilhelm, are based on a QingDynasty edition which in turn is based on the work

of Song Dynasty scholars such as Zhu Xi and

Cheng Yi). A concrete example of this is the term

Zhen1 (). In ancient texts, such as the oracle

bone inscriptions, this term simply means consultthe oracle. In later works, such as those of the Song

Dynasty and succeeding ages, the term becomesperseverance.Add to this the complication ofsome terms having more than one meaning in

antiquity, such as Fu2, which in some places may

mean prisoner of war and in others return, and theconfusion reaches a whole new level.

The symbols of the Yi are binary. The nature of its

operation is in keeping with quantum theory at leastwithin my very limited understanding of quantum

theory. It is the most ancient computer in the world

still in operation (unless one counts the universeitself as a computer, which in information theory isapparently quite plausible). It is the most elegant

tool that you can ever possess and it is yours for the

humble payment of a little study. By studying thesymbols of the Yi Jing you will be in the heady

company of the great sages of China, with Emperor

Fu Xi of the Xia, King Wen and King Wu of theZhou, Kongzi (Confucius) and all the thousands

upon thousands of scholars, poets, diviners and

philosophers who have found a home in the great

bifurcating branches of the garden of forking pathsthat is the Yi.

Reality Suffices

Humans make a thousand arguments and defend a

thousand positions. They take a hundred roads, but

all lead to the same place.

Yi Dao is the inevitability of nature. It is eternal,

implacable and inarguable. That in itself is very

reassuring. Wherever you are, reality is there.

Where there is reality, the 64 hexagrams mark it out

In the scheme of the 64 hexagrams we have a map

of all that is. The figures organize and follow the

lines of increase and decrease, growth and decay,

they lead from simplicity to refinement. In short, all

things that are, have been, and may be are in the


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chart of hexagrams we meditate on daily.

Our planet came into being in a most instructive

form. It is said that without the Moon we would

likely not have life on earth, or that it would be very

primitive (the same is said of Jupiter, which catches

a lot of the wild shots that the cosmos throws at us).

But also consider the Moon as a useful lesson, partof the classic pairs of analogy: The Sun rises and

the Moon sets, the cold withdraws and the heat

increases. Seasons come and go and the cyclical

alterations show us the Dao. We watch the Sun

ascend in the sky and know at its peak it will start to

decline. We gaze at the Moon and know that all

over the planet, others look up, seeing that same

gray orb. Its light joins us together in a gentle way

that the brash and blinding Sun cannot. But it, like

us, like the Earth, like the very galaxy in which we

all dwell is born, grows, thrives, and fades into

death. The death of the stars provide the material for

new planets and new life. We are part of eternity.

We contemplate it every day, and if we were 10

billion light years away from here we would

contemplate those very same 64

figures, because that is our map.

There is no need for fantasies in this model. Realitysuffices.

Living as The Well

It is said that no man is an island, and well said. All

are connected, and everything in the universe is

within six degrees of separation from everything

else in the universe. All changes, and we find that

frightening. We want to establish an island of calm,

a place where all is good and stays that way in the

midst of the swirling whirlpools of change. Yi Dao

gives us that. The Yi Jing gives us a rational

description of everything in reality in a form brief

enough to keep in our daily thoughts. By

consistently practicing Yi Dao we can attain to

being The Well. The town changes but the well

stays the same. We observe reality, we provide the

cool, life-giving water of the Yi to all who look

below the surface to find it, but we are but a conduit

to that source. We take as much of the cool water of

the Yis wisdom into our crude bucket brains and

pray that the rope doesnt break before we get to the

top of the shaft to share it with the wider world. We

attain to immortality, but it is an immortality of

reality. As long as there is reality it will be

described by the figures of the Yi. By studyingthose figures and making them the core of our being

we touch reality and understand that there is no

need for the fairy tales. Reality is perfect in its

imperfection. This is our eternity.

The Four Meanings of Yi

Chinese characters are 'over-loaded' to borrow a

term from programming. One character can have

several meanings, with the intended meaning drawnfrom context and usage. Needless to say this can get

confusing, but it adds a layer of richness to the text

and allows for some depth of interpretation not

found in a more unequivocal language.

Changing

Change according to the circumstances the most

basic meaning of Yi is change. That's why the Yi

Jing is called the Book of Changes.

We change in response to the situation. Laughter is

polite when listening to a joke, anything but polite

when listening to someone recounting a tragedy.

Unchanging

Yes, that's right; a character in classical Chinese can

sometimes mean one thing in one place and the

opposite in another.

The superior person always has a moral core. They

have certain principles that are not subject to

negotiation or even coercion. This is also part of the

unchanging portion of Yi Dao.

Exchange

Changing and the lack of change refer to qualitative

change. The metaphor is chemical change. Once


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you have burned wood you cannot 'unburn' it, at

least in a narrow context. But exchange has two

meanings. One is the rearrangement of matter and

energy that represents a type of quantitative change.

As an example, if there is too much water in one

place and not enough in another the nature of the

water is the same; it is the arrangement or location

that is causing the change.

The other meaning of exchange is the exchange that

occurs between opposites. Yang grows and Yin

recedes. Yin grows and Yang recedes. The

opposites push back and forth, never attaining a

pure state of dominance, but exchanging their

preeminence.

Easy

The Great Treatise says: "That which is easy is easy

to follow". Yi Dao practice is easy. This is

deliberate. If something is going to be to done every

day that goes beyond the built-in human necessities

of sleeping, eating, etc., it must be easy to do or it

will soon fall away. By following the easy way of

Yi Dao you gradually achieve something difficult.

The texts and figures of the Yi become second

nature because you study and meditate on them

daily. The teachings of Kongzi and the othermasters you study daily in small amounts

accumulate by repetition. Soon you will find the

words of the Yi Dao texts pop up in life situations,

assisting understanding and helping you make

decisions.

On Potential Purity and Manifest Reality

The figures of the Yi Jing are in the realm of the

ideal. Qian is pure Yang and Kun is pure Yin. In thereal world there is never perfect purity. No matter

how perfect a crystal may appear, there is always a

minute flaw. If you purify alcohol it will never be

100%. What's more, if you open a barrel of pure

alcohol it will immediate lose some of its purity

because it absorbs water from the air it contacts.

From this I conjecture that Qian and Kun are the

matrix of reality, but they differ from the other

Hexagrams. They are the parents of the universe,

but in our daily lives we deal with their children, the

other six Hexagrams, and never directly encounter

pure Yang and pure Yin.

Pre-Eminence of the Positive

A state of perfection is never seen in nature, as I say

above. This is a fundamental principal that drives

what we perceive as evolution or progress in the

universe. There is a slight imbalance between the

Yang and Yin that gives everything a directional

spin. Some describe this as being theeffect of

entropy that causes systems to move from

organization into eventual chaos. There are some

dissenting voices on the end, with some viewing

entropy as a factor, but not a limiter, and closed

systems capable of moving from chaos into

organization cyclically or transferring theiraccumulated organization to other closed systems,

effectively seeding the wider universe with

organization without falling victim to entropy. All

that is beyond the scope of my simple perception of

things. I once calculated the number of negative,

positive and neutral omens as I judged them, in the

Yi Jing. The number showed just slightly more

positives than negatives. Again, this shows a slight

positive spin to reality. Although the figures

themselves are a perfect set of 32 and 32, their sum

is perceived as being slightly out of balance at any

given point of observation. It is this slight bulge of

positive in perceived reality that keeps the cosmic

ball rolling. Perfect balance is stasis; the heat death

of entropy worked out to its end. That end is never

reached because for each closed system there is

always a system beyond its limits. By this I mean

that we perceive the universe as starting in the big

bang and expanding outward. But we do so onlybecause we cannot see beyond that limit to the other

big bangs that are expanding all around us,

hurtling towards us and influencing our reality in

ways beyond our current comprehension.

Perception and Human History

We evolved from creatures that lived with constant

attrition from the other animals into such a position


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of domination in the natural world that we often

have to hold back from crushing other species in

building our communities and living our day to day

lives. That evolution left us with survival tools that

are often useful to us today as in the ancient times,

but they definitely effect our perceptions and the

ways we describe and explain reality. Our attitude

and interaction with the Yi Jing and similar systemsof divination are an excellent example of a realm

where human nature influences perception. There is

a tendency in human beings to imagine entities to

explain actions. An example of this are seeing the

destruction wreaked by a recent storm in the woods

and imagining that there were angry giants who had

uprooted the trees and tossed them around. Another

such moment is finding a huge fossilized bone in a

place where there are no large animals and deciding

that there are dragons which currently exist, not

dinosaurs existing in the past. Scientists explain the

tendency to imagine entities as part of our survival

mechanism. Think of an ancient pre-human or

human hearing a noise in the wild . They may

ignore it or they may consider it the sound of a

potential predator. Survival can hinge on making

the more cautious assumption, even if it is

empirically incorrect. If you think that every time

you hear a branch crack it is the sound of a tigermany of those tigers are imaginary. But if even one

of them is real the risk to your continuing your

genetic line is high. Thus when we divine with the

Yi there is a feeling that it is like the advice of

parents, that there is an entity that speaks to us

through this inanimate collection of symbols and

words. This is a key element in all religious

experiences. Now we are able to gain some degree

of objectivity by using the instruments of science

and logic (neither one is enough on its own, but

form two halves of a whole). We can eliminate

many of the imaginary tigers of our perceived

reality and come to use the Yi as a way to

understand the world, not a primitive predictive tool.

Perception and DivinationCaution,

Slippery Slopes Abound

When we are facing an important decision and

consult the Yi Jing or some other oracle we enter an

area of shifting sands in the realm of the human

mind. Looking back over the times you got answers

from the Yi over the years you may very well recallsome remarkable answers, sometimes when the text

seemed to be spot on about the question at hand. I

see two key factors in this perception of the

experience. One is commonly seen when dealing

with predictions: we tend to have selective

recollection. We tend to remember our successes

and air brush out our misses. We dont recall those

times when the text seemed to be out of left field

as intensely as those times when the book seemed to

be speaking directly to us (or not speaking, as when

we asked something repeatedly and got the 4th

hexagram). But this distortion of our perception is

at once important and trivial. Trivial because it is

simply the way we perceive many things in life,

important because the texts attached to the Yi give

us a key to how a very different set of diviners

interpreted these figures. I mention imaginary tigers

above. At the time the Yi was written they were

anything but imaginary and the 10th

hexagram isformed around the adrenaline soaked idea of

stepping on a tigers tail. Over the centuries many

have interpreted the texts attached to the figures and

the lines based on such concepts as centrality,

correctness, etc. An objective examination of the

texts based on such rules comes up short (for

instance hexagram 63 is perfect in every physical

aspect of centrality, correctness, etc. but it is

hexagram 15 that is the most auspicious).

A Blooming Principle

I saw a banner in a Chinese TV show some time

ago that said 'A hundred flowers bloom.' It was

meant to be a leftover propaganda poster still

hanging on the doorframe of an old country house

in China. Later in the day I was reading a book on

the history of the universe and ran into the concept

that all life on earth comes from one event, onn 'Big


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Birth' that went on to produce all the rest.

This is a fundamental principle of Yi: In the Spring,

flowers bloom; not hundreds, not thousands, tens

and hundreds of millions and all more or less at

once. Things don't happen as single eventsthat

spread, like carefully arranged dominos, to every

corner of the world. When something is invented, asa rule, it is because its time has come. It is 'in

season'. That is why human inventions so often

occur in different places at more or less the same

time. This is an underlying principle of nature, and I

think it extends all the way up the line. In other

words, yes, I think there were more than one big

bangs, we just don't have the instruments to be able

to see the other ones. Biology follows the same

trend line. We found Lucy, the so called 'Eve' from

whom all life came and genetic proof has been

provided to show that all life came from that one

small tribe in Africa. I don't buy it. According to the

'flowers bloom' principle there were several places

where humans appeared, more of less at the same

time. It remains to be seen if I am right.

When Things Fall Into Place

Until a divination is performed the state of the Yi

Jing is to be equally likely to produce any of the

figures and their attached texts. When we engage a

random method such as the integer generator at

random.org (my personal favorite), or use coins or

yarrow stalks to consult, we are fixing a point in

time (six points, actually, once for each line of the

hexagram cast. It remains for those much more

clever than I to fill in the details, but I instinctively

feel that this process is more than meets the eyes.

The field of possibilities collapses, producing ahexagram. We read the texts attached to it and

evaluate the figure itself in coming to a decision

about a matter in doubt. Until that moment the Yi is

everywhere and all things. After that moment it is in

a single state, and that state points down the

timeline in a certain direction. The concept of a

random operation collapsing a probability field into

a known data point is very like how quantum

particles/waves act, I think. There is a rich field of

exploration in the juncture between the Yi and

quantum theory. Perhaps someone reading this will

be the one who connects the dots.

The Family Arrangement of the Ba Gua

The Ba Gua, or eight trigrams, are the foundation of

the Yi Jing. There is much scholarly discussion of

what came first, the three line or six line figures of

the Yi. It is a chicken and the egg type of discussion

stretching back millennia. Traditionally it was Fu Xi

the legendary first sage emperor, who observed the

world and drew the Ba Gua. Much later (thousands

of years later) King Wen of Zhou doubled the

figures to form hexagrams while he was imprisoned

by the last emperor of the Shang Dynasty, the tyrant

Zhou (his name is a different 'Zhou' in the Chinese

characters than that of the dynasty name 'Zhou').Such is the traditional account. The order in which

the figures were created may be of merely academic

interest, but the association of the Ba Gua with the

roles of a family has always been significant. The

family arrangement is the parents and three pairs of

siblings:

Qian - Father

Zhen - Eldest Son

Kan - Middle Son

Gen - Youngest Son

Kun - Mother

Xun - Eldest Daughter

Li - Middle Daughter

Dui - Youngest Daughter

The division of the six child trigrams into Yang and

Yin is based on the proportions. A Yang trigram has

one Yang line and two Yin. The Yin trigram has

one Yin line and two Yang. There are many ways to

explain this. One image that arises is that it is a

microcosm of life in the traditional family of

ancient China. A man represented the connection

between generations. He dealt with his mother and


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his wife in one household. Thus his role was to

interact with past and present and move into the

future. The woman went from her father's

household to that of her husband. Thus she was too

was bridging the generations, but her role was to

build the future of her husband's family. The

interplay of roles, then as now, was key.

We can see these roles reflected in many places in

the texts of the Yi Jing (for instance hexagram pairs

53/54 and 31/32, where the interactions between the

siblings describe successful and failed relationships).

The arrangement of the hexagrams in the Yi Jing on

silk discovered in the Han Dynasty tomb at

Mawangdui is based on the family arrangement of

the trigrams.

Miscellaneous Notes from the Daily

Readings on Philosophy

Fulfilling Varying Needs

There is a passage in the Analects that sheds somelight on the Yi Jing:

Zi Lu asked whether he should immediately carry

into practice what he heard. The Master said,

"There are your father and elder brothers to beconsulted - why should you act on that principle of

immediately carrying into practice what you hear?"Ran You asked the same, whether he should

immediately carry into practice what he heard, and

the Master answered, "Immediately carry intopractice what you hear." Gong Xi Hua said, "You

asked whether he should carry immediately into

practice what he heard, and you said, 'There are

your father and elder brothers to be consulted.' Qiuasked whether he should immediately carry into

practice what he heard, and you said, 'Carry itimmediately into practice.' I, Chi, am perplexed,

and venture to ask you for an explanation." TheMaster said, "Qiu is retiring and slow; therefore I

urged him forward. You has more than his ownshare of energy; therefore I kept him back."

Analects

11:22

This is a vital lesson about how to interpret the Yi

Jing. There is nothing miraculous about the book,no magic spirit behind its pages, but there is an

element of deep mystery to it. That mystery comes

from dealing with a book written to fit the contours

of the human mind in a way that convinces us thatwe are speaking with a living entity, not just getting

random texts. That's quite a trick, considering that

getting random texts is precisely what we aredoing.

Kongzi gives different advice on the samecircumstances based on his knowledge of the person

asking. The Yi gives random advice and our

interpretation differs based on our experience and

nature. There is a famous passage in the Zuocommentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals. A

noblewoman has been exiled and a diviner asks

about her fate. The answer comes back with a very

positive omen, which the diviner accepts asapplying to her situation. But she rejects that

interpretation, explaining that the positive outcome

would be expected if the person asking was in theright. However she was correctly exiled for her

actions and she will die in exile. As it happens, that

was exactly the outcome.

At a very early stage in China's intellectual life

scholars moved from seeing the Yi as a predictive

means of divination to a metaphysical map of the

universe combined with a light on the path torighteous action. The passage above fits well into

that model.

Culture vs. Superstition in Xunzi

In this passage Xunzi mentions divination, but some

who look to the Yi as something supernatural may be

disappointed. Here is the text in Knoblock's translation:

If you pray for rain and there is rain, what of that? I saythere is no special relationship--as when you do not pray

for rain and there is rain. When the sun and moon are

eclipsed, we attempt to save them; when Heaven sends

drought, we pray for rain ;and before we decide any

important undertaking, we divine with bone and milfoil.

We do these things not because we believe that such

ceremonies will produce the results we seek,

but because we want to embellish such occasions with

ceremony. Thus, the gentleman considers such


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ceremonies as embellishments, but the Hundred Clans

consider them supernatural. To consider them

embellishments is fortunate; to consider them

supernatural is unfortunate.

Xunzi 17:11

Naturally, the terms Xunzi uses for fortunate andunfortunate are those of the Yi and the oracle bones that

went before it, Ji and Xiong.

So we see in this brief text the transition from the

religious to the humanist in ancient China. In the heyday

of the oracle bones, during the Shang Dynasty,

divination was primarily a form of supplication, a prayer

for the ancestors to intervene in the affairs of the living

to benefit their descendants in health, hunting, war, etc.

As society evolved the divinations performed took on an

increasingly proforma nature. The divinations were done

every ten days as before for the royal court, but the

results became uniformly good. As anyone who has

divined before can tell you, a uniformly good oracle is a

broken oracle.

Xunzi does not talk about suspending the various

ceremonies and divinations, but he identifies them as

cultural embellishments (Wen), and in the last

sentence contrastsas fortunate and Shen, the spirit

world, as unfortunate superstition. He redefines the

significance of what in his time were already ancient

practices to the 'modern world' of 2,300 years ago. It is

at this critical point in China's cultural history that

philosophy matured. The seeds planted by Kongzi a few

generations before bloomed in the profundity of texts

like the Appended Statements of the Yi and the writings

of Xunzi. This is the practical philosophy that has kept

Chinese culture alive through the millenia by

concentrating on practical matters and living in the real

world, not in a make believe universe of eternal life pillsand imaginary spirit guardians. In Xunzi we see the

intellectuals in Chinese society reaching their majority

and taking on the responsibility of caring for the children

of society, those who cultivated a world of superstition

and wishful thinking.

This was the point where the Yi Jing went from being a

divination manual to being the operating manual of

reality. Because once you give up on the idea that the

universe is a brooding intelligence that is either out to

get you or smiling benevolently as it blows kisses your

way you can actually start to observe reality. And

observation and explanation are the foundation of reason

and science. Xunzi pointed the way

Xunzi and the Old Saying 'Heaven Helps Those WhoHelp Themselves'

For Xunzi the way to go is to do it yourself and don't

expect any help from 'Heaven'.

How can glorifying Heaven and contemplating it be as

good as tending its creatures and regulating them? How

can obeying Heaven and singing it hymns of praise be

better than regulating what Heaven mandated and using

it? How can anxiously watching for the season and

awaiting what it brings, be as good as responding to theseason and exploiting it? How can depending on things

to increase naturally be better than developing their

natural capacities so as to transform them? How can

contemplating things and expecting them to serve you be

as good as administering them so that you do not miss

the opportunities they present? How can brooding over

the origins of the things be better than assisting what

perfects them?

Accordingly, if you cast aside the concerns proper to

Man in order to speculate about what belongs to Heaven

you will miss the essential nature of the myriad things.

Xunzi 17:13

Again, this is the materialist view that was and is the real

founding principle of Chinese practical philosophy over

the centuries. There is a misconception in the West that

Mencius (Mengzi) was almost on a level with Confucius

(Kongzi) throughout the centuries. The prominence of

Mencius and his inclusion in the canonical 'Four Books'

of Confucianism came from the Neo-Confucianists of

the Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty intellectuals are

greatly significant to the study of the Yi Jing. Many

original ideas began to circulate, and much was revived,

for instance many of the ideas of the Image and Number

school of Zhouyi studies from the Han Dynasty and

Cheng Yi represents the high point of the Meaning and

Principle school founded by Wang Bi in the Wei

Dynasty. There were great intellectual and political

debates in Song society, such as those between Wang An

Shi and Si Ma Guang. There was a flowering of


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intellectual originality that stands out against the relative

dullness of the prosperous dynasties surrounding it. But

hand in hand with these positives was a deep,

disheartening decay. The civil began to overwhelm the

military in society, weakening defense. The Neo-

Confucianists embraced the altruistic Mencius with this

cheerful assurance that no one could see a child about to

fall in a well and not act to prevent it. The basic

assertion of Mencius so familiar to students of Chinese

philosophy, that human nature is basically good, is but

the tip of the iceberg of troubling doctrines in his work.

History is a branch office of reality. It does not

read Rousseau (or if it does, it has the good sense to

ignore him when coming to a decision). It does not give

points to for good intentions. It not only lets children

totter into wells, it tosses them in itself. The Song

Dynasty was first driven from its capital and then

crushed, giving rise to the first dynasty in which a

foreign nation dominated the whole empire, the Yuan.Philosophy has consequences. Xunzi knew this, and

didn't appreciate the religious and philosophical

movements of his time that were more interested in

speculating about utopias rather than improving what we

have to work with here and now. Xunzi, like Kongzi,

was a realist. Some of the best and brightest minds of

history have not been realists, and more's the pity,

because realism works. In politics the realist view of the

world calls for caring for people by helping them realize

their potential with a minimum of restriction and

assistance. In the spiritual realm realism seeks to

eliminate superstition and look at reality, rejoicing at

the beauty of the wonders of the universe and trying to

mitigate the horrors of that very same reality through

science. It is passages like this one today that make

Xunzi my favorite philosopher after Kongzi.

Divining Without the Divine...A Few Words

from Xunzi

I came across this passage tangentially whenstudying the Yi:

74. Using the worthy to reform the unworthy is to

know what is auspicious without first having to

await the outcome of the divination. Using what is

ordered to overcome anarchy is to know victory

without having first to engage in battle.

Another verse has an even more 'Laozi-ish' flavor to

it:

84. An expert in the Odes does not engage in

persuasions. An expert in the Changes does not

divine; An expert in the Rituals is not a master of

ceremonies--all these are of the same mindset.

(Translations are from Knoblock, with the second

one changed about a bit).

I don't think this means 'don't consult the Yi'; that

was a part of Chinese society then as now, and

occupied a prominent place in affairs of state in

Xunzi's time. But I do think it marks a turn in the

road. The Shang approach to divination was at a

very crude level. The expectation was that you

consult using the oracle bone and get a straight yes

or no answer. Complexities set in over the centuries

such as consulting numerous times for and against a

particular question, interpretations that formed a

kind of voting of what the king thought was the

answer, the nobles, the professional diviners, the

people, etc. But ultimately it was all about: Should

we go over and thump tribe 'X' on the head or not?

Later divination added the fine points of exampleand ethics. People got answers and sometimes

interpreted them as their opposite based on the

circumstances and the persons involved. The Yi

moved gradually from being a book that was

consulted as a spirit guide to being a book of

wisdom, edification and philosophy. The root of

fate was found not to be 'in our stars but in our

selves'.

Three Powers

One of the traditional concepts of Chinese

philosophy based on the Yi is the Three Powers,

Heaven, Earth and Humanity.

There is not merely pattern and form in the world.

The world has three elements, heaven, earth and

humanity. Heaven is pattern, the trends, the

invisible, or barely visible net of lines along which


19/21

reality runs. Earth is form, the solid and physical

objects that constitute the visible world. Humanity

functions between the two, giving form to pattern.

My tea cup is an example. My affection for tea, and

the very idea of drinking tea, is a pattern. The cup

itself, and the tea I drink today, is a form. Between

them are the many layers of growing the tea, selling

it, bringing it from Yunnan to my house. Each ofthese has its own set of pattern and form, but taken

together then form the chain of action that

constitutes humanity's part.

This concept is also central to one of the Analects

verses:

The Master said, "Human beings can broaden the

Way--it is not the Way that broadens human

beings."

Analects 15:29

We see in this quote that the pattern is there and can

be followed by human beings, the potentiality of the

pattern can be released by giving it form.


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Appendix I

The Nanjing Method

The Nanjing method is used to filter down the

results of an Yi Jing reading to a single text. The

method was created by a group at Nanjing

University. They 'reverse engineereed' the readingsfound in the Spring and Autumn Annals to

determine how a reading was interpreted in

antiquity. Let us say you received this reading,

which, unfiltered, would give you three changing

line texts and two judgments:

767676

Add the numbers of the hexagram up, and we get 39.

Subtract that number from 55

55 - 39 = 16

Determine if any of the changing lines are the

significant line text, which we will call the 'Nanjing

line', according to this table:

6, 7, 18, 19 - line 6

5, 8 , 17 - line 5

4, 9, 16 - line 4

3, 10, 15 - line 3

2, 11, 14 - line 2

1, 12, 13 - line 1

Our example produces line 4, which is changing, so

we read that line.

To determine what text to read we use these rules:

If there is one changing line, and it is a Nanjing line,

read that, otherwise read the judgement.

For two changing lines, if one is a Nanjing line then

that line is read, otherwise the judgmeent.

For three changing lines, the Nanjing line,

otherwise both judgment texts.

For four changing lines, the Nanjing line, otherwise

the second hexagram's judgement.

For five changing lines, the Nanjing line, otherwise

the second hexagram's judgement.

For six changing lines, the second hexagram's

judgement.

Appendix II

Moving from the Simple to the Subtle

Oracles in Israel and China

The Zhou Yi, that is the core portion of the text that

later evolved into the Yi Jing consisting of thesymbols, the tags or hexagram names and the

judgment and line texts, dates to the early Western

Zhou Dynasty. This means that the text is

approximately 3,000 years old. This puts the time of

the great figures who traditionally are associated

with the Yis writing, King Wen and his brother the

Duke of Zhou in the time of David and Solomon in

Israel. In China the dynasty preceding the Zhou was

the Shang, and it was King Wens son, King Wu,

with the assistance of the Duke of Zhou, who

overthrew the last king of the Shang, a tyrant named

Zhou Xin. We know a great deal about the

divination record of some of the kings of the Shang

because we have a large archive of their divinations

using what has been called the oracle bones.

These were turtle plastrons (belly shells) and ox

scapulae (shoulder blades) which were inscribed

with charges (half invocation/half question) and

then heated until they cracked. The cracks wereinterpreted as simple up and down divinations,

though there may well have evolved some

complexity beyond yes/no and neutral in the answer

based on various factors in the crack. A level of

complexity beyond a simple yes or no was also

introduced by repetition (for instance asking: It is

Ancestor Di causing the kings diseaseand in

another spot on the same bone It is not Ancestor Di


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causing the kings disease). Also the answer was

interpreted by the king, the nobles and the

professional diviners and in some matters the

opinion of the majority of the people was factored

in. Thus we have a fairly complex system founded

on a simple yes/no. Knowing what we do now about

the uselessness of deciding the outcome of a given

question based on tossing a coin, it seems logicalthat the Shang evolved a mechanism for getting out

from under the arbitrary judgment of a yes/no

answer and nuancing it.

In ancient Israel there was a mysterious implement

in the high priests breastplate called the Umim and

Thummim. In contrast to the huge archive of

divinations, interpretations and literary references

that we have to work with when tracing Chinese

divination from the Shang and Zhou oracle bonesinto the Zhou Yi and later evolution of the Yi Jing,

all the evidence for the Urim and Thummim are to

be found in a few passages of the Jewish Bible. But

there is enough material to show a striking

similarity to the methods used in China in the same

period (app. 1200600 BCE). As with the oracle

bones, the Urim and Thummim gave a yes/no

answer. But there is at least one instance of the

divination being repeated to narrow down the

answer. The practice faded away, with some

sources thinking that the Babylonian captivity

ended the practice and others maintaining that with

the rise of the prophets the practice of the Umim

and Thummim was no longer needed. In either case

the practice did disappear, and this is a point of

divergence between the two cultures. In China the

Shang oracle bones were taken up by the Zhou and

we have evidence of their use all the way up to the

Han Dynasty (i.e. the time of the Roman Empire inthe West). The use of an Oracle based on numbers,

and deriving those numbers from manipulating

yarrow stalks or throwing coins runs parallel with

the oracle bones and survived to our times, along

with the divinatory text we now know as the Yi Jing.

The core portion of the Yi Jing is called the Zhou

Yi (The Changes of Zhou), and there were two

other such classics, the Lian Shan and Gui Cang,

which were traditionally associated with the

dynasties preceding the Zhou. There is much

interesting material now coming out about those

works as texts come from the tombs of antiquity to

expand our knowledge of the past.

zhou y idao

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