Fromthe Introduction

I Ching, the "Book of Change," is considered the oldest of the Chinese classics, and has throughout its history commanded unsurpassed prestige and popularity. Containing several layers of text and given numerous levels of interpretation, it has captured continuous attention for well over two thousand years. It has been considered a book of fundamental principles by philosophers, politicians, mystics, alchemists, yogins, diviners, sorcerers, and more recently, by scientists and mathematicians. It was given notice in the West nearly four hundred years ago when a Christian missionary in China wrote to the German philosopher-mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Baron von Leibniz about the similarity between the system of binary arithmetic Leibniz was working on and the structure of the ancient Chinese classic.

Traditionally, the I Ching is attributed to four authors: Fu Hsi, a prehistoric chieftain of perhaps c. 3000 BCE; King Wen, an eleventh-century BCE leader; the Duke of Chou, son of King Wen; and Confucius, humanistic philosopher of the sixth to fifth centuries BC. All of these names represent outstanding figures in the birth and development of Chinese civilization. Fu Hsi is a cultural prototype believed to have taught his people the arts of hunting, fishing, and animal husbandry; he is credited with the invention of the sixty-four signs on which the I Ching is based. King Wen and the Duke of Chou, founders of the great Chinese Chou Dynasty, are held up to history as models of enlightened rule; they are said to have collected or composed sayings attached to the sixty-four signs and to each of the six lines of which every sign is constructed. Confucius was an outstanding scholar and educator, known as an early transmitter of the Chinese classics and credited with commentaries that eventually became incorporated into the body of the 1 Ching. In recent times, however, these commentaries are commonly ascribed not to Confucius himself but to anonymous representatives of the school of thought he is said to have founded.

Precisely what lore, secret or open, was attached to the original signs of the I Ching in remote antiquity is a mystery and a matter of speculation. Fu Hsi lived before the development of writing as it is now known in China, and according to one belief he invented the I Ching signs as a system of notation, replacing a yet more ancient and cruder system. Ancient tradition also suggests connection with the understanding of general principles involved in the operation of the world. One of the commentaries later embedded in the I Ching has it that subsequent cultural innovators devised various implements and techniques based on the inspiration of the signs. Specialization of study and use of the signs in various contexts may have taken place already in the very distant past; in more historical times, in any case, it is a matter of verifiable record that the I Ching signs came to be used as a more or less esoteric notation system for describing elements, processes, and experiences in certain developmental practices involving special uses of body and mind.

Given the pregnancy of the signs as indicators of such fundamental and pervasive relationships as opposition and complementarity, plus the cryptic quality of the sayings attached to the signs and their component lines, it is no wonder that over the centuries a vast body of interpretive literature grew up around the I Ching. According to one estimate, commentaries on the I Ching number in the thousands; and new studies continue to appear, in both the East and the West. Furthermore, this continuing interest in the I Citing is enhanced by the fact that the book has never been universally regarded as the sole property of any particular religion, cult, or school of thought.

Considering overall the various trends of interpretation of the I Ching that developed in the course of history, it may be immediately noticed that there is no one method or approach that has gained universal recognition and acceptance. Even divination, thought by some scholars to be the original function of the I Ching, is deemphasized by certain influential thinkers as a degeneration or trivialization—and this in spite of the fact that one of the embedded commentaries recognizes divination as one of the uses of the I Ching. As early as the third century BC, the noted author Hsun-tzu, one of the founders of Confucian pragmatism, wrote, "Those who make skillful use of the I Ching do not practice divination." Some fourteen centuries later, the Sung Dynasty scholar Kuo Ying went even further to suggest that Confucius himself wrote his commentaries as a corrective to the "degenerate" use of the I Ching for divination: "By the time of Confucius, the great Way was not being practiced any longer, and only divination was current in society; so it was that Confucius composed commentaries to elucidate the Way."

The "Way" Kuo Ying speaks of—called Tao in Chinese—is perhaps the most fundamental concept of Chinese thought, representing universal and specific order or principle. It was in this that Chinese thinkers sought ways of life, both individual and social, that would lead to realization of human nature and destiny. It was as an aid to this sort of study that many thinkers esteemed the I Ching. According to Ch'eng I, an eleventh-century AD scholar and teacher who became one of the major figures in the Sung Dynasty reformation of Confucianism,

"The word I of I Ching means change; that is, changing in accord with the time so as to follow the Tao. As a book, the I Ching is vast and comprehensive: by following the principles of essence and life, understanding the reasons of the obscure and the obvious, and comprehending the conditions of things and beings, it shows the way to enlighten people and accomplish tasks."

In the context of Confucianism, the term "essence and life" refers to human nature and destiny; in the context of Taoism, which embraces Confucianism within a wider scope, the term means mind and body, or spirit and energy. In either case, for such thinkers the primary function of the I Ching was connected with sciences of human development. Ch'eng I goes on in the introduction to his own commentary to emphasize the importance of this aspect of the I Ching, and to note how it had become lost to the majority of scholars.

The concern of the sages for people of later generations may be said to have been consummate indeed; though they lived long ago, the classics they left still exist. Nevertheless, as early Confucians lost the meaning and only handed on the words, later scholars memorized the words and forgot about experience. So on the whole there has been no real transmission since the time of the Ch'in Dynasty [third century BC] Born over a thousand years later, I regretted that the I Ching had been lost in obscurity, and composed this commentary to get latter-day people to follow the stream and seek the source.

During the centuries when Ch'eng I says transmission of the meaning of the I Ching was lost, the prevailing trend of interpretation of this text had in fact been in terms of prognostication, according to a number of elaborate numerological schemes. After Ch'eng I, there was a resurgence of interest in the I Ching as a divination tool, due to the work of Chu Hsi, an industrious Confucian scholar of the twelfth century whose writings were made the standard basis of the Chinese civil service examination system by government fiat during the Yuan, Ming, and Ch'ing dynasties (thirteenth to twentieth centuries).

Divination was also used not simply as a mechanical prognostication device but as a framework for contemplative practices of self-analysis and analysis of situations; it also could be made to function as a medium of contact between people who might be in a position to give advice and people who might be in a position to accept advice, in a cultural context where divination was accepted as a valid practice. These functions, however, require active participation with concentrated attention, and the danger of trivialization was seen by some thinkers as a product of reliance on the I Ching as an oracle independent of the efforts of the individual. The nineteenth-century scholar Chu Shou expressed this sort of dereliction in these terms:

If they only left things to divination, without daily contemplation of the I Ching, and just did what was supposed to be auspicious and avoided what was supposed to be inauspicious, how would people "strengthen themselves unceasingly," how would they "support beings with richness of character"? Students then would have no use for discerning what is regrettable and what is shameful, they would not need to exercise conscience so as to become impeccable—the lessons and admonitions of the sixty-four signs [of the I Ching ] would all be empty words.

In Taoist tradition as well, although divination is not unheard of, it is explicitly abandoned by some leading thinkers. In the late eighteenth century, Liu I-ming, author of the commentary translated in this volume, wrote that after he had met genuine teachers following years of fruitless search, "all my doubts disappeared, so that for the first time I realized that the Tao of spiritual alchemy is none other than the Tao of the I Ching, the Tao of sages is none other than the Tao of immortals, and that the I Ching is not a book of divination but rather is the study of investigation of principles, fulfillment of nature, and arrival at the meaning of life." It is also worthy of note that here Liu identifies the inner component of Confucianism ("the Tao of sages") with that of Taoism ("the Tao of immortals"); hence the social development and spiritual development of humanity, nominally associated respectively with Confucianism and Taoism, are regarded as interrelated.

What, then, is the "Tao of immortals," the Way of Taoism, and how does the I Ching fit in? The ninth-century Taoist giant Lu Tung-pin, an erstwhile Confucian scholar who later became a mystic of high rank in the esoteric Taoist hierarchy, wrote of the I Ching, "Although the words are very clear, yet they are also very vague. The shallow may take the I Ching to be a book of divination, but the profound consider it the secret of the celestial mechanism."

The "celestial mechanism," or "workings of Heaven," is a central concept in Taoist thought. Heaven commonly refers to the source of creation and direction of the universe; the Way of Heaven, or Celestial Tao, is the body of universal principle underlying all manifestations. Thus the Way of Taoism was sometimes expressed in terms of following the Celestial Tao and harmonizing with its design; this was supposed to be the way to experiential understanding of the essence and purpose of life. Lu elaborates further on this in the preface to his own commentary on the I Ching.

Is there anything in the science of sages which is so lofty and remote as to be inaccessible? It is only a matter of understanding the Celestial Tao, the Way of Heaven, and harmonizing with it in human life. For humans to harmonize with the celestial is only a matter of living in concert with the time.