What Is the Yi?

One word, three meanings

Classical commentators gave the word yì 易 three senses: change (biànyì 變易), the unchanging (bùyì 不易), and ease-and-simplicity (yìjiǎn 易簡). Kong Yingda's Tang-dynasty preface to the Correct Meaning of the Zhouyi set them out at the very start.

Change means that neither the cosmos nor a human life stands still for a moment. The Great Commentary puts it plainly: when a way is exhausted it must change; change brings passage; passage brings endurance. Then endurance runs to exhaustion again. This is not pessimism. It is description.

The unchanging means that change itself has rules, and the rules hold. The seasons turn without end, but spring, summer, autumn and winter never change their order. Many people quote the saying that “when Obstruction peaks, Peace returns”, yet in the actual sequence Peace (Tài 泰) is hexagram 11 and Obstruction (Pǐ 否) is 12. Smooth passage, sustained long enough, breeds blockage. Seeing the constant pattern is what keeps you calm inside the changes.

Ease-and-simplicity should be said in that order, yìjiǎn and not jiǎnyì, because the Great Commentary always pairs them so: “Qian knows through ease; Kun accomplishes through simplicity.” Ease belongs to Qián 乾, pure initiative that creates without strain. Simplicity belongs to Kūn 坤, which receives and lets things complete themselves. Qian works through time; Kun works through space. A useful set of pairs: first transformation then digestion, first generation then completion, first ease then simplicity.

Classic and commentary: the three sages

The thick volume sold today as the Yijing 易經 has two layers. The original classic, the jīng 經, contains only three things: sixty-four hexagram figures, sixty-four judgments (guàcí 卦辭) and three hundred and eighty-four line statements (yáocí 爻辭). Printed, it runs to perhaps twenty pages. Qian's “origin, success, fitness, steadfastness” (yuán hēng lì zhēn 元亨利貞) is a judgment; “hidden dragon, do not act” is a line statement. Read on its own, the classic is close to opaque.

What opens it is the zhuàn 傳, the commentaries, ten in all and called the Ten Wings (Shíyì 十翼). The Tuan commentary, in two parts, explains the judgments. The Xiang commentary, in two parts, contains the Great Image (one sentence per hexagram on what its picture teaches) and the Small Images (one per line). The Great Commentary (Xìcí 繫辭), in two parts, is the philosophy of the book. The Wenyan treats only Qian and Kun. Discussion of the Trigrams is a small dictionary of symbols. The Sequence explains the order of the sixty-four. The Miscellaneous Hexagrams sums each one up in a word or two. Since the Han dynasty the classic and the wings have been read together, so “the Yijing” today means both.

Tradition says the Yi “passed through three sages”. Fú Xī 伏羲 observed heaven and earth and drew the trigrams, then doubled them into sixty-four. King Wen of Zhou 周文王, imprisoned by the last Shang king at Youli, wrote the judgments and line statements; some scholars add the Duke of Zhou or a Western Zhou diviner. Confucius loved the Yi in old age, and the Records of the Historian says he read it until the leather thongs of his bamboo strips broke three times. The Wings are credited to him, yet they are full of “the Master said”, which no one writes of himself. The fairer view is that they are the joint work of Confucius, his students and later Confucian scholars.

Principle and image-number: two faces of one tree

Scholarship on the Yi has long divided into two schools. The school of principle (yìlǐ 義理) draws lessons for conduct from the texts and images: think of danger in times of safety, keep a sense of concern, rejoice in heaven and understand fate. Its figures include Wang Bi 王弼, who read the Yi through Laozi and Zhuangzi and swept away Han-dynasty omen lore; Cheng Yi 程頤 of the Northern Song; and Yang Wanli 楊萬里, who matched line statements to historical events. The school of image and number (xiàngshù 象數) starts from the figures and their numerical operations to answer real questions, which is to say, divination.

Each side has tended to look down on the other: principle calls divination superstition, image-number calls principle empty talk. In fact they are two faces of one tree. The Great Commentary says the Yi holds four ways of the sage: those who speak value its words, those who act value its changes, those who make implements value its images, and those who divine value its prognostications. Divination is listed in plain sight. Principle alone ends up at sincerity, kindness and humility, but cannot tell you how to face the matter in front of you. Divination alone shrinks into fortune-telling. This course takes both: enter through principle, then learn image-number, and keep your reason when you do.

Why is divination not mere superstition? The Great Plan chapter of the Book of Documents says that when the Son of Heaven faces a grave doubt, he consults his own mind, his ministers, the common people, and the tortoise and the stalks. The first three are human reckonings, and every human reckoning carries self-interest. The yarrow procedure is built so that no one can steer the numbers. It is a discipline that keeps reason honest, not a replacement for it.

Studying the Yi is self-cultivation

Of the sixty-four Great Image statements, fifty-three mention the jūnzǐ 君子, the exemplary person. Qian: “the jūnzǐ strengthens himself without ceasing.” Kun: “the jūnzǐ carries all things with ample virtue.” Kùn 困, Exhaustion: “the jūnzǐ stakes his life to fulfil his purpose.” The commentaries stand plainly in the Confucian tradition. Each hexagram is a mirror for how a person should cultivate himself.

Cultivate what? Three things: virtue (déxíng 德行), ability (nénglì 能力) and wisdom (zhìhuì 智慧). The Great Commentary says the sages used the Yi to “reach the will of all under heaven, settle its undertakings, and resolve its doubts.” Winning people's hearts takes virtue; completing work takes ability; deciding when reason and experience run out takes wisdom. A person of virtue takes gain and loss lightly. A person of ability has confidence and relies on himself before others. Wisdom is reason joined to lived experience, and that is the faculty divination serves.

So the point of studying the Yi is not to dodge every misfortune or to get everything you want. No one gets everything he wants, and one person's wish fulfilled is often another's disappointment. What the Yi gives is the steadiness of knowing, in any situation, that there is a road beyond it. Three sayings are worth keeping: if you do not study it, you certainly will not understand it; if you study it, you still may not; once you do understand it, it serves you for life.