Show notes
Script: https://tcmpodcast.me/episode-8-yi-jing-the-book-of-changes/
Ancient culture of China has made great contributions to world culture. Book of Changes is one of the most precious contributions of Chinese culture, which has exerted a great influence on Chinese philosophy, literature, historical study, as well as natural and social sciences.
The Book of Changes is the very basis of Chinese culture, the principal source of Chinese philosophy. social sciences and natural sciences. It has greatly influenced the history of Chinese civilization. Its importance lies not only in what is covered in the Book of Changes and Commentaries on the Changes, the two Component parts of the book, but also in some 3000 related works on Yi philosophy (philosophy of Changes). Many ancient schools of thought that derived from this philosophy, and the comprehensive system of in science it nurtured. All this makes the Book of Changes an inexhaustible well and unlimited treasury of human knowledge.
The Book of Changes is a pivotal link between the past and the future. It has organically combined ancient and modem Chinese civilization, joined the lifelines of Chinese culture and vigorously promoted its development.
The Book of Changes, or its essence, has two major connotations: Yi philosophy and Xiang Shu (Divination). Xiang Shu is the basis of Yi philosophy. It is the charm and attraction of Xiang Shu has made Yi philosophy more popular than any other system of philosophy.According to Chinese legend Yi Jing originated with the mythical Fu Xi, one of the earliest legendary rulers of China (2800 BC-2737 BC), reputed to have had the 8 trigrams revealed to him supernaturally.
Fu Xi was said to have found the eight trigrams that form the sixty-four hexagrams on the shell of a tortoise. The meanings evolved from then on, but the book was used mostly for predicting natural events until King Wen wrote the first expositions on the sixty-four hexagrams about 3,000 years ago. These were the first comments that included social and political connotations.
Each inquiry to the oracle will result in a hexagram reading and possibly additional line readings. A hexagram is made up of two trigrams. There are eight possible trigrams: cosmos, thunder, water, mountain, earth, wind/wood, fire, and lake. Each trigram is made up of three lines. Each line is either broken or solid, corresponding to the complementary forces Yin (negative) and Yang (positive). Every time a coin is thrown, one line of the hexagram is determined, thus, six throws decide a hexagram.
These eight trigrams were conceived as images of all that happens in Heaven and on Earth. At the same time, they were held in a state of continual transition, one changing into another, just as transition from one phenomenon to another is continually taking place in the physical world. There are sixty-four different hexagrams, and each hexagram has six changing lines, any one of which may or may not apply for any particular reading. The hexagrams and lines in their movements and changes mysteriously reproduced the movements and changes of the macrocosm.
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