Popular Science of Chinese Studies: Why the Book of Changes is the source of China culture?

China's most intelligent book should be The Book of Changes. Because the Book of Changes is the source of China culture and represents the highest wisdom of China's philosophy, the ideological system of the Book of Changes has profoundly influenced Confucianism and other thoughts. It can be said that the Book of Changes is the only way to find a key to China culture.

The Book of Changes is one of the oldest documents in China, and is regarded as the first of the Five Classics by Confucianism. The Book of Changes describes the change of state with a set of symbol systems, and shows the philosophy and cosmology of China's classical culture. Its central idea is to describe the changes of everything in the world by alternating yin and yang.

In fact, from the beginning, the Book of Changes was regarded as a fortune-telling book. In the corner of the park, in the noisy street, you will often see someone solemnly telling fortune and predicting good or bad luck under the banner of the Book of Changes. As a result, even the management came to collect his stall, and he didn't solve it. Therefore, it is vulgar and dangerous to regard the Book of Changes as a reference book for fortune telling.

As the basis of Zhouyi, Eight Diagrams actually originated from divination of primitive religion in China. People in Shang Dynasty were superstitious about ghosts and gods. No matter what they do, they will do divination. They first drill holes in tortoise shells or animal bones, and then burn them to observe the direction of cracks in tortoise shells or animal bones, just like the direction of palm prints we see today. Then according to the trend of these cracks, make an explanation. This method of divination is called divination. But this method is really inconvenient, because the trend of these cracks is ever-changing and too complicated, and only professional wizards can master it, which is not convenient for the popularization of divination. In the Zhou Dynasty, people invented a new method, using yarrow to form a hexagram through various combinations, and finding the corresponding hexagram words can predict good or bad luck. The Book of Changes was a reference book for divination at that time, which was equivalent to the status of Xinhua Dictionary now.

The Book of Changes now consists of two parts, one is 64 hexagrams, and the other is 384 hexagrams. This is the so-called Book of Changes. The other part is the annotation to explain the hexagrams. Legend has it that it was written by Confucius, and it is called Ten Wings, also called Yi Zhuan. According to the Records of Historical Records, Zhouyi should have originated in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties.

Gua consists of two symbols, namely "-"and "-". The "-"is called yang, and correspondingly, the "-"is called yin. Eight images are composed of three images arranged in different ways, which are called eight diagrams. They are Gan, Kun, Zhen, Xun, Kan, Li, Gen and Dui. As explained in Shuo Gua Zhuan, "Dry is heaven, Kun is earth, earthquake is thunder, root is mountain, separation is fire, ridge is water, change is ze, change is wind."

In essence, Zhouyi is a highly developed semiotics for the ancients to explore the origin of the universe. However, since the birth of Zhouyi, its focus is not on exploring the universe, nor on further questioning the origin of the universe, but on the good and bad fortune of people in the world. It pays attention to people's fate in the world and asks about the meaning of life, good fortune and bad fortune. In this sense, what Zhouyi wants to establish is the meaning of life.

The Book of Changes summarizes the universe, heaven and earth and human society as two forces, namely Yin and Yang, which are mutual induction and promote the development of the universe, heaven and earth and society, and are the fundamental forces for the movement of heaven and earth and social development. In Zhouyi, Yang represents the sky, Yin represents the earth, and the interaction of Yin and Yang produces everything. Yang represents men, Yin represents women, and the interaction of Yin and Yang produces human beings and society.

Therefore, in the Book of Changes, some "auspicious" hexagrams are generally combined with the upper and lower hexagrams. On the contrary, some "fierce" hexagrams are generally not sensitive to each other. That is to say, the author of the Book of Changes is good at observing the movement, development and change of everything from the perspective of interactive induction, and thinks that all hexagrams with moving images and sympathetic images have development prospects, so they are called "auspicious".

For example, in the Book of Changes, the top is the ground, the bottom is the sky, the ground is above, and the sky is below. According to the general understanding, this is a distortion of the order of heaven and earth. This is called an upside-down and terrible image, but the ancients didn't think so. The sky is condensed by the sun, and the sun rises; The earth was gathered by Yin Qi, and Yin Qi fell. The interaction of yin and yang causes the movement of heaven and earth, and the moving things are auspicious. On the contrary, the negative divination in Zhouyi seems to conform to the natural order, but it is actually yin and yang of heaven and earth. Once you get up and down, there is no chance of "dating", no chance of resonance, no movement without resonance, and no future for static things.

According to this principle, we can see that the author of Zhouyi thinks that things are constantly changing, and it is the interaction of opposites and contradictions that promotes the development of things. This is a very simple dialectical view.

Zhouyi contains many simple views on development and change. The main meaning of "Yi" is change. It means that everything in the world is developing and changing, and this change is reflected in the mutual transformation of contradictions between the opposing sides. The change from Yang to Yin, from Yin to Yang, whether it is nature or life until life, is the result of mutual transformation of contradictions. The development and change of things is gradual. Once it exceeds the highest stage of development, it will definitely develop in the opposite direction. This is the truth of "extremes meet" and "extremes meet".

Take the sweet potato as an example. Its hexagrams are written as follows:

Day 9 (the first day): Don't use the hidden dragon.

92 (second): See dragons in the fields, so you can meet adults.

93 (Third): A gentleman works all day, and if he is late, he is not to blame.

94 (fourth): It's not strange to jump deep.

The Ninth Five-Year Plan (the Fifth Five-Year Plan): Flying dragons are in the sky, which is beneficial to meet adults.

Shangjiu (Liuyao): Kang Long has regrets.

The ancients loved and worshipped the dragon, which is the totem of the Chinese nation. So use dragons to represent a person's social development. The ninth day symbolizes that at the beginning, a person's strength is very weak, and he is in a latent and ready-to-go stage. 92, after the dragon accumulated strength, it got rid of the latent state and began to enter the underground from underwater, and its career was slightly improved; 93. With the development of career and status, people will inevitably become complacent. At this time, the Book of Changes tells us that we should work hard every day, and the most important thing is to remain modest and prudent, so as to avoid disaster. In 1994, the dragon entered the abyss, which can be described as "the sky is high and birds fly, the sea is wide and fish jump", and the career and life have a broader development space; During the ninth five-year plan period, the dragon began to achieve great success and reached the peak of its life.

Life is always like this. The course of life is like a parabola. After reaching the peak, it began to descend. Zhouyi realized this life truth very early. In the ninth stage, Raging Dragon began to stagnate and decline, and things stopped developing and began to move towards its opposite. This divination uses dragons to compare our career and life. It tells us that if we make progress, we will retreat, and if we gain, we will lose. There are times of smooth sailing and times of drinking cold water. Just like Lu You, a poet in the Song Dynasty, said, "Without water, there is no road, and there is another village." When you "widen the bank at low tide", don't get carried away, but know that joy brings sorrow. When you are caught in the misery of life, don't lose heart. It is a great truth to know that "the scenery is long and your eyes should be open".

The Book of Changes tells us in divination that no matter what stage of life we are in, we should "be a gentleman who works all day, and if we are late, we will have no blame." A gentleman, on the one hand, should be diligent day and night, constantly striving for self-improvement, full of vigor and vitality, and promising; On the other hand, we should always look at ourselves, reflect on our hearts, be superior to others without arrogance and rashness, be inferior to others without worries, and be disaster-free.

The Book of Changes also tells us that persistently maintaining good morality and hard work are the keys to happiness and avoiding disasters. In Heng Gua, it is said that "you can't be virtuous, shameless and stingy", which means that if you can't maintain good moral character and unremitting pursuit of your career for a long time, you will eventually fail. It gives us a "prescription" for success in life, one is perseverance, and the other is perseverance.

In fact, the Book of Changes represents the law of the development of all things in the universe with the image of nature, that is, the development and change of contradictions. From the beginning, the focus of his philosophical thinking was not to explore the natural laws of all things in the universe, but how people can settle down in society and face their own turbulent inner problems through the development and changes of nature. In this sense, The Book of Changes is the origin of China's philosophy of life. If ancient Greek philosophy is a question of exploring the origin of the universe and how nature became possible from the very beginning, then China's philosophy represented by Zhouyi is a question of teaching people how to settle down, care for human beings and society, and how to improve human nature, which is also the fundamental division between Chinese and Western philosophy.