This is a brief orientation to the Yijing for beginners. It tries to address some of the key points and questions people commonly have when they first approach the Yijing. More detailed explorations can be found here.
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I Ching, Yijing why two names?
They mean the same thing: the Classic (I or Yi) of Change (Ching or Jing). Pinyin is the generally accepted system of Romanization for modern Chinese, approved in 1958 and adopted in 1979 by the government of the People's Republic of China. It superseded older transcriptions like the Wade-Giles system of 1859. Yijing is the Romanization based on the Pinyin system and I Ching is the Romanization based on the Wade-Giles system. For more information click here.
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What is the Yijing?
Yijing is an ancient Chinese text also known as the Classic or Book of Changes. It is particularly relevant in managing change in our daily lives. The text consists of 64 chapters each one of which is represented by a 6 line figure called a hexagram. Each hexagram represents a life situation with advice on how to manage it. Yijing has been studied for thousands of years as a source of wisdom and a spiritual practice, a way of living a happy and fruitful life. It possible that it was first formulated to guide the Kings and Emperors of China, to teach them wisdom and to help them govern well. Click here for a summary of how it is used.
Who wrote it?
Yijing or the Classic of Change is thought to have first been written down some 3,000 years ago in ancient China. The book is built up in layers which have been added through the ages. The trigrams that make up its structure are said to have been formed by an ancient mythical sage called Fu Xi. Legend says the first parts of the text were written by King Wen, who died while preparing to overthrow the last evil King of the Shang dynasty, about 3,000 years ago. Other early parts are said to have been written by one of King Wen’s sons, Duke Zhou, who subsequently helped to form the Zhou dynasty. There were a number of important additions to the text of Yijing throughout the Warring States Period and the Han Dynasty, which started about 200 BCE.
The core development spanned a period of over a thousand years and it has been commented on ever since. With this lengthy development it is not surprising that another name for Yijing is The Book of Wisdom.
What is Change?
Change is the one constant factor in our lives. Every passing moment brings change: we evolve over time, our careers develop over time, people are born, people die, and the world constantly changes. Understanding change and our involvement within it is the key to having a happy and fruitful life. That’s why we can also call it The Book of (dealing with) Trouble.
Why is it useful?
Yijing’s primary focus is managing change in the world around us and inside us. It mentors us through its examples and shows the likely outcome of our choices of action in different circumstances. It gives finely hued scenarios and explains their dynamics, giving advice on the best way to deal with the situations that the scenarios represent.
In the West we tend to try and weigh up all of the possibilities, work out which are the most likely and then choose the approach we think might best help us feel our way through the issue. The ancient Chinese studied change from a different angle and came up with an extraordinarily effective approach. The old Chinese stories tell us that various sages, over an extended period of time, observed how change takes place and the different ways of dealing with it effectively. They came up with the 64 Hexagrams or scenarios, attached wise advice and guidance to each part of the scenario and called the whole thing Yijing.
How does the Yijing view change?
Yijing holds that change is central to our lives and its message is clear. If we grasp what changes are happening around us, appreciate the choices we have within the circumstances and choose a wise route, then we are moving with the Way or Dao and our lives will be happy and fruitful. Yijing puts a premium on happiness.
The various hexagrams or scenarios show the difference between those situations where we can powerfully initiate change and where we have to be cautious and consider its suggested strategies. In other circumstances it may advise us how we can limit the harm that a situation might bring by taking an informed approach. It clearly lays out the differences between these and other situations and proposes fruitful strategies along with their likely outcomes.
How does the Yijing work?
There are many different explanations for how it works. Simply put we throw coins, count yarrow stalks, pick out coloured stones from a bowl or use a computer to generate random numbers. These enable us to build up the hexagram, a six line figure, from which we can look up the appropriate text in the Yijing. Some people believe that it is a spirit which guides the choice, others believe it is synchronicity. Another, less common, belief is that the generated hexagram really is random and that we can use it to stimulate our creative perception and problem solving abilities.
In the West we are taught that the world around us is causal. If we whistle at a Taxi it might stop. This is causal, we do something and it, hopefully, causes the expected effect. However were we to be stranded with no transport; then receive a message that we were needed urgently and a moment later a stranger offers us a lift to that very place. There is no logical link so we call it coincidence. Coincidence usually means that we are not aware of the cause linking the events. Another term to describe highly unlikely coincidence is Synchronicity. Two events happen as if they were synchronised but we do not know how or what caused them to occur together. In our exampleit is the urgent need to travel and the unexpected offer of a lift. This is a well observed phenomenon which commonly occurs in our world. So for many people it is the only way to explain how they get those extraordinarilyYijing readings, which precisely mirror the question they ask, is that there is a synchronicity between their question and the result. It does not take much experience with the Yijing for even the most cynical user to become rather puzzled at its continued precise responses!
Is the Yijing a Religion?
Yijing is not a religion but it is the greatest of the ancient texts which underpin Chinese culture and thought. There was a cultural assumption of Ancestor Worship but we can see this as part of the imagery rather than a religious prescription. Daoism certainly contributed to its later development as did Confucian thought. However these are represented as values and perspectives, not as religious ideology. Our translation attempts to strip away many of the accreted later layers of religious morality in order to get back to the imaginative clarity which the earlier layers sought to achieve.
Why this approach?
Our translation was made by one of the leading figures in the field. Stephen Karcher brings over 35 years of study to bear in producing both a clear and vivid translation of the text and a commentary which is rich in the imagery, myths and spiritual beliefs of the ancient Chinese who made Yijing. He immerses the reader in these images in such a way that it is possible to step away from our modern world and to re-imagine our situation in a rich text of images. This is the Imaginal World we encounter when we dream, where we can access immense creativity and a depth of perception which are not available to us in our purely cognitive or ‘rational’ way of being. This approach encourages the reader to use all of their faculties when examining their problems and issues and the choices available to them.
Why all the talk of Dragons and Shamans?
The language and images can feel odd at first. Most of us have been brought up to try to analyze our problems using only our cognitive minds with perhaps some reference to how we feel. Others make their life decisions based on their feelings, with perhaps some reference to logic. Neither is using all of their faculties which go far beyond both feelings and logic.
This approach enables us to re-imagine ourselves and our situation in an imaginal way, just as we do in dreams. It enables us to set our problem in the ancient Chinese landscape out of which Yijing grew. This Imaginal World is at times magical and at other times completely pragmatic. It invites us to consider the mythic players in that landscape, the King, Queen, Statesman or Shaman, the revolutionary, those who would marry, those with families, soldiers and spiritual seekers and many others. There are many scenes or situations, problems and solutions. Each is a drama which directly reflects the situations and decisions which we face in our modern world with wise and reasoned advice attached. By stepping into this Imaginal World, we are freed to reflect on our problem from other and deeper angles, to weigh the forces acting on us in the time and to explore our situation creatively. Just as with dreams we step back into our world with greater perception and clearer solutions as to how to proceed.
What other approaches are there?
Some of those who use Yijing prefer to study the text in order to fathom precisely what the authorial intent was, what the author meant to say. Given that Yijing had many authors who contributed to it possibly from as far back as 10,000 years ago with the last redaction in the 18th century, this is perhaps a questionable approach.
Another approach, adopted by some authors is to try to logically explain what is meant by the text. This often has the result of diminishing the universality of the original images. It is important to remember that the Chinese characters each had a number of meanings and that the writers often used double meanings and word play which do not translate when one English word is chosen for each character.
Yijing was written in a rich language of symbolic meaning. If there was any imagined intent it might have been that the reader might have been expected to share this culture, to have been brought up on the same stories and myths and to have known the same folk tales and songs. So it would be that a line of text in the Yijing would be from a story that everyone would have known then and the meaning would have been clear to them. This translation and commentary draws on what is known of these and presents them alongside the translated text in order to allow the reader as informed an entry into that world as is possible.
What about freedom of choice and self determination?
Yijing places the user at the centre of their problem and emphasizes their responsibility in dealing with the issue. We always have choices. Yijing points out the likely outcomes depending on what choices we make and tells us what we can and cannot change.
The clever bit
We can try to explain and understand the problems we face in managing our affairs in a constantly changing world, the difficulties we face in trying to gauge precisely what may or may not happen if we choose to take this or that course. We can allow for the fact that something unexpected might happen outside of the situation, like the person who decides that it is best to ‘have it all out’ with their friend only to find that the other person has fallen desperately ill and the situation is instantly changed. These are the typical difficulties we all face in managing change.
What we can’t explain is the synchronicity or spirit that guides Yijing. That’s the good part – that we can’t explain it. The Yijing is demonstrably able to take into account those things which are, for us, unseen and to bring them into the guidance it offers when explaining the changes we are facing and the best way to deal with them.