Oriental Health Aesthetics: The Time of Professor Qiu Zhenglun’s Explanation of the Book of Changes(14）

“You see, in the Book of Changes (I Ching), from Fuxi’s creation of the eight trigrams—called the Innate (or Pre-Heaven) Eight Trigrams—the diagram features a Taiji symbol (yin-yang fish) at its center. Within this Taiji symbol, isn’t there a yin fish and a yang fish? When they rotate, don’t they form a vortex? Think about it. The concept of Taiji in Chinese I Ching culture is truly profound. This represents the study of images (xiangxue), or “establishing images” (立象), from the I Ching’s teachings on the chaotic primordial era.

As a traditional saying goes, ‘Writing cannot fully express words, and words cannot fully express meaning.’ This was said by Confucius. How then do we convey the meaning of the sages? After contemplation, Confucius stated, ‘The sages established images to fully express meaning.’ What is this ‘establishing images’? The works we create through writing are the images. Why is imagery the characteristic of art? And what does the Zhouyi (I Ching) do? It explores divination and predicting fortune or misfortune—notice? ‘The Four Symbols generate the Eight Trigrams; the Eight Trigrams determine fortune and misfortune; fortune and misfortune give rise to great undertakings.’ How does one predict fortune or misfortune? Frankly, it stems from humanity’s predictive psychology. But this predictive psychology is by no means baseless. The ancients emphasized ‘inquiring of Heaven’—achieved through divination, meditation, and a state of unity between Heaven and humanity—to perceive the future fortunes or misfortunes of life.

We predict the outcome of our actions because whenever any of us goes out to undertake a task, our hearts instinctively seek to foresee the result. Just as today, if we travel somewhere, we consult a guide map; when we drive, we use GPS, right? This is the guiding posture for life’s actions. Our ancient sages had no GPS, correct? Nor did they have printed travel maps or guidebooks. What did they rely on? They observed celestial phenomena, weather patterns, cloud formations, star constellations—they observed the signs. Through such observations, the entire I Ching is built upon all its hexagrams: the Four Symbols generate the Eight Trigrams; the Eight Trigrams multiplied (by themselves) yield 64 hexagrams; the 64 hexagrams multiplied (by their lines) yield 386 lines? Minus one yin and one yang line, is it 384? Right? These form 384 keys. Unlock these keys, and we decipher the code.”