Oriental Health Aesthetics: The Time of Professor Qiu Zhenglun’s Explanation of the Book of Changes(16)

“Consider the composition of the I Ching：it progresses from the 8 Trigrams to the 64 Hexagrams, and further to the 384 Yao (lines). Each Yao is depicted as two crossed lines—like two ✗ marks. Think of how math teachers grade: ✗ for wrong answers, ✓ for correct ones. But what is that ✓? It’s the Big Dipper—its ladle shape is the ✓. The West never adopted this; they use circles (○), see?

Why do we use ✗? It signifies judgment. For instance: a tree in the forest is merely a tree, but once a carpenter fells it and crosses its pieces—doesn’t it transform into tables, stools, or chairs?

As researchers, you must trace the origin of ‘the single stroke that parted heaven and earth.’ How did this primal stroke emerge? Intercrossing generates culture. Frankly, observe how people today rarely err—and thus culture withers, for culture is born of such crossings. Much in the Zhouyi arises from intersections; I’ll skip details here, but pose your questions—we’ll explore them together.

Take the Jing Gua  (经卦, Primary Trigrams). Why ‘Jing’? These eight are singular trigrams—nature’s eight elemental forces. When these forces shift, intercross, repeat, or overlap—the 64 hexagrams emerge (8 × 8 = 64).

Yet the 64 hexagrams alone cannot capture the world’s complexity—hence we turn to the Yao. Each hexagram has six lines, but all lines distill to one stroke —‘one stroke parts heaven and earth,’ as Laozi’s Daodejing states: ‘The One begets the Two.’ And what does ‘One begets Two’ yield? Liang Yi (两仪, Two Forms)—like two wings. Note how the I Ching expresses everything through imagery, symbolism, and aesthetic language:

> Tai Ji (Supreme Polarity) generates Liang Yi;

> Liang Yi generates Si Xiang (四象, Four Phenomena—‘Xiang’ meaning manifestations);

> Si Xiang generates the Ba Gua  (Eight Trigrams—eight symbolic images).

These Ba Gua derive the 64 Hexagrams—64 images—and each Yao is itself a symbolic image (Yao Xiang). Thus, the system is fundamentally aesthetic. This is our understanding.

From 8 Trigrams → 64 Hexagrams → 384 Yao, the core symbol is a single line—solid (_____) or broken (_ _)—called ‘the One Stroke.’ Beneath Jing Gua (primary) and Fu Gua (compound) lies this principle: odd numbers denote solid (yang) lines. Remember—‘The dynamic of yin and yang is called the Dao.’”