“Look, next is also from The Book of Changes, Appended Remarks, Part II: ‘When the energies of Heaven and Earth mingle and blend, the myriad things are transformed and enriched; when male and female join their essences, the myriad things are transformed and born.’
Think about it. If you merely approach this as intellectual knowledge, how incredibly difficult it is! Yet this difficulty is meaningless. Conversely, how incredibly simple it is! It might even seem deceptively simple, almost perilously so. But when you enter into it with the genuine experience of life, that’s when it becomes different.
‘When the energies of Heaven and Earth mingle and blend’ – the Tai hexagram represents precisely this mingling and blending of Heaven and Earth. It’s ‘Earth above, Heaven below’ (地天泰). We usually say Heaven is above, Earth is below. How can this configuration here become the Tai hexagram, which is a very auspicious hexagram? Does it contradict the external world we see? No. Look: Earth is above, Heaven is below. Because the Book of Changes is derived through abstraction, this ‘Heaven’ represents the pure, clear Qi rising upwards – it’s Yang energy ascending. Yin energy sinks downwards. If you see Heaven placed below, isn’t that Yang energy? Doesn’t Yang energy rise? Doesn’t this rising energy emerge from within the earth? The Yang energy becomes the seed, the great Earth becomes the soil (坤为土, Kun is Earth). The seed pushes upwards through the soil, breaking the surface – it sprouts, it grows! Isn’t that so? ‘The Yi gives birth to the myriad things’ (易生万物) – this is where it comes from.
‘When the energies of Heaven and Earth mingle and blend’ – observe the interaction between them. ‘The myriad things are transformed and enriched’ (万物化醇). If we temporarily set aside humans as the ‘heart of Heaven and Earth’ to think just about the myriad things, what does ‘transformed and enriched’ (化醇) mean? ‘醇’ (chún) means rich, concentrated, like the fragrance of wine, right? You know, like ‘this or that chun’ (e.g., methanol, ethanol). But methanol in wine is troublesome, while ethanol is good. Ethanol contains many microbial communities beneficial to the body, whereas methanol harms us. All grain alcohol, in its raw, initial liquor state, contains methanol. That’s why it needs to be aged, stored for a long time. Methanol is lighter and evaporates over this extended period, leaving behind the ethanol. The ethanol, with its microbial communities, is then beneficial. So even though wine has brought me much negative news in life, I still cherish it. Like poetry, though it too has sometimes caused me pain, both wine and poetry are woven into my very being, my destiny. Thus, my philosophy is a ‘life of poetry and wine’. That’s how I contemplate these matters.
‘When male and female join their essences, the myriad things are transformed and born’ (男女构精，万物化生). Of course, this is a metaphor; it doesn’t refer solely to male and female. This ‘essence’ (精) means the essence of spirit. But this ‘essence’ operates on two levels: On the material level, ‘essence’ means the refined, the subtle, the minute – like modern nano-technology, it belongs to this realm of the exquisitely fine. The second level is the ‘essence’ of vital energy, spirit, and vitality (精气神) – it exists as a fundamental element, a kind of energy.
‘The myriad things are transformed and born’ (万物化生). Why ‘transformed and born’ (化生)? Why not ‘created and born’ (造生) or ‘forged and born’ (打造而生)? ‘Transformed and born’ (化生). Think about Zhuangzi in the middle section of *The Equality of Things* (齐物论), in that story you all know – Zhuangzi dreaming he was a butterfly, vividly alive as a butterfly, right?”
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