As "Yi" and "Book of Changes", most people find it very mysterious and have a very strong interest in it. So what exactly is "Yi" about? This is a question of positioning. From the perspective of traditional Chinese culture, the "Yi" is mainly divided into several schools: The first is the Confucian Yi. The "Yi" is one of the Six Classics of Confucianism. Strictly speaking, the "Zhou Yi" belongs to the Confucian classics. With the beginning of the Han Dynasty and the emergence of Shen Tongqi in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the "Book of Changes" formed an indissoluble bond with Taoism and received great development in Taoism, especially the rise of Neidan. The "Book of Changes" emphasizes principles, qi, images, and techniques, while Taoism pays more attention to qi, combining the sixty-four hexagrams of the "Book of Changes" with the operation of the human body's qi. There are also many theories in traditional Chinese medicine that are inseparable from the "Book of Changes" The guidance of the "Book of Changes" has the so-called origin of the "Book of Changes" in medicine, such as the "Ziwu Liu Zhu" of acupuncture; Buddhism also has many discussions about the "Book of Changes". In the Southern and Northern Dynasties, some Buddhist masters used to explain the "Book of Changes" to promote According to the principles of Buddhism, in the Tang Dynasty, Elder Li, one of the founders of the Huayan Sect, used the system of the "Book of Changes" to explain the "Huayan Sutra" and wrote a "Combined Theory of the Huayan Sutra". It was a unique approach, which had a certain influence on the Neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming Dynasties at that time and later.
As an important basis for traditional Chinese cultural theory, "Yi" and Lao-Zhuang Thought played an extremely important role in the formation and development of ancient Chinese cosmology and worldview. The Han Yi focused on iconography, and the Song Yi focused on principles. However, many tributaries of the Yi study always focused on and tended to its prediction aspect. Of course, the "Yi" itself was used for divination in the Shang and Zhou dynasties. Forecasting has an integral side. The businessman Shang Gui's government is full of the combination of politics and religion. Divine power and political power are inseparable. Every major event is often decided through divination. There were Lianshan in Xia, Guizang in Yin, and Zhou Yi in Zhou Dynasty. Before Zhou Yi, the main function of "Yi" was to use it for divination and divination. After the Zhou Dynasty, King Wen of Zhou changed ghost plots into human plots, emphasized people's subjective initiative, advocated humanistic thinking, downplayed the divination function of "Yi", and incorporated the theory of Yi into self-cultivation, so that he could govern the country and bring peace to the world. Among the great ways, this is the mainstream of Yi Xue. In "Book of Changes" 6.1 Series of Ci, it is said: "Did the rise of Yi occur in the Middle Ages? Did those who made the changes have worries?" King Wen of Zhou overlapped Fu Xi's single trigrams in twos and evolved It is the eighty-eight and sixty-four hexagrams, and is developed. Zhou Gong and Confucius added Xiangci, Hexagrams, classical Chinese, etc., making it an important guiding ideology for people's planning and self-cultivation, as well as for grasping the development and operation laws of future things. .
In order to distinguish between Yi Li, Qi, Xiang, and Shu, we must first pay attention to "Li", that is, Yi Li. If you don’t even know Yi Li, you can’t talk about Qi, Xiang, and Shu. Each of the sixty-four hexagrams in the Book of Changes contains Li, Qi, Xiang, and Shu, but Yi Li is the foundation. The so-called "Book of Changes" refers to the principles deduced by the Book of Changes on the laws of development and evolution of things based on the cosmology and worldview in the Book of Changes. This is the essence of the thought of the Book of Changes. In the pre-Qin period, the Yi Jing was mainly used for divination and prediction. In the Han Dynasty, the principles, qi, physiognomy, and techniques of the Yi were put into greater use. After the Song Dynasty, the emphasis began to be on the principles of the Yi, and predictions were only at the end of the I Ching. The main schools of prediction include Zi Ping Shu (eight characters), Zi Wei Dou Shu, Qi Men Dun Jia Shu, fortune telling, Feng Shui, etc., and these are all inseparable from the Yin Yang Five Elements theory and the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches theory derived from the Book of Changes. Five elements: metal, wood, water, fire, earth; Heavenly stems: A, B, B, D, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, Gui; Earthly branches: Zi, Chou, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu, Hai. Strictly speaking, this is the theory of numerology in ancient China, with corresponding derivation formulas. Its basic theory is exactly the same as that of traditional Chinese medicine.
Forecasting has a history of more than 3,000 years in China and became popular after the Song Dynasty. Now, this set of knowledge has been classified into the category of superstition, which is both reasonable and unreasonable. What is reasonable is that most people are addicted to numerology and fortune telling, and have lost their ambitions, which has reduced their ability to control themselves and transform themselves. , lacks the spirit of being the master of one's own destiny. But we must understand that when we talk about the principles, Qi, phenomena, and techniques of Zhouyi, Qi directly promoted the development of ancient Chinese natural sciences. Chinese and foreign academic circles have fully affirmed this point. What we admire here is Yili, which is a unique set of knowledge in China. According to academic theory, the Chinese Book of Changes contains rich and simple dialectics and logical thinking. In the Book of Changes, it has a very rich and high level of thought. If we only use logical theories to explain the Book of Changes, it is impossible to fully grasp the ideas and essence of the Book of Changes.