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Below my introductory poem, giving my view on the book.

A BOOK OF WISDOM AND UNDERSTANDING,

One the warp, one the weft of the Universe,

Both revealed in the teaching of this Book.

Through dealing with change, we come

To an understanding of the Spirit.

You need someone with you to take this on,

Both the wisdom and the divination;

To maintain the fabric of the Book of Change.

Pass it back and forth, it will not fall apart.

One giving, one following,

One with the reins, the other being led.

One without t’other leads to twisted,

And confused teachings.

The Task allotted in this Book Is

No more than understanding Yin and Yang,

Light and dark, matter and spirit,

Leader, follower, push-and-pull, both

Shown in the firm and yielding lines.

The various trigrams and hexagrams

Have their proper positioning

Place and Timing in this World.

Thenceforth the role of the Great Individual

Is to promote the Yang, to contain the Yin,

To enable the life-forces to permeate the people,

And bring order, peace and clarity to all.

You can order my translation SIGNED, if you wish, through me, here.

Confucian Virtues

       li – Propriety (fire)
jen – Compassion (wood)  

Faith – Earth

yi – Fairness (metal)
           zhi – Wisdom (water)

These FIVE CONFUCIAN VIRTUES also correspond to Spring (compassion), Summer (propriety), Autumn (fairness) and Winter (wisdom),  with Earth (faith) in the middle. Thus nature, the world and humankind inter-twine, as always in Chinese thought.  The Yin/Yang is a subtle process – some might even call it a sense of humo…r  After all, to every Yin there is Yang, and to every Yang a Yin.  This could be how to look at it.  Gia-fu Feng used to say “two sides of the same coin…” – and of course a coin can be flipped…

TRY THESE ON FOR SIZE – The Five P-Words of the Yi Jing : 

people

passion

position

penetration (reaching)

possession 

The two Classical Methods of Displaying the Trigrams Concern the Pre-heaven and Post-Heaven Also known as the Fuxi and King Wen Diagrams Also known as the World of Ideas and World of Senses One in Time and One in Space. But there is also the noumena and phenomena distinction Of Immanual Kant Who pinched it from Leibiniz Who got it from the Neo-Confucians Who were even then being translated into Latin

The World of Ideas
Inner World

The World of Sense
Outer World

Now this is deep stuff, deliberately so.  Come back some time and look at it again, and again.  Look at the reflections and intricacies.  They Chinese of the 2nd Century wanted to communicate to later generations their view of the world.  To understand you actually have to imbibe the hexagrams and trigrams – eat and drink them for breakfast a few days – then go and read the Yijing text plus the commentaries.  Good luck!

 The Eight Trigrams  (can you name them?)