THE

I CHINGSCIENCE,

METAPHYSICS& DIVINATION

L. H. Kwan

First published 1974First pamphlet edition 1980Vancouver, B. C. Canada

CONTENTS

1. A Romance withthe I CHING 5

2. The I CHING : Science,Metaphysics & Divination9

3. The Origin ofConfucianism 19

A ROMANCE WITH THE I CHING

The Occult Monster

My interest in the I Ching dates back to my undergraduate days in the early sixties. The two subjects I studied were Western Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy. In the Western Philosophy course, our beloved radical teacher Dr. Joseph Agassi threatened that he would dismissthe class if we could not raise a question, whereas in theChinese Philosophy course, I became a rebel in the eye of my fellow-students the moment I asked a question in open class. Utter simplicity of language was demanded in one classroom whereas subtle profundity persisted in the other. It was enlightened optimism in one hour and mystic obscurity in another.

My young mind declared war on my own tradition. I vowed that I would strip Chinese philosophy down to its naked common sense. Chinese Buddhism should also betray its sheer play of words. With this frame of mind, I was confronted with the I Ching. Almost every Chinese scholar,past and present, acknowledged its supremacy. It was proclaimed both the sublimation and fountain of all Chinese thought, whether Confucian or Taoist or otherwise.Yet astonishing puzzlement it was to glance over the pagesof threaded up pieces of odd jargon aside from the Confucian appendixes of subtle verbosity. I could not see any provoking thought in it. I cast it aside: it was undefeated for its odd obscurity and I was undefeated for my spite of it. It remained the untouchable sovereign.

Buddhism did not bother me anymore. Confucianism wasmore valuable as ethical practice than philosophizing or vulgar hypocrisy. Aristotelianism aroused no more interestin me than the Confucian scholasticism. Hegelianism I loathed, with Russel as my hero. Popperian scienticism opened a new vision. I was freed of my metaphysical obsession, but the I Ching remained an unsurmountable challenge, the occult monster.

5

6

Pre-Confucian Cosmological Approach

In 1966, I approached the I Ching in a new frame of mind. I thought that it must be the science, or ideas of science underneath it which I had not understood and whichmade the book so difficult to comprehend:

"Genuine philosophical problems are always rooted inurgent problems outside philosophy --- in mathematics, for example, or in cosmology, or in politics, or in social life, and they die if these roots decay."

(Popper)

In the summer of 1965, I expressed this interest of mine and my thoughts to my former M.A. supervisor, Dr. I.C. Jarvie, saying that it might be interesting to reconstruct something like 'Back to Pre-Confucians', an imitation of Karl Popper's "Back to Pre-Socratics," which is a reconstruction of the progress of cosmological conjectures, interposed with their refutations, of philosophers before Socrates.

The story was difficult to write as most of the books written in English on the subject I came across in the Hong Kong University Library did not help me much. Joseph Needham, in Science and Civilization in China, comes to the conclusion that the system of the I Ching is only a pseudo-science. My lecturer in Chinese Philosophy feared too that there was little in the I Ching which was

of scientific value, and that research along my line mightonly be a waste of time. I ran through the I Ching myself and was not much impressed either. Historical Chinese books on the I Ching I found again incomprehensible to me,due of course to my scanty knowledge of classical Chinese and Chinese philosophy.

7Post-Confucian Scientific Approach

I saw Dr. Jarvie again after two months and said that I had to give up my programme. He, however, said thateven if there was little or no science in the I Ching, onemight ask if it did not at least lead to or influence somelater scientific discoveries. I did not carry on the programme and I could not find any other interesting problem for myself to work on; so I stood over my programme for one whole year.

Then, in October 1966, at a lecture on the I Ching, I heard it mentioned in passing that many practitioners inChinese Medicine made mistakes in diagnoses because they did not have a good knowledge of the I Ching, The other forty members of the audience present might have missed this statement, but it opened my eyes to a new horizon.

I went to see a confident practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine and asked him whether there was any truth in that statement. He said that not only wasthe statement true but also if there had not been the I Ching there would not have been traditional Chinese medicine at all. His argument was that from the Theory of Ying and Yang in the I Ching was developed the Theory of the Five Processes, which, improved upon from time to timein its application, had been the theoretical foundation oftraditional Chinese medicine for two thousand years. I was'quite fascinated, for at last I had found what I had beenlooking for.

I accepted that Chinese Medicine, like Western Medicine, was a science as it is falsifiable in its diagnoses, prescriptions, prognoses, cures, etc. Now if

the theoretical foundation of Chinese Medicine originated in the I Ching, then the I Ching, with its cosmological ideas, must have some scientific value. I thought I could start from such ideas applied in Chinese Medicine as a special example and then come back to a general theory andunderstanding of the I Ching.

I had the learned practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine who would instruct me on matters concerning Chinese Medicine. For fear that my work might degenerate into empty metaphysical talk, I attended his lectures on Chinese Medicine. I had been taught Logic and Scientific Method, which I could apply to my new study. With the help of certain friends at the University of HongKong, I was introduced to Dr. Gerald Choa, who agreed to be my co-supervisor in my intended project. The former Mr.R.B. Maneely, of the School of Anatomy, also read and corrected my early script pages.

8

All was set for a great adventure. I intended to make a study of the Theory of Yin and Yang and the Five Processes as applied in traditional Chinese medicine. I even turned to Chinese Medicine for treatment when ill, something unprecedented to me. From the dark sea of metaphysics, I felt I had come ashore on the continent of Chinese Medicine, a realistic contribution to the welfare of man. Slowly I came to have confidence in Chinese Medicine; my former prejudice against it diminished. I found it rich in progressive theories. For more than threeyears, I constantly attended as an observer at the clinic of the said practitioner where Chinese Medicine was practised, and there were a great number of cases of whichI personally knew well and which convinced me of its efficacious curing power. I was impressed. During this time I made an intensive study of the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, only to find that without a proper imitation of learning it is difficult to make any progress beyond mastering a few basic concepts, although Iwas aware that Chinese Medicine is itself organized knowledge.

The Divinational Key

I was about to abandon, for the second time, the pursuit of the I Ching, when I met Professor Wang Chen, who suggested to me an entirely different approach, and that is the classical divinational approach. It then dawned upon me that the I Ching is not difficult at all tocomprehend, and I was emancipated from the mystery of its

language. I was able to precipitate my earlier efforts in writing the present dissertation. But instead of an ambitious piece of "The Theory of Ying and Yang and the Five Processes in Traditional Chinese Medicine," as a special theory, the present dissertation is only a generalinterpretation of the I Ching.

L. H. Kwan

The I CHING

Science, Metaphysics & Divination

The I CHING

Science, Metaphysics & Divination

The very first five words of the I Ching are:

“Creativity: prime, through, advantageous, constant.”

This is the absolute.

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11In reality it is change:

In change there are Yin and Yang:

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In the Yin there is Yang developing, and in the Yangthere is Yin recessing. The young Yang grows into the old Yang, when change recesses the process from minor Yin to the extreme Yin. In the extreme Yin the young Yang regenerates:

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The seed bursts into life and grows into the full free, when change recesses the process; it bears fruit andconserves itself in the seed again for a new generation.

This is the creative cycle of life: birth, growth, harvest, and storage.

16It is the cosmic order of the I Ching: beginning,

development, limitation, and potentialization.

Limitation is the change from Yang to Yin, from growth to recess. A leaf of the size of a roof befits not the tree. Endless flowering bears no fruit. Monopolized consumption must give way to harmonized growth for all.

Prime is the great beginning of :creativity'. Unobstructed, it progresses all the way through. The process changes. Just limitation produces harmony advantageous for all. Conservation potentializes the life-energy for a new generation, creativity thus achieving constancy.

"Creativity: Prime, through, advantageous, and constant."

This is creativity, as if it were six dragons: the hidden dragon quietly recessing at the bottom; the dragon appearing in the fields; the alert and cautious attempting

leaps out of the deeps; the soaring dragon in the clouds; and the dragon in the extreme and unseen.

This is change. This is creativity. The dragon showsits head, but when you look for its tail, it is there no more. So mysterious and spectacular is change.

17Yet our ancient sages have pictured it. We

understand change in the wood-process, the fire-process, the metal-process, and the water-process; the earth process being latent in all.

For, does not nature show itself in the processes ofspring, summer, fall, and winter?

Wood is the green birth of life in spring; fire is the brilliant growth of summer; metal is the harvest scything in fall; water is the recessed depths of winter: amidst all is earthy change ever pervading.

18Wood is bending-straight; lire burns upwards; metal

conforms; water sinks: all cultivated in earth. The wood-force, its fire-development, its metal-conformation, and its water -consolidation: these are the physical qualitiesresident in Matter. Physics begins.

The physician diagnoses the life-energy of the body in its liver-process, proceeding onto the heart-process, changing into the lung-process, and recessing into the kidney process; the spleen process being latent in all. Equally so are there liver, heart, spleen, lung, and kidney in each and every cell. Medicine begins.

Humanity begins with the birth of love, growing intoculture, harmonized by justice, and potentialized as wisdom. This is ethics, the creativity proper to man: It has been known as human- heartedness. We know it as love.

Love is like thunder, the most startling and forceful burst in nature. It is the beginning of goodness,gentle like the wind, and penetrates like the wind. It burns like fire and shines in culture, the assemblage of all excellency. It is mother earth, the receptive womb forall creativity. It harvests in joy for each and all, the harmony of justice. It is heaven. It potentializes into oceanic wisdom, whence its life regenerates in mountain quiet.

"Thunder, wind, fire, earth, lake, heaven, water, and mountain." Eight trigrams.

As one, reality is ultimately creativity. The creativity of humanity is love.

Love is prime, through, advantageous, and constant. It is good beginning progressing through all advantage in constancy. Herein is good fortune.

Valentine's Day, 1974Canada

L.H. Kwanpupil of PANG Kon.

The Origin of Confucianism

The Origin of ConfucianismThe Confucian tradition began with the I Ching. The very first words of the I Ching Are:

Creativity: Prime, Progress, Advantage, Constancy.

The hexagram, composed of all Yang lines of power, symbolizes that eternal strength which cannotbe curtailed. It is the source of power. The heavensgive a representative image of this eternal strength, for they ever move on and on with immense momentum.

"Creativity" is an apt translation (by Richard Wilhelm) for the hexagram's name. It adequately reveals the ultimate reality of nature as creativity, the ultimate impetus of all changes. It carries the optimistic human fondness for the universe and life. Receptive matter is the substancefor this heavenly perpetual creativity in full play,giving us the infinite variety of changes and phenomena.

This creativity manifests itself in a cosmic order, which we can appreciate and try to describe. The I Ching authors describe this cosmic order of creativity as Primal, Progressive, Advantageous, andConstant.

What do these four cardinal attributes mean? Weshall have recourse to the best authority, namely, Confucius, to define them.

Confucian DefinitionsPrime is the beginning of goodness.Progress is the assemblage of excellences.Advantage is the harmony of justice.Constancy is the potency of endeavours.

These four Confucian definitions themselves of course need explaining. I advocate a Wittgenstein type of linguistic analysis to clear up the muddle of all such Chinese philosophical terms. This could form a strong and important modern school of Chinesephilosophy.

21Foundation of Confucian Ethics

Love . What is primal in humanity is Love. Love has been known by many names: Christian charity, Buddhist mercy, or Confucian human-heartedness.

Like life itself in the seed, love is the vital timeof the human heart. Basically, it is the yearning to live.

Plants too grow towards the sun, showing the desire to live and propagate. Human beings excel plants and animals.

Man desires to live, but he knows that his fellow man also desire to live. By extending his own love of life, he loves his fellowmen and other creatures.

The awakening and first extension of this love is similar to the life-sprouting of the seed. Love is the beginning of goodness.

Culture . Progress in humanity manifests itself in civilization and culture. Humanity, if allowed to develop fully and well, achieves magnificence of civilization, with its social order, ceremonial beauty, cultural richness, and individual creativity in ethical norms.

This is the thorough progress of love and humanity, the assemblage of excellences, the brilliance of creativity.

Justice . The greatest advantage love and humanity can achieve is the harmonious fulfilment of each and every individual life. Ethics and government must allow every individual his rights within his limits, for the universal achievement of the greatest advantage by humanity as a whole. Thus, the 1 Ching defines Advantage as the harmony of justice.

Wisdom . Man is known for his intelligence, and intelligence is proper to man. It is the greatest goodnessand beauty of the cosmos, the sublimation or essence of love, reality and creativity.

Humanity has the highest form of intelligence. It isthe wisdom of love. It is the great effort to love ourselves, our fellow human beings, other creatures, and our universe. It is a continuous effort through long and painful mistakes. It is an effort potentialized and conserved as wisdom, for the future to regenerate and propagate until infinity. Humanity collapses without love,and the wisdom of love is the potency of humanity.

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Prime . Not every beginning is primal. Evilsalso have beginnings which are not qualified as "primal" in the I Ching sense.

In early language usage, the first year of a reign is called the "prime year" of the reign. Calling this year "prime" is understandable wishful thinking.

In later usage, the "prime month" means the first month of the year; the "prime day" refers to New Year’s Day.

These usages satisfy only half of the I Ching sense of the word, i.e., being the beginning or the first, but neutral as far as good and evil are concerned.

Moreover, the "prime criminal" came to be used to describe a criminal leader or a great criminal. Like "My offence hath the primal eldest curse upon it, a brothers murder." (Shakespeare.) This is of course not the I Ching sense of the word.

The I Ching sense of the word is beginning, andbeginning of goodness.

Progress . Alternative translations of this Chinese word, which is both a substantive and an attribute, are possible: "passage", "communication","progress", "development", "success", "getting through", "unobstructedness", etc.

A "primal" beginning necessarily progresses through.

We have in English "through train". "through passenger'', "through fare", "through journey", "through traffic", and the like, with an attributiveuse of the adverb "through". "Through creativity" is

not idiomatic English. We say instead "successful endeavour", "fruitful effort", or "progressive creativity."

When a traffic jam clears, we can get through. Unsuccessful with one strategy, we can perhaps get through with another. These senses still do not satisfy the I Ching sense of the word.

A bank robbery plot may get through, in a sense, for some time. But it is more likely for the robber to get caught in the act or afterwards. The success is not unconditional'. (Some would say the success is not "absolute", but "absolute" is one of my taboo words.) The success may be sectional, i.e.,it does not last through to the very end.

23The I Ching sense of the word demands success

all the way through, which is a proper attribute of heavenly creativity. Confucius defines this unimpeded progress as the assemblage of excellences, the natural outcome of initial goodness getting through, the resultant magnificent achievement of creativity, displaying aninfinite variety of heavenly phenomena.

Human beings are born good. Human nature is therichest potential which has ever existed. Fully developed, it will be the greatest good and beauty in the cosmos. Towards this goal, education providesthe key. (The Trimeter Primer.)

Advantage . The I Ching sense of this word demands the advantage to be utilitarian. If the gainis another man's loss, the gain has no advantage in the I Ching sense. It has to be gain to everyone. Itdemands a limit to egoistic exertions, in order to allow the greatest advantage for the whole communityor system, which ultimately is also real advantage to the individual.

A gambler's gain is usually not real advantage.Exploitation for gain results in greedy excess for some capitalists and unjust deficiency for the masses. These gains fail in the I Ching sense of advantage.

The heavenly bodies do not collide with one another, but keep to their own orbits and limits, each progressing in its own appropriate course. Realadvantage lies in such appropriate fulfilment for every element, towards the Confucian harmony of justice.

Constancy . Without a trunk, the branches and leaves of a tree will fall to pieces: the trunk maintains the whole tree. Pillars and frames maintain the whole building. This central support cannot be just momentary, otherwise the structure will stand today and fall tomorrow.

Constancy is essential. In human endeavours, itis perseverance. In substance, it is the conservation of energy. In a plant, it is the potentialization of life in the fruit and seed.

4 April 1974 L.H. Kwanpupil of BANG Kon

CONFUCIUS