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Transcript of Zhou Y iDao
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Yi Dao
A Spiritual Path of Work, Study and Meditation
Based on the Ancient Chinese book the Yi Jing (I Ching)
Known in the West as the Book of Changes
Therefore the superior man, when living quietly, contemplates the emblems and studies theexplanations of them; when initiating any movement, he contemplates the changes (that are madein divining), and studies the prognostications from them. Thus 'is help extended to him from
Heaven; there will be good fortune, and advantage in every movement.'Xi Ci I , 2
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Folksy and Slightly Pretentious Preface
(If you just want to start using the beads see the
Read Me First chapter below)
It is traditional to start books about the Yi Jing by
saying that its the oldest Chinese book and
launching into a panegyric on its rich spiritual and
mystical heritage. Well, were not going to do that.
For one thing it isnt the oldest book from China,
several of the Confucian Classics and at least one
non-canonical book (the Bamboo Annals) have
sections predating the Yi Jing. And as to the
panegyric, I consider the Yi a book worthy of
dedicating many lifetimes to. Would that I believed
in reincarnation and could do so! Now on to a brief
introduction to Yi Dao, which is a materialist
approach to the Yi Jing. Yi Dao is a form ofRealism. Realism, in turn, is the path for all you out
there who are spiritual, but not religious. We have
beads and chanting and studious monastics (or at
least people who dress funny and keep unusual
hours), we just dont have an actual religion at the
heart of the whole thing.
Introduction
Reality is.
Thats a simple but challenging statement. There is
an observed reality and the only thing that distorts it
are the flaws and ripples in the glass through which
we see itour minds.
Reality was.
The universe has no need for a creator. There is no
need for giants, ghosts, pixies, imaginary friends or
gods. Reality got us here just fine without having to
resort to any blind watch makers, divine demiurges
or intelligent designers. Reality gets along just fine
without wishful thinking and fantasies. Im not
against fantasy. Imagination and play are precious
cargo that we bring with us from childhood. But it
is counterproductive to continue believing in Santa
Claus after you understand that people buy gifts for
their children at the store or make the toys
themselves.
Reality will be.
Every day more and more people in the world
discover that the world is real. They grow up. They
come to realize that there is a real universe and that
we are not at its very center. Only by reaching
beyond the words, behind the appliqus and painted
scenery boards that we paste on the front of reality,can we touch reality itself. For those so inclined, by
bringing the symbols of the ancient Yi Jing deep
within us we can reach an intimate understanding of
reality--enlightenment, if you like the term. The old
saying goes: A picture is worth a thousand words.
Well, a symbol is worth a thousand pictures. At the
same time that many discover reality, many more
take the easy way out and buy into a religion. They
take things on faith. But faith is easy, and reality is
hard. Yi Dao is the Easy Way. But thats a bit of an
inside joke. Its true that the daily practices of Yi
Dao only take a few minutes of meditation and a
little reading. But to face the universe, unblinking,
and acknowledge that we know little more about it
than its vastness, is hard.
Okay, now it really gets rough: Life is real.
Death is real. Life and death work together.
Galaxies die, stars die, civilizations die, and peopledie. The only thing that is eternal and infinite is the
totality of all that is real and the change that makes
that reality move. Using the small lens that we have
to work with, the human mind, we really cannot tell
if there is something beyond the limits of what we
define as the universe. But I would say that based
on the way things usually work out we will
eventually find the edge of the big bang heading
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outward and see something beyond itother big
bangs heading this way from the surrounding
universes. Or it may be that our perception cant
grasp what the universe is really like, that the whole
wide cosmos seems as it is to us only because we
cannot perceive it, and if we did perceive we would
find some horrid Lovecraftian asymmetry that
would send us into stark raving madness, perhapseven cause us to start believing wild ideas, for
instance that there is a stone firmament over the
earth with holes to let the rain through and stars
stuck to it with safety pins.
Because death is real, life moves from the crude
to the refined.
So there is a justification for all the sadness. There
are organisms that clone themselves rather thanreproduce by mixing it up between the Yin and
Yang. Those organisms are elaborate dead ends.
They never change; they never go beyond the niche
they are in. They might as well be rocks. It is the
constant re-throwing of the clay on the wheel that
produces a great work of art. It is by the constant
pounding motion of evolution that life moves
forward. But we dont understand the why or
wherefore of it. We know that the universe of today
is born of the death of trillions of stars that wentbefore, but we cannot conceive what the whole
project might be about. Religious thinkers, now that
they have, for the most part, stopped killing those
with differing opinions, would have us believe that
all this is part of a divine plan. Its possible that
there is a plan. There may even be a motivation, a
grand purpose. The entire universe could just as
easily exist as the product of a massive cosmic
entity trying to get the malt mix just right for a
batch of beer. We cannot perceive the scale of the
whole. That is where Yi Dao comes in. If we
meditate on the figures of the Yi Jing, a set of
figures which perfectly represent all of reality, then
at some point we may get a flash of inspiration and
get closer to understanding reality. At the very least
we may be able to get some of that cosmic beer
when its ready.
Consider a few moments from science in our day:
We know that all the elements in our world, the
very stuff we are made of, come from the hearts of
long dead stars. Iron, appropriately enough, comes
from a stage in a stars life where it collapses in and
explodes outward; a moment of deadly conflict,
appropriate to Mars, whose metal is traditionallyiron. But Mars the God is an entity dreamt up by
man to fill a need. Metallic iron and the planet Mars
are much more useful in science than tales of the
god Mars, but they make for lousy poetry. So we
need to keep a balance of loving and respecting
ancient traditions without allowing them to run our
livesor ruin our lives. But that concept of the
cycle of life of stars producing ever more complex
life in the universe is key. When we look at the
images that roll in from the mind-bending distancesof the cosmos and are told that here there is a
supernova destroying all within X number of light
years distance and there are two galaxies colliding
there is a natural human reaction of gut wrenching
fear. If it is all so easy, if life on billions of planets
and stars can be wiped out any moment by the blind
interplay of larger events in motion then we too are
in the path of destruction. We too may be swept
away at any moment. Indeed it does not take
anything so large and significant as a galactic
cataclysm. A mere asteroid a few kilometers across
hitting this planet can wipe out nearly all life and
has done so repeatedly in the past, apparently. But
in the cool, calm rationality of the Yi all of this is
the imperfection of perfection. All of this is part of
a grander scheme. The scale, grandeur and beauty
of it all are the subject of wonder, not of terror. To
attain to this level of detachment is a great
achievement on the path.
Dark matter and dark energyare they the latest
big answer? Perhaps people will read that phrase
in the future and smile. Maybe dark matter and dark
energy are the beginning of a grand scheme of
understanding reality. On the other hand maybe
they are the next ether, the next phlogiston (no,
Phlogiston is not one of those little Central Asian
republics with lots of people and no oil, look it up
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for goodness sake, it once was the next big thing
in science just like dark matter and dark energy are
today).
As Heraclitus said, everything flows, and in so
saying echoes Confucius. Yi Dao is about living
here and now, striving for years to be connected to
one place at one time and understand it all. Yi Daoseeks the next stop after Samadhi. Samadhi is to be
here now. Yi Dao is to be everywhere now.
On Accepting the World as It Is
Knowing reality and accepting it 'as is' is a key part
of Yi Dao, but stoically accepting fate is not
sufficient. The philosophers who wrote the Yi Jing
call on us to rejoice in the appointments of heaven.
We go beyond accepting reality as it iswe rejoice
in that knowledge. We exult in the absolute
unshakable solidity of being. This acceptance, this
Amor fati, is the key to the questions that our
materialist path answers, questions that all the
worlds religions puzzle over in vain: Why is the
world so arbitrary? Why is there evil and why do
bad things happen to good people? What is the
purpose of life? Why is there no evidence that the
Gods exist? Why is there suffering?
Because thatsthe way things are, thats why.
Im not kidding. Its just that simple. There is a term
that was popular for a time: tough love. We need
to have tough love for ourselves. We need to look
infinity in the eye, look into the gaping maw of
trillions upon trillions of galaxies stretching out
beyond our limited line of sight, and say: It is
beautiful, it is awe-inspiring, it is great and
significant and we are small and puny.but that is
all relative. It all IS. That is the key. That is the
wellspring. Reality IS. Nature IS. No amount of
religious posturing will make fairy tales and wishful
thinking actually become measurably true. That
simple idea, that things are as they are and not as we
imagine or wish them to be, marks the line between
a thought system that is based on fantasy and one
based on the real world as we perceive it.
Humanity is ready to put aside its childish
attachments to our cradle toys and look at the world
as it is. Or at least a few humans are ready to do so.
Lets face it, most people cannot handle the reality
of reality and will stay in the cotton wadding nest of
deception that they inherited from their parents and
their parents before them. But we are faced with the
same phenomena that send them scurrying to thepews, and our answers are different. For instance
we affirm that death is not from inherited sins; it is
a way to clear things out and bring out improved
organisms. Life is not a preface to an eternity of
real life. Life is here and now and it denies all the
machinations of religion through its very existence.
Suffering is neither a lesson, nor a gift, nor a result
of a reality we should escape, it is a part of reality
and we accept and embrace all of reality and fight to
eliminate suffering and seek to increase joy.
Life improves itself and refines itself and we have
no idea why. But we do know one thing: There are
natural laws and our understanding of those laws
improves and is refined just as life itself can be
improved.
What does all of this have to do with Yi Dao? In
fact, what is Zhou Yi Dao (Yi Dao for short)? Yi
Dao is a swirling fabric of contradictions that leadsto the perfect peace of understanding the world and
accepting it. Yi Dao is a system of materialist
thought, study and meditation that bases itself on a
3,000 year old scripture and rejects the very concept
of scripture. It is based on the Yi Jing (I Ching), one
of the most ancient books of divination in the world,
but it rejects the utility of predictive divination. Yi
Dao is a path for those who are spiritual, but not
religious. Yi Dao is what you make of it, because it
is a Path, and it is a Way, but it is not a faith and it
is not a religion. Yi Dao is utterly Chinese, but
invented by an American. It is thoroughly new, but
a natural outgrowth of something very ancient. The
only surprising thing about Yi Dao is that nobody
seems to have thought of using beads to keep track
of meditation before me, and precious few seem to
have used the figures of the Yi Jing as a visual
mantra.
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Okay, now the practical aspects of living the
spiritual path of Yi Dao.
Components of the Path
There are three elements of Yi Dao: Work, Study
and Meditation.
Work is no doubt familiar to many of you already.If you arent independently wealthy (andperhaps
even if you are) work is what you do to support
yourself and perhaps also is very central to who you
are. Some people work to pay for what they enjoy,
others enjoy their work. In both cases working, and
keeping up our obligations to family, community
and the wider world of society, is the foundation of
the Confucianist life and thus the basis of Yi Dao
(did I mention that we are based on Confucianism?
No? Well, that cat is out of the bag now. After all,
the Yi Jing is a Confucian classic). There is a
religious concept of being in the world, but not of
it. Thats not us. We are in the world and we are of
the world.
Study is to the Yi Dao practitioner what horseshoes
are to a smith. We labor at our studies and use what
we learn in our work. We study to improve
ourselves, to enjoy ourselves, and ultimately to
leave a legacy. Our study and its results effect all
that we leave behind, whether it is in the children
we raise, the people we teach or the people for
whom we write or otherwise create.
Meditation is what probably got you reading this,
and it is the core of Yi Dao, what distinguishes it
from other paths. Yi Dao meditation can be done in
the typical settings for meditationplacid forest,
peaceful shore, etc., far from the madding crowd.
But it is more typically practiced right in the middle
of that madding crowd. Before we go further on that
subject lets run through how to do Yi Dao
meditation, at least the techniques Ive been
working with.
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READ THIS FIRSTThe
Impatient Readers Guide to Yi Dao
To practice Yi Dao meditation all you need is a
human mind and the 64 hexagrams of the Yi Jing (I
Ching). I started running through the 64 Hexagrams
in their traditional King Wen order in my mind as
soon as I memorized the figures as a teenager. In
moments of pain or boredom or difficulty they have
been a great refuge and consolation. But its easy to
lose your place, so to keep track of your meditation
on the figures you can use an Yi Dao circlet and an
Yi Dao counter. These are items I have created for
myself over the last few years and am now ready to
distribute. The circlet is a type of mala or thinking
beads with 64 beads on it. The counter contains
two sets of eight counters, the cycle counters on theright and the greater circlet counters on the left. You
meditate on each hexagram and move your fingers
over the appropriate bead on the circlet, breathing in
for the bottom trigram and out slowly for the top
one.
Those meditating on the hexagrams of the Yi Jing
fall naturally into the following categories:
1. Those who dont know the Yi Jing and are
probably wondering what the heck all these
hexagrams and trigrams are. You need to
study the Yi Jing a little before you do Yi
Dao.
2. Those who know the Yi Jing, but have not
memorized the 64 Hexagrams.
3. Those who know the 64 hexagram images
by heart and can meditate on them without
the aid of a chart.
4. Those who are able to see all the figures atonce. I dont know if such people exist They
may only come to be after the Digital
Singularity. The goal of Yi Dao is the same
as the goal of science: to understand and
explain the universe, and I suspect being
able to see all of the figures at once is a big
step on that path, allowing the person who
can do it to perform complex visualizations
when thinking about the world, relationships
change, etc..
Yi Dao has very little rite and ceremony to it, but
there are daily practices and a rite of passage. The
daily practices are tracked in a daily journal and/or
blog. Each day an Yi Dao practitioner completes at
least one meditation on the 64 hexagrams,preferably in the morning when they have
performed their ablutions but not yet started work or
eating. Here is what I do:
Ring a bell.
Meditate on the 64 Hexagrams.
Ring a bell.
Do an Yi Jing reading that draws one or two texts asstudy texts for the day (I use the Nanjing method to
cut things down to one or two texts. See details in
the Appendix).
Read the Chinese text aloud, then the lesser image
of the text, the text again, the greater image for the
Hexagram as a whole, and the text a third time.
Obviously you may want to read the text in your
own language, and Chinese is not my native
language, so what I read is a book that hasinterlinear texts of the Pinyin transcription along
with the characters.
Record the lesson for the day in your journal/blog,
along with the other readings for the day. I keep
these readings brief (one of the meanings of Yi, in
Yi Jing, is easy).
Ring a bell.
Put everything away and start your day.
At some point during day I study the lesson text
from the Yi Jing. I dont view it as an omen for the
day, but I do often find it useful as a cautionary text
in dealing with people and events in the course of
the day.
In the evening I study other texts. The one I
consider standard is reading three verses of the
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Analects of Confucius (the Lun Yu of Kongzi).
There is no greater teacher that I have ever met in
my intellectual travels. His Analects introduced me
to the Yi, and for that I am eternally grateful. I
recommend getting several editions of the Analects
and reading as much commentary as you can. Many
of the sayings will mean nothing to you if you dont
absorb some of the historic and philosophic contextin which they were created.
It was traditional in ancient China to have a kind of
major and minor in the Confucian Classics. Every
scholar was supposed to know all the classics, but
there was still a concentration in one book with a
lesser focus in another, with the rest of the classics
getting much less work and attention. Another
tradition I find charming is that those who study the
Yi Jing traditionally start either in childhood orretirement. It is a book that requires a certain
amount of detachment from the world to grasp. So
in Yi Dao our major is the Book of Changes, and
our minor is the Analects, and the rest of the
classics round out our studies.
And thats it; the minimal practices. The rest
depends on the time you have and to what depth
you want to go in exploring Yi Dao meditation. You
can for instance add other readings of thecommentaries and appendices of the Yi, other
Confucian classics, or other philosophers, such as
Xunzi.
The rite of passage I mentioned above is this: When
an Yi Dao practitioner is ready to move from using
a chart to go through the hexagrams of the Yi to
keeping them in their minds eye they write out the
hexagrams. Sit down and write the figures in their
traditional King Wen order from memory without
making a single error and you have graduated.
The chart you create is then suitable for framing,but better used ceremonially at your morning
meditation. Even if you have the figures memorized
and use them throughout the day, at morning
meditation you keep a chart of the hexagrams in
front of you. Perhaps if we get really organized
well use writing out the hexagrams as a test for
entry into the ranks of initiates. Then we can haze
the heck out of those who have not memorized the
hexagrams, call them little brain, etc.Probably not
though.
A major alternative that someone could explore is
using the Fu Xi, binary order of the hexagrams to
meditate. There are some very interesting
possibilities in such a practice, since you will be
getting what amounts to a computers eye view of
the hexagrams. You could use the Ma Wang Dui
order as well. It is much simpler to memorize than
the King Wen order, and could allow you to do an
in-depth meditation on one of the most important
aspects of Yi Jing studies from its very outset: The
family attributes of the Eight Trigrams.
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Here is a picture of the current version of an Yi Dao circlet:
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Bi4 Shi1 Song4 Xu1 Meng2 Zhun1 Kun1 Qian2
Yu4 Qian1 Da4 You3 Tong2 Ren2 PI3 Tai4 L3 Xiao3 Xu4
Fu4 Bo1 Bi4 Shi4 He2 Guan1 Lin2 Gu3 Sui2
Heng2 Xian2 Li2 Kan3 Da4 Guo4 Yi2 Da4 Xu4 Wu2 Wang4
Jie3 Jian3 Kui2 Jia1Ren2 Ming2 Yi2 Jin4 Da4 Zhuang4 Dun4
Jing3 Kun4 Sheng1 Cui4 Gou4 Guai4 Yi4 Sun3
L3 Feng1 Gui1 Mei4 Jian4 Gen4 Zhen4 Ding3 Ge2
Wei4 Ji4 Ji4 Ji4 Xiao3 Guo4 Zhong1 Fu2 Jie2 Huan4 Dui4 Xun4
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The coins used in circlets are old Chinese cash
coins with a square hole in the middle. They rangein age from 200 to 2,000 years old.
The tower of the circlet consists of three elements,
the globe, representing the Tai Qi (Yin and Yang),the yak bone disk representing the four elements of
Elder and younger Yang and Yin and the coin,
representing the Ba Gua, the eight trigrams.
Miscellaneous Notes on Yi Dao
There is a lot of satisfaction knowing that the
system you are studying is directly connected to the
infinite beauty and majesty that is the universe.
Consider the fact that no matter where you go, atleast in this set of dimensions we inhabit, the 64
hexagrams of the Yi Jing cover all aspects of the
reality you are in. If you were stranded somewhere
in a habitable place a billion light years from here(try to think about how far that is some time), you
could take your Yi Dao circlet out and meditate toform a closer connection with the reality of that
place. But you can just as easily connect while
standing in line or listening to music far less than a
billion light years away.
The texts were attached to the figures of the Zhou
Yi 3,000 years ago and what we can determine oftheir meaning is very different from the Yi Jing of
2,300-2,500 years ago. Those texts are in turn moredifferent still from the relatively modern
interpretation of the Song Dynasty 1,000 years ago.Like the Well in hexagram 48. The town changes
around it, the well stays the same. To give the
western reader a better insight into what I mean bythe meaning of the text differing in different times,
imagine a single text which, interpreted one way is
the text of the Jewish Bible and interpreted anotherway is the Christian New Testament. Although the
text does not in fact vary by this much, the
variations there are sometimes are quite striking andeffectively create a book within the book. The coretext, a divination manual for a culture that still lived
on a mix of agriculture and hunting and was chiefly
concerned with matters of survival is in sharpcontrast with the finely tuned moral and
cosmological text of later years. Many of the terms
of the Yi as an ancient divination manual speak of
sacrifices, including human sacrifices. Those samewords carry a very different meaning in the
interpretation of the Yi in the Song Dynasty (and
the modern editions of the Yi Jing, including those
of Legge and Wilhelm, are based on a QingDynasty edition which in turn is based on the work
of Song Dynasty scholars such as Zhu Xi and
Cheng Yi). A concrete example of this is the term
Zhen1 (). In ancient texts, such as the oracle
bone inscriptions, this term simply means consultthe oracle. In later works, such as those of the Song
Dynasty and succeeding ages, the term becomesperseverance.Add to this the complication ofsome terms having more than one meaning in
antiquity, such as Fu2, which in some places may
mean prisoner of war and in others return, and theconfusion reaches a whole new level.
The symbols of the Yi are binary. The nature of its
operation is in keeping with quantum theory at leastwithin my very limited understanding of quantum
theory. It is the most ancient computer in the world
still in operation (unless one counts the universeitself as a computer, which in information theory isapparently quite plausible). It is the most elegant
tool that you can ever possess and it is yours for the
humble payment of a little study. By studying thesymbols of the Yi Jing you will be in the heady
company of the great sages of China, with Emperor
Fu Xi of the Xia, King Wen and King Wu of theZhou, Kongzi (Confucius) and all the thousands
upon thousands of scholars, poets, diviners and
philosophers who have found a home in the great
bifurcating branches of the garden of forking pathsthat is the Yi.
Reality Suffices
Humans make a thousand arguments and defend a
thousand positions. They take a hundred roads, but
all lead to the same place.
Yi Dao is the inevitability of nature. It is eternal,
implacable and inarguable. That in itself is very
reassuring. Wherever you are, reality is there.
Where there is reality, the 64 hexagrams mark it out
In the scheme of the 64 hexagrams we have a map
of all that is. The figures organize and follow the
lines of increase and decrease, growth and decay,
they lead from simplicity to refinement. In short, all
things that are, have been, and may be are in the
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chart of hexagrams we meditate on daily.
Our planet came into being in a most instructive
form. It is said that without the Moon we would
likely not have life on earth, or that it would be very
primitive (the same is said of Jupiter, which catches
a lot of the wild shots that the cosmos throws at us).
But also consider the Moon as a useful lesson, partof the classic pairs of analogy: The Sun rises and
the Moon sets, the cold withdraws and the heat
increases. Seasons come and go and the cyclical
alterations show us the Dao. We watch the Sun
ascend in the sky and know at its peak it will start to
decline. We gaze at the Moon and know that all
over the planet, others look up, seeing that same
gray orb. Its light joins us together in a gentle way
that the brash and blinding Sun cannot. But it, like
us, like the Earth, like the very galaxy in which we
all dwell is born, grows, thrives, and fades into
death. The death of the stars provide the material for
new planets and new life. We are part of eternity.
We contemplate it every day, and if we were 10
billion light years away from here we would
contemplate those very same 64
figures, because that is our map.
There is no need for fantasies in this model. Realitysuffices.
Living as The Well
It is said that no man is an island, and well said. All
are connected, and everything in the universe is
within six degrees of separation from everything
else in the universe. All changes, and we find that
frightening. We want to establish an island of calm,
a place where all is good and stays that way in the
midst of the swirling whirlpools of change. Yi Dao
gives us that. The Yi Jing gives us a rational
description of everything in reality in a form brief
enough to keep in our daily thoughts. By
consistently practicing Yi Dao we can attain to
being The Well. The town changes but the well
stays the same. We observe reality, we provide the
cool, life-giving water of the Yi to all who look
below the surface to find it, but we are but a conduit
to that source. We take as much of the cool water of
the Yis wisdom into our crude bucket brains and
pray that the rope doesnt break before we get to the
top of the shaft to share it with the wider world. We
attain to immortality, but it is an immortality of
reality. As long as there is reality it will be
described by the figures of the Yi. By studyingthose figures and making them the core of our being
we touch reality and understand that there is no
need for the fairy tales. Reality is perfect in its
imperfection. This is our eternity.
The Four Meanings of Yi
Chinese characters are 'over-loaded' to borrow a
term from programming. One character can have
several meanings, with the intended meaning drawnfrom context and usage. Needless to say this can get
confusing, but it adds a layer of richness to the text
and allows for some depth of interpretation not
found in a more unequivocal language.
Changing
Change according to the circumstances the most
basic meaning of Yi is change. That's why the Yi
Jing is called the Book of Changes.
We change in response to the situation. Laughter is
polite when listening to a joke, anything but polite
when listening to someone recounting a tragedy.
Unchanging
Yes, that's right; a character in classical Chinese can
sometimes mean one thing in one place and the
opposite in another.
The superior person always has a moral core. They
have certain principles that are not subject to
negotiation or even coercion. This is also part of the
unchanging portion of Yi Dao.
Exchange
Changing and the lack of change refer to qualitative
change. The metaphor is chemical change. Once
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you have burned wood you cannot 'unburn' it, at
least in a narrow context. But exchange has two
meanings. One is the rearrangement of matter and
energy that represents a type of quantitative change.
As an example, if there is too much water in one
place and not enough in another the nature of the
water is the same; it is the arrangement or location
that is causing the change.
The other meaning of exchange is the exchange that
occurs between opposites. Yang grows and Yin
recedes. Yin grows and Yang recedes. The
opposites push back and forth, never attaining a
pure state of dominance, but exchanging their
preeminence.
Easy
The Great Treatise says: "That which is easy is easy
to follow". Yi Dao practice is easy. This is
deliberate. If something is going to be to done every
day that goes beyond the built-in human necessities
of sleeping, eating, etc., it must be easy to do or it
will soon fall away. By following the easy way of
Yi Dao you gradually achieve something difficult.
The texts and figures of the Yi become second
nature because you study and meditate on them
daily. The teachings of Kongzi and the othermasters you study daily in small amounts
accumulate by repetition. Soon you will find the
words of the Yi Dao texts pop up in life situations,
assisting understanding and helping you make
decisions.
On Potential Purity and Manifest Reality
The figures of the Yi Jing are in the realm of the
ideal. Qian is pure Yang and Kun is pure Yin. In thereal world there is never perfect purity. No matter
how perfect a crystal may appear, there is always a
minute flaw. If you purify alcohol it will never be
100%. What's more, if you open a barrel of pure
alcohol it will immediate lose some of its purity
because it absorbs water from the air it contacts.
From this I conjecture that Qian and Kun are the
matrix of reality, but they differ from the other
Hexagrams. They are the parents of the universe,
but in our daily lives we deal with their children, the
other six Hexagrams, and never directly encounter
pure Yang and pure Yin.
Pre-Eminence of the Positive
A state of perfection is never seen in nature, as I say
above. This is a fundamental principal that drives
what we perceive as evolution or progress in the
universe. There is a slight imbalance between the
Yang and Yin that gives everything a directional
spin. Some describe this as being theeffect of
entropy that causes systems to move from
organization into eventual chaos. There are some
dissenting voices on the end, with some viewing
entropy as a factor, but not a limiter, and closed
systems capable of moving from chaos into
organization cyclically or transferring theiraccumulated organization to other closed systems,
effectively seeding the wider universe with
organization without falling victim to entropy. All
that is beyond the scope of my simple perception of
things. I once calculated the number of negative,
positive and neutral omens as I judged them, in the
Yi Jing. The number showed just slightly more
positives than negatives. Again, this shows a slight
positive spin to reality. Although the figures
themselves are a perfect set of 32 and 32, their sum
is perceived as being slightly out of balance at any
given point of observation. It is this slight bulge of
positive in perceived reality that keeps the cosmic
ball rolling. Perfect balance is stasis; the heat death
of entropy worked out to its end. That end is never
reached because for each closed system there is
always a system beyond its limits. By this I mean
that we perceive the universe as starting in the big
bang and expanding outward. But we do so onlybecause we cannot see beyond that limit to the other
big bangs that are expanding all around us,
hurtling towards us and influencing our reality in
ways beyond our current comprehension.
Perception and Human History
We evolved from creatures that lived with constant
attrition from the other animals into such a position
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of domination in the natural world that we often
have to hold back from crushing other species in
building our communities and living our day to day
lives. That evolution left us with survival tools that
are often useful to us today as in the ancient times,
but they definitely effect our perceptions and the
ways we describe and explain reality. Our attitude
and interaction with the Yi Jing and similar systemsof divination are an excellent example of a realm
where human nature influences perception. There is
a tendency in human beings to imagine entities to
explain actions. An example of this are seeing the
destruction wreaked by a recent storm in the woods
and imagining that there were angry giants who had
uprooted the trees and tossed them around. Another
such moment is finding a huge fossilized bone in a
place where there are no large animals and deciding
that there are dragons which currently exist, not
dinosaurs existing in the past. Scientists explain the
tendency to imagine entities as part of our survival
mechanism. Think of an ancient pre-human or
human hearing a noise in the wild . They may
ignore it or they may consider it the sound of a
potential predator. Survival can hinge on making
the more cautious assumption, even if it is
empirically incorrect. If you think that every time
you hear a branch crack it is the sound of a tigermany of those tigers are imaginary. But if even one
of them is real the risk to your continuing your
genetic line is high. Thus when we divine with the
Yi there is a feeling that it is like the advice of
parents, that there is an entity that speaks to us
through this inanimate collection of symbols and
words. This is a key element in all religious
experiences. Now we are able to gain some degree
of objectivity by using the instruments of science
and logic (neither one is enough on its own, but
form two halves of a whole). We can eliminate
many of the imaginary tigers of our perceived
reality and come to use the Yi as a way to
understand the world, not a primitive predictive tool.
Perception and DivinationCaution,
Slippery Slopes Abound
When we are facing an important decision and
consult the Yi Jing or some other oracle we enter an
area of shifting sands in the realm of the human
mind. Looking back over the times you got answers
from the Yi over the years you may very well recallsome remarkable answers, sometimes when the text
seemed to be spot on about the question at hand. I
see two key factors in this perception of the
experience. One is commonly seen when dealing
with predictions: we tend to have selective
recollection. We tend to remember our successes
and air brush out our misses. We dont recall those
times when the text seemed to be out of left field
as intensely as those times when the book seemed to
be speaking directly to us (or not speaking, as when
we asked something repeatedly and got the 4th
hexagram). But this distortion of our perception is
at once important and trivial. Trivial because it is
simply the way we perceive many things in life,
important because the texts attached to the Yi give
us a key to how a very different set of diviners
interpreted these figures. I mention imaginary tigers
above. At the time the Yi was written they were
anything but imaginary and the 10th
hexagram isformed around the adrenaline soaked idea of
stepping on a tigers tail. Over the centuries many
have interpreted the texts attached to the figures and
the lines based on such concepts as centrality,
correctness, etc. An objective examination of the
texts based on such rules comes up short (for
instance hexagram 63 is perfect in every physical
aspect of centrality, correctness, etc. but it is
hexagram 15 that is the most auspicious).
A Blooming Principle
I saw a banner in a Chinese TV show some time
ago that said 'A hundred flowers bloom.' It was
meant to be a leftover propaganda poster still
hanging on the doorframe of an old country house
in China. Later in the day I was reading a book on
the history of the universe and ran into the concept
that all life on earth comes from one event, onn 'Big
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Birth' that went on to produce all the rest.
This is a fundamental principle of Yi: In the Spring,
flowers bloom; not hundreds, not thousands, tens
and hundreds of millions and all more or less at
once. Things don't happen as single eventsthat
spread, like carefully arranged dominos, to every
corner of the world. When something is invented, asa rule, it is because its time has come. It is 'in
season'. That is why human inventions so often
occur in different places at more or less the same
time. This is an underlying principle of nature, and I
think it extends all the way up the line. In other
words, yes, I think there were more than one big
bangs, we just don't have the instruments to be able
to see the other ones. Biology follows the same
trend line. We found Lucy, the so called 'Eve' from
whom all life came and genetic proof has been
provided to show that all life came from that one
small tribe in Africa. I don't buy it. According to the
'flowers bloom' principle there were several places
where humans appeared, more of less at the same
time. It remains to be seen if I am right.
When Things Fall Into Place
Until a divination is performed the state of the Yi
Jing is to be equally likely to produce any of the
figures and their attached texts. When we engage a
random method such as the integer generator at
random.org (my personal favorite), or use coins or
yarrow stalks to consult, we are fixing a point in
time (six points, actually, once for each line of the
hexagram cast. It remains for those much more
clever than I to fill in the details, but I instinctively
feel that this process is more than meets the eyes.
The field of possibilities collapses, producing ahexagram. We read the texts attached to it and
evaluate the figure itself in coming to a decision
about a matter in doubt. Until that moment the Yi is
everywhere and all things. After that moment it is in
a single state, and that state points down the
timeline in a certain direction. The concept of a
random operation collapsing a probability field into
a known data point is very like how quantum
particles/waves act, I think. There is a rich field of
exploration in the juncture between the Yi and
quantum theory. Perhaps someone reading this will
be the one who connects the dots.
The Family Arrangement of the Ba Gua
The Ba Gua, or eight trigrams, are the foundation of
the Yi Jing. There is much scholarly discussion of
what came first, the three line or six line figures of
the Yi. It is a chicken and the egg type of discussion
stretching back millennia. Traditionally it was Fu Xi
the legendary first sage emperor, who observed the
world and drew the Ba Gua. Much later (thousands
of years later) King Wen of Zhou doubled the
figures to form hexagrams while he was imprisoned
by the last emperor of the Shang Dynasty, the tyrant
Zhou (his name is a different 'Zhou' in the Chinese
characters than that of the dynasty name 'Zhou').Such is the traditional account. The order in which
the figures were created may be of merely academic
interest, but the association of the Ba Gua with the
roles of a family has always been significant. The
family arrangement is the parents and three pairs of
siblings:
Qian - Father
Zhen - Eldest Son
Kan - Middle Son
Gen - Youngest Son
Kun - Mother
Xun - Eldest Daughter
Li - Middle Daughter
Dui - Youngest Daughter
The division of the six child trigrams into Yang and
Yin is based on the proportions. A Yang trigram has
one Yang line and two Yin. The Yin trigram has
one Yin line and two Yang. There are many ways to
explain this. One image that arises is that it is a
microcosm of life in the traditional family of
ancient China. A man represented the connection
between generations. He dealt with his mother and
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his wife in one household. Thus his role was to
interact with past and present and move into the
future. The woman went from her father's
household to that of her husband. Thus she was too
was bridging the generations, but her role was to
build the future of her husband's family. The
interplay of roles, then as now, was key.
We can see these roles reflected in many places in
the texts of the Yi Jing (for instance hexagram pairs
53/54 and 31/32, where the interactions between the
siblings describe successful and failed relationships).
The arrangement of the hexagrams in the Yi Jing on
silk discovered in the Han Dynasty tomb at
Mawangdui is based on the family arrangement of
the trigrams.
Miscellaneous Notes from the Daily
Readings on Philosophy
Fulfilling Varying Needs
There is a passage in the Analects that sheds somelight on the Yi Jing:
Zi Lu asked whether he should immediately carry
into practice what he heard. The Master said,
"There are your father and elder brothers to beconsulted - why should you act on that principle of
immediately carrying into practice what you hear?"Ran You asked the same, whether he should
immediately carry into practice what he heard, and
the Master answered, "Immediately carry intopractice what you hear." Gong Xi Hua said, "You
asked whether he should carry immediately into
practice what he heard, and you said, 'There are
your father and elder brothers to be consulted.' Qiuasked whether he should immediately carry into
practice what he heard, and you said, 'Carry itimmediately into practice.' I, Chi, am perplexed,
and venture to ask you for an explanation." TheMaster said, "Qiu is retiring and slow; therefore I
urged him forward. You has more than his ownshare of energy; therefore I kept him back."
Analects
11:22
This is a vital lesson about how to interpret the Yi
Jing. There is nothing miraculous about the book,no magic spirit behind its pages, but there is an
element of deep mystery to it. That mystery comes
from dealing with a book written to fit the contours
of the human mind in a way that convinces us thatwe are speaking with a living entity, not just getting
random texts. That's quite a trick, considering that
getting random texts is precisely what we aredoing.
Kongzi gives different advice on the samecircumstances based on his knowledge of the person
asking. The Yi gives random advice and our
interpretation differs based on our experience and
nature. There is a famous passage in the Zuocommentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals. A
noblewoman has been exiled and a diviner asks
about her fate. The answer comes back with a very
positive omen, which the diviner accepts asapplying to her situation. But she rejects that
interpretation, explaining that the positive outcome
would be expected if the person asking was in theright. However she was correctly exiled for her
actions and she will die in exile. As it happens, that
was exactly the outcome.
At a very early stage in China's intellectual life
scholars moved from seeing the Yi as a predictive
means of divination to a metaphysical map of the
universe combined with a light on the path torighteous action. The passage above fits well into
that model.
Culture vs. Superstition in Xunzi
In this passage Xunzi mentions divination, but some
who look to the Yi as something supernatural may be
disappointed. Here is the text in Knoblock's translation:
If you pray for rain and there is rain, what of that? I saythere is no special relationship--as when you do not pray
for rain and there is rain. When the sun and moon are
eclipsed, we attempt to save them; when Heaven sends
drought, we pray for rain ;and before we decide any
important undertaking, we divine with bone and milfoil.
We do these things not because we believe that such
ceremonies will produce the results we seek,
but because we want to embellish such occasions with
ceremony. Thus, the gentleman considers such
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ceremonies as embellishments, but the Hundred Clans
consider them supernatural. To consider them
embellishments is fortunate; to consider them
supernatural is unfortunate.
Xunzi 17:11
Naturally, the terms Xunzi uses for fortunate andunfortunate are those of the Yi and the oracle bones that
went before it, Ji and Xiong.
So we see in this brief text the transition from the
religious to the humanist in ancient China. In the heyday
of the oracle bones, during the Shang Dynasty,
divination was primarily a form of supplication, a prayer
for the ancestors to intervene in the affairs of the living
to benefit their descendants in health, hunting, war, etc.
As society evolved the divinations performed took on an
increasingly proforma nature. The divinations were done
every ten days as before for the royal court, but the
results became uniformly good. As anyone who has
divined before can tell you, a uniformly good oracle is a
broken oracle.
Xunzi does not talk about suspending the various
ceremonies and divinations, but he identifies them as
cultural embellishments (Wen), and in the last
sentence contrastsas fortunate and Shen, the spirit
world, as unfortunate superstition. He redefines the
significance of what in his time were already ancient
practices to the 'modern world' of 2,300 years ago. It is
at this critical point in China's cultural history that
philosophy matured. The seeds planted by Kongzi a few
generations before bloomed in the profundity of texts
like the Appended Statements of the Yi and the writings
of Xunzi. This is the practical philosophy that has kept
Chinese culture alive through the millenia by
concentrating on practical matters and living in the real
world, not in a make believe universe of eternal life pillsand imaginary spirit guardians. In Xunzi we see the
intellectuals in Chinese society reaching their majority
and taking on the responsibility of caring for the children
of society, those who cultivated a world of superstition
and wishful thinking.
This was the point where the Yi Jing went from being a
divination manual to being the operating manual of
reality. Because once you give up on the idea that the
universe is a brooding intelligence that is either out to
get you or smiling benevolently as it blows kisses your
way you can actually start to observe reality. And
observation and explanation are the foundation of reason
and science. Xunzi pointed the way
Xunzi and the Old Saying 'Heaven Helps Those WhoHelp Themselves'
For Xunzi the way to go is to do it yourself and don't
expect any help from 'Heaven'.
How can glorifying Heaven and contemplating it be as
good as tending its creatures and regulating them? How
can obeying Heaven and singing it hymns of praise be
better than regulating what Heaven mandated and using
it? How can anxiously watching for the season and
awaiting what it brings, be as good as responding to theseason and exploiting it? How can depending on things
to increase naturally be better than developing their
natural capacities so as to transform them? How can
contemplating things and expecting them to serve you be
as good as administering them so that you do not miss
the opportunities they present? How can brooding over
the origins of the things be better than assisting what
perfects them?
Accordingly, if you cast aside the concerns proper to
Man in order to speculate about what belongs to Heaven
you will miss the essential nature of the myriad things.
Xunzi 17:13
Again, this is the materialist view that was and is the real
founding principle of Chinese practical philosophy over
the centuries. There is a misconception in the West that
Mencius (Mengzi) was almost on a level with Confucius
(Kongzi) throughout the centuries. The prominence of
Mencius and his inclusion in the canonical 'Four Books'
of Confucianism came from the Neo-Confucianists of
the Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty intellectuals are
greatly significant to the study of the Yi Jing. Many
original ideas began to circulate, and much was revived,
for instance many of the ideas of the Image and Number
school of Zhouyi studies from the Han Dynasty and
Cheng Yi represents the high point of the Meaning and
Principle school founded by Wang Bi in the Wei
Dynasty. There were great intellectual and political
debates in Song society, such as those between Wang An
Shi and Si Ma Guang. There was a flowering of
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intellectual originality that stands out against the relative
dullness of the prosperous dynasties surrounding it. But
hand in hand with these positives was a deep,
disheartening decay. The civil began to overwhelm the
military in society, weakening defense. The Neo-
Confucianists embraced the altruistic Mencius with this
cheerful assurance that no one could see a child about to
fall in a well and not act to prevent it. The basic
assertion of Mencius so familiar to students of Chinese
philosophy, that human nature is basically good, is but
the tip of the iceberg of troubling doctrines in his work.
History is a branch office of reality. It does not
read Rousseau (or if it does, it has the good sense to
ignore him when coming to a decision). It does not give
points to for good intentions. It not only lets children
totter into wells, it tosses them in itself. The Song
Dynasty was first driven from its capital and then
crushed, giving rise to the first dynasty in which a
foreign nation dominated the whole empire, the Yuan.Philosophy has consequences. Xunzi knew this, and
didn't appreciate the religious and philosophical
movements of his time that were more interested in
speculating about utopias rather than improving what we
have to work with here and now. Xunzi, like Kongzi,
was a realist. Some of the best and brightest minds of
history have not been realists, and more's the pity,
because realism works. In politics the realist view of the
world calls for caring for people by helping them realize
their potential with a minimum of restriction and
assistance. In the spiritual realm realism seeks to
eliminate superstition and look at reality, rejoicing at
the beauty of the wonders of the universe and trying to
mitigate the horrors of that very same reality through
science. It is passages like this one today that make
Xunzi my favorite philosopher after Kongzi.
Divining Without the Divine...A Few Words
from Xunzi
I came across this passage tangentially whenstudying the Yi:
74. Using the worthy to reform the unworthy is to
know what is auspicious without first having to
await the outcome of the divination. Using what is
ordered to overcome anarchy is to know victory
without having first to engage in battle.
Another verse has an even more 'Laozi-ish' flavor to
it:
84. An expert in the Odes does not engage in
persuasions. An expert in the Changes does not
divine; An expert in the Rituals is not a master of
ceremonies--all these are of the same mindset.
(Translations are from Knoblock, with the second
one changed about a bit).
I don't think this means 'don't consult the Yi'; that
was a part of Chinese society then as now, and
occupied a prominent place in affairs of state in
Xunzi's time. But I do think it marks a turn in the
road. The Shang approach to divination was at a
very crude level. The expectation was that you
consult using the oracle bone and get a straight yes
or no answer. Complexities set in over the centuries
such as consulting numerous times for and against a
particular question, interpretations that formed a
kind of voting of what the king thought was the
answer, the nobles, the professional diviners, the
people, etc. But ultimately it was all about: Should
we go over and thump tribe 'X' on the head or not?
Later divination added the fine points of exampleand ethics. People got answers and sometimes
interpreted them as their opposite based on the
circumstances and the persons involved. The Yi
moved gradually from being a book that was
consulted as a spirit guide to being a book of
wisdom, edification and philosophy. The root of
fate was found not to be 'in our stars but in our
selves'.
Three Powers
One of the traditional concepts of Chinese
philosophy based on the Yi is the Three Powers,
Heaven, Earth and Humanity.
There is not merely pattern and form in the world.
The world has three elements, heaven, earth and
humanity. Heaven is pattern, the trends, the
invisible, or barely visible net of lines along which
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reality runs. Earth is form, the solid and physical
objects that constitute the visible world. Humanity
functions between the two, giving form to pattern.
My tea cup is an example. My affection for tea, and
the very idea of drinking tea, is a pattern. The cup
itself, and the tea I drink today, is a form. Between
them are the many layers of growing the tea, selling
it, bringing it from Yunnan to my house. Each ofthese has its own set of pattern and form, but taken
together then form the chain of action that
constitutes humanity's part.
This concept is also central to one of the Analects
verses:
The Master said, "Human beings can broaden the
Way--it is not the Way that broadens human
beings."
Analects 15:29
We see in this quote that the pattern is there and can
be followed by human beings, the potentiality of the
pattern can be released by giving it form.
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Appendix I
The Nanjing Method
The Nanjing method is used to filter down the
results of an Yi Jing reading to a single text. The
method was created by a group at Nanjing
University. They 'reverse engineereed' the readingsfound in the Spring and Autumn Annals to
determine how a reading was interpreted in
antiquity. Let us say you received this reading,
which, unfiltered, would give you three changing
line texts and two judgments:
767676
Add the numbers of the hexagram up, and we get 39.
Subtract that number from 55
55 - 39 = 16
Determine if any of the changing lines are the
significant line text, which we will call the 'Nanjing
line', according to this table:
6, 7, 18, 19 - line 6
5, 8 , 17 - line 5
4, 9, 16 - line 4
3, 10, 15 - line 3
2, 11, 14 - line 2
1, 12, 13 - line 1
Our example produces line 4, which is changing, so
we read that line.
To determine what text to read we use these rules:
If there is one changing line, and it is a Nanjing line,
read that, otherwise read the judgement.
For two changing lines, if one is a Nanjing line then
that line is read, otherwise the judgmeent.
For three changing lines, the Nanjing line,
otherwise both judgment texts.
For four changing lines, the Nanjing line, otherwise
the second hexagram's judgement.
For five changing lines, the Nanjing line, otherwise
the second hexagram's judgement.
For six changing lines, the second hexagram's
judgement.
Appendix II
Moving from the Simple to the Subtle
Oracles in Israel and China
The Zhou Yi, that is the core portion of the text that
later evolved into the Yi Jing consisting of thesymbols, the tags or hexagram names and the
judgment and line texts, dates to the early Western
Zhou Dynasty. This means that the text is
approximately 3,000 years old. This puts the time of
the great figures who traditionally are associated
with the Yis writing, King Wen and his brother the
Duke of Zhou in the time of David and Solomon in
Israel. In China the dynasty preceding the Zhou was
the Shang, and it was King Wens son, King Wu,
with the assistance of the Duke of Zhou, who
overthrew the last king of the Shang, a tyrant named
Zhou Xin. We know a great deal about the
divination record of some of the kings of the Shang
because we have a large archive of their divinations
using what has been called the oracle bones.
These were turtle plastrons (belly shells) and ox
scapulae (shoulder blades) which were inscribed
with charges (half invocation/half question) and
then heated until they cracked. The cracks wereinterpreted as simple up and down divinations,
though there may well have evolved some
complexity beyond yes/no and neutral in the answer
based on various factors in the crack. A level of
complexity beyond a simple yes or no was also
introduced by repetition (for instance asking: It is
Ancestor Di causing the kings diseaseand in
another spot on the same bone It is not Ancestor Di
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causing the kings disease). Also the answer was
interpreted by the king, the nobles and the
professional diviners and in some matters the
opinion of the majority of the people was factored
in. Thus we have a fairly complex system founded
on a simple yes/no. Knowing what we do now about
the uselessness of deciding the outcome of a given
question based on tossing a coin, it seems logicalthat the Shang evolved a mechanism for getting out
from under the arbitrary judgment of a yes/no
answer and nuancing it.
In ancient Israel there was a mysterious implement
in the high priests breastplate called the Umim and
Thummim. In contrast to the huge archive of
divinations, interpretations and literary references
that we have to work with when tracing Chinese
divination from the Shang and Zhou oracle bonesinto the Zhou Yi and later evolution of the Yi Jing,
all the evidence for the Urim and Thummim are to
be found in a few passages of the Jewish Bible. But
there is enough material to show a striking
similarity to the methods used in China in the same
period (app. 1200600 BCE). As with the oracle
bones, the Urim and Thummim gave a yes/no
answer. But there is at least one instance of the
divination being repeated to narrow down the
answer. The practice faded away, with some
sources thinking that the Babylonian captivity
ended the practice and others maintaining that with
the rise of the prophets the practice of the Umim
and Thummim was no longer needed. In either case
the practice did disappear, and this is a point of
divergence between the two cultures. In China the
Shang oracle bones were taken up by the Zhou and
we have evidence of their use all the way up to the
Han Dynasty (i.e. the time of the Roman Empire inthe West). The use of an Oracle based on numbers,
and deriving those numbers from manipulating
yarrow stalks or throwing coins runs parallel with
the oracle bones and survived to our times, along
with the divinatory text we now know as the Yi Jing.
The core portion of the Yi Jing is called the Zhou
Yi (The Changes of Zhou), and there were two
other such classics, the Lian Shan and Gui Cang,
which were traditionally associated with the
dynasties preceding the Zhou. There is much
interesting material now coming out about those
works as texts come from the tombs of antiquity to
expand our knowledge of the past.