Chapter 5 Chapter Four

Zhou Wenwang's career mainly includes two parts, one is to prosper Zhou and destroy Shang, and the other is to create "Book of Changes".And these two parts are so inseparable, they form an organic whole throughout his life.He has completed his historical mission, and the rest should be done by future generations. Although King Wen of Zhou never formally raised the anti-Shang banner, he laid a solid foundation for overthrowing the Shang Dynasty. Advantages, and in the "Book of Changes", the political program of anti-business and destroying business and the future blueprint for the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty were clarified.It was on the basis of Naifu that King Wu of Zhou marched into the Central Plains, stood on behalf of the Shang, and became the actual ruler of the Huaxia nation.

The Zhou Dynasty existed for more than 800 years. It experienced long-term, difficult and painful collisions in barbarism and conquest, integration and development, civilization and evolution, and then transformed, finalized and accumulated a rich national historical heritage. The Zhou Dynasty inherited the worship of gods and ancestors from the Xia and Shang Dynasties, integrated them into one, and invented a set of patriarchal clan systems based on blood ties—a family-state isomorphic model that integrated clan power and political power.The monarch integrates heaven, earth, man, god, government, morality, and emperor. He is the highest and largest patriarch of the general public. He centers on royal power and closely integrates all social functions such as religion, politics, military affairs, and economics, and strictly implements them in the family and family. Among them, a set of social hierarchy system with orderly rites and music, high and low, and high and low was formed, and this patriarchal system was pushed to the road of autocracy and centralization.For this reason, the Western Zhou Dynasty established a large and sophisticated patriarchal system and bureaucracy on the basis of the rule of the Yin and Shang Dynasties. "Under the whole world, is it the land of the king; on the shore of the land, are the ministers of the king." The king's ministers belonged to the family of Ji in the Zhou Dynasty.The family is the shrinking of the country, and the country is the expansion of the family.Therefore, the Western Zhou Dynasty implemented the enfeoffment system in the political system, entrusting pieces of land to members of the family surnamed Ji, forming a unified "pyramid" ruling structure in which the small family, the big family, and the country merged with each other.And govern the country and rule the people with a set of civilized etiquette adapted to it.

We often say that Huaxia culture is a precocious culture, and its political culture was basically finalized as early as the Western Zhou Dynasty. Since then, it has continued to influence China for thousands of years.Its legacy mainly includes the unity of politics and religion, the unity of politics and clan, the pyramid rule structure of the kingship, the hereditary system of the eldest son of the kingship, the orderly and orderly political organization system, and the moral and ethicalization of political guiding ideology. Wait, until today, there is still a slanting afterglow shining on the land of China in the east.

The Western Zhou Dynasty was the time when the ontology of Chinese culture was formed, and it was also a typical beautiful society in the mind of Confucius. He once said from the bottom of his heart: "I follow the Zhou Dynasty." It absorbed sufficient nourishment from the social soil of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and many ideas were directly derived from "Book of Changes", which has a "flesh and blood" relationship of the same origin. Although the "Book of Changes" deduced by King Wen of Zhou was a breakthrough and transcendence compared with the past, it must have only been a rough framework and prototype at that time. "Book of Changes", in fact, can be disassembled into two parts, one is the hexagram and line symbols, which are composed of Fuxi and eight trigrams superimposed in pairs to form sixty-four hexagrams, each hexagram has six lines, a total of three hundred and eighty-four lines, which is A fixed and unchangeable framework and structure; the other part is the hexagrams and lines, which are the explanations of the sixty-four hexagrams and the three hundred and eighty-four lines.The explanation part is composed of words, and of course there are also some symbols, but the symbol of hexagrams and lines is a highly concise, abstract, and concise symbol, while the symbols of words are more specific and complicated; the signs of hexagrams and lines are fixed, while the words are flexible; Yao can be used everywhere, but its interpretation varies from person to person, from time to time, and from place to place, so the characters and symbols used to record the explanation will of course change.Therefore, within the framework of the sixty-four hexagrams and three hundred and eighty-four lines built by King Wen of Zhou, later generations added, enriched, and changed them to make it more standardized, regular, and correct.Through the joint efforts of a large number of famous or unknown people, it gradually reached a relatively perfect level and formed a version that is generally acceptable to the public. This is the "Book of Changes" that has been handed down to this day.

"Book of Changes", originally a book of witchcraft and divination, has both mysticism and rationalism; both superstition and scientific elements; Capitalize people's self-confidence and pride.Therefore, Confucius in the early years dismissed it, and later got a glimpse of its profoundness, and found that it is tolerant and broad, and it looks higher and deeper; when Qin Shihuang burned the book, all the history books other than Qin Ji and the books of various schools They were all burned, and only books on medicine, divination, and tree planting were left behind. Qin Shihuang regarded it as an ordinary divination book, and thus escaped a bad luck.Just as the structure of "Book of Changes" can be disassembled into two parts: hexagrams and lines and explanations, its content also has two different language systems: one is about hexagrams and lines and divination methods, and it narrates how to predict Personnel, deriving the future; the other is about the universe and human society, which explains to us the law of evolution of the universe, the origin and development of human society.After the Warring States period, the two language systems of "Book of Changes" gradually separated. Its divination method was cited by mathematicians, and its interpretation and interpretation of the universe, society, and life were valued by literati and scholars.Since the Spring and Autumn Period, people have completely separated the "Book of Changes" from the divination process, regarded it as a text for direct reading, and gradually made it classic, opening a channel for the purely spiritual activity of "text-interpretation".

"Book of Changes", a thin little book, why has it attracted generations of descendants?Where is its charm?Why does it drill deeper and deeper, and learn more and more widely, so it is difficult to see the bottom?Why is it able to incorporate some contradictory and opposite things into one body, how deep is its "cultivation" and how big is its capacity?Yi itself contains the meaning of easy to learn and easy to practice. I am afraid that this is also the original intention of Zhou Wenwang's naming? "Yi Xue" is both easy to learn and easy to learn, why is it so difficult and obscure, difficult to learn and difficult to understand? ... Although there is no unified and complete answer to these questions, many guides and introduction books have explained them in detail or briefly.Here, I don't need to repeat them one by one. I just want to briefly introduce the contents of "Book of Changes" from the perspective of its influence on Chinese culture.

It is a philosophical work full of dialectical wisdom. Its most famous proposition is "one yin and one yang are called the Tao", explaining all phenomena of the universe through the changes of yin and yang.The central idea of ​​the book is one yin and one yang, relative opposites, and unity of contradictions.The core ideas of Lao Tzu's intergeneration of existence and non-existence, advocating femininity, and Confucius' benevolence, righteousness, and masculinity originated from this.The Western sage Hegel once said: "It represents the wisdom of the Chinese people." This statement can be said to be accurate.

It is a key to open the labyrinth of the universe. It provides a set of unique thinking modes for ancient Chinese culture and science, mainly including: 1. Taking images and comparing them, the unity of abstract hexagram symbols and text explanations, resulting in logical thinking Mutual induction with image thinking; 2. The symmetry of yin and yang, emphasizing the harmony of all things, both rigidity and softness, and tepidity. Its ideal principle of "preserving harmony and harmony" has become the keynote of traditional Chinese culture; 3. The concept of encompassing all things in the universe Vision and ambition form the overall way of thinking of Chinese people; 4. Emphasize sequence, pay attention to rhythm, "the nature does not violate the sky, and the day after tomorrow" follows the nature.

Tolerance and superstition, science and ignorance are integrated into one. It includes the Taiji map, the relationship between the five elements, the calendar of the heavenly stems and the earthly branches, the four seasons and eight directions, the Hetu Luoshu mathematical system, and what later generations stuffed into it. There are various theories and methods such as "Six Parents", "Qi Men Dun Jia", "Na Jia", "Zi Wei Doushu", "Six Relatives and Nine Demons".This also determines that ancient Chinese science always coexists with essence and chaos, rationality and superstition, enlightenment and ignorance.

It is a treasured book of classics for all ages, and it is a book of internal sages and external kings. Many of its famous sayings and sentences were regarded as the foundation or strategy of governing the country by later feudal rulers, such as "same trouble with the people"; ; "Profit and loss, profit and loss, keep pace with the times"; "Use the system to save money and not harm the people"; Follow the sky and respond to people"; "A gentleman is safe but does not forget danger, survives but does not forget death, governs but does not forget chaos, so that the country can be protected with his own safety" and so on.

It contains a set of normative life concepts, which run through the long history of the Chinese nation like a red thread.These outlooks on life mainly include: 1. Optimistic about fate. "It is similar to the heaven and the earth, so it does not violate... I am happy with my destiny, so I don't worry about it."There are mainly two principles of life formed, "Tian Xingjian, a gentleman strives for self-improvement."It is mainly reflected in the respect of heaven and earth, supporting yang and suppressing yin, seeking for a gentleman, etc.; fourth, the realm of the unity of heaven and man. It is a compilation and encyclopedia of ancient cultural knowledge. It not only has the natural knowledge of "observing astronomy to observe time changes", but also the social theory of "observing humanities to form the world". All ancient Chinese knowledge and disciplines can be found from it. . The rich content contained in it has influenced the development of many disciplines. For example, its overall dialectical view and the principle of yin-yang balance have inspired and determined the development trend of traditional Chinese medicine. The principle of yin-yang coordination has influenced architectural art and craft art. The analogy method of classical poetry was invented, the combination of "meaning" and "image" gave birth to the creation method of Chinese painting, and the interframe structure of gossip symbols inspired dancers' aesthetic cognition... There was no single learning in ancient China, and its philosophical thoughts did not originate In "Book of Changes". Integrating images, numbers and principles, it is extremely creative and flexible, and stagnation and rigidity seem to have nothing to do with it. It is always growing and changing, keeping pace with the times, and can constantly create and invent some exciting things. A refreshing miracle.