Chapter 15 Section 3. Taoism’s philosophy of vigorousness and daily innovation as opposed to weakness and retreat

Before Laozi, there was a book in ancient China called.It is a book of divination, which includes hexagrams, hexagrams and lines.It uses one, one or two symbols, or a group of three or six, called hexagrams.At first there were eight trigrams, and later developed into sixty-four hexagrams.Each hexagram has a hexagram name and a hexagram speech, and each hexagram is divided into six lines, with a total of 384 lines, and each line has its own line speech.According to the shape of the hexagrams, the fortune of divination is judged.At first, people's thinking was relatively simple, and they only needed to know whether it was good or bad, and whether things should be done or not.As social life becomes increasingly complex and people's thinking progresses day by day, it is necessary to ask why?Even ask how to do it?This requires some reasoning about the results of divination.Although this truth is considered to be the will of God, in fact it does not fall from the world, but can only be taken from people's life experience.With the continuous development of science, people's understanding of nature and society is becoming more and more profound, and these understandings will be used as materials to explain the results of divination.Over time, over time, people gradually realized that the results of divination mainly expressed a kind of truth, and God's will retreated to the second place.

Collect the principles that explain the results of divination, explain and illustrate them, and compile them into a book, which is "Yi Zhuan". "Book of Changes" and "Book of Changes" are collectively referred to as "Book of Changes". "Yi Zhuan" was formed in the middle and late Warring States period, which is the period from Zhuangzi to Han Fei.There are 10 chapters in total, later known as "Ten Wings" or "Ten Biography". "Yi Zhuan" said, "Yi" talks about Taoism.There are the ways of heaven, the way of authenticity and the way of humanity.Cover them all.We have seen that the authors of Yi Zhuan, like the Taoist figures, also completed a fundamental change in thinking. They described the theological book originally used for divination as a philosophical book for preaching.

What is Tao?Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu have talked about Tao all their lives, but they have never clearly explained what Tao is?They even think that what can be explained clearly is not Tao.But "Yi Zhuan" says: "One yin and one yang are called Dao." In other words, Dao is "one yin and one yang". What does "one yin and one yang" mean?The ancients had many explanations, and many people now compare it to "unity of opposites".Is this explanation appropriate?Those who are interested can continue to study.But from the "Yi Zhuan" itself, it only talks about the sun going down and the moon coming up, spring and summer pass and autumn and winter come. From this, it can be inferred that the moon has gains and losses, all things have life and death, countries have rise and fall, and life has disasters. Fu, creatures have male and female, and objects have hardness and softness.Naturally, up and down, high and low, big and small, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, black and white, right and wrong, each other... are all included.They are opposite and replace each other, "one yin and one yang" is roughly the generalization of these phenomena. "Yi Zhuan" believes that the way of "one yin and one yang" is all-encompassing, so whether it is heaven, earth, or human beings, they all abide by this most universal law.

When opposites replace each other, things change; in other words, change is the mutual substitution of opposites.You see, the night has become day, the good has become bad; the winter has replaced the heat, and the chaos has replaced the peace; the grass has grown in the wasteland, and the grass has produced fruit; the child is born, and then becomes a man. , the adult becomes an old man, and the old man is about to die again.Isn't it all change?Isn't it all one instead of one? The result of substitution, of change, is always the death of the old and the birth of the new. "Yi Zhuan" believes that this is the most important function of heaven and earth, and it is called "the great virtue of heaven and earth is life".Things are constantly being born, and the appearance of the world is constantly being updated.In Lao Tzu's view, all things must return to their roots and return to tranquility, which in fact means to die, so he must earnestly persist in tranquility.In Zhuangzi's view, all things are in continuous circulation, like a non-stop rotating ring.But the ring itself does not change, so it is also a static state.Therefore, Zhuangzi advocated that people should be in the center of the circle, and not follow the flow of all things. In this way, the cardinal of the Tao is grasped, which is actually a way of keeping quiet.But in the eyes of the author of Yi Zhuan, the world is a vibrant picture.

The continuous alternation of day and night, and the continuous rotation of spring, summer, autumn and winter are due to the continuous operation of the sky.The movement of heaven does not stop for a moment. People should follow the way of heaven and strive for self-improvement. "Yi Zhuan" believes that a great person should "combine his virtue with the heaven and the earth, and his brightness with the sun and the moon".That is to say, it has the same qualities as heaven and earth, and emits light like the sun and the moon.The nature of heaven is dry and yang.The nature of Yang is rigidity and movement.The nature is the same as that of heaven, that is, to be vigorous and self-improving, not to be a weak person.The nature of the earth is Kun and Yin.The nature of yin is soft and still.Like the nature of the earth, it is gentle and thick. "Yi Zhuan" does not exclude softness, but the softness mentioned in "Yi Zhuan" is not softness, but suppleness.Shun means obedience to Qianyang, obedience to vigor.Therefore, the quality of suppleness is the complement and subsidiary of soundness.Accompanied by suppleness is broadness, tolerance and bearing of everything.It's not like Lao Tzu wants to overcome the strong with the weak, and just stop at the weak.In Lao Tzu's view, after being strong is death, so being strong also means death.According to "Yi Zhuan", being strong is the goal that should be pursued in life.

The philosophy of "Yi Zhuan" shows that, contrary to the Taoist philosophy that advocates weakness and retreat, there was also a philosophy that advocated vigor, aggressiveness, and favored continuous renewal. Lao Zhuang advocated doing nothing, or even letting nature take its course and being content with fate, but "Yizhuan" juxtaposes man and heaven and earth, and believes that man can assist heaven and earth to complete what is about to happen.Although the people mentioned in "Yi Zhuan" are mainly saints, the saints of Laozhuang and Zhuangzi are a model of doing nothing and being content with their fate.

The philosophy of "Yi Zhuan" also shows that the ancient Chinese not only strongly demanded to know the way of humanity, but also strongly demanded to know the way of heaven.The way of heaven is the law of nature. To understand it, we must develop natural science.The way of heaven is the model of human way, so it is actually the basis of Chinese philosophy.