On the philosophy of life implicated in the Zhouyi

The Zhouyi has been playing an important role in traditional Chinese philosophy and had exerted far-reaching influence upon Chinese culture. The systematic interpretations of the Yi Zhuan to the ancient Text fundamentally transformed the Zhouyi as a book of divination to a philosophical book or a book of wisdom. The kernel of the philosophy embraced in the Yi Zhuan is the philosophy of life, which regards the whole cosmos as a holistic organism. Impacted by the thought conceived in the Yi Zhuan, Chinese philosophy always focuses on the unity of man’s physical and metaphysical existence, and even on the organic motion of the entire universe. Zhouyi regards the holistic cosmos as a living organism which is always in a state of “ceaseless creating” through the interaction of yin and yang. This kind of cosmology views the hexagram Qian symbolizing yang and heaven and hexagram Kun symbolizing yin and earth as the proto gene generating the myriad of things in the world, with human as an important component in the Three Calibers (of heaven, earth, and human). Hence, the subjective role of human is emphasized in the Yi Zhuan. But, to completely realize man’s subjectivity, Man has to take “sincerity” as the media and to accumulate good deeds and virtue so as to realize a virtuous unity with the heaven. This thought was inherited and improved by Confucianism in later generations. At the same time, Man has to act according to the waxing and waning of the time to realize a natural unity with the heaven. This idea was mostly inherited and improved by Daoism in later generations. The idea advocating the unity of heaven and human is much different from the dominant Western thought which separates the subject from the object. Traditional Chinese philosophy which is now marginalized in China has many common factors with the Western process thought marginalized at present in the West. The philosophy of life in the Zhouyi can make more than a trivial role in compensating the defects of scientific reductionism which tend to cause the separation of man’s soul and body and is easy to lead to the deterioration of the environment.