生命教育

Heaven’s numbers are five, and Earth’s numbers are five. With the completion of these two sets of five places, each number finds its match. Heaven’s numbers come to twenty-five, and earth’s numbers come to thirty. The total sum of Heaven’s and earth’s number is fifty-five These【numbers】indicate how change and transformation are brought about and how gods and spirits are activated The number of the great expansion is fifty. Of these we use forty-nine. We danger one single stalk, thereby representing the three. We count off the stalks by fours, thereby representing the four seasons. We return the odd ones to a place between the fingers, thereby representing an intercalary month, so we place a second lot of stalks between the fingers; after that we dangle another single stalk (and continue the process).

Thus the stalks needed to form Qian number 216, and the stalks needed to form Kun number144. In all, these number 360 and correspond to the days of a year’s cycle. The stalks in the two parts (of the Changes) number 11,520 and correspond (roughly) to the number of the ten thousand (i.e. “myriad”) things. Therefore it takes four operations to form the changes, and it takes eighteen changes to form a hexagram. With the eight trigrams, we have the small completions. These are drawn upon to create extensions and, as they are also expanded through the use of corresponding analogies, all the situations that can happen in the world are covered.

The Changes manifests the Dao and shows how its virtuous activity is infused with the numinous. Thus one can through it synchronize himself   with things and with it render services to the numinous. The Master said: “does it not follow that one who understands the way of change and transformation also understands how the numinous behaves!”