The Xici and the Human Mind
On the passage from the Great Commentary on the Yijing
The quote that opens dojo.be comes from the 繫辭傳 Xìcí zhuàn, the Great Commentary on the Yijing, traditionally attributed to Confucius. It is one of the Ten Wings — appendices that transformed the Yijing from a divination manual into a work of wisdom literature.
The Yijing is often translated as "Book of Changes" — but that translation is misleading. The character 易 Yi points to something deeper than change as we ordinarily understand it. The Xici offers its own definition: 生生之謂易 — "the ceaseless arising of life from life is called Yi." Not a cycle, not transformation from one state to another, but an uninterrupted generative movement — the creative ground from which everything continuously wells up.
The Full Passage
The passage in which our quote appears forms a single coherent movement in three parts. Each part ends with the same question: how could we participate in this? — pointing toward three qualities: utmost precision (至精), utmost adaptability (至變), and utmost spiritual attunement (至神).
Part I — Utmost Precision
The Yi has four ways of the sage: those who speak value its words; those who act value its changes; those who make things value its images; those who divine value its prognostications. When a noble person is about to act or move, he consults it in words, and it receives his charge as an echo. Whether near or far, deep or hidden, he thereby knows what is coming. If it were not the most precise thing under Heaven, how could we participate in this?
Part II — Utmost Adaptability
Varying it by threes and fives, interweaving its numbers, penetrating its changes, thereby completing the patterns of all under Heaven. Exhausting its numbers, thereby determining the images of all under Heaven. If it were not the most adaptable thing under Heaven, how could we participate in this?
Part III — Utmost Spiritual Attunement (the passage quoted on dojo.be)
"The Yi is without thought and without action; silent and unmoving, when stimulated it penetrates [connects] all circumstances under Heaven. If it were not the most spiritual thing under Heaven, how could we participate in this?"
— tr. Joseph A. Adler, The Original Meaning of the Yijing (Columbia University Press, 2020), p. 279
Closing
The Yi is what the sage uses to plumb the depths and investigate the subtle. Only through depth can he penetrate the intentions of all under Heaven. Only through subtlety can he complete the affairs of all under Heaven. Only through spiritual attunement does he move swiftly without haste, arrive without travelling. The Master said: "The Yi has four ways of the sage" — this is what is meant.
Zhu Xi's Commentary
Adler's translation includes, for the first time in English, the full interlinear commentary of Zhu Xi (朱熹, 1130–1200) — the most influential Chinese philosopher of the past thousand years. Zhu Xi's commentary on Part III reads:
That final sentence is the key. Zhu Xi reads the passage not only as a description of Yi as an external principle — the pattern underlying all things — but equally as a description of the ideal operation of the human mind. Stillness and activity do not oppose each other; they interpenetrate. The mind that is truly still is also the mind most capable of response.
As Adler notes in his commentary (footnote 57, p. 367):
"This passage, according to Zhu Xi, describes the ideal operation of the human mind, in which stillness and activity interpenetrate."
— Joseph A. Adler, footnote 57, p. 367
This reading brings the ancient text surprisingly close to what happens in martial arts practice — and to what contemplative traditions across cultures have pointed toward: not a mind that suppresses activity, but one whose stillness is itself the ground of natural, unforced response.
Source
Joseph A. Adler (trans. and ed.), The Original Meaning of the Yijing: Commentary on the Scripture of Change, by Zhu Xi. Translations from the Asian Classics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020.
Further Reading
For an overview of Adler's translation in the context of recent Yijing scholarship, see the open-access review by Wu Lijing in the Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia (2021):
doi.org/10.1515/jciea-2021-2009
"These four [phrases] are how the substance of the Yi is established and how its function works. 'Yi' refers to the milfoil and the hexagrams. 'Without thought and without action' speaks of it having no mind. 'Silence' is the substance of stimulation. 'Stimulating' and 'penetrating' are the function of silence. The mystery of the human mind, in its activity and stillness, is also like this."
— Zhu Xi, in Adler (trans.), p. 279