Interpretation of the idea of "unity of heaven and man, and the unity of matter and self" in the Zhouyi (The Book of Changes)

"The unity of heaven and man" is an important concept in Yijing, and also an important concept in traditional culture. Over the years, there has been a lot of discussion in the academic circles, and to a certain extent, it has been taken as the core concept of Yijing and even the whole Chinese traditional culture. Therefore, to clarify the original meaning of this concept has an irreplaceable significance for the study of Yijing and the study of traditional culture.

However, in order to clarify the meaning of this concept, we should not base on our contemporary scholars' understanding of it, but should turn to the ancient people's own words. To see, in the ancient conception, this concept is what the meaning. The key to clarifying the meaning of "the unity of man and heaven" is to find out what the meaning of "heaven" in "the unity of man and heaven" is.

I from the "Siku Quanshu" in *** to find more than two hundred clearly expressed "unity of man and heaven" material. I found that the "heaven" in the "unity of heaven and man" contains the following content: 1, heaven is the existence of induction relationship with people; 2, heaven is the existence of giving people with the good and bad luck; 3, heaven is the object of people's reverence, service; 4, heaven is the master of people, especially Dominate the existence of the fate of the dynasty (heaven of heaven); 5, heaven is the existence of the nature of human kindness, righteousness, courtesy and wisdom. Today, many people understand the "sky" as nature, and therefore believe that the "unity of heaven and man" is the "unity of man and nature" of the content, but one did not find.

I now publish these materials. For those who are concerned about this matter to study and discuss. It should be noted that: 1, these materials I just roughly added some punctuation, not to push, and do not want to push. Because the researchers have a considerable level of ancient languages, do not need me to knock; 2, omitted some. Omitted, are those repeated, or the point has been clear, no need to repeat the citation. The good thing is that the "Siku Quanshu" is not difficult to find the book, such as this information do not believe, you can go to check.

Another point of clarification is that the earliest use of the concept of "unity of heaven and mankind" that can be traced is in Zhang Zai's Zhengmeng (正蒙), a book that was written at the same time as Zhang Zai's Cheng Yi. However, Cheng Yi, who was at the same time as Zhang Zai, did not recognize it and said, "There is no such thing as the unity of heaven and man, so there is no need to talk about the unity of heaven and man". （He said, "There is no need to say that heaven and man are two, and there is no need to say that they are one". According to my understanding, Zhang's "unity" and Cheng's "non-duality" mean that heaven and man have the same qi, or the same reason, and that man's benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom are endowed by heaven. In their writings, the heaven that gives people good nature is also a heaven that people must honor, a heaven that can be sensed with people, a heaven that can give people good fortune and bad fortune.

Further back, the inventor of this idea can be attributed to Dong Zhongshu. Dong Zhongshu's famous saying is: "Heaven also has a happy and angry temperament, sad and happy heart, and human beings are the same. If we combine them in the same way, heaven and man are the same." (Spring and Autumn Annals? In Dong Zhongshu's view, heaven is a heaven with joy, anger, sadness and happiness, and of course, it is also a heaven that dominates the world, can sense with people, and can give people good luck or bad luck.

In the case of Dong Zhongshu, the word "one" in the phrase "heaven and man" means "one kind". Because at the time of Dong Zhongshu, due to new discoveries in natural science, people knew that things can be inductively induced without contact. For example, magnets can attract iron, strings can **** vibrate and so on. It is believed that the occurrence of induction is mediated by "qi". It was also discovered that there are conditions for the induction mediated by qi. For example, magnets can attract iron, but not copper; the strings of the zither *** vibration, but also the palace string and the palace string *** vibration, the quotient string and the quotient string *** vibration. The strings of the zither *** vibrate with the gong strings and the shang strings vibrate with the shang strings, just as the ox sounds and the horse sounds. So it was concluded that only things of the same kind can sense each other. In order to prove that heaven and man can sense each other, Dong Zhongshu first needed to prove that heaven and man are of the same kind. This is the background of the reality of the unity of heaven and man.

Dong Zhongshu's method of proving that heaven and man are the same is called "heaven and man are the same". That is, man is a copy of heaven, a "copy". For example, the sky is round, so people's heads are round; the earth is square, so people's feet are square. Why does man have two eyes? Because the sky has a sun and a moon; why does man have four limbs? Because there are four seasons in the sky; why do people have happiness, anger and sadness? Because the sky is cloudy and sunny. There are 360 days in the sky, and 360 joints in a man's bones. And so on and so forth. Similar ideas developed into the Song Dynasty, when the "unity of heaven and man" was clearly stated. Zhou Dunyi's "Taiji Diagram" and Shao Yong's "Diagram of the Heavenly Creatures" are considered representative of the idea of the unity of heaven and man. What is also said there is that man's nature of benevolence, righteousness, courtesy and wisdom is given by heaven, and the order of the world is a copy of the order of heaven.