Ta Chuan/ The Great Treatise
Part one Chapter one: Underlying Principals
Heaven is high, the earth is low: thus the Creative and Receptive are determined. In correspondence with this difference between high and low, inferior and superior places are established.
Movement and rest have their definite laws: according to these, firm and yielding lines are differentiated.
Events follow definite trends, each according to its nature. Things are distinguished from one another in definite classes. In this way good fortune and misfortune come about. In the heavens phenomena take form. In this way change and transformation become manifest.
Therefore the eight trigrams succeed one other by turns, as the firm and the yielding displace each other.
Things are aroused by thunder and lightning, they are fertilized by wind and rain. Sun and moon follow their courses and it is now hot, now cold.
The way of the creative brings about the male. The way of the receptive brings about the female.
The Creative knows great beginnings. The Receptive completes the finished things.
The Creative knows the easy. The Receptive can do things through the simple.
What is easy, is easy to know: what is simple, is easy to follow. he who is easy to know attains fealty. he who is easy to follow attains works. he who possesses attachment can endure for long, he who possesses works can become great. to endure is the disposition of the sage; greatness is the field of action of the sage.
By means of the easy and the simple we grasp the laws of the whole world. When the laws of the whole world are grasped, therein lies perfection.
Excerpted from The IChing or Book of Changes Wilhelm Baynes Translation Pages 280-287
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