弘明集 4.20

4.20

Explanation: I have heard from former scholars that the pure symbols began with three strokes, and the combined hexagrams concluded with six lines. The three strokes established the foundation, the positions of the Three Powers. When the six lines have not yet changed, they are what the host of dragons traverses. Therefore, after the hexagrams were doubled, they were clarified through withdrawal and office. Thus, withdrawing from the world, diligently toiling, lying hidden, and acting together are the sage's timely righteousness, a way that combines them. If, because the initial line is not Earth and the third position is not Heaven, one considers the Two Poles to have nothing to rely upon and nothing to be drawn upon to establish humanity, I do not know where your previous discussion that the Three Powers share a single essence arose from. If you still receive it from the Great Treatise [Xici] and do not transgress ancestral instruction, why do you uniquely obtain it in doubled hexagrams yet lose it in single emblems? If outside the text of righteousness there are separate Three Powers, this is merely a new idea from the Spring and Autumn period, of which I have no knowledge. Moreover, although 'withdrawing from the world' and 'diligently toiling' are not the names of covering and supporting, within a single essence they have not lost the reality of low and high. How can one, through words describing change and motion, abolish the principle of establishing the foundation? You also realize that because the line is centered and harmonious, it should correspond to the ruler's virtue. If there were merely a centered and harmonious line yet ultimately no centered and harmonious person, what would the line emulate? If center and harmony lie in virtue, one cannot have a person who turns his back on center and harmony. The thesis of essential union certainly cannot be dismissed.