Texts with Tea

Category: Chinese Philosophy

  • Bazi, the Four Pillars of Destiny: A Comprehensive Guide

    Bazi explained, how it relates to the Chinese zodiac, and much more.

    The Four Pillars of Destiny, also known as Bazi (八字), is a Chinese fortune telling technique that attempts to calculate your fate based on the day and time you were born. Your birth chart will consist of four pillars/columns, one for the year, one for the month, one for the day, and one for the time. Each column will have two characters, which makes eight characters in total that will be used for telling your future. To get your bazi, you can use a calculator online.

    You have likely heard of the Chinese zodiac, and these concepts are related. In fact, your zodiac animal will be associated with one of the eight characters. For example, if you were born on the year of the rat, this will correspond with 子, which means that one of the characters for your year will be 子.

    The top character of each column will be from the set of the heavenly stems (天干), which consist of 甲 (jia), 乙(yi), 丙(bing), 丁(ding), 戊(wu), 己 (ji), 庚 (geng), 辛 (xin), 壬 (ren), 癸 (gui). Each of these elements have an element and a yin/yang associated with them. For example, 甲 is yang wood, while 乙 is yin wood.

    The bottom character of each column will be from the set of the earthly branches (地支), which consist of 子 (zi), 丑 (chou), 寅 (yin), 卯 (mao), 辰 (chen), 巳 (si), 午 (wu), 未 (wei), 申 (shen), 酉 (you), 戌 (xu), 亥 (hai). Likewise, each of these elements have an element and a yin/yang associated with them as well. For instance, 子 is yang water, while 丑 is yin earth.

    Before proceeding further, I highly suggest familiarizing yourself with the relationships between the wuxing (五行), also known as the five elements, 金 (metal), 木 (wood), 水 (water), 火 (fire), 土 (earth). Place particular focus with the 生 (generating) and 剋 (overcoming) cycles. You can check out the wuxing article on Wikipedia for reference.

    Once you have your birth chart ready, you can start doing your analysis. The heavenly stem of your day pillar, commonly referred to as your day master (日主), would represent yourself. Most analyses will be in relation to the day master.

    Gods and Spirits

    This is probably the most straightforward way to analyze your birth chart. There are many charts online that you can use as reference for finding out which gods and spirits play a role in your chart. There are probably several dozens of them, but the ones I see that are most commonly used are ones like 天乙貴人, 文昌貴人, 驛馬, 華蓋, and 桃花. If any of these are present in your chart, find out how they impact your life. Given my understanding, the gods mentioned in Bazi are not gods in the Western sense. Rather, they are more like energies.

    Strength of Your Day Master

    If your chart has a bunch of elements that are the same element as your day master or generate your day master, then your day master would be considered strong. If your chart has a bunch of elements that overcome your day master, or if your day master generates or overcomes a lot of elements in your chart, then your day master will be considered weak. Whether your day master is strong or weak can play a factor in what elements can be auspicious for you.

    The Ten Gods (十神)

    Depending on the polarity and the elements of the other characters in your chart, each character will have a god associated with it depending on your day master. The presence of these “gods” can give insights to a person’s personality, such as their creativity and proclivity for wealth. There are different interactions with some of these “gods,” so aspects can be magnified or diminished depending on other “gods” that are present in the chart. Knowing what each of the ten gods represent and how they affect each other is crucial for analyzing a bazi chart, so pay extra attention to studying this.

    A is day master and B is the characterDifferent PolaritySame Polarity
    B overcomes A正官 (Direct Officer)七殺 (Seven Killings)
    B generates A正印 (Direct Resource)偏印 (Indirect Resource)
    A, B are same elements劫財 (Rob Wealth)比肩 (Friend)
    A generates B傷官 (Hurting Officer)食神 (Eating God)
    A overcomes B正財 (Direct Wealth)偏財 (Indirect Wealth)
    Chart for the Ten Gods

    To illustrate how the “gods” interact with each other. I’ll give a brief example. For a man whose day master is metal, he might generate a Hurting Officer, which is also responsible for creativity. Think of a Hurting Officer as someone who’s impulsive in personality and lacks a filter. He might spout the most unique ideas you’ve ever heard of, but at the same time his lack of filter can also cause him to say things that inadvertently hurt those around him. In this case, our hurting officer has an element of water, and water in turn can generate wood, which is the man’s wealth element, signaling how creativity can be channeled for generating wealth.

    However, the Hurting Officer (the impulsive element), which is water in this case, might be overcome by the Direct Resource, which is earth in this case. The Direct Resource can symbolize logical and conservative thinking, indicating that over-analyzing a problem can overcome and kill our creative urges that we have.

    If you can read Classical Chinese, check out 淵海子平, where Xu Ziping goes in detail explaining what each of the gods represent and their interactions with each other.

    Favorable and Unfavorable Elements

    Once you understand a chart well enough, you will be able to tell which elements would be good for a chart and which elements would be unfavorable for a chart. For example, water might be a favorable element for someone with a weak wood day master, because water helps generate wood. Someone whose favorable element is water might do well in the north, or finding a career that is associated with water, such as working on a ship.

    Keep in mind that this is just an example, and someone with a weak wood day master might have a favorable element that isn’t water. Knowing your favorable element can help you decide between two choices such as where to live and what job to take.

    Luck Pillars

    Throughout your life, there will likely be ups and downs. How does the Bazi system account for this? There is a luck pillar (大運) for every 10 years of your life, as well as a 流年 for every year of your life. You can combine these with your birth chart and analyze the relationships with each other to find out your fortune for different phases of your life. 

    Combinations and Clashes

    Sometimes, there will be characters that can combine, such as 甲 and 己, into another stronger element. Other times, there can be characters that can clash with each other, such as 子 and 午. As a result, this can impact the effects of the “gods” mentioned in previous sections.

    Special Structures

    In rare cases, your chart might be built in a certain way that is special, such as all four of your heavenly stems being a certain character or a day master that is abnormally strong or weak. In exceptional cases like these, the classic texts are there to discuss how these special cases can affect the individual.

    After the Basics

    Once you’ve grasped the fundamentals of the previous sections, you can start practicing it, by comparing the life experiences of an individual with their birth chart. However, I would still heavily discourage fortune telling at this stage, because what you say about their birth chart can have unintended consequences for the person you are practicing it on. It is important to emphasize that at the end of the day, the Four PIllars of Destiny are merely a tool that you can use to help you or others make decisions. You should not let this fully replace other steps of the decision process and let it fully control you.

    Learning bazi will allow you to be more acquainted with Chinese metaphysics, and will help speed up the process of learning other related concepts such as feng shui, divination, and traditional Chinese medicine.

  • 10 Steps to Learning Chinese Philosophy

    How to learn Chinese philosophy? This seems like a daunting task at first glance. However, it need not be so difficult if you have a good approach to learning it. I will give some recommendations and provide some of my own experiences on how I approached learning Chinese philosophy that I hope will be helpful to you on your path.

    1. Recognize that Chinese philosophy is not composed of one school. Rather, it is composed of many different schools. The most common schools are Confucianism and Taoism. Less obscure schools like Mohism and the School of Names are fascinating to learn about as well, although not as influential. Later, Buddhism spread into China from India, which Chinese society embraced as well. There is the notion of the Three Teachings in Chinese philosophy, where Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism are harmonized together and each are practiced to a certain degree by many Chinese worldwide.

    2. Start finding a book that has a brief overview of all the different schools of Chinese philosophy. When I was in college, I found a book at the college East Asian library called The Chinese Mind by Wang Gung-hsing who spent several pages for each famous philosopher in Chinese history. While this book really helped me grasp the basics, I do realize that this book is probably hard to find outside of an academic setting. In the likely case you cannot find a copy of The Chinese Mind, you can try going with A Short History of Chinese Philosophy by Feng Yu-lan, which is also a very good comprehensive review of famous Chinese philosophers.

    3. By the time you are done reading A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, you will likely have a good overview on all the major Chinese schools of thought. You probably also have a school that you find fascinating and want to read more about. In that case, you can try reading the primary texts of the school you are interested in. At this stage, if you pick up a text like the Tao Te Ching or I Ching, it will probably be hard to understand the majority of what these texts are talking about. Fret not, this is normal. Even most Chinese do not fully understand these texts the first time they read them. 

    4. You will likely have to find a commentary to start understanding more of these primary texts. Commentaries can provide helpful context and analysis that you might not get from directly reading the primary text. Different commentators will likely approach the text in different ways, so before reading a commentary, do some research on the commentator beforehand so you can expect any biases that may be present. There are a lot of commentaries on Chinese thought out there, and there can be modern commentaries on these commentaries as well. For example, I am currently reading a modern commentary on an older commentary of the Cantongqi, an important text on Chinese alchemy.

    5. Read and learn more about Chinese history and culture. Doing so allows you to understand the contexts different philosophies arose from, as well as how Chinese philosophical concepts are applied to everyday Chinese life, such as yin-yang, five elements, etc. Rather than treating Chinese philosophy as purely an object of study, find out ways you can incorporate some of the teachings in your day-to-day life. Doing so will help you feel and understand some of the concepts better.

    For example, you might often read about the concept of wu wei (inaction) when reading Taoist texts. This does not mean that you can slouch on your couch or sleep on your bed all day and not do anything productive. I admit I’m still in the process of fully understanding what wu wei is, but I think it’s one of those concepts you will comprehend from experiencing it in your life, rather than just reading about it and taking the meaning of the term literally.

    6. Sooner or later, you will likely end up in a xuanxue rabbithole. Xuanxue is a bit like Chinese metaphysics/mysticism/spiritualism, and is related to concepts such as Feng Shui and the Chinese zodiac. This gets into more superstition territory, so your interest in it will likely depend on how superstitious you are. These topics are usually heavily inspired by concepts from the School of Naturalists, such as yin-yang and the five elements. If you are interested in a further elaboration of xuanxue, I can write another blog post on a guide to this topic. 

    7. Start learning more about the broader scope of Asian history and culture as well. This allows you to see how different cultures reacted to different schools of thought. For example, when Buddhism spread from India to China, there are Chinese influences to Buddhism that cause there to be some differences from Indian Buddhism. Then, when Buddhism spread from China to Korea to Japan, there were interesting developments that occurred in Japan that caused it to be a bit different from the Buddhism practiced in China.

    8. Even if you have a favorite Chinese philosophy at this point, don’t forget to branch out as well. Different schools of thought have influenced each other throughout the history of China. Some Buddhists read Taoist texts, and some Taoists read Buddhist texts. Even though the Neo-Confucians were often critical of Buddhism and Taoism, they nevertheless took inspiration from these two schools of thought. Other schools of thought have probably played a significant role in the development of your favorite school of philosophy as well.

    9. Somewhere down the line, it is worth it to start learning Chinese and eventually Classical Chinese. This will be a very complex task, but it will greatly aid in comprehending these texts, since translation can only help so much. For example, the character 道 can have numerous definitions, not only meaning “the way” (the English term that is commonly used when translating the Tao Te Ching). Learning Classical Chinese also allows you to appreciate the structure of the texts more. In the future I might write an article on my (ongoing) path to learn Classical Chinese.

    10. Realize that learning Chinese philosophy is a lifelong activity. You might end up reading the same text multiple times, each time at a different stage of your life, where you will gain newer insights that have not occurred to you before. 

  • I Ching Yarrow Stalks and Coins: A Helpful Guide to Consulting the I Ching

    So let’s say you finally grabbed yourself a copy of the I Ching. You open up and realize that it’s full of hexagrams with descriptions tied to each of them. Then how do you consult it? Lucky for you, there are all kinds of ways to consult it.

    The most traditional way to consult it is listed here: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/I_Ching/The_Ancient_Yarrow_Stalk_Method

    I am sure that if you take a look at the steps, you will find that it is pretty time consuming. After all, you literally have to construct each line of a hexagram at a time. Then, what do you do if you do not want to use the traditional yarrow stalk method?

    There is a simplified method for consulting the I Ching that uses yarrow stalks as well. This method has been known in Japan since the 18th century. My research led me to this book: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/760010/1/2 by Arai Hakuga. This method was later used by Takashima Kaemon, also from Japan, for his work Takashima Ekidan, which is a compilation of case studies of Takashima consulting the I Ching, for numerous uses, stretching from business to politics. If you are curious for an English translation of this method, check out this link: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/I_Ching/The_Modified_Yarrow_Stalk_Method

    This method is faster than the previous one. Instead of constructing each individual line at a time, this method allows us to construct three lines at a time. However, there is an extra step to determine the changing line for the hexagram that the first method doesn’t require. This method also comes with the caveat that there can be only one changing line per hexagram, while the former method allows for multiple changing lines in a single hexagram. 

    What if you don’t have any yarrow stalks? Can you still consult the I Ching? Of course! There are other ways as well, such as using a series of coin flips to build up your hexagram. Take out your wallet, pick three coins, shake it around, and reveal it. For each head you see, add 3. For each tail you see, add 2. If your total is 6, then you have a changing yin. If your total is 7, you have a yang. If your total is 8, you have a yin, and if your total is 9, you have a changing yang. Repeat this 5 times for the remaining lines to make a hexagram.

    That being said, there is an alternative viewpoint which assigns the value of 2 to heads and the value of 3 to tails, and uses the total values as above. Which method is more accurate, I do not know. Feel free to experiment with both techniques and let me know in the comments below.

    What if you do not have any coins? Fret not, there are other techniques as well. In fact, in the Chinese book 梅花易數 (Mei Hua Yi Shu), also known as Plum Blossom Numerology, other methods are listed, that use whatever is around you. You can use the current date, you can use the number of strokes in a name, and you can even rely on the number of knocks on your door to come up with a hexagram (this is an actual example in the book) to come up with two or three numbers that you can use to set up a hexagram for the I Ching.

    How does this work?

    Let’s say someone gives you three numbers, 26, 75, and 22. We take the first number, divide it by 8, and take the remainder. For the math and computer science nerds out there, this is the modulo function. So if you take 26 and divide by 8, you will get 3 with a remainder of 2. Refer to the chart below to get the upper trigram for our hexagram.

    RemainderTrigramCharacter
    0☷坤 (kun)
    1☰乾 (qian)
    2☱兌 (dui)
    3☲離 (li)
    4☳震 (zhen)
    5☴巽 (xun)
    6☵坎 (kan)
    7☶艮 (gen)

    This tells us that our upper trigram will be ☱. Repeat the same for the second number. 75 modulo 8 is 3, which tells us that our bottom trigram will be ☲. We combine ☱ and ☲ together to get ䷰, which is 革 (skinning).

    To get the changing line for our hexagram, we take the third number, 22, and modulo 6 it. This gets us 4, which means our changing hexagram would be the 4th line from the bottom. You can then look up in your copy of the I Ching or online to see what the 4th line for the skinning hexagram represents.

    What if you only have two numbers? How will you get the third number for determining the changing line? Fret not. You can just add up the first two numbers to obtain the third number.

    What if you lost your copy of the I Ching? Can you still get a rough idea of whether your hexagram and changing line is auspicious or inauspicious? Yes. The Mei Hua Yi Shu covers a method to do that, involving the interaction of the five elements. Check this out here: Plum Blossom Numerology (Meihua Yishu).

  • Poker, Dugu Nine Swords, and a Wheelmaker From Zhuangzi

    What a poker game, a sword fighting technique in Jin Yong’s wuxia novels, and a wheelmaker in Zhuangzi can teach us about specific knowledge.

    You’re playing a game such as poker, and you have just bluffed your small hand. Your goal by bluffing is to scare all the other players into folding and quitting their hand. Who has an edge in winning this round? The fellow who just learned the rules of poker earlier that day and for, or someone who had a mentor teaching him poker, and reads books studying poker in his free time?

    At first glance, it seems like the player who puts effort into studying poker will be more likely to call the bluff and win the round. After all, more knowledge is always a good thing, right? However, upon closer inspection, it might be the player who has just learned poker that very day who will be the likely winner of that round. Why is that?

    The more experienced player who studies poker would probably be more cautious. When you bluff, he remembers his poker training, crunches the odds in his head, and speculates that there’s a high chance you have a powerful hand. As a result, he decides this is too risky and decides to fold. You win the pot.

    On the other hand, the novice player who just learned poker would have no idea about the rankings of the cards. He’ll mistakenly think his hand is very powerful when it’s nothing more than a small hand. When you decide to bluff, he thinks his hand is powerful and can beat you, and once the cards are revealed, he ends up winning the pot.

    A few months ago I was reading about a successful Indonesian businessman by the name of Bob Sadino who pioneered the concept of “stupid learning.” While a “stupid” person might start a business as soon as an idea pops into his head, someone else who has more education might start second-guessing himself and never end up establishing a business.

    By now, we can see that just because one is more “educated” in the conventional sense does not mean he will necessarily be at an advantage. But hey, you might be wondering, this doesn’t seem right. After all, what is the point of learning then? If the person who has less knowledge ends up being at an advantage, then why find a teacher, why read books, why learn?

    In short, the point of learning isn’t to necessarily learn the fixed facts and steps for a topic. Instead, the importance of learning is to arrive at the essence of the subject matter.

    In Jin Yong’s wuxia novel Smiling, Proud Wanderer, Feng Qingyang explains to his student Linghu Chong that there are two types of people that are unpredictable when engaging in swordplay. Those who have never learned it, and those who are so advanced that they have already grasped the essence of swordplay and “forgot” the moves. 

    Who’s the most predictable in swordplay? The intermediate student who has already learned several sets of moves from his master. 

    Who will end up winning a sword fight though? The master who already “forgot” his moves and is no longer constrained by fixed sequences of moves. 

    At this point, I do want to mention that to arrive at such a level, one will likely have to go through the phase of learning fixed sequences of moves beforehand, before he can fully grasp the essence. However, in the novel, we can see that not everyone will eventually be able to get the “essence” of sword fighting. While most characters in the novel are pros at sword fighting, the characters that end up grasping the “essence” and come up with their own techniques on the spot while fighting are few and far between. After all, words are not enough to describe the “essence.” One has to feel it through experience.

    We can see a further elaboration of this concept in the Zhuangzi. Duke Huan, who was in the middle of reading a book on statecraft, got interrupted by his wheelmaker, Bian, who explained to him that the book the duke was reading was merely the “dregs and remains” of the words of wise men. Bian elaborated that when he makes wheels, he cannot be too gentle or slow; neither can he be too forceful or fast. Instead, he has to strike a balance that he cannot put into words, so even though he is 70, he cannot pass on the skill to his son. 

    I’ll have to admit that I’m a bit of a bookworm, and the first time I read that passage, it did not sit fully well with me. However, upon further reflection, I realized that Bian was right. No amount of books and theory can substitute for experience. In fact, the Chinese have a saying 紙上談兵 which means “discussing military tactics on paper,” to describe Zhao Kuo, a general who in the Warring States Era of China, more than two thousands years before the modern day phenomenon of Hearts of Iron 4 players spending their days online critiquing World War 2 generals for how they fought their battles.

    In my computer science classes in college, simply reading the textbook will do no good. One has to adopt an algorithmic way of thinking in order to pass classes and eventually program software projects. When I learned to invest, simply reading about how to invest is not enough. The books talk about taming your psychological biases and urges and being more rational, but it was only through buying a share of GME in January of 2021 and feeling anxious through the ups and downs of the stock that I started realizing how important your psychological state is when playing the stock market.

    In our current society, more people than ever are attending university. While that is no problem in itself, we have to remember that theoretical knowledge is no replacement for experience. A term popularized by the investor Naval Ravikant, specific knowledge, which refers to knowledge gained from experience, is just as important, if not more important, than theoretical knowledge.

    At the end of the day, it’s the poker player with years of experience and gets the essence of poker who realizes that you were bluffing all along. He will be the winner of not only this round, but probably the entire poker session as well.