Understanding the I Ching: Restoring a Brilliant, Ancient Culture

As Confucius states in The Great Treatise, divination is not the highest use of the I Ching. It can and should be used as a living reference for the highest moral and ethical standards for any individual in virtually any given circumstance.

After writing The Complete I Ching, Taoist Master Alfred Huang, encouraged by friends and family to further expound on the subtleties of the sacred text, decided to take a fresh approach. Considering the tremendous differences between life today and life three thousand years ago, the author began to discover new ways to present the ancient wisdom to modern readers. Now, in Understanding the I Ching, he offers a detailed commentary of the sixty-four hexagrams and their characters, including a detailed examination of the nature and principles of the first two gua-heaven and earth-as well as interpretations of the first hexagram and the guiding principles represented by its four characters.

With an in-depth analysis and study of the two different schools of interpretation, the construction of the hexagrams, and the placement and significance of the hexagram's host, this scholarly yet easy-to-understand book provides exceptional insight for those who have studied the I Ching and seek a deeper understanding of its subtleties and profundity.

Born in 1921, Master Alfred Huang is the author of The Numerology of the I Ching and the bestselling The Complete I Ching. As a young man, he studied the I Ching-a forbidden book at the time-with some of China's greatest minds only to be branded an antirevolutionary by the Communist government and eventually imprisoned. During his twenty-two years of confinement, he found the strength to survive through meditation on the I Ching. Released in 1979, he immigrated to the United States.

A former dean of students at Shanghai University, he is currently a professor of Taoist philosophy, and a third-generation master of Wu-style Tai Chi Chuan, Chi Kung, and Oriental meditation. The founder of New Harmony, a nonprofit organization devoted to self-healing, Master Huang lives on the island of Maui.