{"slug": "what-the-i-ching-is-really-about", "title": "What the I Ching is really about", "summary": "The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is an ancient Chinese text that offers wisdom through its enigmatic and poetic nature, making it accessible to Western minds despite Carl Jung's claims of its foreignness. Figures like Allen Ginsberg, Joni Mitchell, and John Cage have praised its suggestiveness, and a new translation by Brian Bruya of C.C. Tsai's illustrated version has been published by Princeton University Press.", "body_md": "# What the I Ching is really about\n\nWhile it may depart from scientific axioms, readers can glean much about their circumstances by consulting the Book of Changes\n\n[I Ching](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3298842/deepseek-ancient-chinese-wisdom-combine-wang-yi-underlines-chinas-resolve-munich?module=inline&pgtype=article), also known as the Book of Changes. He was also a close friend of Richard Wilhelm, whose German translation was probably the most influential Western version of the ancient Chinese text in the last century.\n\nBut over the years, I have become convinced that the great Jung didn’t really get it. A red flag is that he thinks it is very difficult for the Western mind to grasp what I will call the Chinese spirit of the I Ching, which he claims is completely foreign.\n\n“I can assure my reader that it is not altogether easy to find the right access to this monument of Chinese thought, which departs so completely from our ways of thinking,” he wrote in the foreword to an English translation of the Wilhelm text.\n\nActually, I think it is quite accessible and easy for anyone to consult the I Ching and believe in it. It’s precisely its enigmatic allure that appeals to foreign minds like Jung.\n\nPeople as different as poet Allen Ginsberg, musician Joni Mitchell, composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham have all “lauded the Yi Jing for both its wisdom and its poetic suggestiveness”. That’s according to Brian Bruya, who recently translated the classic – and highly amusing – *Illustrated Book of Changes* by C.C. Tsai, the cartoonist and Shaolin monk who also illustrated volumes about Chinese philosophers such as Confucius, Sun Tzu and Chuang Tzu.\n\nYi Jing is the contemporary standard transcription of I Ching. I will stick with the latter, which most readers are probably more familiar with. Bruya’s translation is now published in a handsome edition by Princeton University Press.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/what-the-i-ching-is-really-about", "canonical_source": "https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3357512/what-i-ching-really-about?utm_source=rss_feed", "published_at": "2026-06-20 01:30:06+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-20 01:43:49.018192+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["I Ching", "Carl Jung", "Richard Wilhelm", "Allen Ginsberg", "Joni Mitchell", "John Cage", "Brian Bruya", "Princeton University Press"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/what-the-i-ching-is-really-about", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/what-the-i-ching-is-really-about.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/what-the-i-ching-is-really-about.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/what-the-i-ching-is-really-about.jsonld"}}