Ten Wings

Commentaries kept being added for centuries, and the latest of them most likely date to the Han dynasty, a few hundred years after Confucius's death.

Now as I mentioned earlier, tradition held that one set of those commentaries, called the Ten Wings, was written by Confucius himself.

Modern scholars mostly reject this claim, but the wings are where the Confucian influence shows.

And it's in one of these wings, in a section called The Greater Images, Da Xiang, that we find the line from 14.26.

And his son, Duke of Zu or Zhou, uh, added the line judgment, each line of the hexagrams.

And then about 500 or so years later, Confucius added commentary known as Ten Wings.

Now, traditionally in the East, if anybody changed a single letter or single character of what is known as Ching or classic...

So I Ching or I Jing, Ching means classic, but it's actually a holy scripture.

The I Ching, the Book of Changes, contains sections that date from the 9th century BCE, discussions of prognostication that reflect the experiences and thinking of official scribes of that time.

Around the late Warring States or early Han, further layers were added to these divination manuscripts, called the Ten Wings.

They reflect on the underlying principles and the process of divination, the nature of change, and the importance of being prepared for it.

A pair of chapters in the Ten Wings, in two parts, the Commentary on the Appendant Phrases, are the I Ching's most philosophically interesting chapters.

In one passage, it offers advice on anticipating change.

The Master said, To get into danger is a matter of thinking one's position secure.

This is sound practical advice, warning us against complacency.

The Master who provides the advice was traditionally thought to be Kong Zi, this being yet another attempt to establish Confucian orthodoxy.