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An Emperor of China Governs by
SynchronicityOurs is not a dynasty that shuns bad omens
-- K’ang-hsi, Emperor of China 1661-1722
K’ang-hsi, Emperor of the Ch’ing (Manchu) dynasty, ruled China for over
sixty years, surviving wars, rebellions and numberless intrigues. He
was a man of science and reason who personally attended to many details
of government without getting overwhelmed by those details.
Dissatisfied with the quality of graduates from the all-important civil
service examinations, he personally graded hundreds of exam papers while
campaigning under a military tent. Unimpressed by his generals’
handling of river pirates, he issued exact and savvy directives on the
recruitment of agents, the deployment of special forces, and the need
for rulers to have personal knowledge of the character and motivation
of the enemy that Western leaders trying to cope with terrorism today
would do well to heed:
To learn about pirates you need more than official reports – you can
question pirate leaders in person, as I did…You can employ captured
pirates themselves as advisers, or use them to take messages to their
fellows and induce them to surrender….One needs, too, to examine the
type of person who is a pirate.
One of the most instructive aspects of this Emperor’s long and
successful reign is that he governed with the help of synchronicity
and, in particular, with that remarkable Chinese vehicle for pattern
recognition, the I Ching or Book of Changes. From his own surviving
writings, beautifully edited and arranged by the distinguished Yale historian
Jonathan D. Spence [1] we can track K’ang-hsi’s study of the Changes
and decisions he made based on specific readings. There is absolutely
no flavor of credulity or superstition in his practice or his
commentaries. We are observing a ruler who simply understands that
whatever is happening – or is likely to happen – in a given moment is
connected, and that by reading those connections , and reaching for the
secret harmony, we can do better.
In 1680, K’ang-hsi embarked on a “preliminary reading” of the Book of
Changes with three counselors. They devoted three days’ study to each
hexagram. Four years later, they went through the hexagrams all over
again. The emperor noticed that his diviners were placing some things
in the category of “things there was no need to discuss” for fear of
offending their master – for example, the sixth line in hexagram 1,
Ch’ien: “Arrogant dragon will have cause to repent.” K’ang-hsi
instructed that nothing would be off-limits for discussion of a
reading. A warning against arrogance was especially important since
“arrogance means that one knows how to press forward but not how to
draw back…something about winning but nothing about losing.”
In 1683, after the capture of Taiwan, the Emperor discussed hexagram
56, Lu - “Fire on the Mountain” - with his diviners: “The calm of the
mountain signifies the care that must be used in imposing penalties;
the fire moves rapidly on, burning up the grass, like lawsuits that
should be settled speedily. My reading of this was that the ruler needs
both clarity and care in punishing: his intent must be to punish in
order to avoid the need for further punishing.” Here the Emperor’s
reading is based on considering the natural qualities of the two
elemental trigrams, Mountain and Fire – not on looking up the wordy and
obscure commentaries of Confucian bureaucrats (which, however, he uses
in other readings). Be calm like a Mountain, and look on things from a
higher perspective; be quick and decisive in cleansing, like Fire.
The Emperor gives us excellent guidance on the need for a ruler to be
open to receiving unwanted messages:
My diviners have often been tempted to pass over bad auguries, but I
have double-checked their calculations and warned them not to distort
the truth: the Bureau of Astronomy once reported that a benevolent
southeast wind was blowing, but I myself calculated the wind’s
direction with the palace instruments and found it to be, in fact, an
inauspicious northeast wind; I told the Bureau to remember that ours
was not a dynasty that shunned bad omens.
He notes that while some phenomena once held to be supernatural are now
known to have natural causes and may be predicted “with absolute
precision”, their guidance within the weave of change must still be
acknowledged and honored:
Human affairs are involved in the phenomenon of eclipses, and it makes
no difference that we can now calculate them with absolute precision;
we must still make the reforms necessary to avoid trouble and obtain
peace.
He insists that we make our own fate, and should “urge on Heaven in its
work”:
Things may seem determined in our lives, but there are ways in which
man’s power can help Heaven’s work….We must urge on Heaven in its work,
not just rely on it….In our own lives, though fixed by fate, yet that
fate comes from our own minds, and our happiness is sought in
ourselves…If you do not perform your human part you cannot understand
Heaven’s way.
Late in his reign, he celebrates the Book of Changes in these words:
I have never tired of the Book of Changes and have used it in
fortune-telling and as a source of moral principles; the only thing you
must not do, I told my court lecturers, is to make this book appear
simple, for there are meanings here than lie beyond words.
I do wish that our leaders today would learn from Emperor K’ang-hsi’s
curt response to the diviners who tried to pretty up a disturbing
portent: "Ours is not a dynasty that shuns bad omens." In
other words, give us the data straight, whether we like it or not –
notice the larger patterns - and do not ignore any source that can be
checked out. We have only to look at the newspapers to notice a number
of intelligence failures with tragic consequences that might have been
avoided had these principles been followed.
1. Jonathan D. Spence, Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K'ang-hsi.
New York: Vintage Books, 1975.
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