T’AI-HSÜ SEE TAIXU
TAIJI. In the Yi jing (Book of Changes; a wisdom book
in ancient China that is widely believed to have been a major
source of inspiration for Confucianism and Daoism), the
term Taiji (“great ultimate”) signifies the origin and ground
of Heaven and earth and of all beings. It is the Great Ulti-
mate that is said to engender or produce yin and yang, the
twin cosmic forces, which in turn give rise to the symbols,
patterns, and ideas that are, indeed, forms of yin and yang.
The interaction of the two modalities of these cosmic forces
bring about the eight trigrams that constitute the basis of the
Yi jing. Combining any two of the eight trigrams, each of
which contains three broken (yin) and three unbroken
(yang) lines, forms one of the sixty-four hexagrams. These
are taken as codes for all possible forms of change, transfor-
mation, existence, life, situations, and institutions both in
nature and in culture. The Great Ultimate, then, is the high-
est and the most fundamental reality, and is said to generate
and underlie all phenomena.
However, it is misleading to conceive of the Great Ulti-
mate as the functional equivalent of either the Judeo-
Christian concept of God or the Greek idea of Logos. The
Great Ultimate is neither the willful creator nor pristine rea-
son, but an integral part of an organic cosmic process. The
inherent assumption of this interpretation is that the uni-
verse is in a dynamic process of transformation and, at the
same time, has an organic unity and an underlying harmony.
The universe, in Joseph Needham’s understanding, is well-
coordinated and well-ordered but lacks an ordainer. The
Great Ultimate, so conceived, is a source or root, and is thus
inseparable from what issues from it.
It was the Song-dynasty neo-Confucian master Zhou
Dunyi (Zhou Lianxi, 1017–1073) who significantly contrib-
uted to the philosophical elaboration of the notion. In his
Taijitu shuo (Explanation of the diagram of the Great Ulti-
mate), strongly influenced by the cosmology of the Yi jing,
Zhou specifies the cosmic process as follows: the Great Ulti-
mate through movement and tranquility generates the two
primordial cosmic forces, which in turn transform and unite
to give rise to the Five Agents or Five Phases (wuxing, water,
fire, wood, metal, and earth). When the five vital forces (qi),
corresponding to each of the five “elements” (agents or
phases), interact among themselves and reach a harmonious
order, the four seasons run their orderly course. This pro-
vides the proper environment for the Five Agents to come
into “mysterious union.” Such a union embraces the two pri-
mordial cosmic forces, the female and the male, which inter-
act with each other to engender and transform all things. The
continuous production and reproduction of the myriad
things make the universe an unending process of transforma-
tion. It is in this sense, Zhou Dunyi states, that “the Five
Agents constitute a manifestation of yin and yang, and yin
and yang constitute a manifestation of the Great Ultimate.”
This is the basis for the commonly accepted neo-Confucian
assertion that the Great Ultimate is embodied both singly by
each thing and collectively by all things.
It has been documented that Zhou’s Taijitu shuo grew
out of a long Daoist tradition. Indeed, it is believed that
Zhou received the diagram itself from a Daoist master: Dao-
ist influences are evident even in his explanatory notes. His
introduction of the term “the Non-Ultimate” or “the Ulti-
mate of Non-being” (wuji) generated much controversy
among Song and Ming dynasty Confucian thinkers because
the notion “non-ultimate” or “non-being” seems closer to
the Daoist idea of nothingness than the Confucian concept
that the human world is real. However, by defining human
spirituality in terms of the notion that it is “man alone who
receives the cosmic forces and the Five Agents in their most
refined essence, and who is therefore most sensitive,” Zhou
clearly presents a philosophical anthropology in the tradition
of Confucian humanism.
A similar attempt to read a humanist message into the
seemingly naturalistic doctrine of the Great Ultimate is also
found in the writings of Shao Yong (Shao Kangjie, 1011–
1077), perhaps one of the most metaphysical Confucian
masters of the Song dynasty. Shao’s cosmology is presented
as the numerical progression of the one to the many: “The
Great Ultimate is the One. It produces the two (yin and
yang) without engaging in activity. The two (in their won-
derful changes and transformations) constitute the spirit.
Spirit engenders number, number engenders form, and form
engenders concrete things” (Chan, 1969, pp. 492–493).
Shao further maintains that the human mind in its original
state is the Great Ultimate. If one’s mind can regain its origi-
nal calm, tranquility, and enlightenment it has the capacity
to investigate principle (li) to the utmost. The mind can then
fully embody the Great Ultimate not only as the defining
characteristic of its true nature but also as an experienced re-
ality, a realized truth. This paradoxical conception that the
Great Ultimate is part of the deep structure of our minds but
that it can be fully realized only as a presence in our daily
lives is widely shared among neo-Confucian thinkers.Zhu Xi (1130–1200), in a rationalist attempt to provide
an overall cosmological and metaphysical vision, defines the
Great Ultimate as “nothing other than principle,” or, alter-
nately, as “merely the principle of Heaven and earth and
the myriad things.” Perhaps inadvertently, Zhu Xi restricted
the Great Ultimate so as to acknowledge its function as the
ground of all beings but not necessarily its role in the genera-
tion of the universe. However, there is fruitful ambiguity in
Zhu Xi’s position. In response to the challenging question
as to whether the Great Ultimate must split into parts to be-
come the possession of each of the myriad things, Zhu Xi
employed the famous Buddhist analogy of moonlight scat-
tered upon rivers and lakes. That there is only one moon in
the sky does not prevent its being seen everywhere without
losing its singularity and wholeness. Zhu Xi further depicts
the Great Ultimate as having neither space nor form. TheTAIJI 8959