big5:
In the beginning period, Heaven and Earth were only the Yin and Yang qi. This
qi flowed and ground against itself, grinding in a very intense way, and the result
was that it struck off many fragments. Since there was no place for these fragments
to exit to, they coagulated to become the earth in the center. The clear portions of this qi
then became the sky, the sun and moon, and the stars and other astronomical entities, which
are only found on the outside and constantly form a rotating sphere [around us].
The earth is therefore made to remain immobile in the center. It is not on the bottom.
-- Chun
Commentary:
Zhu Xi refutes the old idea that earth is a square body covered by the dome of heaven. Instead,
earth is a body that is suspended in the center of the celestial sphere.
The first contact most people in the West have with the idea of qi pictures it as something
so incorporeal that it cannot ordinarily be detected by the most sensitive of physical tests.
In medical discussions it is treated as something that can be removed from the body by
heating a heavy glass container, placing the container's mouth in tight contact with the
patient's body, and then depending on the partial vacuum that forms as the air within the
glass container returns to room temperature to withdraw disease-causing qi from the body.
But, once withdrawn, there is no way that it can be detected by analyzing the contents of
the bottle.
So it is surprising to find qi described as something so substantial that it can form the
earth upon which people reside. The densest of elements, the hardest of minerals, the
strongest of metals must all be species of qi.
It is also difficult to understand how Zhu Xi could have imagined the process he describes
occuring in the real world. We are asked to believe that in the beginning there was either a
rotating unitary qi that was the qi of Yin and Yang together (whatever that means), or that
there were two qi, a qi of Yin and a qi of Yang, that somehow rotated together. How, one
would like to know, would a rotating disk or a rotating sphere be able to "grind against itself"?
Perhaps Zhu Xi had in mind real-world experiences with rotating grinding disks that disintegrate
due to the action of centrifugal force.
Zhu Xi's theory says that the earth is in the center, and heaven surrounds it. That account
opens up two questions: (1) Does heaven extend all the way to earth? Or is there a region between
them that is neither heaven nor earth? (2) If an intangible qi enlivens and motivates human beings,
does that kind of qi pertain to heaven or to earth? If the intangible qi that gives life to a human
being (and to other creatures) does pertain to heaven, then it would seem that the tangible body of
human beings must pertain to earth. If that is the case, what does that situation say about the most
general characteristics of human beings (and other living creatures)?
--PEM