The problem with calling the I Ching a mandala
The problem with classifying the I Ching as a mandala is that it is not easy to see how it is one. Implicit in the structure and combinatorial interactivity of the hexagrams is the suggestion that the I Ching must be a logical mandala of some kind. But that promise is a long way from explicit realization of its complete mandalic pattern.
One way to help begin to grasp the assertion is to realize that the 64 hexagrams which form the backbone of the I Ching constitute the entire universe of possible 6-line figures.
As it is composed of all possible permutations of 6-line figures, the I Ching is in fact a microcosm which mirrors the macrocosm of reality. It is a structure that represents wholeness and all-inclusiveness but one having also a very special relational patterning of parts which achieves that holo-interrelated totality.
There are many different ways to sequence the I Ching hexagrams. The book presents them in a fixed linear sequence. Most other extant models are similarly linear. Some are two-dimensional, in the form of a circle or square. A small number arrange the hexagrams on the surface of a sphere, another two-dimensional patterning. A very few show three-dimensional positioning of the hexagrams throughout the volume of a sphere. None of these arrangements is in fact a true mandala.
The challenge is that any given hexagram can change into any other hexagram but certain mutations are more likely than others. There is no sequence or simple pattern that can possibly represent that fact.
What is really needed in order to see the true mandalic nature of the I Ching is not a sequence, not a simple pattern, but a higher dimensional representation which when viewed by even the neophyte is obviously a mandala. What we still need, simply put, is a mandala of the hexagrams.
© 2013 Martin Hauser