“Question” (Wen 問) and “Response” (Ying 應): Examining the Religious Dialogue of Divination in the Study of the Yijing

This study contends that the dialogic structure of “question” (wen 問) and “response” (ying 應) is not only a description of the procedure of divination, but also the logic through which the Yijing constructs the human–divine relation. There are two core questions: First, how does this dialogical structure generate a religious communicative model that presupposes the finitude of the human questioner and the transcendence of the responding divine? Second, how does this same structure enable a shift in divination from a ritual technique for resolving doubt to a discipline for existential self-realization? This study, by drawing on the Yijing text and later commentaries, argues that “questioning” is not limited to a cognitive request for information but also an existential opening of the finite self to the transcendent, conditioned by “sincerity” (cheng 誠) and impelled by the recognition of human limitation. The “response” is unfolded in two progressively deeper registers: “image response” (xiang ying 象應), which presents a field of “image” meaning that must be interpreted, and “response of bestowal” (ming ying 命應), which requires the diviner to internalize Heaven’s generative bestowal through fully comprehending and exhausting the principles (qiong li 窮理) and realizing his own “nature” (jin xing 盡性). The cosmological principle of “communion through resonance” (gan 感), based on the common qi 氣 of humanity and Heaven, integrates “questions” and “responses”. The path from question to answer is thus the path from doubt to self-transcendence, where divination fulfills itself not in prediction but in the harmonizing of human virtue with the cosmic rhythm. The contribution of this study is to show how the religious act of “questioning” becomes a discipline of existential realization, and how the structure of “question” and “response” holds the key to understanding the transformation of the Yijing from a manual of divination into a project of human realization and transcendence.