...[T]he sage-kings created music to give expression to the winds coming from the eight directions and to appease the feelings of the people. This is the reason why the sound of music is calm and not harmful, and is harmonious without being licentious. As it enters the ear and affects the heart, everyone becomes calm and peaceful.

...Alas! Ancient music appeased the heart but modern music enhances desires. Ancient music spread a civilizing influence, but modern music increases discontent. To hope for perfect government without restoring ancient and changing modern music is to be far off the mark.

...As the sound of music is calm, the heart of the listener becomes peaceful, and as the words of the music are good, those who sing them will admire them. The result will be that customs are transformed and mores are changed. The influence of seductive sounds and passionate words is equally great.

In the early 11th century, Chou Tun-i (or Zhou Dunyi) laid the foundation for a new way of looking at much older Confucian values, by taking some of the Taoist thoughts about desirelessness and acting without intention and marrying them to Confucian values of sincerity and moral self-perfection. This new way was called Neo-Confucianism, which is pretty much the most self-explanatory name they could have picked. It was his work more than any other that really delved into the I Ching, reading it less as a magical manual than as a philosophical treatise -- a way of looking at all the many things in the world as expressions of the One Thing which is the ultimate reality of the universe.

He praised lotus flowers (water lilies) for their purity and tranquility, and (according to Dr. Wing-Tsit Chan, whose Source Book in Chinese Philosophy is where I'm getting all this stuff), "[h]is love for life was so strong that he would not cut the grass outside his window." Which is definitely how I feel of a hot summer day.

Music, I should note, has a strange role in Chinese philosophy. It's tied up with public performances held by governmental leaders and with certain kinds of religious observances as well as with the kind of revelry we're used to in nightclubs and on jukeboxes. When Confucius was around, 500 years before Jesus Christ was born, his students studied six classics, including the Book of Changes (I Ching) and a Book of Music. Although several of those classics are still around, the Book of Music is lost to history.