 We may reflect that Zhu’s original notion of li as pattern involves restrictions that conflict with experience or expression, so he reconfigures it in light of Zhou Dunyi’s Explanation of the Diagram of the Supreme Polarity and the Cheng Hao  quotation.[25]  To work as intended, li has to tolerate and express simultaneous assertions of “contradictory” complementary terms. At the same time, this reconfiguration marks a step away from primarily immanental aesthetic pattern of the li conception to a  more  abstract, more self-consciously meta-pattern.