Finished — Not Ended — Moving
|or| Settled

Now is the time to celebrate an ending. Remember, the energy of ending feeds yet another beginning. It is all part of a perpetual cycle. Act with self-discipline and control. Now is not the time to force activity. Exhibit sincerity, modesty, and humility, but do not surrender control to anyone. (Bright-Fey 155)

 

Settlement brings success to the small. It is beneficial to be steadfast. At first all is well; afterward there is disorder.

Yang 1: Dragging the wheels, wetting the tail, one is blameless.

Yin 2: The woman loses her protection. Do not chase—you will gain in seven days.

Yang 3: The emperor attacks the barbarians, and conquers them in three years. Small people are not to be employed.

Yin 4: There is wadding for leaks. Be careful all day.

Yang 5: The neighborhood to the east slaughters an ox, but this is not comparable to the simple ceremony of the neighborhood to the west, which really receives the blessings.

Yin 6: When you get your head wet, you are in danger. (Cleary 392-397)

All endings are also beginnings, and all settlements are periods of rest between ascents. One must find equilibrium at the bottom of the trough before springing aloft atop the next high peak. Water so seeks the lowest point where it, too, reaches equilibrium. This is the easy temptation and danger of the water trigram: a settled time is one in which the ease of external fortune makes blind the leadership and institutions to the necessity, utility, and virtue of wisdom—hence fire within and below. Ambition and consciousness are drowned and snuffed and can be kept alive only inside until change arrives and settled times become unsettled.

This is why Bright-Fey’s translation calls of celebration but also discipline against temptations to force events forward. Though the culture is stagnant, benefitting primarily the small-minded, those who see only their narrow self-interest and never the cost paid by their neighbors, their future-selves, or their children, it shall not remain static for long. Disorder borders settlement. If one is steadfast, never surrendering his aims or integrity, then he can bear the humiliation and modest conditions which are necessary precursors to the natural order of change.

The first Yang describes such steadfast waiting. “Dragging the wheels” is not so different in meaning to dragging one’s heels. One does not roll quickly forward, but instead carries the facilitator of rapid forward movement behind him. Likewise, “wetting the tail” means to not cross a river; apparently animals lift their tails when crossing water, and the ancient Chinese believed that if their tails got wet, they would refuse to cross. Perhaps this is a use heuristic for us moderns. If the tail gets wet, then maybe the river is too deep to cross. Considering that the first Yang’s correspondent is the fourth Yin, compliant officials who are obediently and diligently plugging holes in the ship—that is what the “wadding” is for, the maintenance of the settled order, the first Yang will receive no aid in trying to elevate himself. Like fire meeting water, he will only be doused. Therefore, his Yang energy is best manifested in firmness of moral character. Then he can be blameless when the time changes and disorder presents danger as well as opportunity.

The second Yin is in her proper position in relationship to the fifth Yang. She is balanced and sincere, and she rests within the body of enlightened consciousness and ambition. However, much like the first Yang, she will be without help—“the woman loses her protection.” This is because, in a settled time, a strong leader surrounded by great fortune finds no advantage in wisdom. Everything seems to be working fine, so why bother listening to the advice of sages or virtuous citizens or one’s wife? This is a mistake, but it is an inevitable one. All the second Yin—those virtuous, wise, and ambitious people—can do is to resist the desire to force of manipulate the situation. After seven days, meaning when the times change following the resolution of the sixth Yin, then she will have her opportunity to be hard and employed by wiser leadership.

The third Yang lies at the extreme height of ambition in a settled time. When wealth and power are abundant, the leadership will naturally expand its vision outward. Internal problems will be perceived to be settled; therefore, the next accomplishment lies outside the culture and nation. This is an expedition or mission to affect, influence, or incorporate another peoples into ones own, and it is rarely done well. Small people, those aforementioned types only interested in bettering themselves, even at the expense of others or their own future-selves of descendants, go about expanding in an exploitative manner. This sustains the settled time for a while, but it always leads to a more catastrophic disaster later. This is only partially avoidable. The I Ching suggests that the best that can be hoped for is that the expansion is perpetrated by competent and virtuous individuals. They might have the wisdom to expand in a mutually beneficial fashion, one which is prepared for and can compensate for the corresponding disorder brought on by the sixth Yin.

Moving now into the body of water, the fourth Yin uses an implied metaphor of a ship to describe the officials and influential figures. They are all scurrying about madly, plugging holes on a leaky ship. They are eternally vigilant and thereby made excessively adverse to risk. Their Yin nature and servile position compounds this disposition. Being ruled by fear and moral weakness, they can only give in to the temptations represented by the water trigram and thereby unwittingly summon the floods themselves.

As mentioned, the fifth Yang is disconnected from his partner, the second Yin, during a time of settlement. Water smothers fire. And so, in the east—which represents Yang—grandiose rituals are performed at exorbitant expense, but they are spiritless when contrasted with the simple yet sincere ceremonies of the west—representing Yin, the second Yin specifically, who gains the spiritual benefits of her sincerity.

The sixth Yin is in-over-her head. She is at the extreme end of settlement in the body of danger, and she is ill equipped to succeed at her task. In relation to her correspondent, the third Yang, she is like the incompetent and small individuals leading an expedition of expansion. She will indulge and overextend in the present, and the inevitable unsettlement will be more chaotic to match the depths of danger into which she has leapt.

I Ching; The Book of Changes, with commentaries by Cheng Yi, translated by Thomas Cleary, Shambala Library, 2003.

I Ching: The Book of Changes; An authentic Taoist translation, translated by John Bright-Fey, Sweetwater Press, 2006.