坤
GUA 02 · KUN
ACCEPTING
Overall Image (大象)
The earth’s capacity is acceptance
The noble young one, with tolerance of character,
Upholds the outer world▼
Overall Image (大象)
The earth’s capacity is acceptance
The noble young one, with tolerance of character,
Upholds the outer world
Earth is here and there, and now and then, vast and timeless. Heaven might be larger, but earth is alive; subject to every least thing, but the root and birth of all sentience. Why is a passiveness power? An event needs room to occur. Emptiness is capacity, and capacity is power. The way power can go is the way power does go, that is its way and its capacity. Begin with what is given and everything fit enough follows. All the parts of the whole are in play. Any denial of things as they are is bad science, not a basis for change. To have it all is accepting it all, at the least as a place to begin. What good are blessings not well received? What good is grace without gratitude?
Main Judgment (Accepting) (卦辞)
Supreme fulfillment
Rewarding the mare’s persistence
The noble young one has somewhere to go
To lead is confusion
To follow is to learn mastery
Worthwhile west to south:* find companions
East to north:* forgo companions
Secure the certain good fortune*▼
Main Judgment (Accepting) (卦辞)
Supreme fulfillment
Rewarding the mare’s persistence
The noble young one has somewhere to go
To lead is confusion
To follow is to learn mastery
Worthwhile west to south:* find companions
East to north:* forgo companions
Secure the certain good fortune*
The fertile mare wanders the breadth of her world, with stamina and endurance, noble bearing and dignity, and yet without thought. She needs no genius to figure her aims, no pride to prance and no shame to limp. She simply inherits the ways of her kind and all the sense that’s needed to browse. So many tracks may be traced through one field that the number of possible paths has no end. When one looks at choosing a path, what is real exceeds what is possible. To choose, then, begs how, and life, which grew up with earth, has slowly absorbed some good, simple rules: The path of least resistance is often the path of optimum gain. Securing the certain good fortune will squander less effort in adding up losses. To follow one’s senses is to use something older than mountains. To be still and learn is not to be stupid. Then why does leading lead to confusion? Where is guidance first and best sought? Leading is best when more is known and being responsive would make less sense. But simply learn first and all the rest follows. Acceptance keeps all of the options. To not assert such a small thing as self is to move among some far greater powers.
Key Words (关键词)
Receiving, tolerance, gentleness, patience, openness, accommodation, gratitude▼
Key Words (关键词)
Receiving, tolerance, gentleness, patience, openness, accommodation, gratitude
Assent, contentment, comprehension, understanding, embrace, room, allowance Endurance, perseverance, acquiescence, compliance, groundedness, support, care Potential, capacity, raw material, substance, suchness, realism, consent, upholding Simplicity, naturalness, surety; latitude, range, breadth, largesse, fields of options Power of possibility, first accept givens; absorbing, learning, growing, accessing
Structure & Connections
Structure Class
Sovereign Gua, 10th Moon (Nov)
This classification indicates the hexagram's role in the 12 Sovereign Cycle (Earthly Branches) or its structural family.
Astrology
note:Neptune in Earth
planet:Neptune
element:Earth
Tarot
card:Three of Pentacles
suit:Pentacles
Qabalah
note:Binah in Assiah
sphere:Binah
The Lines
11st • YangWalking on frost, hardened ice results▼
1
1st • YangWalking on frost, hardened ice results
02.1x Walking on frost, hardening to ice:
The shadow begins to manifest
* Gradually fulfilling its nature
To realize solid ice
Grounds for change gather in knowable ways, are sensed before they are evident, felt before they are obvious. Heralds and portents, traces and signs may be subtle, but unlike expectations, they are legible here in this moment. Winter solstice marks the end of Sol’s decline, but a lagging cold has only begun. A shadow’s beginning to form is not bad, unless you do not see it coming - for then all progress just goes the wrong way. Without a thought about seasons, the mare gets a new winter coat. The green beings take their first hints and so withdraw to their roots for the winter. The creatures all know what they need to know, without any big brains or science, they follow the order of things, and dress for the occasion. The eggs and the seeds are as smart as they need to be with their own basic grasp of the nature of things.
22nd • YangStraight, square and complete
Without repetition, nothing cannot be turned to advantage▼
2
2nd • YangStraight, square and complete
Without repetition, nothing cannot be turned to advantage
02.2x Six second’s movement:
Straight (is) the way to square
* Without repetition, nothing cannot be turned to advantage: The earthly principle (is) illustrated The dimensions of capacity unfold in a natural order. Count the points that fit onto a line, the lines that fit into a square, the planes that fit into a solid, the solids that fit into one span of time. Open the next dimension and options grow instantly endless. Unfold four or more and there is the way. You can take an entire life and still fail to cross one small field in all possible ways. And the ingrates complain about having so little. If life is too short, make it wider, if too thin, go deeper, if amazed, rise up, If this is not enough, live again, or be someone else. The being goes where it goes, conditioned from behind, not by what is ahead, reaching, broadening, deepening and enduring. A beginner’s mind keeps all of its options,* free from Been There and free from Done That, the two human thoughts that suck the life from the world.
33rd • YangRestraint in display is suited to persistence
But for someone engaged in the royal service
No achievement brings closure▼
3
3rd • YangRestraint in display is suited to persistence
But for someone engaged in the royal service
No achievement brings closure
02.3x Restraining display (is) suited to persistence:
For the sake of timely development
* Someone engaged in the royal service
Knows (and) honors the whole
A work will not be a great work if the whole of its point is its author’s biography. Higher purpose will serve a cause before self, and the great work of transformation is higher purpose made real. This is not to denigrate self, or to say that great causes are more important or sovereign than beings: it is beings who think and feel, beings who bleed for their causes. No practical fiction like nation or group mind does this. Why does the master work for the work’s success, and spread the credit around? Why does the royal servant serve the cause and not the effect? It is not that the work is its own reward, or that some greater good may be served here: the result is simply life’s journey through life and by success is the way life advances. This effort needs no distractions. It is better corrected than praised, and praised to better the work.
44th • YangTied up in a bag
No blame, no praise▼
4
4th • YangTied up in a bag
No blame, no praise
02.4x Tied up in a bag, no blame:
Discretion avoids trouble
Drawing the string, not attention, the result for now is in and secured, with no label. Only oneself is a hard thing to be. To be either fetus or pregnant with the possible are not the sustainable states: one wants to burst out and be more than potential, one wants to be kinetic. Even a lifeless earth would want its stones to roll down hills, would want its waters to rush down to the sea. So how much more for a living earth! Yet there are times to be only potential, to learn the things that you have in the bag, to learn and not push the envelope’s limits, to just be no big thing, to be set aside, out of the way, to not to be seen by adventure or have no need to prove freedoms. The troubles will soon be compelling enough that this is a thing to not worry about. To incubate, gestate, claim time or space for one’s own, also serves a great work.
55th • YangGolden dress
Most promising▼
5
5th • YangGolden dress
Most promising
02.5x Golden dress (is) most promising:
Refinement dwells within
The sovereign’s favorite robe is made from dull and bland yellow linen, is simple, comfortably cut, without all the trappings, tassels and frills. Simplicity too can attract and hold things together. Beauty is also a way of seeing, and not just some thing to be seen. The wiser sovereigns remember things others forget: nobility is an ethic to practice, not just a position to hold. Respect can be given and not merely sought. Dignity is held in example, diplomacy in an open hand. A king can know that he is a servant, in place by the grace of the ancestors and for the sake of those yet to come. A full head of hair can serve for a crown, a rump as a comfortable throne, borne around the kingdom by two loyal feet. Court can be held in the heart. Respect can be had in better ways, so that helpers can walk upright. To be humble is not to be less.
6Top • YangDragons at war in the wild
They bleed indigo and golden▼
6
Top • YangDragons at war in the wild
They bleed indigo and golden
02.6x Dragons at war in the wild:
Their way (is) exhausted
Accepting can accept some wild ideas. Humanity thought up some notion that reality comes in two halves, becoming, in the process, earth’s one exception to wholeness. Softness is hardened and strength is made weak. And now both sides are bleeding. The dualist picks and goads his champion, wages the war in his mind, with wild and poetic visions of eternal battles between darkness and light, so ready to hand himself over as some sort of coveted prize. In wholeness the forces also compete, moving the beings ahead, and all the sides win - including the ones passing out of existence. But taking sides you can’t have it all. Partial itself means less and unwholesome. This is not a power struggle: power does not struggle. It is force exhausting itself. This would be sad enough if it didn’t spill out of the mind and mess up the world.
7Using • YangWorth enduring persistence▼
7
Using • YangWorth enduring persistence
02.7x Using six (with) enduring persistence:
For the sake of greater conclusions
Humans beings are in such a hurry they call themselves a race. Thinking they have but a short way to go, they set an appropriate pace. Leaving no time to watch the grass grow, they act as though they were parasites, rushing to grow and consume all they can. They would flee to the stars in their ships and their prayers, and leave what they pray to behind them, on the home where it began. Earth can be thought to have a perspective on this. It might be the whole point of life: this would be of the long run and passing the torch along to successors. Naturalness, what is so of itself, that dumb to the sixth power wisdom that all life is heir to, knows a pace that might go the distance: it is life that lives inside of its means, and knows to sustain its place, and finds its goals in the journey itself. Persistence that fails to endure is just failure.
Reference in Original Text & Resources
This content is derived from Bradford Hatcher's THE BOOK OF CHANGES: Yijing, Word By Word.
Original text for Hexagram 2 begins on Page 71-80.
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