离
GUA 30 · LI
ARISING
Overall Image (大象)
The light appears twice
Arising
The mature human being, accordingly,
Is continuous in clarifying and illuminating
into the four directions▼
Overall Image (大象)
The light appears twice
Arising
The mature human being, accordingly,
Is continuous in clarifying and illuminating
into the four directions
Flaming beauty consuming the present is mounted on flames consuming the past. Sunshine hides to rise again. It hides in the logs to flame again. It hides in the grass, in the salad, in the silos, in the cow, in the steak, and it flames up again as mind in the beings. The flame is not feeding on fuel, it is or was the fuel, sunlight mingled with water and wind. Now it’s transforming again. The sage consumes the light of his ancestors and his breakfast too. To honor what he consumes he ignites himself and lights up in all four dimensions, consuming the past and present and licking at tomorrow. Life is a fountain of well-informed light and spirit is how well it forms.
Main Judgment (Arising) (卦辞)
Meriting persistence
Fulfillment
Attend to the cow
Promising▼
Main Judgment (Arising) (卦辞)
Meriting persistence
Fulfillment
Attend to the cow
Promising
Existence means to stand out, while standing upon what upholds us, to be free in a forward direction, while dependent on all of our sources. As sun and moon cling to heaven and the living things to earth, as life must turn on nature and each thing in its turn be eaten, as the flame needs the logs to transform in order to free more light, so does the brightest of sages rely upon his darker depths, simpler conditions and the body that fools call a house for the soul. Thus he is seen hard at work, attending to his less spectacular nature, not above chopping wood, unashamed to carry water, the visionary leader of a herd of cows. When it is one with the work, spirit becomes a verb. The debt to place and source is honored with liberation, a debt to background best paid by standing out from it, like the oriole stands out against the winter’s tree. Yet flames go out when they go beyond their connections and networks of sources. Emanation, upon further reflection, merely describes one of many directions in time. The height of the flame in time is the length of the moment and darkness is only a promise that life is ready to light up and go. It’s no wonder the flame likes to dance.
Key Words (关键词)
Radiate, diversify, individuate, glow, distinguish self; depart, go on; energy cycles▼
Key Words (关键词)
Radiate, diversify, individuate, glow, distinguish self; depart, go on; energy cycles
Fire, flame, light, ignition, sunlight, beauty, radiance; transformational processes Coherence, moment, presence, attention, sentience, intelligence, enlightenment Dependence on fuel, relying on place and conditions; photosynthesis, metabolism Temporally conditioned consciousness, dependent arising; appearances, seeming Inherent in & adhering to conditions; instance, existence, articulation; continuum
Structure & Connections
Structure Class
Kan-Li Family
This classification indicates the hexagram's role in the 12 Sovereign Cycle (Earthly Branches) or its structural family.
Astrology
note:Sol in Fire
planet:Sun
element:Fire
Tarot
card:Six of Wands
suit:Wands
Qabalah
note:Tipareth in Atziluth
sphere:Tipareth
The Lines
1 • YangTaking steps but seeming confused
Respect this
And avoid errors▼
1
• YangTaking steps but seeming confused
Respect this
And avoid errors
30.1x Taking steps in confusion (but) respecting this:
Thereby to avoid errors
The past has brought us this far. Now the dawn lights up a new land, to which this long, winding path has led. What a thing to wake up to: a tangled network of trails, footsteps and tracks, cryptic glyphs of human direction, and few clues to which ones brought us here. Must we know where we were to know where we are? Or where we are going? Tracking yourself means going nowhere in circles: the outcome is right where we stand. Can’t we simplify things if we limit the field of study? If we make the past a summary, pause in our search to ask for directions, admit our ignorance, ask someone who has been here and respect the place to which we have come as the place to start out for the future? Another way to learn where we are is simply to go someplace new, leaving some of ourselves behind for all the learning that lies ahead.
22nd • YangGolden radiance
Most promising▼
2
2nd • YangGolden radiance
Most promising
30.2x Golden radiance (is) most promising:
Finding the middle path
The sunny disposition is not wrong about having it all, or about letting all of it go. Sunshine is not just a way to talk about life: life is sunshine reborn. Life is a light which has now found ways to light up even at night. The mind is a flame from the sky. Awareness is light which once was locked deep in the sun. So what, then, of the shadows and the darkness and doubt? Is there enough credibility here to scoff at the sunny one’s optimism? Or to say that a golden radiance has less than a beaming face value? Let us not talk about optimism: this wants to defend itself with denial. But talk instead about optimizing, how to make and take the most value from life. Light is what makes value: the sun’s gold is no different than light which bounces off treasure. Give it away: you never see the light that something keeps for itself.
33rd • YangThe sun declines with its radiance
Not drumming on clay pots and singing
Leads to much of old age’s lament
Unfortunate▼
3
3rd • YangThe sun declines with its radiance
Not drumming on clay pots and singing
Leads to much of old age’s lament
Unfortunate
30.3x The sun declines with its radiance:
Why should this be prolonged?
He sits on his porch, watching the sun set, dimming his mood with the darkening light, sighing: Yea, the sun must go down, and so all that I am must also go down. He’s going gently and fading fast and soon will be a burden. It is truly unfortunate to fail to see all of this gold, and not bounce some of it back with a livelier response. He is still young enough to not know this age, to bang on his kettles and pots and sing his fool head off. Instead, he groans pitifully like a man in his eighties. Might he be running a fever here, heating his being to get rid of some foreign thing, such as a thought badly timed? Could he think this day’s light has grown old and rotten? To the east and the west a new day dawns, saying goodbye to the stars now coming his way. Why not enjoy today’s blessings now? Savor death and decrepitude later.
44th • YangWhat a breakthrough this one’s arrival appears!
What a blaze!
What an ending!
What a waste …▼
4
4th • YangWhat a breakthrough this one’s arrival appears!
What a blaze!
What an ending!
What a waste …
30.4x What a breakthrough this one’s arrival appears:
(But) having no place to fit in
His coming is sudden and dazzling, flaming and swift, like a meteor. An otherwise placid tableau is brilliantly lit for a moment. The crowds in attendance go wild with frenzied applause. Word spreads of the next spectacular thing. Then he uses up all of his resource and substance, flames up and dies out in darkness. The crowds now return to their various lives, with only a dim recollection of seeing a lovely, bright light somewhere. The theater’s senile custodian comes plodding across the stage to sweep up the ashes, whistling absently. So much for the flaming success, or the meteoric rise, or flames using nothing more solid than glamour for fuel. What then was the purpose of this? Will one great showing redeem a whole life? Were there pretty women to please? Great matters fuel great flames: seek fuel, not brightness.
55th • YangGushing tears, streaming like water
What grief and lament!
Good fortune!▼
5
5th • YangGushing tears, streaming like water
What grief and lament!
Good fortune!
30.5x Six fifth’s good fortune:
A departure from sovereign (and) patriarch
He takes on the world’s great sorrows, the suffering, craving, blindness and waste, the failure of his own human kind to wake up and enkindle each other, and the most stubborn will with which humans cling to their ignorance, while everyone gnaws on everyone else, and all of those organizations we had so much hope for just turn into cancers and parasites. Not much to cheer up the lone soul. But every great one, and every bright light, will have many nights as dark as this one and will waste a lot of tears on things which will be transcended. Relief is on the way, as the tears will clean the eyes. They come through these nights with dawning awareness of fuel beyond wildest dream and reasons to shine today: if not you, then who, if not now, when? Light which learns is power. The suffering is optional, but swamp gas burns as well.
6Top • YangThe sovereign takes advantage of emergencies to expedite
There will be commendations
And severed heads
The captives were never his enemies
Not a mistake▼
6
Top • YangThe sovereign takes advantage of emergencies to expedite
There will be commendations
And severed heads
The captives were never his enemies
Not a mistake
30.6x The sovereign takes advantage of emergencies to expedite:
In order to set right the domain
Triumph comes at last at the end of a long, bloody struggle, a moment of truth and reckoning, as well as a happy occasion. There is much of what had gone wrong to be set right here today. The Lord will demand a few severed heads, the same heads which should have seen this day coming. But beyond this are the new tasks at hand and now he needs all the help he can get from those he now stands above. With all the bigger tyrants now gone, the only half-innocent followers and failures at being effectively guilty are pardoned. This is the worst time for resentment and retribution. The moment of victory means laws and mandates all change, and so he makes this sweeping gesture. The past can be changed at will when better things need to begin. The grateful parade of new citizens will do better rebuilding than a trail of slaves.
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 30 begins on Page 240-248.
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