兑
GUA 58 · DUI
SATISFACTION
Overall Image (大象)
Interconnecting pools
Satisfaction
The noble young one, accordingly,
joins with friends for discussion and practice▼
Overall Image (大象)
Interconnecting pools
Satisfaction
The noble young one, accordingly,
joins with friends for discussion and practice
Pleasure on the surface and pleasure in the depths. Like we were taught as children, the magic word is still please. There are multiple pools involved here, many wetlands and lochs. The water in time will be one, inseparable, seeking its one level, borrowed back and forth, circulated between selves, and only stagnant if pooled in one body. And thus there is giving and taking, as one reflects another, and the one who gives is enriched, and the one who takes enriches the giver. Encouraging each other is a highly contagious cure for disease. The world improves in resonant ways when a few improve their moods, awash in their feelings, clean, refreshed and replenished.
Main Judgment (Satisfaction) (卦辞)
Fulfillment
Rewarding to persist▼
Main Judgment (Satisfaction) (卦辞)
Fulfillment
Rewarding to persist
There is a lot of proper time to savor enlightened self-interest. Life’s serious sides, the long cultivation of character, careful choosing of proper paths, the short and long term deferrals of gratification, pay off after some time is invested. To not taste and savor the fruits of this work is absurd: these are just desserts. Nor is there need to divide the high and low pleasures, or the sacred from the profane. If choices were made to live well, then vivid enjoyment of a life well-lived should not be unexpected. The wisest of minds will remember what it is made of: its living nerve and the nerve to live. Now and again this wants stimulation. It’s still a big mystery, but somehow the erotic dimension of life holds the key to creation of life. Appetitive behaviors, or wants and desires, set us to work toward our goals. Happiness is not a good pursuit, but the sign of a good pursuit, a sign that something is found. The sage loosens up with his fellows, with all sorts of oral behaviors, plays games with his good friend the witch, happy with wine and herbs, awakening all his best senses. So how do we deserve this, with all our guilt and shame? With our gratitude, even with no gratitee.
Key Words (关键词)
Free, open up, clear out; barter, bargain, negotiate, weigh, exchange, pay, redeem▼
Key Words (关键词)
Free, open up, clear out; barter, bargain, negotiate, weigh, exchange, pay, redeem
Enjoyment, pleasure, happiness, delight, relish, relief, gratification, self-interest Harvest, reaping rewards, fruits; compensation, incentives, persuasion, satisfaction Hedonics, pursuit of pleasure and happiness as intrinsically benign and instructive Encouragement, desire, attraction, welcome; charm, enchantment, bewitchment Ananda, eros, cheer, epicurean hedonism, need/want as driving force in evolution
Structure & Connections
Structure Class
Gen-Dui Family
This classification indicates the hexagram's role in the 12 Sovereign Cycle (Earthly Branches) or its structural family.
Astrology
note:Pisces Ascending, Mutable Water
element:Water
Tarot
card:Queen of Cups
suit:Cups
Qabalah
note:Briah of Briah
sphere:Briah
The Lines
11st • YangResponsive joy
Promising▼
1
1st • YangResponsive joy
Promising
58.1x Responsive joy holds promise:
The behavior (is) not now in doubt
The things conducive to joy can come and go like the tide. The high tides are seldom the problem and they don’t overstay their welcome. But when the fullness and flow go out with the tide, what will sustain us then? One of the sillier things that we do is to feed on ourselves. In the name of self-reliance, we may turn inward for strength. But this is no place to draw the waters which have now left us. The trick is to find it at low tide as well, when great ebbs leave us stranded from Ocean. The resourceful folks might comb the few pools remaining, and make a game out of rounding up interesting creatures, and enjoy the tide’s ebbs for variety’s sake. Joy can dwell in strange places: after all, life was born in these pools and depressions. Life is such that it’s hard to be whole or fulfilled by ourselves. We want a world to respond to.
22nd • YangTrusting joy
Promising
Regrets pass▼
2
2nd • YangTrusting joy
Promising
Regrets pass
58.2x Trusting joy holds promise:
A belief (in) the purpose
Joy is a subject. To have faith in an object of joy, and hang one’s hopes thereupon, will teach us that joy, unlike faith, is no nun. She will sleep with the saint one night and then run off with a shaman or witch. She plays the field far too well, loving both faith and uncertainty. For her, this is a wonderful world to be so worldly in. But to count upon joy or happiness, perhaps as our reward for being so well-behaved, is to ask for mental illness. To even think to keep her at home is vexation itself. We look for joy to affirm our convictions, or to tell us that we are on the right path. She is a fine omen indeed, and sometimes she may even come when she’s wanted, but this is not proof of merit or worth. To leave the doors open is sometimes all we can do, focus on our work to keep ourselves worthy, and not whine when an episode ends.
33rd • YangFuture joy
Disappointing▼
3
3rd • YangFuture joy
Disappointing
58.3x Future joy holds disappointment:
The position is not appropriate
A pool or a pond begins with some kind of depression, hollow, waiting for fullness. And truly much can be said for deferring gratification. But joy is never tomorrow; always or never sometimes, when hijacked by emotions, or past, if being nostalgic, or right now as it is happening. When saving up for great joys to come, we empty our hearts till it hurts, the better to suck the joys in. Then we’ll try to be idle, saving ourselves for the time, dismissing the lesser, more worldly joys, keeping busy with distractions, indulging in things that kill time. Our time will be dead soon enough. If the joy we await takes much time to respond, it will find us too weak to embrace it. Waiting for one great ship to come in, one can miss two ships worth of rowboats. The poor souls who await their heaven to live will not have a clue what to do there.
44th • YangMeasured joy is less than serene
Limit the anxiety to own happiness▼
4
4th • YangMeasured joy is less than serene
Limit the anxiety to own happiness
58.4x Nine fourth’s happiness:
There will be rewards
He contrives to collect and examine one of each kind of pleasure. His journals are marked up with assorted descriptions and symbols, ratings for health and intensity. He speaks cleverly, and at length, on topics of pleasure. He knows which joys are high and most sacred and which are low and profane, and can list, in proper order, all of those in between. And of course he suffers from assorted small ills attendant upon such anxious reflection, and the naggings of choices forgone. He makes it all so complex, with all of this fussing and fretting. But, that being said, there is a due and optimum order to arranging one’s satisfactions: to take care of the basic needs first, that they don’t turn into deficiencies, or problems of mental health. Then we move on to life’s finer wants and fulfillments, such as jumping naked into the lake.
55th • YangTrusting in the unsustainable
There will be struggles▼
5
5th • YangTrusting in the unsustainable
There will be struggles
58.5x Trusting in the unsustainable:
(Though) the position (is) correct (and) appropriate
Unconditional love and acceptance, a compassion for all living things, did not make the world we know. The beauty we see around us, the health that we enjoy, the set of senses we use to know this life and the wits to make our lives work, only exist because our world is ever renewed as the unfit are swept from existence. The loving and nurturing mothers in nature might kill and eat the runts of their litters to spare the rest from diseases. Compassion is still a good thing, and a heart ought not judge or choose, but denying selection is mindless, and harmful to all. Looking for joy in inferior places is waiting for fullness in waning moons. The joy which derives from ephemeral causes extinguishes itself. Enduring values will value what will endure. Why glue autumn leaves to the tree? The secure joy accepts the due order of things.
6Top • YangDrawn by satisfaction▼
6
Top • YangDrawn by satisfaction
58.6x Top six (is) drawn by satisfaction:
Less than enlightened
It is in our nature to do things when we think there will be rewards. Life will even build some of this into its structure, and use our own glands to play tricks on our minds. But satisfaction still measures the success of our pursuits. Joy is only one consequence of living life correctly. When it becomes the pursuit in itself, then life gets turned around and effect starts to act like a cause. Then behaviors which lead to rewarding feelings begin to become interchangeable. We will start to look for the shortcuts. An identity built on one’s work, and higher purpose in life, is traded for the quick fixes. We might be seduced from our paths by anyone holding rewards. We’ll look for our signs of success in all the wrong places: it is always somewhere outside us, somewhere to move on to. Inhabiting our places is our highest reward.
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 58 begins on Page 408-416.
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