讼
GUA 06 · SONG
CONTENTION
Overall Image (大象)
The sky together with water is contradiction in movement*
Contention
The noble young one, accordingly,
In undertaking the work, appraises beginnings▼
Overall Image (大象)
The sky together with water is contradiction in movement*
Contention
The noble young one, accordingly,
In undertaking the work, appraises beginnings
A boat afloat on the water, with stars above for guidance: a permit to go anywhere, if the crew could decide where to go. With broad horizons and too many choices, some might say that one way is as good as another, others might draw a line in the water and take a strong stand on a moveable premise, others will claim that there is a wrong way in all of the choices that sink or maroon you. The stars are impartial but useless. The captain will have a compatible crew and backup plans before going.
Main Judgment (Contention) (卦辞)
Being true yet opposed
Wariness in the middle is promising
At the end, unfortunate
Worthwhile to meet a mature human being
Not worthwhile to cross the great stream▼
Main Judgment (Contention) (卦辞)
Being true yet opposed
Wariness in the middle is promising
At the end, unfortunate
Worthwhile to meet a mature human being
Not worthwhile to cross the great stream
Advocacy, in systems of justice, does not begin with the truth, but by withholding one half of the truth, then exaggerating the other. The hyperbole weakens the case, and a jury and judge weigh double the nonsense, while somebody lies under oath. Yet in legitimate conflicts of interest, both can be right and both wrong. Certainly both can be sure, or an outer half certain, and an inner with no idea. But however sure one may be, what is true may be worlds away. Inquisitors full of assumptions can refute or validate anything, if they can control all the questions. But “true” can be also a verb, a reconsideration of aim in terms of where it wants to go and what it has to begin with. We true our aims and our courses. This will use our sense of resistance and friction to make corrections in courses, adjustments best made at the start of a journey, the midst of great water being a bad place to stop halfway. But rudders won’t work without some forward motion, so the true must learn on the move. The right idea is altered enough to accommodate the real: successes are found where resistance and failure are not. Right and truth guarantee no success.
Key Words (关键词)
Advocacy, adversarialism, partiality, partisanship, taking or promoting one side▼
Key Words (关键词)
Advocacy, adversarialism, partiality, partisanship, taking or promoting one side
Presumption, challenge, competition; ambivalence, approach-approach conflicts Conflict, disparity, dissent, dissonance, points of view within the bigger picture Resistance, friction, strife, grievance, litigation, dispute, contest, confrontation Arbitration, diplomacy, (re)conciliation, reconsideration, mid-course corrections Revisiting postulates & reference frames, using feedback, finding metasolutions 06, Notes 06.6 The sky seems to rise while water is always falling and river-borne water in old China tended Eastward, the opposite direction of the heavenly bodies.
Structure & Connections
Structure Class
No Family
This classification indicates the hexagram's role in the 12 Sovereign Cycle (Earthly Branches) or its structural family.
Astrology
note:Luna in Air
planet:Moon
element:Air
Tarot
card:Nine of Swords
suit:Swords
Qabalah
note:Yesod in Yetzirah
sphere:Yesod
The Lines
11st • YangNot prolonging certain endeavors
The small will talk
In the end, promising▼
1
1st • YangNot prolonging certain endeavors
The small will talk
In the end, promising
06.1x Not prolonging certain endeavors:
Contention is not suited to being prolonged
* Even though the small will talk
One’s arguments are clear
He has only begun to enact his plan and already gossips are making their noises. Having made a noisy beginning, he resolves to change his mind, plead no contest, withdraw and start over. Now the gossips could get really excited, but half of the conflict has just slipped away. The noise was good information, even if its content was not. Friction and drag are kinds of intelligence. Note that the swiftest boat has also the smallest wake, and the sharpest knife cuts without effort. So where is one wrong in changing one’s mind? Trial balloons are meant to get popped; all great artists have lots of erasers; if the water is really cold, it is best if only your big toe tells you so. Sometimes being a quitter is wisdom. Anyone can begin in an error, it requires more of a fool to complete one. What is there now to defend so soon?
2 • YangNot capable of contending
Capitulate and take refuge
One’s home town’s people, three hundred households,
Will escape suffering▼
2
• YangNot capable of contending
Capitulate and take refuge
One’s home town’s people, three hundred households,
Will escape suffering
06.2x Not capable of contending:
Capitulate, take refuge (or) sneak away
* From a lowly position to contend with superiors:
Suffering comes as a harvest
You travel to see the tyrant, bearing a list of your village’s grievances and seeking redress and justice. But your audience goes poorly, your lucid explanations, your logical arguments fall upon deaf ears. You are absolutely correct and the tyrant is equally wrong. Inferior people have all of the power today and reason has no voice. And yet you bow, and submit to honorable father, to a spoiled and arrogant fool. You bite your tongue and swallow your pride, you get small and invisible quickly and don’t even think about justice today. The truth was only one of the options: to find the others first means surviving. Picking one’s battles with care might be done best at the start, but soon after comes a close second. This is not submitting to fate, like a corpse or prisoner would. It’s about the best future, not about truth.
33rd • YangIncorporating long-standing virtues
In order to be steadfast
Distressing, but in the end, auspicious
Yet for someone engaged in the royal service
There is no completion▼
3
3rd • YangIncorporating long-standing virtues
In order to be steadfast
Distressing, but in the end, auspicious
Yet for someone engaged in the royal service
There is no completion
06.3x Incorporating long-standing virtues:
Following the superior (is) promising
Conflicts can leave one shaken, with certainties in doubt and afraid of going too far. Not all human beings can spend half of life to examine and forge an original ethic. Society offers a fallback in classical virtues and morals, the compromises already packaged and approved by the mediocrats and the lowest of common denominators. Settling early on compromise is not always a good idea, yet it can help you move on to your more fruitful pursuits. An original, self-driven life is hard work. This isn’t always worth all of the effort if one can be better used elsewhere. But the problems here are not in the lore of these hand me down values and truths. The safe course is still just one course, but promotes itself, and will go to war, as the one true way. Those who serve kings should not try to lead. Many more should not try to think.
44th • YangNot capable of contending
Returning to take up a higher purpose
Withdrawing to secure the certain
Promising▼
4
4th • YangNot capable of contending
Returning to take up a higher purpose
Withdrawing to secure the certain
Promising
06.4x Returning to take up a higher purpose
Withdrawing to secure the certain:
This is not failure
Imagine that our life is a maze with walls only one meter high, and everyone thinks that the rule is to crawl through this on your belly. And the one who stands tall and looks over the walls is a cheat and a quitter. Most life has its multiple levels like this. The fighting goes on in the trenches and the peace is made up above. The problem itself can be changed by changing its frame of reference, by letting in more options from the other parts of the world. Problems are not best solved on the level where they begin; solutions are often just one level up. To liberate mind from the known is not to go floating away from the real, to change the mind is easier than to change the rest of the world, and to change the game itself will break only one set of rules. Conflict dignifies things that need not even be. Higher purpose plays from above.
55th • YangThe contest is most promising▼
5
5th • YangThe contest is most promising
06.5x The contest (is) most promising:
Make use of the balance correctly*
Being true and sincere but still opposed. Maybe this is the right time for a contest, or conflict, to take a stand and assert what is right, or even simply to demonstrate who is the best. Beware of the warrior who knows that today is a good day to die. But the oddest things sometimes happen with one who is right and true, or is truly the best. They might find themselves outside of themselves in the contest, in some zone with the flow, walking the shining path, occupying the center around which opposing forces compete. It is like they have entered the problem at its moment of resolution, and all of the puzzle’s pieces are found and sit right side up. This is not done from way down inside of one’s purpose. When opponents are ready to fall they get help, those who are ready to self-destruct are assisted and everyone wins.
6Top • YangIf somehow one is awarded the leather belt and ribbons
By the end of the morning they will be three times stripped away▼
6
Top • YangIf somehow one is awarded the leather belt and ribbons
By the end of the morning they will be three times stripped away
06.6x Using contention to be subjected to burdens:
Truly not a basis for honor
Does this mean that one should renounce competition? Or that all triumph is empty? Or that victory carries no meaning? If this is only a game, then the morning’s six contests still have great value. If this is mistaken for what is real and true, there is not only no net achievement, one is also six tests more exhausted. Conflict will take things out of proportion on purpose, but it ends by leaving them where they belong. It is when one thinks this important that even the winners will lose. The winner here is awarded six fine challenges, and honored with partners able to vie for top places. Character builds, to use in retirement later. And while there is no end to the wheel, there are the rewards, and the best may get to be put out to stud. It does not all need to sum down to zero. Simply decide if you want this, or find something better to do.
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 6 begins on Page 96-104.
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