大畜
dà xù

26. The Taming Power of the Great

䷙
Above
艮 gèn
Keeping Still, Mountain
Below
乾 qián
The Creative, Heaven

The Cre­ative is tamed by Ken, Keep­ing Still. This pro­duces great power, a sit­u­a­tion in con­trast to that of the ninth hexa­gram, Hsiao Ch’u, THE TAM­ING POWER OF THE SMALL, in which the Cre­ative is tamed by the Gen­tle alone. There one weak line must tame five strong lines, but here four strong lines are re­strained by two weak lines; in ad­di­tion to a min­is­ter, there is a prince, and the re­strain­ing power there­fore is far stronger.

The hexa­gram has a three­fold mean­ing, ex­press­ing dif­fer­ent as­pects of the con­cept “hold­ing firm.” Heav­en with­in the moun­tain gives the idea of hold­ing firm in the sense of hold­ing to­geth­er; the tri­gram Ken, which holds the tri­gram Ch’ien still, gives the idea of hold­ing firm in the sense of hold­ing back; the third idea is that of hold­ing firm in the sense of car­ing for and nour­ish­ing. This last is sug­gest­ed by the fact that a strong line at the top, which is the ruler of the hexa­gram, is hon­ored and tend­ed as a sage. The third of these mean­ings also at­tach­es specif­i­cal­ly to this strong line at the top, which rep­re­sents the sage.

The Judgement

The taming power of the great.
Perseverance furthers.
Not eating at home brings good fortune.
It furthers one to cross the great water.

To hold firm­ly to great cre­ative pow­ers and store them up, as set forth in this hexa­gram, there is need of a strong, clear­head­ed man who is hon­ored by the ruler. The tri­gram Ch’ien points to strong cre­ative power; Ken in­di­cates firm­ness and truth. Both point to light and clar­i­ty and to the dally re­new­al of char­ac­ter. Only through such daily self-re­new­al can a man con­tin­ue at the height of his pow­ers. Force of habit helps to keep order in quiet times; but in pe­ri­ods when there is a great stor­ing up of en­er­gy, every­thing de­pends on the power of the per­son­al­i­ty. How­ev­er, since the wor­thy are hon­ored, as in the case of the strong per­son­al­i­ty en­trust­ed with lead­er­ship by the ruler, it is an ad­van­tage not to eat at home but rather to earn one’s bread by en­ter­ing upon pub­lic of­fice. Such a man is in har­mo­ny with heav­en; there­fore even great and dif­fi­cult un­der­tak­ings, such as cross­ing the great water, suc­ceed.

The Image

Heaven within the mountain:
The image of the taming power of the great.
Thus the superior man acquaints himself with many sayings of antiquity
And many deeds of the past,
In order to strengthen his character thereby.

Heav­en with­in the moun­tain points to hid­den trea­sures. In the words and deeds of the past there lies hid­den a trea­sure that men may use to strength­en and el­e­vate their own char­ac­ters. The way to study the past is not to con­fine one­self to mere knowl­edge of his­to­ry but, through ap­pli­ca­tion of this knowl­edge, to give ac­tu­al­i­ty to the past.

The Lines

Nine at the beginning means:
Danger is at hand. It furthers one to desist.

A man wish­es to make vig­or­ous ad­vance, but cir­cum­stances present an ob­sta­cle. He sees him­self held back firm­ly. If he should at­tempt to force an ad­vance, it would lead him into mis­for­tune. There­fore it is bet­ter for him to com­pose him­self and to wait until an out­let is of­fered for re­lease of his storedup en­er­gies.

Nine in the second place means:
The axletrees are taken from the wagon.

Here ad­vance is checked just as in the third line of THE TAM­ING POWER OF THE SMALL. How­ev­er, in the lat­ter the re­strain­ing force is slight; thus a con­flict aris­es be­tween the propul­sive and the re­strain­ing move­ment, as a re­sult of which the spokes fall out of the wagon wheels, while here the re­strain­ing force is ab­solute­ly su­pe­ri­or; hence no strug­gle takes place. One sub­mits and re­moves the axle­trees from the wagon —in other words, con­tents him­self with wait­ing. In this way en­er­gy ac­cu­mu­lates for a vig­or­ous ad­vance later on.

Nine in the third place means:
A good horse that follows others.
Awareness of danger,
With perseverance, furthers.
Practice chariot driving and armed defense daily.
It furthers one to have somewhere to go.

The way opens; the hin­drance has been cleared away. A man is in con­tact with a strong will act­ing in the same di­rec­tion as his own, and goes for­ward like one good horse fol­low­ing an­oth­er. But dan­ger still threat­ens, and he must re­main aware of it, or he will be robbed of his firm­ness. Thus he must ac­quire skill on the one hand in what will take him for­ward, and on the other in what will pro­tect him against un­fore­seen at­tacks. It is good in such a pass to have a goal to­ward which to strive.

Six in the fourth place means:
The headboard of a young bull.
Great good fortune.

This line and the one fol­low­ing it are the two that tame the for­ward-push­ing lower lines. Be­fore a bull’s horns grow out, a head­board is fas­tened to its fore­head, so that later when the horns ap­pear they can­not do harm. A good way to re­strain wild force is to fore­stall it. By so doing one achieves an easy and a great suc­cess.

Six in the fifth place means:
The tusk of a gelded boar.
Good fortune.

Here the re­strain­ing of the im­petu­ous for­ward drive is achieved in an in­di­rect way. A boar’s tusk is in it­self dan­ger­ous, but if the boar s na­ture is al­tered, the tusk is no longer a men­ace. Thus also where men are con­cerned, wild force should not be com­bat­ed di­rect­ly; in­stead, its roots should be erad­i­cat­ed.

Nine at the top means:
One attains the way of heaven. Success.

The time of ob­struc­tion is past. The en­er­gy long dammed up by in­hi­bi­tion forces its way out and achieves great suc­cess. This refers to a man who is hon­ored by the ruler and whose prin­ci­ples now pre­vail and shape the world.