Earth inside
The easiest way to get to grips with the first two hexagrams, for me, is always to think how much they’re not each other. Qian, the creative force of heaven: nothing but solid lines, like the paths of sun, moon and stars across the sky. It moves without ceasing, and we can’t change it – not by a millimeter or a millisecond. Kun, earth: nothing but open lines, like the soft earth ready to be shaped by roots, or water, or footprints, or hands, or the plough, to take the shape it’s given and provide whatever is needed to bring the creative impulse to full expression.
So when I start looking at how kun works as an inner trigram, I notice first how it isn’t inner qian. As an inner trigram, heaven might feel like your irreducible will, life force and creative drive: that part of you which will not be changed, or made to swerve or turn aside. So kun inside could be sustaining and realising power, something that provides the ‘how’ for the outer trigram; it can also be the power of responsiveness, even malleability.
Let’s see…
Hexagram 2, Earth
Earth inside, earth outside: a whole broad expanse of open land waiting for footprints, like the way stretching out ahead of the noble one with ‘somewhere to go’ of the Oracle text, or the field for the mare:
‘The mare is the earth’s kindred spirit,
And wanders an earth with no borders.’
(Bradford Hatcher’s translation of the Tuanzhuan)
I think the Image authors saw Hexagram 2 as soil:
‘Power of the land: Earth.
A noble one, with generous de, carries all the beings.’
To quote myself…
I wonder whether the Image authors might not have been looking down instead of out and across, and thinking of the depth of soil beneath their feet:
‘Power of the land: Earth.
A noble one, with generous character, carries all the beings.’
地勢坤,君子以厚德載物
‘Soil power’! The word for power, shi 勢, is a lovely choice: its component parts are ‘strength’ and ‘agriculture’ – a component (purely phonetic, apparently!) that shows a person kneeling to plant a seedling. In many old versions of the character, they’re holding the plant up above head height, in a way that – to my very-amateur-gardener’s soul – seems like something between exultation and prayer. (‘Look, it’s growing! Can the pigeons please not eat it?’)
And the noble one, mirroring the power of the land, has ‘generous character’, 厚德 hou de – where hou also means thick, deep, dense, profound and weighty. The six broken lines of the hexagram start to look like really deep, rich soil – not just a dusty layer that could blow away. This deep kindness will carry all beings.
Generous de (character/ virtue/ power) is like good earth: all six broken lines, open and friable, with no rocks to dig through. And this power is ready to carry everything – literally to be loaded up like a wagon. That gives me the sense not only of earth’s readiness to lend support, but also of carrying things forward, to their natural destination. Qian might bring the ‘what’ – or maybe more the ‘why’ – but kun will provide the ‘how’.
Hexagram 8, Seeking Union, Belonging
Earth inside, with water running over it.
‘Seeking union, good fortune.
At the origin of oracle consultation,
From the source, ever-flowing constancy.
No mistake.
Realms not at peace are coming.
For the latecomer, pitfall.’
What could be the role of earth here?
It could be the water’s source: perhaps water is welling up from the earth, like the ‘origin of oracle consultation’ in inner openness. (Look at where we’ve come from in the Sequence, too.) Earth could be your willingness to be guided, and the unfortunate latecomer was just not available enough.
It can also be the banks of the river, its course shaping and shaped by the water’s flow. Then earth could be what supports and lends shape to your unceasing emotional-intuitive flow of commitment in the world. (‘On second thoughts, stop a minute, I’ll just go back up the hill and see if there’s an alternative route,’ as rivers, on the whole, do not say.)
Then the Image shows earth at work:
‘Above earth is the stream. Seeking Union.
The ancient kings founded countless cities for relationships with all the feudal lords.’
Earth provides the ‘how’: without the cities, there could be no relationships. I’ve tended to think of this one as a matter of political/military strategy, but it’s really much more than that. The ‘relationships’ here, 親 qin, are close and personal: ancient meanings include close family, intimacy, cherishing, the love of parents, siblings and children.
So… perhaps we could imagine outer kan as the flow of love, and inner kun as everything that supports it: all the practical things you do to uphold a relationship.
Hexagram 12, Blocked
This is really the odd one out. With the other seven ‘earth inside’ hexagrams, I can start by asking how earth interacts with the outer trigram, how it supports it, responds to it, is shaped by it, provides the ‘how’ to realise it… but in Hexagram 12, ‘Heaven and earth do not interact.’ The Image says so, bluntly; so too does the Tuanzhuan:
‘Thus heaven and earth do not unite, and all beings fail to achieve union. Upper and lower do not unite, and and in the world, states go down to ruin.’
(Wilhelm/Baynes translation)
I think it was Sarah Denning who connected this one with the quotation from Waiting for Godot:
“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It’s awful!”
Exactly. So what can we do with or learn from the trigrams here?
‘Heaven and earth do not interact. Blocked.
A noble one uses her strength sparingly to avoid hardship.
She does not allow herself honours and payment.’
‘Uses her strength sparingly’ – literally, the noble one uses ‘frugal de‘, jian de 儉德. That’s a direct contrast to Hexagram 2, where she uses hou de 厚德: generous de. The two sentences have exactly the same structure:
| The noble one thus | frugal | de | avoids | hardship. |
| The noble one thus | generous | de | carries | beings. |
‘Frugal’ means thrifty, the opposite of profligate, and also crop failure. In these times, ‘the noble one’s constancy bears no fruit’: nothing is growing; generous de wouldn’t work. So in a sense, the noble one makes active use of the trigrams’ non-interaction by withholding her own inner strength, keeping her earth-like capacity to herself.
Not allowing honours or payment seems to me to be the action of the outer trigram heaven – not connecting with earth, but continuing unswerving and uncompromised. (I like Bradford Hatcher’s explanation of this as ‘not taking bait, not giving wrongness something to rally and live for’. We’ve all had one of those arguments where you are only giving energy to the wrongness, not getting anywhere.)
Looking at the two trigrams together, you can also imagine standing quietly on the earth and not trying to capture the stars. For a clearer sense of this, contrast it with Hexagram 10, Treading: heaven above, but lake below, reflecting the depths of heaven, aspiring towards it.
Hexagram 16, Enthusiasm/ Anticipating
‘Thunder bursts forth from the earth!’ We should imagine springtime, when everything that has been dormant in the earth surges upwards into life.
The trigrams are already visible – or imagin-able, at least – in the Oracle text:
‘Enthusiasm.
Fruitful to set up feudal lords and mobilise the armies.’
Thunder sets things in motion, so that looks like mobilisation; then the earth would correspond to the feudal lords, providing the structure that makes it possible. The earth trigram inside Hexagram 16 feels a lot like the one inside Hexagram 8: lending all possible strength and support.
In the Image, you can feel the wholehearted generosity of its commitment:
‘Thunder bursts forth from the earth. Enthusiasm
The ancient kings composed music to honour de,
They celebrated and worshipped the supreme lord,
Joining with their ancestors.’
The ancient kings are honouring virtue, chong de 崇德; chong means to respect and elevate, exalt – the character is made of ‘ancestral temple’ and ‘mountain’. So their music uplifts de like the earth supports the thunder that rises through it; it’s the same idea we know from familiar psalms and hymns of voices rising to heaven.
I think they also use earth-qualities to ‘join with their ancestors’ – or as Wilhelm beautifully puts it, to invite them. The idea here is of matching, being worthy of, being in accord with. That suggests the responsiveness of earth, open to invite a spiritual presence, and following in the ancestors’ footsteps like the noble one of Hexagram 2: ‘following behind, gains a master’.
It’s also important that their music has structure, transforming raw enthusiasm into harmony. In the same way, the interconnected web of feudal lords will turn the people’s strength into an army, and the matrix of soil will support the new plants’ growth.
(Hexagrams 20, 23, 35 and 45 to come!)