above Gen, Keeping Still, mountain · below Kan, the Abysmal, water
This sign is about inexperience and how we learn; even the inexperienced succeed if they persevere. ‘In youth, folly is nothing bad’; what matters is to sense your own inexperience and seek out an experienced teacher. Find someone who knows how, ask them openly and accept their answer. Then make the subject your own point by point, as thoroughly as the spring that fills every hollow before it flows on. Don’t ask the same question two or three times: then even the oracle stops answering.
What are you still inexperienced in here, and who could you ask who knows the ropes?
In two ways this sign brings youth and folly to mind. The upper sign, Gen, has a mountain as its image; the lower, Kan, has water. The spring that comes forth below the mountain is the image of inexperienced youth. The attribute of the upper sign is keeping still, that of the lower the abyss, danger. Keeping still before a dangerous abyss is likewise a symbol of the perplexed folly of youth. But the two signs also contain the way in which youthful follies can be overcome: water is something that necessarily flows on. When the spring breaks forth, it does not at first know where to go, it is true. But by flowing steadily it fills the deep place that blocks its progress, and then success has come.
Some old words keep coming back in Wilhelm’s sayings:
Youthful Folly has success.It is not I who seek out the young fool;the young fool seeks me out.At the first oracle I give an answer.If he asks a second or third time, that is pestering.If he pesters, I give no answer.Perseverance is favourable.
In youth, folly is nothing bad. It can still meet with success. Only one must find an experienced teacher and approach him in the right way. This requires, first, that one is aware of one’s own inexperience and seeks out a teacher. Only such modesty and such interest guarantee the necessary readiness to receive, which will show itself in reverent recognition of the teacher.
The teacher must therefore wait quietly until he is sought out. He should not offer himself of his own accord: only in this way can instruction come at the right time and in the right manner.
The answer the teacher gives to the pupil’s questions should be clear and definite, like the answer that someone consulting an oracle wishes to receive. It must then be accepted as the resolution of doubt and as a decision. Mistrustful or thoughtless further questioning serves merely to pester the teacher and is best passed over in silence, much as the oracle, too, gives only one answer and stays silent before doubting questions meant to test it.
If to this is added perseverance that does not let up until one has made each point one’s own, a fine success is certain.
The sign thus gives counsel both to the one who teaches and to the one who learns.
Below the mountain a spring comes forth:the image of youth.So the noble one, by thorough action,nourishes his character.
The spring begins to flow and overcomes standstill by filling every hollow along its way. In the same way the path to forming character is thoroughness, which skips nothing but, like water, fills all the gaps gradually and steadily and so moves forward.
Wilhelm placed the signs ○ and □ after certain lines (p. 334 f.). They mark the rulers of the hexagram. □ stands by the constituting ruler: the line that gives the hexagram its meaning, however high it stands and whatever its character. ○ stands by the governing ruler. It is always of good character and becomes ruler through the meaning of the time and its position, usually in the fifth place. Where a line is both, it carries ○.
To develop the fool,it is favourable to put the person under discipline.The shackles should be taken off.Continuing like this brings humiliation.
Anyone starting to learn needs seriousness and a certain strictness, because whoever only plays at life never finds their feet. That goes for you as much as for others you are guiding. Be sparing with strictness, though: constant drilling shames people and saps their strength.
Law stands at the beginning of education. Inexperienced youth is inclined at first to take everything casually and as a game. Then it must be shown the seriousness of life. A degree of self-control, where strict discipline enforces it, is good. Whoever plays with life never gets anywhere. But discipline must not degenerate into drill. Continued drill has a humiliating effect and cripples one’s strength.
Bearing fools with mildness brings good fortune.Knowing how to treat women brings good fortune.The son is equal to running the household.
This describes someone without outward power who still has the inner strength to carry responsibility. Bear the weaknesses and follies of the people around you with mildness and forbearance. If you combine inner strength with outward restraint, you can lead a larger community too, and that turns out well.
Here a man is depicted who has no outward power but has the strength of mind needed to bear the responsibility that rests on him. He possesses the inner superiority and strength that know how to bear the shortcomings of human folly with kindness. The same attitude applies towards women as the weaker sex. One must know how to take them and to acknowledge their worth with a certain chivalrous forbearance. Only through this union of inner strength and outward restraint will one be able to take on the responsibility of guiding a larger social body and truly succeed in it.
Do not take a maidenwho sees a man of bronzeand does not keep hold of herself.Nothing is favourable.
The line warns against a closeness in which someone attaches themselves to a strong personality and gives up their own nature in the process. Whoever offers themselves like that loses their dignity, and whoever accepts the offer does neither of them any good. Keep your own nature and don’t get drawn into a bond that costs you your freedom.
A weak, inexperienced person who strives upwards easily loses his individuality when he sees a strong personality in a high place and imitates it slavishly. He is like a maiden who throws herself away when she meets a strong man. One must not respond to such an unfree approach. Responding would be good neither for the youth nor for the educator.
A maiden owes it to her dignity to wait to be courted. In both cases it is undignified to offer oneself, and it is not good to accept such an offer.
Narrow-minded folly brings humiliation.
Here folly gets tangled up in fancies that have nothing to do with reality. The more stubbornly you cling to them, the more surely humiliation follows. Check whether your picture of things stands up to the situation as it really is. If it concerns someone else, you may need to leave them to themselves for a while; often only experience will save them.
For youthful folly the most hopeless thing is to get entangled in empty fancies. The more stubbornly it clings to such fancies, remote from reality, the more surely it brings humiliation on itself.
Faced with narrow-minded folly, the educator will often have no choice but to leave it to itself for a while and not spare it the humiliation that springs from its own conduct. That is often the only way to rescue it.
Folly of a childlike kind brings good fortune.
Things go well for the inexperienced person who asks for instruction openly and without arrogance. Take your question to someone who knows more than you, and let them teach you. If you entrust yourself to a teacher like that, it turns out well.
An inexperienced person who seeks instruction in a childlike, unassuming way is well placed. For whoever, free of arrogance, places himself under a teacher will surely be helped forward.
When folly is punished, it is not favourableto commit excesses.Only warding off excesses is favourable.
Sometimes a person who won’t listen has to feel the consequences of how they behave. The line warns against acting in anger when it comes to that. Fend off any encroachment, and go no further yourself than you must; a punishment should only restore order and is never an end in itself.
In certain circumstances an incorrigible fool has to be punished. Whoever will not listen must be made to feel. This punishment is different from the shaking-up at the beginning. But punishment must not be imposed in anger; it must be confined to a measured warding off of unjustified excesses. It is never an end in itself but serves only to establish orderly conditions.
This applies both to education and to the measures a government takes against a population that is guilty of excesses. The government’s intervention must always be purely defensive, and its sole aim is the restoration of public security and order.
Would you like to put your own question to the I Ching? Six throws of three coins, and the answer appears straight away.
Consult the I ChingTexts by Richard Wilhelm: I Ging. Das Buch der Wandlungen (first edition Jena 1924), translated into English by NUMEN COMPASS from the Diederichs edition, Munich 1996. Wilhelm’s German text is in the public domain. The section ‘What the hexagram says today’, the question for you and the short notes under the lines are our own reading. The I Ching is no substitute for medical, legal or psychological advice.