Here we are at xian (or hsien, in the old style), nearly up to halfway through the Book of Changes. Some scholars mark this as the beginning of the "Lower Canon" of the I Ching (pdf file). I'm not really sure what that means -- why there might be two canons in the book. Master Huang says the Lower Canon starts with a symbolic marriage (between xian and the next hexagram, heng) and has to do with "the yin aspect of natural phenomena, the Tao of Humanity." The last two hexagrams had to do with water and fire, the ultimate expressions of yin and yang here on Earth, so I suppose this is a good place to be starting over with people and social affairs.

What's the character mean?
Anton Heyboer says the character for xian represents a halberd (which is a big [expletive deleted]ing axe) and a mouth, and says this might represent either attacking with a mouth or a mouth giving orders to an assembled army. Master Huang, on the other hand, says the character for xian corresponds to two ideographs, -- xian, which means "all" or "mutual," becomes another ideograph when placed over xin (heart). It turns into the word gan, or "influence." He says Confucius says xian should really be gan, but someone somewhere dropped the heart off the bottom of the character. I don't know if I buy that or not, but Huang writes Chinese and I don't. Wilhelm, on the other other hand, translates the hexagram four ways: "universal," "general," "to influence," and "to stimulate." He picked "influence" as the primary meaning.

What's on the top?
The outer trigram is dui, the joyful, stagnant lake.

What's on the bottom?
The inner trigram is gen, the stolid, steadfast mountain.
Again, I kind of get the feeling that lakes really should be under mountains, but we'll see what smarter heads say about this state of affairs in a minute.

What's in the guts?
The nuclear trigrams are yinny-yin-yin kun, earth, over xun, the wind. This is another reversal of how things usually are in nature -- generally the expanding, turning wind travels over the cool, receptive earth, not the other way around.

What's it from far away?
The Judgement and Image verses talk about taking a maiden to wife (ho ho!) and the wise man encouraging people to come and stay a while by being "ready to receive them." The lake over the mountain is a reminder of humility -- the lake also represents the younger daughter, while the mountain is seen as the younger son. There seems to be a vibe throughout this hexagram of "woman on top" stuff, now that I look at it all. Wilhelm also says, talking about the wedding bit in the Judgement verse:

...[A]ll success depends on the effect of mutual attraction. By keeping still within while experiencing joy without, one can prevent the joy from going to excess and hold it within proper bounds.

What's it saying up close?
The Lines verses depict influence rising up the body, from the toes in the bottom line up the legs, through the heart and finally reaching the jaws, tongue and cheeks -- the mouth, basically, in the final line. "Talking is the superficial way to influence someone" is what Wilhelm says about that final line. The fourth line, though, has a long discussion about the heart and the necessity to maintain that inner stillness referred to in the Judgement verse -- and to keep from trying to consciously influence others in any way other than by setting an example.

He says: "When the quiet power of a man's own character is at work, the effects produced are right."

Sounds good to me.




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_{Curious why this is in a blog about Chinese adoption? Read this explanation. I'm using the Wilhelm/Baynes translation from the comprehensive Wengu collection or the user-friendly Eclectic Energies site, and I'm taking the character translations from Alfred Huang's The Complete I Ching. Feel like going deeper? Check out Hong Kong's Taoist Culture & Information Centre's I Ching page, and the essays & reviews on Ma Xia's Yijing Page.}