So, we're at the halfway point. Cool. Smooth sailing from here on out, as long as we persevere, right?

This is the inverse of the previous hexagram, xian, which was about newlyweds. This one is about long familiarity and lasting-ness.


What's the character mean?
The character for heng shows a heart next to a boat traveling between two shores. Oddly, I was just looking at the clickable Dao de jing on zhongwen.com, and "heng" is the central word of the second chapter there. Same position here. Strange. Anyway, in that book, it seems to mean something like "the way things are" or maybe even "it's always thus."

What's on the top?
The outer trigram is zhen, the moving, shaking thunder.

What's on the bottom?
The inner trigram is xun, the breezy wind.
I suppose that makes this a good hexagram for stormy weather. Huang points out that zhen represents the eldest son and xun the eldest daughter, so together this hexagram symbolizes an elderly married couple - the husband moving around outside and the wife gently sitting inside. Wilhelm says almost exactly the same thing.

What's in the guts?
The nuclear trigrams are dui, the joyful marsh, over qian, powerful, ascendant heaven. Happiness backed by massive power, I think. A good feeling overall, maybe.

What's it from far away?
The Judgement and Image verses advise us that perseverance (which is a word that pops up a lot in these verses) is more than standing still -- it's a combination of standing still and being fiercely active.
Wilhelm says:

Heavenly bodies exemplify duration. They move in their fixed orbits, and because of this their light-giving power endures.

and

...[T]he independence of the superior man is not based on rigidity and immobility of character. He always keeps abreast of the time and changes with it. What endures is the unswerving directive, the inner law of his being....

I like the idea of an orbit as a model for that which perseveres. It moves at millions of miles per hour, but it keeps going in a circle (or, well, an ellipse) because that's the law. That's the nature of orbits.

What's it saying up close?
The Lines verses depict a kind of contest between "duration" and human nature -- how hard it can be to make perseverance part of your basic personality. Lessons include Laozi talking about patience, how being constantly changed by your moods leads to misfortune, how sometimes perseverance really doesn't pay off (when you're hunting and there ain't no animals to find), and, ahem, how women ought to heed their husbands, even if they seem kind of scatterbrained.

A woman should follow a man her whole life long, but a man should at all times hold to what is his duty at the given moment. Should he persistently seek to conform to the woman, it would be a mistake for him.

Can't wait to lay that one on My Headstrong Spouse.

"Hear that, honey? It'd be a mistake for me to conform persistently!"



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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.}