Lin: land above the lake, the firm advances

Land above the lake: two yang lines rising from the bottom

Lin (臨) is the 19th hexagram: Dui (lake) below, Kun (earth) above. Only the lowest two lines, first and second, are yang; the four above them are yin. In ordinary speech the word means to approach or to face, as in facing a river, and the Great Image (大象) is likewise "above the lake there is land": a stretch of ground facing the water.

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Lin and its reversed form Guan: turn Lin over and the two yang lines move from the bottom to the top.

Two yang lines are pressed under four yin lines, rather like two forces just breaking surface. That is what the Commentary on the Judgments (彖传) says first: they are growing.

The Commentary: "the firm advances", and the eighth month

The judgment reads "yuan heng; li zhen; when the eighth month comes, there is misfortune", and the Commentary comments on it clause by clause.

Lin: the firm gradually advances and grows. Delighting and yielding; the firm is central and is answered. Great success through what is right: this is the way of heaven. "When the eighth month comes, there is misfortune": the decline is not far off.

"The firm advances" is read off the figure: two yang lines pushing up from the bottom. "The firm is central and answered" is about the second line: a yang line in the middle of the lower trigram, with the fifth line above answering it. After "great success through what is right" the Commentary closes the praise with "this is the way of heaven". Then the eighth month: which month is meant has long been disputed, and the Commentary adds only half a sentence, "the decline is not far off".

The Great Image: unending teaching, boundless protection

The Great Image of Lin puts the weight on "unending" and "boundless".

Above the lake there is land: Lin. The noble person is unending in teaching and thought, and unbounded in embracing and protecting the people.

"Teaching and thought" is instructing and giving care; "embracing and protecting" is tolerating and shielding. Each clause ends on a word for having no end. Set this beside the Xu Gua's "Lin means great": the name is "great" there, and the Great Image gives two acts without bounds, so the two echo each other in wording.

The six statements: one word, Lin, with five words before it

Every one of the six statements contains the word Lin, and the word in front changes: feeling, feeling, sweet, arriving, knowing, generous.

Lines 1 and 2 both say "approaching with feeling". The first word is explained in the Commentary of the hexagram Xian as "to feel", so it is usually read as approaching with feeling, a borrowed explanation. Line 1 says "staying on course brings good fortune" and the Small Image (小象) says "his aim carries out what is right". Line 2 says "good fortune, nothing unfavorable", yet its Small Image says "he has not yet gone along with the command". Taken literally it is "not yet following the order", and it has more than one reading, so only the literal sense is given.

Line 3: "A sweet approach: no benefit anywhere. Once he is anxious about it, there is no fault." The word is sweet: approaching sweetly brings no gain, and once he worries about it there is no fault. The Small Image says "his place is not fitting", a yin line in the third place, and also "the fault does not last". Line 4: "An arriving approach: no fault", and "his place is fitting". Line 5: "A knowing approach: what suits a great ruler; good fortune", with "it means acting from the center". Line 6: "A generous approach: good fortune, no fault", with "his aim is within".

Guan and Fu: neighbors of Lin, and the Xu Gua's "great"

Turn Lin upside down and you have Guan: the two yang lines go from the very bottom to the very top, which is why the two are side by side at the head of this article.

The inverse of Lin is Dun (遯): every line changes polarity, so the two yang lines become yin and the four yin lines become yang. The nuclear hexagram is Fu (復): lines two to four give the lower trigram, Zhen, and lines three to five the upper, Kun, so Fu keeps only the lowest yang line.

The Xu Gua attaches Lin to Gu with this sentence:

Only when there are affairs can anything grow large; so Lin follows, and Lin means the great.

Once there are affairs, something can grow large, and the Xu Gua says that is the reason for Lin, adding that Lin means "great". The hexagram after it is Guan; the Xu Gua says things must be great before they can be looked at, and that is the subject of the next article.