Daxu: heaven inside a mountain, holding and storing

Heaven inside a mountain: Qian below, Gen above, one word with two meanings

Daxu (大畜) is the 26th hexagram. The lower trigram is Qian (heaven), the upper is Gen (mountain). The first, second and third lines are yang, the fourth and fifth are yin, and the top line is yang again. The Shuo Gua says "Qian is strength" and "Gen is stopping", so the layout is plain to read: the strong below, what stops it above.

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Daxu and its reversed form Wuwang: turn Daxu over and the three yang lines move from the bottom to the top.

The two meanings do not conflict here. Holding back something strong is also a way of keeping it. In each section below it is worth asking which of the two the word means.

The Commentary on the Judgments: a run of praises, then "can stop the strong"

The judgment of Daxu is "fitting to stay on course; not eating at home brings good fortune; fitting to cross the great river". The Commentary on the Judgments (彖传) first praises the hexagram's character and then explains the judgment line by line.

Daxu: firm, strong, solid and sincere, radiant; day by day it renews its virtue. The firm rises and honors the worthy. It can stop the strong: this is great rightness. "Not eating at home brings good fortune": it nourishes the worthy. "Fitting to cross the great river": it answers to heaven.

"The firm rises and honors the worthy" is read off the figure: the top line is yang, a firm line at the highest place, and the Commentary takes that as honoring the worthy. "It can stop the strong: this is great rightness" is the hinge of the passage: Gen is able to stop the strength of Qian, and the Commentary calls that great rightness. The last two clauses annotate the judgment, one by one: "not eating at home" is nourishing the worthy, and "crossing the great river" is answering to heaven, which in this hexagram is the lower trigram, Qian.

The Image: heaven within the mountain, learning the earlier words

The Image changes the angle. Instead of holding something back it speaks of putting something in.

Heaven is within the mountain: Daxu. The noble person widely learns the earlier words and the deeds of the past, so as to store up his virtue.

"Earlier words and deeds of the past" means what people before him said and what has already been done. The first act is to learn it, and the second is to store the result up as virtue. The word for "store" is the same character the Commentary on the Judgments uses for "stop the strong", yet here it means accumulating: the same mountain holds back toward the outside and keeps safe toward the inside.

The six lines: first self-stopping, then restraint, then the road

The six statements fall into three groups by position. The three below are Qian's yang lines; the three above belong to Gen.

Take the three yang lines first. Each stops differently. Line 1: "danger; it is fitting to stop", and the Small Image says this way "it runs into no disaster". Line 2: "the cart sheds its axle strap". The strap that binds the axle to the cart has been taken off, so the cart cannot go by itself, and the Small Image says that, being in the middle place, he has no fault. Line 3 stops most loosely. "A good horse gives chase": the horse is running, and the text allows "fitting to have somewhere to go", on condition that "day by day he drills the cart and its guard". The Small Image says "those above share his aim". Across the three yang lines the stopping moves from a halt, to taking a strap off, to running while drilling, and the road opens a little at a time.

Lines 4 and 5 write differently. The subject is now an animal under restraint: "the board on a young ox" (the original word is traditionally read as a board tied across the ox's horns), and "the tusk of a gelded boar". Both are fortunate, and each Small Image gives a single word: joy, celebration. The top line has only five characters, "what a thoroughfare of heaven; success", and the Small Image says "the Way is greatly carried out".

Xiaoxu, Wuwang, Guimei: neighbors and the sequence

Put Daxu beside the ninth hexagram, Xiaoxu (小畜). Both have Qian below; they differ in the upper trigram.

The upper trigram of Xiaoxu is Xun, which the Shuo Gua calls "entering", and its figure has a single yin line. The upper trigram of Daxu is Gen, "stopping", and its figure has two yin lines.

The reversed hexagram of Daxu is Wuwang (无妄): turn Daxu upside down and Gen the mountain becomes Zhen the thunder, below, with Qian the heaven above; that is the right-hand figure at the top of this article. Its inverse is Cui (萃) and its nuclear hexagram is Guimei (歸妹). The Xu Gua sets it between Wuwang and Yi (頤): not acting rashly comes first, and once something is stored up the text turns to nourishing.