Sheng: from “allowed to rise” to “rising in darkness”

A tree inside the earth: Xun below, Kun above

Start with the figure: a yin line at the bottom, two yang lines over it, then three broken yin lines. The lower three are Xun, the upper three Kun. In the Shuo Gua the images of Xun include wood and also height, and Kun is the earth. This is Sheng (升). Wood inside the earth, growing upward: the figure matches the Great Image, “a tree grows inside the earth”, exactly.

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Sheng and its inverse Wuwang: the inverse changes every line to the opposite polarity, so the three yin lines of Sheng all become yang.

The judgment and the Commentary: rising told in soft words

The judgment of Sheng reads: primal success; fitting to meet a great person; do not worry; a southern campaign is fortunate. The Commentary on the Judgments splits this into conditions and results.

The yielding rises as the time allows. Entering and compliant, with the firm keeping to the center and finding an answer: this is why success is great. “Fitting to meet a great person; do not worry” means there is something to celebrate. “A southern campaign is fortunate” means the will gets carried out.

Of the three conditions, the yielding, entering and compliant ones are all soft words: the yielding is the yin line, entering is the word for Xun, and compliance is the image of Kun. Only the clause about the firm holding the center is hard, meaning that line 2 stands in the middle of the lower trigram and line 5 above answers it. The Commentary uses no word like “struggle” or “charge” for rising: it speaks of rising with the time.

The three results each answer one clause of the judgment: “great success” answers “primal success”, “celebration” answers “fitting to meet a great person; do not worry”, and “the will is carried out” answers the southern campaign.

The Great Image: a tree in the earth, piling up the small

The Great Image (大象) of Sheng reads: inside the earth a tree grows, Sheng; the noble person follows virtue and piles up the small to become high and great.

The word for “follows” in “follows virtue” is traditionally read as “complies with, goes along with”, and the sentence means acting in accord with virtue. The second phrase gives the method: pile up the small bit by bit until it becomes high and great. The Commentary says “the yielding rises with the time” and the Image says “pile up the small”: the two can be read together, one about following the time, the other about piling up little by little.

Six lines: rising and offering, by turns

Put the verbs of the six statements side by side and a neat rhythm shows. Line 1 speaks of rising, line 2 of an offering, line 3 of rising, line 4 of an offering, line 5 of rising, and line 6 again of rising.

Line 1: “allowed to rise: great good fortune”. The first word means trusted or agreed, so this line, at the bottom, rises with consent. The Small Image says “above, wills agree”, and one way to read it off the figure: the three lines above are yin as well, of the same kind, and their wills match.

Line 2: “where there is sincerity, a modest spring offering will serve; no blame”. Cui has this same clause in its line 2. The Small Image remarks: there is joy.

Line 3: “rising into an empty city”. One may read it off the figure: above line 3 are the three broken yin lines of Kun, like an empty town with nothing standing in the way. The Small Image says “nothing to doubt”.

Line 4: “the king offers at Mount Qi: good fortune, no blame”. Mount Qi is a place where the Zhou people were active early on. The Small Image says it is a matter of yielding: doing things as they come.

Line 5: “steadfastness brings good fortune; climb the steps”. Steps are taken one at a time, and for this line the Small Image calls it a will greatly met.

Line 6: “rising in darkness; fitting for unceasing steadfastness”. The Small Image comments: rising in darkness at the top, ebbing, not enriched. “Ebbing” is traditionally read as being used up, and “not enriched” as no longer gaining. At the end of the climb the next step is no further up; what carries the line is steadfastness that does not stop.

Cui, Wuwang and Guimei: what stands beside Sheng, and its place in the order

Turn Sheng upside down and you get Cui (萃), so Cui is its reversed hexagram (综卦), with the three yin lines back at the bottom. The inverse hexagram (错卦) is Wuwang (无妄), which swaps every line of Sheng. The nuclear hexagram (互卦) is Guimei (归妹): lines 2 to 4 of Sheng are yang, yang, yin, which make Dui; lines 3 to 5 are yang, yin, yin, which make Zhen; Dui under Zhen is Guimei.

Read the Great Images of Cui and Sheng together: one is “a lake above the earth”, water lying on the ground, and the other is “a tree grows inside the earth”. In each the three yin lines are the earth, one holding things up from below and the other covering them from above. The Xu Gua joins them: what has gathered then goes upward, and that is Sheng. After Sheng it says that rising without stopping must end in Kun (困), exhaustion. Yet line 6 of Sheng itself speaks of “unceasing steadfastness”: one text is about a steadfastness that does not stop, the other about a rise that does not stop. The two “not stopping” are worth reading side by side.