Dui: where delight comes from

Lake over lake: a yin line atop each trigram

Dui (兌) is built from two Dui (lake). Each is two yang lines under one yin line: from the bottom yang, yang, yin, and then yang, yang, yin again. The Shuo Gua says “Dui is delight”, takes the lake as its image, and also the youngest daughter, with the mouth among its images; in its account of the directions it calls Dui true autumn, “where all things delight”.

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Dui and its inverse Gen: the Shuo Gua puts them side by side, with Gen to stop things and Dui to delight them.

The judgment and the Commentary: firm in the center, yielding outside

The judgment of Dui is three characters in the original: success; steadfastness is fitting. The Commentary on the Judgments first glosses the name as “delight”, then says from the figure what kind of delight it is.

Dui means delight. The firm is in the center and the yielding on the outside; delight that is fitting and steadfast is therefore in accord with heaven and answers to people. When delight leads the people, they forget their toil; when delight meets danger, they forget death. How great is delight: the people are encouraged!

“Firm in the center, yielding outside” can be seen at a glance. The two yang lines, 2 and 5, are the middle line of each trigram. The two yin lines, 3 and 6, are the top line of each trigram, which makes them the outermost. The sentences after that carry delight out among people: delight leads them, and the people forget their toil; delight faces danger, and the people forget death. The last cry, “how great is delight”, is an exclamation about how delight encourages them.

The Great Image: joined marshes, friends at discussion and practice

The Great Image of Dui reads:

Joined marshes: Dui. The noble person holds discussion and practice with friends.

“Joined marshes” is two bodies of water side by side. Tradition usually reads it this way: two sheets of water joined, each moistening the other. The noble person’s share of it is “discussion and practice with friends”: talking things through and going over them in company.

The Commentary glosses the name as “delight”, and the Great Image lands that on discussion and practice: delight, here, is the kind that comes from talking and going over things together. The Image writes nothing about a solitary joy.

Six lines: one trigram twice, so three pairs

The upper and lower trigrams of Dui are identical, so the six lines can be paired by their place inside their own trigram: line 1 with line 4 at the foot, line 2 with line 5 in the middle, line 3 with line 6 at the top.

The pair at the foot is about how delight begins. Line 1 says “harmonious delight: good fortune”, and the Small Image (小象) says his conduct raises no doubt. Line 4 says “delight under discussion, not yet at ease”: discussion is conferring, and ease has not come. Tradition usually reads the next clause as keeping a small ailment at bay, and then there is joy; the Small Image says there is cause for celebration.

The middle pair both carry the word for trust. Line 2 says “delight in trust: good fortune; regret vanishes”, and the Small Image says it is his aim that is trusted. Line 5 says “trusting what strips away: danger”. The Small Image says its place is right and fitting, so the place is not the trouble; the trouble is what is trusted. Tradition usually reads the stripping thing as a yin line that wears away yang, and in this figure the top yin line stands directly above line 5.

The pair at the top are the two yin lines, both outermost. Line 3 says “delight that comes asking: misfortune”, delight that offers itself unasked, and the Small Image says the place is not proper: a yin line in the third place, a yang place. Line 6 has just two words, “delight that draws”, bringing delight in, with neither fortune nor misfortune attached; the Small Image calls it “not yet bright”.

Read through the pairs, the foot lines are harmony and conferring, the middle ones trust, the top ones being come to and being drawn. In the Shuo Gua, Dui is the mouth; harmony, conferring and trust are all things said between people.

Xun, Gen and Jia Ren: neighbors of Dui and its place after Xun

Dui has three close neighbors. Its inverse hexagram (错卦) is Gen, drawn in the figure above. Flip Dui over and Xun (巽) appears: that is its reversed hexagram (综卦). Regroup the four middle lines, 2 to 5, and the result is its nuclear hexagram (互卦), Jia Ren (家人), with Li (yang, yin, yang) below and Xun (yin, yang, yang) above.

The yin lines of Dui, at 3 and 6, are the top lines of their trigrams; flip the figure and they land at 1 and 4, which is Xun. In the Xu Gua, Dui stands after Xun and before Huan:

After entering comes delight in it, so what follows is Dui; Dui means delight.

First entering, then delight. One step further, the Xu Gua says delight is followed by scattering, and Huan (渙) comes next. The Za Gua has a sentence that sets Dui and Xun together:

Dui shows itself while Xun lies hidden.

Dui is the one that shows, Xun the one that lies low. The Shuo Gua also pairs Dui with its inverse Gen: Gen is for stopping things, Dui for delighting them.