Reading
Judgment
The Joyous. Success. Favorable is perseverance.
The cheerful mood has a contagious effect; therefore it has success. But joy needs as foundation constancy, so that it does not degenerate into uncontrolled merriment. Truth and strength must dwell in the heart, while mildness comes to light outwardly in intercourse. In this way one takes the right stance before God and people and achieves something. Through mere intimidation without mildness one can perhaps achieve something under certain circumstances for the moment, but not for the long run. If, on the other hand, one wins the hearts of people through friendliness, one brings it about that they willingly take upon themselves all troubles, indeed, if it must be, do not even shun death. So great is the power of joy over people.
Image
Lakes resting on one another: the image of the Joyous.
Thus the noble one joins with their friends for
discussion and practice.
A lake evaporates upward and thereby gradually exhausts itself. But when two lakes are in connection with each other, they are not so easily exhausted, because one enriches the other. So it is too in the scientific realm. Science should be a refreshing and enlivening force. It can become this only in enlivening intercourse with like-minded friends, with whom one discusses and practices the application of life-truths. Thus knowledge becomes many-sided and acquires a cheerful lightness, while the knowledge of autodidacts always retains something heavy and one-sided.
Commentary
Tui is, like Sun, one of the eight double hexagrams. Tui means the youngest daughter; it has as image the smiling lake, as attribute joy. Joy does not rest, as it might perhaps seem, on the softness that shows itself in the upper line. The attribute of the soft, that is, the dark principle, is not joy but melancholy. Rather, joy rests on the fact that within are two strong lines that express themselves through the medium of softness.
True joy therefore rests on the fact that firmness and strength are present within, which come forward outwardly soft and mild.
Changing Lines
Line 1
A nine at the beginning means:
Contented joy. Good fortune!
Commentary
A quiet, wordless, inwardly collected joy, which desires nothing from outside and is content with everything, remains free of all egoistic inclinations and aversions. In this freedom lies good fortune, for it holds the calm security of the heart that is firm within itself.
Line 2
A nine in the second place means:
Sincere joy. Good fortune! Remorse vanishes.
Commentary
Often one finds oneself in relation with inferior people, from whose midst other joys beckon than are fitting to the higher person. Were one to take part in such joys, this would surely entail remorse; for a higher person cannot really be satisfied with lower joys. If in consequence of this recognition one does not let oneself be thrown off in one's will, so that one finds no pleasure in this kind of thing, then even a questionable environment does not dare to offer one ignoble joys, since they would after all not delight one. And with this, every occasion for regret is eliminated.
Line 3
A six in the third place means:
Coming joy. Misfortune!
Commentary
True joy must well up from one's own inner being. But if one is inwardly empty, so that one loses oneself to the outer world, then joys come in from outside. That is what some people greet as diversion. People who out of inner unstablity have the need for diversion will always have opportunity to divert themselves. They draw the outer joys to themselves through the emptiness of their being. Thereby they lose themselves more and more, which is naturally evil.
Line 4
A nine in the fourth place means:
Deliberated joy is not at rest.
After laying off the faults, one has joy.
Commentary
Often the human being finds themself in between various kinds of joy. As long as one is not yet decided which kind of joy one wants to choose, the higher or the lower, one finds oneself inwardly in unrest. Only when one has clearly recognized that passion brings suffering is one able to decide so that one lays off the lower and strives for the higher joys. Once this decision is sealed, one has found true inner cheerfulness and rest, and the inner conflict is overcome.
Line 5
A nine in the fifth place means:
Truthfulness toward the disintegrating is dangerous.
Commentary
Even to the best person dangerous elements draw near. If one gets involved with them, their disintegrating influence works quite slowly but surely and inevitably brings its dangers behind it. Whoever, however, recognizes the situation and knows how to see through the danger, knows how to guard oneself and remains free of harm.
Line 6
A six at the top means:
Seductive joy.
Commentary
If one is inwardly vain, one draws the joys of diversion and has to suffer under them (compare six in the third place). If one is not firm inwardly, the joys of the outer world, from which one does not withdraw, work so strongly on one that one is carried along. Here there is no longer talk of danger, of good fortune or misfortune. One has given the steering of life out of hand, and it depends on chance and outer influences what becomes of one.