East Asia · Love & Union
Symbol · The Sixty-Four Hexagrams
Biting Through
The Obstruction Between the Teeth
What blocks the jaws must be bitten through: justice done openly, with its penalties named beforehand.
What it meansThunder and lightning together: the shock and the light arriving as one event. The Image derives law from it — penalties made clear and definite. Biting through is the necessary bite, and the tradition's condition is that it be visible and known in advance.
Symbol · The Sixty-Four Hexagrams
Duration
The Enduring Course
What lasts is not stillness but a direction held long enough to renew itself; rigidity is not constancy.
What it meansThunder and wind, two things that never stop and never stay. Duration in this reading is not stillness but a motion that renews itself — so the counsel is to stand firm in direction while everything else changes. What endures is the bearing, not the position.
Symbol · The Sixty-Four Hexagrams
Development
The Wild Goose's Ascent
Advance by proper degrees, as a tree on the mountain gains height: a step skipped is lost, not saved.
What it meansA tree on the mountain, which grows slowly and cannot be hurried, and whose height is borrowed from what it stands on. The counsel is to abide in dignity and so improve the customs of others. Gradual influence works at the speed of the thing being influenced.