The Abyss
Hexagram 29: K’an
Water above Water
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Mindsports:
Water flowing on continuously forms the repeated K’an. The superior man, in accordance with this, maintains constantly the virtue of his heart and the integrety if his conduct, and practices the business of instruction.
Bottom six:
Showing its subject in the double defile, and yet entering a cavern within it. There will be evil.
29: Without Form
You may walk upon the water while the ice is on the river. But when the ice melts the pathway has no form. With awareness you can endure the absence of known pathways until the trackless becomes familiar.
Thus you create a path upon the featureless terrain of the new, the dangerous, the unexplored and ever shifting. Let the light from the flame of your mind, beyond thoughts, be the guide now, as it has in the past.
There are many dangers in a trackless ocean if you are without skill or a compass. But for those with both, adventure and fortune lies in facing and traversing the unfathomable seas of life.
Meeting the unknown then becomes a way of life. In the trackless, one needs to return to the simple and great truths of life left us by sages, or uncovered in our own search for the truth that has no form.
Water is a great teacher regarding this. It flows on despite the terrain, filling depressions, passing over rocks, falling great heights, all without changing its innate nature. So the changeless in us can meet all change.
Moving lines:
1. In a trackless way you are always lost unless you have supreme confidence and are centred upon what lies behind change. Now you have stumbled into a pit – a situation hard to get out of.
At Sacred Texts has more grim news on the change line:
Line 1 is weak, at the bottom of the figure, and has no correlate above, no helper, that is, beyond itself. All these things render the case of its subject hopeless. He will by his efforts only involve himself more deeply in danger.
29 with the first line changing becomes…
Hexagram 60: Disciplined Release
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There is much to receive, but there are difficulties in dealing with it.
Discipline is needed in balance with dropping restraints. To unbound restraint entirely leads to losing the resources now at hand. To be disciplined without yielding means constant and exhausting vigilance.
So let the water flow, but control as with a dam. There are enormous reserves, don’t waste them
And:
Kieh intimates that (under its conditions) there will be progress and attainment. (But) if the regulations (which it prescribes) be severe and difficult, they cannot be permanent.