The lines of hexagram 40

 For the meaning of Eminent - expansion. Harvest - determination click HERE
  'Coming and returning' can also mean a seven day cycle 'West and south' or: southwest. Thunder and rain 'at work' or creating.
  Line 1. This line might be like Zen-master Dogen's "beyong thinking". See also 32.2.
  Line 2. 'At the hunt' can also be 'in the field', hunt and field are both the character 'field' And 'gold' is the same as 'yellow'.
  Line 3. 'Carrying a burden and also riding' might be 'carrying an ancestral tablet when riding'. For the tablet, see hex.44 line 3. Or carrying responsibility and also taking advantage of things.
  Line 4. A difficult one, still searching for a better translation. In one of my Chinese texts the last character is not 'true' but 'study'. 'Release and-yet big-toe (or thumb) friend (or money) arrive split-off true'. Split-off can be apart or special, and arrive can be culminate, the top. Anybody who has a good idea, please mail to me!
  Line 5. The third character is a guiding rope for a net or a tether rope, but also the ropes of the system, the nexus, the fiber. "The junzi kind or ~species". According to Richard Kunst: a tether rope: "Junzi tether rope has release". Here, solution is a different one than in 59. There it is about dissolving, here about solving, releasing.
  Line 6. This line refers IMO to Arjuna, one of the princes of the Mahabharata, and the one who had the long talk with Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. In India he is a great example, and without any doubt he is well known in China as well since old times.
  When the princes, the sons of Kunti, practised shooting, their teacher Dronacharya asked each of them what he saw when he aimed at a bird in a tree. Most saw the bird and a lot more, one saw only the bird, but Arjuna saw only the eye of the bird.

More about hexagrams 39 and 40
Back to hex.40
Back to the story of hex.40