Suí, hexagram 17

Hunting, following, pursuing

When cook Ting first began carving oxen, all he could see was the ox itself. After three years he no longer saw the whole ox. And now he goes at it by spirit and doesn’t look with his eyes. “A good cook changes his knife once a year — because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month — because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room — more than enough for the blade to play about it. That’s why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.” (Zhuangzi)

Cook Ting follows the way: he goes along the roads of the time, where passages open.

Hex.17

SUÌ: The left part of the character (1) is a foot + road: to go. It has been abbreviated to 1a, and then the road became only three slashes. The middle part (2) is a height or mound and the right part is a hand with a tool (3, only the tool: 3a) and meat (4). This right part in its total means cut up meat, and the left and right part together also have this meaning, or sacrificial meat.
SUÌ: Original meaning: hunting. To follow, to trace, to come after, to listen, submit to, comply with, to let (it go, it be etc), to accompany, together, to conform to, forthwith, subsequently, in the course of time, obsequious, foot. Following can be following a leader, or following the time or succession to a throne.

The trigrams: Thunder in the Lake.
In the center of the marsh is thunder: Following.
The noble one, towards nightfall, goes inside to eat and relax.
The lake is where all beings are born and interact. They follow others and the time and make others follow them. All creatures have this inborn survival instinct to resonate, to go along with their surroundings. Like the dragon who sleeps in the water when it is not time for him to rise, and ascends to heaven in a waterspout, when the storm hits the water in a whirlwind.

Thunder is the most primal cause of moving. When you move with Thunder you move according to Heaven's laws and nothing will resist.

More about hexagrams 17 and 18