شش خطی 13
همسانی با مردم، معاشرت هدفمند، همبستگی نیروها (تانگ رن Tong Ren)

Sameness with people means other people and oneself are as one. As for the qualities of the hexagram, above is heaven , strong, and below is fire , luminous: Employing strength with illumination, making illumination effective by strength, being truthful within and adept without, developing oneself and others as well, it is therefore called sameness with people.

This hexagram represents mixing in with the ordinary world, concealing one’s illumination, skillfully assimilating to others. It follows on the previous hexagram tranquility. In tranquility, yin and yang match each other, strength and receptivity are united. When practitioners of Tao reach the point where yin and yang are balanced, strength and receptivity are unified, and the spiritual embryo is formed, then they can merge with the ordinary world, hiding their illumination, to cultivate advanced practice.

But to mix with the ordinary world, concealing one’s own light, requires great impartiality and impersonality. This is a matter of being selfless. If there is no self, there are no others. When there is no self or others, the sense of others and self leaves; when the sense of others and self leaves, then others are oneself and oneself is identified with others. This is like the sky’s covering everything, like the sun’s shining everywhere. One can thus return others and self to emptiness, being like others in the wilderness, as it were, this assimilation being unfailingly developmental. The wilderness is a vastness where there are no people: Being like people as though in a wilderness means there is no image of self, no image of others, no image of people.

If one cannot be the same as other people with a true heart, and can only be the same as them in favorable circumstances but not in adversity, only in times of ease but not in danger, then this sameness is not true and sure, and is ultimately not developmental. When the text says “It is beneficial to cross great rivers,” it means that if one can go along through situations of danger and difficulty, then where there is no danger or difficulty, wherever one goes it will be beneficial.

Every ordinary person in the world assimilates to others; but most people do so for personal reasons, and do not do it correctly—they assimilate to those they should be the same as, but they also assimilate to those whom they shouldn’t be like. This is not the meaning of sameness with people in the wilderness. Therefore the benefit of crossing great rivers is beneficial insofar as one is upright like a superior person. The superior person assimilates based on correctness, not on sentiment. What is correct is only a matter of what is right and true; sentiment changes, while truth has no change.

If one assimilates based on truth, then there is no sentiment; when there is no sentiment, the ideas of others and self both are transformed. Only truth is to be preserved; inwardly one can thereby develop oneself, and outwardly develop others. Seeing afar by means of illumination, acting directly by means of strength, strength and illumination both working, firmness and flexibility balancing each other, inwardly not losing oneself, outwardly not hurting others, round and bright, clean and bare, one stands in the midst of myriad things without being inhibited by myriad things; one is within yin and yang without being constrained by yin and yang.

Sameness with others means being the same as other people. Above is heaven , below is fire . Fire is the sun; the sky covers everything, the sun shines on everything—the sky and the sun are in the same place, impartial and illuminating. This is the image of sameness with others.

What superior people see in this is that when practitioners of the Tao deal with people, it is important to be able to be the same as others, yet it is most important not to assimilate to them arbitrarily; so they distinguish them in terms of categories and groups. Categories and groups are internally similar and united, like different classes of people each having their own groups. Superior people see each group as a category in which all members are the same.

Distinguishing means differentiating; things are things that are right or wrong, good or bad. Superior people must distinguish things; they dare not arbitrarily consider all categories and groups the same. This is how they model themselves on the impartiality of heaven, and distinguish things in emulation of the illumination of the sun. When one is impartial and also lucidly aware, there is no one in the world one cannot be the same as, and there is nothing in the world that is arbitrarily considered the same as something different.

This is because superior people assimilate by means of the Tao, not in terms of mentality; they assimilate by means of reason, not in terms of personality. This is what is called harmonizing without being influenced, associating without becoming a partisan. This is how the sky and sun are the same toward things, and this is how superior people are the same with others.