شش خطی 44
ملاقات، رویارویی، دیدار غیر منتظره (Gou)

Meeting means encounter, unexpected encounter. In the body of the hexagram, there is one yin, which enters under five yangs; five yangs meet one yin, so it is called meeting.

This hexagram represents warding off mundanity and preserving celestial energy; it follows on the previous hexagram increase. Increase means augmenting insufficient celestial energy; to augment what is insufficient means adding from one yang until there are six yangs, so that finally positive celestial yang is pure and complete. However, when yang culminates, yin is inevitable; one yin surreptitiously arises, and the yang energy is damaged. This is why the text says “meeting, the woman is strong.”

However, the inevitability of yin when yang culminates is the path of the temporal, going along with creation; if one can borrow the earthly to complete the celestial, the sages’ science of reverse operation to get back to the primordial, and, as in the second and fifth lines of this hexagram, have strength in balance, attaining the power to adapt to changes, having flexibility within firmness and firmness within flexibility, one can thereby go in and out of yin and yang without being constrained by yin and yang.

Using yin without being used by yin is like meeting a woman but not marrying her. Though earthly yin energy be strong, after all it will obey celestial yang energy. Not only will the yang energy not be damaged, the yin energy will gradually sublimate. This is why the work of warding off mundanity is valued.

Meeting is getting together. Above is heaven , below is wind ; there is wind under heaven. Heaven creates myriad beings but cannot stir them; it is with the blowing of the wind that myriad beings stir. Thus heaven gets together with myriad beings through the agency of the wind. This is the image of meeting.

What rulers see in this is that just as heaven and myriad beings are far apart and cannot easily get together, but with the blowing of the wind those who have not gotten together do meet, in the same way rulers are far apart from their subjects and cannot easily get together, but with the announcement of directives, those who have not met can in fact meet. Therefore they give out directives for the education and guidance of the people, announcing them to the four quarters.

The four quarters are distant, and the local customs are not the same; how can everyone be taught personally? But when rulers give out directives, then everyone follows their direction, and those far and near are affected. This is like the wind under heaven, reaching everywhere, getting into everything. The ruler is heaven, the directive is the wind; where the wind reaches, things stir; where the directive reaches, the people are guided.

The way sages teach people is also like this. Just as rulers have directives that they announce to the four quarters, sages have classic writings that they use to teach later generations. They leave classic writings in the world for later generations, and students who hear them are stirred, those who read them are inspired. Even a hundred generations later people are roused and come face to face with the sages. The influence of the sages does not extend only to the four quarters of their own time. When rulers and sages love all beings and are in sensitive contact with all beings, they are upholding the practice of heaven.