شش خطی 49
پوست اندازی، دگرگونی، نو شدن (Ge)

Revolution means riddance. The reason for riddance is obsolescence. As for the qualities of the hexagram, above is lake , joyous, and below is fire , luminous; joy is based on illumination, while illumination controls joy. In joy, there should be no delusion; in illumination, there should be no obscurity. Producing joy from within illumination, having illumination within joy, therefore it is called revolution.

In the image of the hexagram, lake is metal, associated with the west: fire is the fire associated with the south. Refining metal by fire, when metal meets fire it produces brightness and is melted down; when fire meets metal it goes into storage and returns to the root. This too is the meaning of revolution.

This hexagram represents refining yin energy; it follows on the previous hexagram exhaustion. In exhaustion, joy is produced from the midst of danger; this is how to take the true yang in water , to get out of danger. However, even if you can take the true yang in water, if you cannot restore the true yin in fire , the gold elixir will not crystallize, and you will not attain joy. So this path of producing joy from within illumination is indispensible. Producing joy from within illumination is the working of refining yin energy. Refining yin energy means refining one’s own personal desires to become unselfish.

Humans are the most conscious of beings, born with the true energy of the patterns of yin and yang of heaven and earth. When they are first born, they unconsciously follow the laws of the lord; completely good, with no evil, the true essence is bright and clear, the open awareness unobscured. Emotions do not stick in their hearts, wealth and poverty do not disturb their minds. Wild beasts cannot harm them, weapons cannot get at them, water and fire cannot overcome them, life and death cannot burden them. When hungry, they simply eat; when cold, they just put on clothes, without thought or reflection; their capacity is originally clear.

Then when people reach the age of sixteen, yang culminates, producing yin; as they deal with things based on acquired conditioning, they develop characteristic temperaments and intellectual knowledge. At this point, only sages of superior wisdom granted by nature, when they are not opposing nature in the primal state and when they serve nature in the temporal state, are able to preserve primal reality and not be damaged by acquired conditioning. Among mediocre and lesser people, rare are they who are not ruled and manipulated by acquired conditioning; after this, a hundred anxieties confuse their minds, myriad affairs belabor their bodies, they take the artificial to be real, abandon the true and enter the false. As the days and years go by, they become estranged by habit from what is close by nature, and the quality of clarity is damaged. The new piles up and becomes old, the pure becomes defiled. This is where the pollution of obsolescence and defilement comes from.

If we look into the source of the pollution of obsolescence, stagnation, and defilement, we see it all comes from having a self. Once one has a self, an ego, the mind of Tao is obscured and the human mentality arises. Conscious of what one should not be conscious of, enjoying what one should not enjoy, one goes to any lengths following personal desires.

So revolution simply means overthrowing the ignorance of the self to restore illumination. But if one wants to overthrow the ignorance of the self, it is necessary that the self first be understood. Once the self is understood, one can be sincere in revolution, and the ignorance of the self can be overthrown. Therefore, in the path of revolution “the sun of the self is truth.” The sun is an image of illumination, understanding; truth means sincerity. If one does not understand, one cannot be sincere; if one can understand, one will be sincere. With understanding and sincerity, as the first thought is truthful, one will be able to overthrow and revolutionize the self. Therefore revolution contains a path of creativity and development.

However, though revolution is creative and developmental, it is necessary that revolution be correct. If right and wrong are not differentiated and true and false are not distinguished, but all are overthrown together, and one enters into nihilistic quietism, this is not correct and so is not fruitful; and not being fruitful it is not creative or developmental.

Only by correct revolution, conquering the ego and returning to propriety, getting rid of falsehood and maintaining truthfulness, burning away all the pollution of conditioning and bringing to light the true essence of the primal unified awareness, reaching this state, returning to the fundamental, integrating with natural principle, pure and clean without flaw, can the regret of having a self vanish.

This path is not hard to know; what is hard is to carry it out. It is simply a matter of people being able to be sincere in revolution.

Change is transformation. Above is lake , below is fire ; there is fire in a lake. A lake is wet, fire is hot. If there is too much moisture, fire will dry it up; if there is too much heat, moisture will dampen it down. When moisture and fire are in the same place, the wetness and heat balance each other. This is the image of change.

What superior people see in this is that as people establish their careers in the world, when they cannot achieve proper adjustment based on actualities and cannot adapt to the times, it is because they do not understand the principle of change of the celestial Tao and the seasons of advance and withdrawal of yin and yang. Therefore superior people divide the various seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, with their twenty-four energies and seventy-two periods, and thus make a calendar to show that the operation of the energies of the five elements each has its own time, to enable people to obey heaven and accord with the time, changing any element that is excessive so that it returns to correct balance.

Heaven has its times of operation, people have times when they should act; as the time changes, the way changes, so the way of change is the way of going along with the time. When one acts appropriately in concert with the time, action and inaction, preservation and elimination, will not lose their proper balance. This too is one kind of celestial practice.