شش خطی 61
صداقت ژرف، پاکی قلب، حقیقت درونی (Zhong Fu)

Faithfulness is truthfulness; faithfulness in the center means truthfulness is within. The body of the hexagram has four yangs outside and two yins inside: Open inside, solid outside, openness and solidity balance each other, inside and outside correspond. Also, the qualities of the hexagram are inner joy and outer accord; traversing the Path with joyful accord, not obsessed and not astray, it is therefore called faithfulness in the center.

This hexagram represents seeking fulfillment by being empty; it follows on the previous hexagram dispersal. In dispersal, yang is trapped by yin; yin sneaks in and yang gradually dissolves. If you want yin not to trap yang but to accord with yang, so that yin and yang conjoin, this is impossible unless you are seriously faithful to the Tao; without faithfulness to the Tao, practice is insubstantial and lacks power, inevitably leading to failure to complete what has been started. But if the mind is faithful and united, and thought is pure and true, myriad ruminations cease and sincerity within reaches outward, so that one can genuinely carry on true practice leading from lowliness to exaltation, from shallowness to depth, gradually enabling one to reach the state of profound attainment and self-realization.

Spiritual alchemy, the science of the gold elixir, uses the “yellow woman” as the go-between for yin and yang. The “yellow woman” is true intent; faithfulness in the center is truthfulness in the center—truthfulness is associated with earth, which is called the yellow woman. With the yellow woman in the center, it is possible to harmonize yin and yang, to communicate with self and others, to respond to myriad things—there is nothing that cannot be influenced. Therefore “faithfulness in the center is auspicious when it reaches even pigs and fish.” Pigs and fish represent those without knowledge; when truthfulness can influence them, those without knowledge can harmonize themselves—how much the more so those with knowledge. If practitioners of Tao can apply the truthfulness that influences even “pigs and fish” to cultivation of essence and life, they will not fail to produce good results.

However, if faithfulness can be carried out in ease but not adversity, that faithfulness is not real, and will surely crumble in the end; even if one is faithful in this way, it does not bode well. There are people who believe in the Tao, and there are those who believe in the Tao and practice it regularly when all is well and comfortable; but there are hardly any who forget themselves for the Tao and do not lose control in situations of great difficulty and stress, when there are great obstacles, when things are topsy-turvy and in a shambles, and it is difficult to bear up patiently.

If one can remain unmoved and unperturbed in situations that are hard to endure, can go on through and get out, this alone is faithfulness that can move pigs and fish. This is why “it is beneficial to cross great rivers” for faithfulness in the center to bode well. Great rivers represent most hazardous places, adverse situations; if one can cross over adverse situations, needless to say one can cross over favorable situations. When able to pass through both favorable and adverse situations, that faithfulness is beneficial and suspicious wherever it goes.

However, the seventy-two aberrant schools, with their three thousand six hundred deviant practices, all cling to voidness or stick to forms; these are not studies that can fulfill our nature and lead to the meaning of life. The false distorts the real, the aberrant adulterates the correct; if you have faith without discriminating the false and real, the aberrant and correct, this is incorrect faithfulness, which is not beneficial and does not lead to good results. Therefore faithfulness is only beneficial if it is correct. Correct faith and correct practice meet with good results, unhindered in adversity or ease, entering from striving into nonstriving, thereby perfecting essence and life, completing beginning and end; of this one can be sure.

Truthfulness within means there is sincerity in the center. Above is wind , below is lake ; there is wind above a lake. The form of a lake is facing upward, the nature of wind is penetrating; wind blows on the lake, the lake receives the wind, as though there is feeling between them. This is the image of truthfulness within.

What superior people see in this is that adjudication of criminal cases concerns people's nature and life, and if there is any carelessness the innocent are harmed; therefore after a conviction is established, they do not immediately carry out the sentence—even if the crime is unpardonable, they still postpone execution and reconsider the case, seeking a way of life in the midst of death.

Practitioners of the Tao search out the recondite and find out the hidden, fish out the profound and reach the remote, so as to thoroughly investigate the abstruse and subtle truth; this requires genuine knowledge and clear vision, without the slightest trace of confusion in the mind. In this sense it is like adjudication of criminal cases. When one understands truth in the mind and puts it into actual practice, the mind dies and the spirit comes to life; gradually cultivating this without seeking immediate results is like postponing execution.

Consideration is whereby life is sought in the midst of death, freeing the innocent and condemning the guilty, enlivening what should be alive and killing what should be dead. If consideration is not thoroughgoing, one has no independent perception, and one does not have too much self-confidence, how could it be appropriate to "kill" rashly? Postponement means reconsideration of whether or not "death" is appropriate.

Inasmuch as the way of life is perforce difficult, the way of death is not easy either. If one does not postpone death but rather hastens death, hoping for quick accomplishment, one may become a nihilistic quietist. So it is a matter of "death" after consideration, and then reconsideration at the time of death whether it is right or wrong, true or false. Only when this is perfectly clear in one's mind will one avoid the mistake of taking the spurious for the genuine.

In the image of the hexagram, above is wind, representing gradual advance, while below is lake, representing harmonious and joyful action. Gradualism means one can avoid haste, harmony means one can be considerate. With consideration and relaxation, truthfulness within being put into practice outwardly, an all-out effort will dissolve away all the pollution of conditioning and expose the primordial original being, so that one will surely reach the realm of eternal life.