XIII. "The Eight Trigrams Stir One Another into Motion": Not Eight Objects, but Eight Great Functions Rousing One Another

After rubbing comes stirring (dang). "Stirring" shows even more flow and rousing than "rubbing." The Heaven, Earth, thunder, wind, water, fire, mountain, and marsh imaged by the eight trigrams are not eight specimens set out motionless, but enter into, push against, and complete one another within the running of Heaven and Earth. Thunder shakes because of cloud and vapor; wind travels according to the workings of qi; rain moistens the great earth; fire illumines water and marsh; the mountain sends forth clouds; the marsh receives the flowing streams. Take any single image on its own, and it can hardly complete the transformation of Heaven and Earth apart from all the other images.

A hexagram is composed of three lines, and the doubled hexagram brings an upper and a lower trigram together to meet. Once they meet, the meaning is not merely the sum of the two images, but a new situation is born. The same water, in the sky, may be cloud; in the earth, may be a spring; before a defile, may be difficulty; above fire, may show the image of Already Fulfilled or Not Yet Fulfilled. The same mountain, meeting water, marsh, thunder, or wind, presents different relations. Stirring brings the images to life: the meaning of an image is born from its position and its interaction, not a fixed, unchanging list of names.

This is also how the Yi regards the complexity of human affairs. A person's virtue and talent are never displayed in a vacuum. A firm and upright minister, meeting a ruler capable of accepting remonstration, can bring about order; meeting a jealous and severe ruler, may instead incur disaster. Benevolent, generous governance applied to a depleted and worn-down state should first give it rest and recovery; applied at a time when foreign trouble presses close, it must also be joined with defense. The same virtue, placed within different combinations, shows different effects. Judgment cannot ask only "what is this," but must also ask, "what does it meet$1"

The Sunzi says that the changes of the five tones cannot all be heard, the changes of the five colors cannot all be seen, the changes of the five flavors cannot all be tasted -- showing precisely that finite basic elements, through combination, can generate boundless change. The eight trigrams carry this same meaning. The images are finite; the transformations of affairs are boundless. That finite images can respond to boundless affairs lies not in pairing each event in advance with a fixed symbol, but in stirring, interweaving, going and coming, and changing. To lock each hexagram down as a single fortune-telling formula is precisely to abolish this stirring.

Music best displays this stirring. A single note cannot make music; the many tones, high and low, clear and murky, must correspond to one another, and the rhythm must have its proper order of quick and slow, before feeling can flow. Musical tones are not better the more there are; there must be a principal and a subordinate, a rising and falling, a stopping and starting. The stirring of the eight trigrams into motion is likewise not disorderly collision, but change proceeding upon the premise that Qian and Kun have already taken their places and the firm and the yielding can already be distinguished. Sound without order is mere noise; sound without change is mere monotony. The distinction of ritual propriety and the harmony of music can be used to grasp the taking of position and the mutual stirring of the hexagrams.

Stirring carries one further warning: every position lies within the influence of the whole. A small act may spread along the web of relations. If the ruler loves valor, his ministers may compete in cruelty to win merit; if the ruler loves wealth, his officials may plunder at every level; if a village honors the worthy, its young may take pride in learning and good conduct. What those above favor, those below will favor to an even greater degree. Gathering by kind draws like to like; stirring transmits influence onward. One who occupies a pivotal position all the more cannot treat a private preference as a trivial matter.

Conversely, good influence can likewise stir and spread. When one person keeps faith, others dare to entrust themselves to him; when one household values yielding, disputes in the neighborhood decrease; when the court employs the worthy, scholars know which direction to turn toward. Virtue is not some beautiful thing stored in isolation within the heart; it enters into relations through word and deed, and changes the choices of those around it. What the Master called "governing through virtue is like the North Star, which stays in its place while the multitude of stars pay court to it" shows precisely that once virtue and position are established, the group rearranges itself around them.