IV. Name and Position Are No Cage -- Timeliness-in-Position Is Where the Yi Truly Lives

When the Yi discusses position, it never speaks only of a fixed status, but also of the place one occupies within a particular moment and a particular affair. One and the same person, entering the ancestral temple, has the reverence proper to the temple; commanding troops, has the resolve proper to the battlefield; in mourning, has the grief proper to mourning; at ease at home, has the harmony proper to leisure. As the position one occupies changes, so does the conduct proper to it. A hexagram has six positions, and the lines dwell among them; whether a line attains the center, attains correctness, corresponds to another, or stands adjacent to another must all be viewed together with the situation of the whole hexagram. One can see that position is not an isolated cell, but a node woven through with relations. The fortune or misfortune of a given line is determined not only by whether it is firm or yielding in itself, but by when it occurs, what position it occupies, which line it corresponds to, and what configuration precedes and follows it.

This matters immensely for understanding human affairs. People often think that because their own intention is good, their action must therefore be good; that because they themselves have talent and ability, they can be put to use anywhere. Yet the Yi constantly reminds us: good intention out of season may become mere disturbance; talent and ability out of keeping with position may become overreach. In the time of the hidden dragon, virtue is not lacking, yet it must not hastily show itself; in the time of the overreaching dragon, strength is not weak, yet it must not press further forward. It is not that virtue or talent itself is at fault, but that time and position have changed the meaning of the action. One who knows position does not belittle himself; one who knows timing does not rush ahead rashly. When it is time to lie hidden, one nurtures one's virtue; when it is time to show oneself, one draws close to the people; when it is time for wariness, one examines one's faults; when it is time to leap, one discerns the moment. Change does not urge a person to seek novelty day after day, but demands that a person keep a clear mind toward his situation.

The Most High said, "He who does not lose his place endures long," and this "place" (suo) may be read together with position. That the myriad things each attain their proper place does not mean they are cut off from one another, but that each preserves its own nature within the whole. Fish cannot be forced to dwell on land, birds cannot be forced to submerge in the deep; crooked wood may become a wheel, straight wood may become a beam, each according to its material. If governance uses one single measure to level the myriad things, it appears orderly on the surface but in fact harms life. Master Zhuang (Zhuangzi), in his writings, often uses the transformation of large and small, long and short, useful and useless, to break the habit by which people judge the myriad things from one single, partial point of view. So-called "attaining one's position" need not always mean rising high; at times, withdrawing, keeping to the yielding, staying behind, and concealing one's use are precisely the position that preserves the springs of life.

The position most valued in the Confucian tradition places still greater emphasis on how a person forms virtue within relations. The position of father and son allows the love of kin to be realized in fact; the position of ruler and minister allows righteousness to be carried out; the position of elder and younger allows order to unfold; the association of friends allows trustworthiness to be brought to completion with one another. None of these are virtues one could possess in a vacuum, alone. Without another person, there is no way to display forbearance; without a trust bestowed, there is no way to test trustworthiness; without a conflict of interest, there is no way to make righteousness manifest. Position is at once a limit and the condition under which virtuous conduct can occur. A person does not first become a complete worthy outside of relations and only afterward happen to enter into the company of others; rather, it is precisely in serving parents, serving elders, befriending others, presiding over the people, and facing difficulty that he gradually forms his own virtue.

Position thus has two sides: it gives a person somewhere to stop, and it also gives a person something to accomplish. To see only the stopping is to regard ritual propriety as mere restraint; to see only the accomplishing is to overlook the danger of overstepping one's place. What the Yi displays through the hexagrams and lines is precisely how stopping and accomplishing depend on one another. A door needs a pivot before it can open and close; a cart needs an axle before it can move; without any limit at all, motion in fact has no way to occur. When a person knows the position he presently occupies, he can gather his strength toward what he ought to do, and not be dragged about by boundless idle imaginings. Only once position is fixed does resolve become concentrated; only once resolve is concentrated does achievement come to completion. If the heart constantly wanders a thousand miles away while the matter at hand is left to no one, then no discourse, however lofty, can bring anything to completion.