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Hexagram 58 of 64
The Joyous
兌 · Duì
Two lakes lying alongside one another, feeding each other. The hexagram is about joy, speech and exchange, and its Image is the closest thing in the book to a description of a seminar.
joy
conversation
openness
shared study
- King Wen number
- 58 of 64
- Above
- ☱ Duì · Lake
- Below
- ☱ Duì · Lake
- Composition
- Lake over Lake
- Lines, bottom to top
- Solid · solid · broken · solid · solid · broken
- Chinese
- 兌 · Duì
The Judgment
Success. It rewards holding to the course.
Brief and favourable. The steadiness clause is what stops joy from becoming its own object.
The Image
Lakes resting on one another: the Joyous. So the noble person joins with friends for discussion and practice.
Two lakes replenish each other. The classic's model of learning is conversation between people who keep at it together.
What it means
Dui doubled is the hexagram of joy, and specifically of joy in company. Two lakes lie side by side and replenish each other, which is the image the classic reaches for when it wants to describe an exchange that leaves both parties fuller.
The Image is the reason this hexagram is quoted in educational contexts to this day. Friends gathering to discuss and to practise: not a lecture, not solitary study, but people going over material together and keeping at it. The classic treats that as the natural expression of joy rather than as work made pleasant.
The line texts sort pleasure by where it is pointed. Contented joy and sincere joy both do well. Joy that goes out looking for itself gets the hexagram's one misfortune. Joy that is being calculated is described as not at peace, and the remedy is to remove whatever is prompting the calculation.
The last two lines are the shadow. Sincerity offered to something that is falling apart, which is danger. And at the top, seductive joy, stated in two characters with no verdict attached at all. The classic simply names it and lets it sit there.
In a reading
The Joyous as an answer is favourable and social. It points to conversation, exchange, shared work and the pleasure people take in each other.
Its counsel is to keep the pleasure attached to something real. The hexagram's failures are all about pleasure pursued for itself, or offered to something that cannot return it. If you are weighing whether to enjoy something, the fourth line says deal with the reason you are weighing it.
The six lines
Read a line's text only when the cast made it a moving line. They are listed from the top of the figure down, the way the hexagram is drawn.
-
Six at the top
Seductive joy.
Two characters and no verdict. The classic declines to say, which the commentaries take as saying enough.
-
Nine in the fifth place
Sincerity toward what is disintegrating. Danger.
Trusting something that is coming apart. Openness aimed at the wrong object.
-
Nine in the fourth place
Joy that is being weighed is not at peace. Rid yourself of the fault and there is gladness.
Calculating whether to enjoy something. The unease is the signal; the remedy is dropping what is causing it.
-
Six in the third place
Joy that comes seeking. Misfortune.
Pleasure gone out to find itself. The only outright misfortune here, and it is about appetite.
-
Nine in the second place
Sincere joy. Good fortune. Regret disappears.
Joy with truth in it. The addition of sincerity is what clears the regret.
-
Nine at the beginning
Contented joy. Good fortune.
Pleasure that is not looking for anything. The simplest good line in the hexagram.
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