Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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Let Him Not Concern Himself With Loss or Gain

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Let Him Not Concern Himself With Loss or Gain

The fifth line is the hexagram arriving. Legge's translation says that all occasion for repentance disappears, instructs the subject not to concern himself about whether he loses or gains, and states that to advance will be fortunate and in every way advantageous, while the commentary on the image adds that the movement affords ground for congratulation. It is the most unreserved good fortune in the figure, and the condition attached to it is an attitude rather than an action.

The position is the ruling seat of the whole hexagram, a yielding stroke at the centre of the upper trigram Li, the sun. By the ordinary rule a soft line in an odd place is incorrectly placed, and Progress does not care, because what the fifth line of this figure has to do is shine rather than exert. The judgement of the hexagram describes a prince given horses and received three times in a day, and this is the line that judgement belongs to.

The instruction about loss and gain carries the substance. Every line below has been calculating something: whether trust would come, whether the advance was justified, whether the position could be held. At the point where advance is finally right in every direction, the text removes the calculation entirely, which is not indifference to outcomes but a recognition that a reckoning still running at this station is the one thing that could spoil it.

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