The Joyous, Line 3

The third line of The Joyous (King Wen 58) is drawn as yin, the numeral six in the old divination manuals. James Legge's translation renders the line as bringing round himself whatever can give pleasure, an evil course, since the place of the line is not the one appropriate to it. The image sits inside a hexagram whose judgment as a whole concerns progress and attainment, but advantage lies in being firm and correct, and this line supplies one stage of that larger reading rather than a complete statement on its own.

Structurally the line stands at the topmost place of the lower trigram Dui, lake in Legge's readings of the eight trigrams, while the upper trigram of the hexagram is Dui, lake in the same traditional set of images. The Great Symbolism of the hexagram reads two joined marshes, one above the other; the superior man encourages friends in conversation and in the practice they share, and the third line takes its place inside that combined picture of Dui below and Dui above.

Read on its own the line neither opens nor closes the hexagram's argument. It marks the point where Dui is either forming (in the lower trigram) or completing itself (in the upper), and later interpreters treat its image, Bringing Round Himself Whatever Can Give Pleasure, as the concrete case through which the hexagram's abstract judgment becomes visible in a single situation rather than a general principle.

As a divinatory line, six at the third place of The Joyous reads within the hexagram's overall concern with progress and attainment, but advantage lies in being firm and correct. The line occupies a place that does not match its own nature in the classical doctrine that odd places favour a firm, yang line and even places favour a yielding, yin line. Its own text, that bringing round himself whatever can give pleasure, an evil course, since the place of the line is not the one appropriate to it, is the particular fortune assigned to this one stage of the situation, not to the hexagram as a whole.

The third line corresponds by classical convention with the sixth line, and the two do not correspond here, since both lines share the same character. Read together with the trigram it belongs to, Dui in the lower position of the figure, the line marks the hinge between the two trigrams, the last word the lower trigram gets before the upper trigram takes over, one stage in the six stage movement the hexagram traces from its first line to its last.

A change at this line, from yin to its opposite, is the mechanism the tradition uses to move from one hexagram to another. Flipping the third line of The Joyous turns Dui into Qian while the other trigram, Dui, stays as it is, which yields The Joyous's changing partner, Breakthrough (King Wen 43), the hexagram this line is recorded as transforming into.