Progress — 晋

What Is Hexagram 35?

Hexagram 35, Jìn (晋, written 晉 in the received text), Progress, is Earth below and Fire above, ䷢ — the sun standing over the ground rather than under it. Its judgment gives a lord horses in abundance and three audiences inside one day. Its Image turns that light on the noble one's own virtue. Its six lines carry a favorable word on five of the places; the fourth has nothing but peril, and the top has peril mixed into its good fortune. The character 凶, misfortune, does not appear in the figure at all.

The 序卦 gets to this figure from the one before it. 物不可以終壯，故受之以晉；晉者進也 — nothing can stay at full vigor to the end, and so Progress follows, 晉 meaning to advance. It moves on immediately: 進必有所傷，故受之以明夷 — wherever there is advance there is some hurt, and so Darkening of the Light comes after. The 雜卦 puts the pair into a single breath, 晉晝也，明夷誅也: Progress is the daylight, Darkening is the wounding. The book hands over its brightest figure and names the cost one line later.

The name is easier than most. The 彖 opens by defining the word rather than the shape, 晉，進也, and the 疏 says what kind of advancement this is: 晉之為義，進長之名。此卦明臣之昇進, the word means growing forward, and this figure is about a minister's rise. What makes the rise work is named in the same commentary, 臣既柔進，天子美之，賜以車馬: the minister comes up by yielding rather than by pushing, and the ruler honors him with horses. The advance in this hexagram is not a climb. It is closer to being noticed while doing something quietly well.

The diagram explains more of the judgment than most figures do. It is 坤下離上: three yielding places at the bottom, a firm fourth, a yielding fifth, a firm one at the top, which is ䷢, four yielding lines and two firm ones. Turn the same six strokes upside down and they become Hexagram 36, 明夷, Fire below Earth. Reverse every line instead and they become Hexagram 5, 需, Waiting. The figure and its inversion are as far apart in mood as two hexagrams get: the sun above the ground and the sun gone under it.

One word in the judgment is worth pausing on. 侯, a lord, is not rare in the book. 利建侯 stands in the judgment of Hexagram 3, 屯, and again on its first line, but those are appointments being handed out. This is a figure in which a lord is shown in the middle of the transaction, arriving, being given horses, being received. He is 康侯, a lord with a title of praise attached to him, and the 疏 is precise that nothing about his position is self-made.

Trigram Structure

The lower trigram is Earth, 坤, and the upper is Fire, 離. The 說卦 gives each one word: 坤，順也…離，麗也 — Earth is compliance, Fire is attaching. The 彖 folds both into its reading, 順而麗乎大明: what complies below attaches itself to what is bright above. It also fixes the geometry before it draws any conclusion: 明出地上, the brightness comes out above the ground. The 疏 reads the name straight off that picture, 明既出地，漸就進長，所以為晉 — light having come up out of the earth moves onward and grows, and that growing is what the word names.

The 說卦 has more to say about 離 than about most trigrams, and one passage reads like a description of this figure. In the chapter that maps the eight directions, 相見乎離 — at 離 things come into each other's view — and the same chapter explains: 離也者，明也，萬物皆相見，南方之卦也。聖人南面而聽天下，嚮明而治，蓋取諸此也. Fire is brightness; it is the southern position, where everything is visible to everything else; and it is from this that the sage takes the practice of facing south to hear the world and governing toward the light. A hexagram about being seen could hardly have been built on a better upper trigram.

In the list of images, 離 is 為火、為日、為電、為中女、為甲冑、為戈兵 — fire, the sun, lightning, the middle daughter, armor, weapons of war. That last pair is not idle here, since this is a figure whose top line ends in a punitive campaign, and the 疏 names the problem plainly, 兵者兇器, weapons are ill-omened instruments. Earth's own list runs 為地、為母、為布、為釜、為吝嗇、為均、為子母牛、為大輿、為文、為眾、為柄 — ground, mother, cloth, cauldron, holding back, leveling, the cow with its calf, the great cart, pattern, the crowd, the handle. Two of those words do actual work in the lines below: the second line receives its fortune from a mother, and the third line's regret goes when the crowd agrees.

The 繫辭下 supplies one more piece of the picture, in its list of the arts the old sages drew from the figures. The net for hunting and the net for fishing came from the figure 離: 作結繩而為罔罟，以佃以漁，蓋取諸離. A mesh is an open thing that holds by being open, which is a fair description of what brightness does to whatever comes into its range. The same element that makes things visible makes them catchable, and this figure carries both halves of that.

The Judgment

晉：康侯用錫馬蕃庶，晝日三接。

Jìn: kāng hóu yòng xī mǎ fán shù, zhòu rì sān jiē.

Our rendering: Progress: the honored lord is given horses in abundance, and in the daylight is received three times.

Read character by character:

Three audiences in one day are the whole of the promise, and the book has a negative image of exactly the same number. The 疏 sets the two side by side without arguing the case: 以訟受服，則終朝三褫。柔進受寵，則一晝三接也. In Hexagram 6, 訟, what is given through conflict is taken away three times before the morning is over, while here a rise made by yielding is answered with three admissions inside one day. The top line of that figure says it in the same language, 或錫之鞶帶，終朝三褫之, given a belt and stripped of it three times in a morning, with the Small Says adding 以訟受服，亦不足敬也: a reward that arrives out of litigation is not worth much respect. The same verb of giving, the same three times, and the two figures point in opposite directions.

That threefold grant turns up in one further place, on the second line of Hexagram 7, 師: 王三錫命, the king three times issues the commission. Repetition in this book is usually a sign of something being confirmed rather than something being accumulated. What gets confirmed here is a rise that was not forced.

Jungian reading: taken as inner weather, the judgment describes the moment when work done below is recognized from above, and it insists on the order of events. The 疏 is unambiguous that the lord does not take the horses, 臣既柔進，天子美之: the rise comes first and the acknowledgment follows it. Anyone who has spent a long time on something unglamorous knows the shape of that moment. The reward is not the point, but until it arrives the work has no sponsor, and the psychological distance between those two states is larger than the gift itself. What the second line of this figure calls 愁, grief, is the unsponsored state, and the figure treats it as a stage rather than a verdict.

The Image

明出地上，晉；君子以自昭明德。

Míng chū dì shàng, Jìn; jūn zǐ yǐ zì zhāo míng dé.

Brightness comes out above the earth: Progress. The noble one therefore brings his own virtue into view himself.

Wang Bi's note is brief, 以順著明，自顯之道: to meet brightness with compliance is the way of showing yourself. The 疏 then spends far more words than the line has, because a single character is disputed. Some readers take 昭 as 照, to illumine, and hear 自照己身, throwing light on one's own person. Kong Yingda will not have it. On Wang Bi's reading the phrase is 自顯明德, bringing one's own virtue into view, and he brings two witnesses. The first is the Laozi, 自知者明, to know oneself is clarity. The second is the mirror-image hexagram: 又此卦與明夷正反，明夷象云：君子以蒞眾，用晦而明, with Wang Bi's note on it, 藏明於內，乃得明也, keep the light inside and only then do you have light. He even gives the fanqie, 昭字宜為昭，之遙反；周氏等為照，之召反，非注旨也.

The distinction is worth keeping. 照 is a lamp aimed at an object, and aimed at oneself it is an inspection. 昭 is a thing becoming visible by its own nature. The Image asks for the second, and the character 自, by oneself, keeps the whole sentence reflexive. Nobody is watching in 自昭明德.

The line has had a long second life. The 大學 opens with 在明明德, making bright the bright virtue, and the two have been read side by side ever since. What the Image adds that the essay does not is the location of the light: it comes out of the earth. The brightness in this figure does not descend from anywhere. It is underneath the whole time and it rises.

Jungian reading: this is one of the few Images in the book that directs the reader at himself rather than at a situation, and its instruction cuts against one of Jung's sharpest observations. Jung used the term persona for the face a person assembles for the outside world, and he was unsparing about what a life spent inside that face produces. The Image asks for something structurally different, because the display is not addressed to an audience and the audience is not the mechanism. What makes 明德 visible here is not exposure but maturation. The sun does not perform; it comes up.

The Lines

初六：晉如，摧如，貞吉。罔孚，裕，無咎。 (Jìn rú, cuī rú, zhēn jí. Wǎng fú, yù, wú jiù.) Advancing, and being pushed back: holding firm is good fortune. Trust has not yet come; widen your ground, and there is no blame.

The Small Says answer both halves, 晉如摧如，獨行正也。裕無咎，未受命也: the advance and the rebuff are one person going his own way correctly, and the widening with no blame is because no commission has yet been received. The commentator He is quoted for the vocabulary, 摧，退也。裕，寬也。如，辭也 — 摧 is to give ground, 裕 is to be broad, 如 is a particle. Wang Bi explains the missing trust without sentimentality, 處卦之始，功業未著，物未之信，故曰罔孚: at the start of a figure the achievement is not yet visible and nothing believes in it. The instruction that follows from that is not to move faster but to widen, 必宜寬裕其德，使功業弘廣，然後無咎.

Down at the floor of the figure, invisibility is the problem the lower half works through. What it refuses to do is treat being unseen as evidence of a mistake. It carries the verdict 貞吉 in the same breath as the pushing-back, and the reason sits in the Small Says: the person is rightly alone rather than wrongly ignored. The word 裕 is the actual counsel, and it is wider than patience. Patience waits. 裕 enlarges the ground the work can stand on, so that when recognition finally arrives there is something for it to land on.

六二：晉如，愁如，貞吉。受茲介福，于其王母。 (Jìn rú, chóu rú, zhēn jí. Shòu zī jiè fú, yú qí wáng mǔ.) Advancing, and grieving: holding firm is good fortune. A great measure of fortune comes to him from the king's mother.

Wang Bi's note is the key to the whole figure, 進而無應，其德不昭，故曰晉如愁如: it advances with nothing answering it above, its virtue is not yet visible, and that is where the grief comes from. What it does instead of turning around is stated just as flatly, 居中得位，履順而正，不以無應而回其志: it holds the center, keeps to compliance and correctness, and does not let the absence of a counterpart change its mind. The Small Says give the single reason for the fortune that follows, 受茲介福，以中正也.

The mother does the rest of the work. 母者，處內而成德者也, the mother is the one who completes her virtue indoors. Wang Bi then reaches across the book for a comparison and quotes the second line of Hexagram 61, 中孚: 鳴鶴在陰，則其子和之, a crane calls from the shade and its young answer it. Work done out of sight still gets an answer; it simply does not get the answer on the timetable of the person doing it. The 疏 confirms the reading, 初雖愁如，但守正不改，終能受此大福於其所脩.

The line is the loneliest in the figure and the only one with the word 福 in it. 愁 is the diagnosis, and note what the diagnosis is not: there is no mistake, no fault, no rebuke. The line sits in the center of a trigram of compliance with nothing above that corresponds to it, and the figure's answer is an inheritance rather than a reply. The second place in the book generally collects praise, as the 繫辭下 observes; here the praise arrives late and from behind the scenes.

六三：眾允，悔亡。 (Zhòng yǔn, huǐ wáng.) The many assent: regret is gone.

The Small Says attach the assent to a direction, 眾允之志，上行也. Wang Bi locates the regret first, 處非其位，悔也: the place is not its own, and that is where the regret comes from. Then the cure, 志在上行，與眾同信，順而麗明，故得悔亡也: the will is set upward, it holds the same confidence as the many, and it complies with the brightness instead of competing with it. The 疏 adds the social reading, 居晉之時，眾皆欲進，巳應於上，志在上行，故能與眾同信也. At a time when everyone wants to rise, the one who is joined to what is above can share the general confidence rather than be isolated by it.

The line's four characters are 眾, 允, 悔, 亡, and between them they describe something unusual: a place where a person's standing is not damaged by other people's ambitions. It is the top of Earth, and a firm place held by a yielding line, which is the source of the regret. What dissolves it is not an achievement but an alignment. What makes the second line grieve is a missing counterpart above; the third line has one, and that is the whole difference between the two.

九四：晉如鼫鼠，貞厲。 (Jìn rú shí shǔ, zhēn lì.) Advancing the way a 鼫鼠 does, the rat with five abilities and no craft: holding to this is peril.

The Small Says give the reason in one phrase, 位不當也, the place is not its own. Wang Bi describes the squeeze, 履非其位，上承於五，下據三陰，上不許其承，下不許其據，以斯為進，無業可安，無據可守: it sits in a place that is not its own, bearing on the fifth above it and pressing on the three yielding places below, and neither end permits it to do either; advancing this way, it has no work it can rest in and no ground it can hold. The 貞厲 that closes the line then reads as an instruction as much as a warning. To keep holding this position is the peril.

The creature in the line is disputed, and the 疏 records the disagreement rather than hiding it, 鼫鼠有五能而不成伎之蟲也, a bug with five abilities and no craft. Cai Yong's Encouragement to Learning is quoted for the list, 能飛不能過屋，能縁不能窮木，能游不能度谷，能穴不能掩身，能走不能先人: it can fly but not over the roof, climb but not to the top of the tree, swim but not across the valley, dig but not cover itself, run but not outrun anybody. Then the identifications multiply. The Materia Medica gives the name to the mole-cricket, 螻蛄一名鼫鼠. Zheng Xuan cited the Book of Songs, 碩鼠碩鼠，無食我黍, and took it for a large rat. Lu Ji called it a sparrow-rat. Wang Bi cuts through the taxonomy by describing the behavior instead, 進如鼫鼠，無所守也: it advances the way that animal does, having nothing it holds.

The 繫辭下 has a general rule for this place that fits the line exactly, 二與四同功而異位，其善不同：二多譽，四多懼，近也. The second and fourth places do the same work from different positions, and the fourth is the place of fear because it stands near the ruler. The rat with five talents is what that fear looks like when it is not handled: a person who can do a great many things and cannot commit to any of them, occupying a position that requires exactly the commitment he does not have.

六五：悔亡。失得勿恤，往，吉，無不利。 (Huǐ wáng. Shī dé wù xù, wǎng, jí, wú bù lì.) Regret is gone. Do not fret over what is won and what is lost: setting out brings good fortune, and nothing is unfavorable.

Wang Bi's note describes a ruler who declines to micromanage, 柔得尊位，陰為明主，能不用察，不代下任也: a yielding line in the place of honor, brightness in a yielding mode, able to do without inspecting and to leave the tasks below where they belong. The regret being dissolved has a cause, since this is a yielding line in a firm place, 居不當位，悔也. What removes it is the refusal to make the whole figure one's own business. The 疏 carries the logic forward, 既以事任下，委物責成，失之與得，不須憂恤: having handed the work down and let each thing come to its own completion, wins and losses are no longer its anxiety. The result is not merely private either, 委任得人，非惟自得無憂，亦將人所慶說, because when the right people are trusted with the work the relief is felt by everyone, which is what the Small Says mean by 往有慶也.

The 繫辭下 supplies the matching half of the rule it gave for the fourth place, and this figure answers both, 三與五同功而異位…三多凶，五多功，貴賤之等也: the third and fifth places do the same work from different ranks, the third collecting trouble and the fifth collecting achievement. The counsel here is also unusual for the figure: it concerns attention rather than action. 失得勿恤 does not say to ignore the outcome. It says to stop auditing it.

The same two characters open the fifth line of Hexagram 38, 睽, and both lines end their Small Says with 往有慶也. Two figures that sit far apart in the sequence share the sentence because they share the situation: a yielding line in the place of authority, whose only task is to avoid doing the job of the four places below.

上九：晉其角，維用伐邑。厲吉無咎，貞吝。 (Jìn qí jiǎo, wéi yòng fá yì. Lì jí wú jiù, zhēn lìn.) Advancing with the horns: it serves only for punishing a town. Peril, and good fortune without blame; to take this as a standard is base.

Wang Bi sets the scene and does not soften it, 處進之極，過明之中，明將夷焉，巳在乎角，在猶進之，非亢如何: at the extreme of advance, past the middle of brightness, with the light about to be wounded, it is already at the horn and still pushing, which is overreach by definition. The consequence for method is spelled out, 失夫道化無為之事，必須攻伐，然後服邑: it has lost the business of transforming things without acting and must make war before a town will submit. Then the verdict on such a method, 用斯為正，亦以賤矣, to make this one's standard is base. That is what 貞吝 means in this line. Not a disaster, a lowering.

The 疏 reads 角 as the corner of the sky and turns the line into an image of lateness, 上九處晉之極，過明之中，其猶日過於中，巳在於角而猶進之: like the sun past noon, already in the corner of the sky and still climbing. The Small Says agree that nothing good has been built here, 維用伐邑，道未光也: using force to make a town submit is not a way that has become bright. The fortune in 厲吉無咎 is real, but it is a fortune bought with danger, and the 序卦 has already told the reader what comes next, 進必有所傷，故受之以明夷. The top line of Progress is standing on the first day of Darkening.

Daily Life

Most of what this hexagram says concerns a problem with no clean solution: how to keep working when the work has not yet been noticed. The first line's answer is to widen rather than to hurry. The second line's answer is to keep the shape of the work intact while nothing answers it. Both describe the same discipline from different angles, and neither offers a technique for getting seen faster. That is the point. In practice this is the difference between a body of work and a portfolio, and the difference only shows up years later.

The middle of the figure turns on a harder question, and the fourth line is where it is asked. Five abilities and no craft is a recognizable kind of person, and the hexagram does not treat it as a moral failure. It treats it as a structural one: the fourth place bears on the ruler above and presses on the three places below, and neither relationship holds still long enough to be made into something. Anyone who has taken a role sitting between a demanding authority and a team that needs decisions knows the shape of that sentence.

The fifth line is the counterweight and the one worth carrying around. It does not describe doing more; it describes not doing the work of the four places below. The ruling line in this figure is a yielding one in a place that is not really its own, and its method is to stop auditing what it has handed down. The last line then marks the boundary of the whole business. Whatever is still climbing when it is already in the corner of the sky is not climbing toward anything, and the warning there is not about failure. It is about the moment when force starts being used to hold what daylight used to give for free.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does Hexagram 35 mean in one sentence?

That a rise goes well when it is made by compliance rather than by pressure, and that the reward for such a rise usually arrives late and from a direction the person was not watching. 晉，進也 is the 彖's whole definition, and 順而麗乎大明 is the mechanism: what complies below attaches itself to what is bright above. The judgment then gives the outcome as horses and three audiences in one day, and the 疏 is careful that the gifts follow the rise rather than cause it, 臣既柔進，天子美之. Five of the six lines carry a favorable word and the character 凶 never appears, which is rarer in this book than it sounds.

Who is 康侯, and why is he given horses?

He is a lord, written with an honorific in front of the title rather than a name: 康者，美之名也 in the 疏, praise built into the word itself. 侯 is defined there as 昇進之臣, a minister on the way up. The horses are not a wage. They are what the court does when a subordinate's rise has become visible, 賜以車馬，蕃多而眾庶, and the three audiences in one day are the same recognition in its most direct form, 一晝之間，三度接見. The 疏 puts the whole economy of the figure into one contrast, 以訟受服，則終朝三褫。柔進受寵，則一晝三接也: the same gifts given for conflict in Hexagram 6 are stripped away three times before the morning ends.

What does the 鼫鼠 on the fourth line mean?

It is a small animal the old commentaries could not agree on and a description that they could. The 疏 calls it 鼫鼠有五能而不成伎之蟲也, a creature with five abilities and no craft, and quotes the list from Cai Yong: able to fly but not over a roof, to climb but not to the top of a tree, to swim but not across a valley, to dig but not to cover itself, to run but not to outrun anyone. The Materia Medica gave the name to the mole-cricket, Zheng Xuan pointed to the 碩鼠 of the Book of Songs, and Lu Ji called it a sparrow-rat, while Wang Bi cut through all of it by describing the behavior, 無所守也, having nothing it holds. The position explains the animal: the fourth place bears on the ruler above and presses on the three yielding places below, and neither relationship settles enough to be built on.

How does 晉 differ from 明夷 (Hexagram 36)?

They are the same six strokes read from opposite ends. 晉 is 坤下離上, Fire above Earth, the sun over the ground; invert the figure and Fire drops below Earth, which is 明夷, the sun gone under. The 雜卦 states the pair in one line, 晉晝也，明夷誅也, Progress being the daylight and Darkening the wounding, and the 序卦 makes the second the direct consequence of the first, 進必有所傷，故受之以明夷. The 疏 on this figure's Image treats them as exact opposites and cites both, contrasting 自昭明德 with the Image of Darkening, 君子以蒞眾，用晦而明, where Wang Bi's note reads 藏明於內，乃得明也: keep the light inside and only then do you have light. The top line of Progress already belongs to the other figure, and Wang Bi says so outright, 明將夷焉.

The I Ching is a mirror for reflection, not a prediction machine.