Opposition — 睽

What Is Hexagram 38?

Hexagram 38, Kuí (睽), Opposition, is Lake below and Fire above, ䷥ — the figure of two things held close together and moving apart: fire whose nature is to rise, standing water whose nature is to run down, and one three-character judgment, 小事吉, that claims small matters and nothing larger. The word 凶 does not appear in it at all.

The 序卦 arrives here from the figure before it, 家道窮必乖，故受之以睽；睽者乖也 — when the way of a house runs out, people go apart, and so comes 睽, which means to go apart. It leaves by the opposite door, 乖必有難，故受之以蹇；蹇者難也 — divergence brings difficulty, and so comes Hexagram 39, Obstruction. The 雜卦 takes the two figures on either side of this one and puts them in a single breath, 睽外也，家人內也: 睽 is the outside, the Family is the inside.

The 疏 defines the name from what it does rather than from its picture: 「睽」者，乖異之名，物情乖異，不可大事 — 睽 is the name for divergence; where the dispositions of things diverge, great matters cannot be undertaken. That sentence is the key to the whole page, because it explains the judgment's smallness before anything else does. The 疏 goes straight on to say what the two sizes of matter are: 大事謂與役動眾，必須大同之世，方可為之。小事謂飲食衣服，不待眾力，雖乖而可，故曰「小事吉」也. The great matters mean conscripting labor and moving crowds, and those require a world that is in agreement; the small matters are food and clothing, which do not need many hands and can be managed even while people are at odds. The claim is not modest out of politeness. It is the largest claim a figure of division can honestly make.

What the figure is not is a description of enemies. The 彖's founding image is domestic, 二女同居，其志不同行 — two women living in one house whose wills do not take the same road — and the 疏 is exact about who they are: 中少二女共居一家，理應同志，各自出適，志不同行，所以為異也, the middle daughter and the youngest sharing one household, who ought by rights to want the same thing, each departing for her own marriage, so that their wills do not go together. Nothing in that picture is hostile. It is the ordinary shape of a house with two futures in it.

The geometry does part of the argument, so it needs setting out. This is 兌下離上: 兌, Lake, takes the lower half and 離, Fire, the upper, ䷥ — four firm lines and two yielding ones, with the yielding pair in the third and fifth places. Read the six places against the rule that a firm line belongs in an odd place and a yielding one in an even place, and only the first line stands where its kind belongs. Read the same six strokes from the top down and they make Hexagram 37, 家人, The Family, which is where the 序卦 has just come from. Take each line as the opposite of what it is and they make Hexagram 39, 蹇, Obstruction, which is where the 序卦 goes next. Both neighbours are inside the figure: one by turning it over, one by turning every line against itself.

Across the judgment and the six lines there is no 凶 anywhere and no 吝 anywhere, no 悔 other than twice 悔亡, and one plain 吉 in the line text, at the top. 咎 appears four times, and one of those four is the rhetorical 何咎 of the fifth line, a question rather than a verdict. 厲 appears once, on the fourth. Nothing about that is softness: the word is common enough in other figures. Here the damage has been put into the picture rather than into the people, and no line is made to carry it. A figure built on divergence, in which two things that should complete each other physically cannot meet, hands out no ruin and no disgrace to anybody.

Trigram Structure

Lake, 兌, holds the bottom of the figure and Fire, 離, the top, and the 說卦's one-word summaries for the two are 離，麗也…兌，說也 — Fire as that which attaches itself, 兌 as that which opens and gives pleasure. The two together already describe the trouble: something that fastens on in order to shine, held above something that goes its own way downward.

Both trigrams are daughters, and the 說卦's list of the eight children says which two: 離再索而得女，故謂之中女…兌三索而得女，故謂之少女 — at the second exchange a daughter is obtained and she is the middle one; at the third, another, and she is the youngest. Middle daughter above, youngest below, and that is the 彖's 二女同居 in trigram form. The figure is built entirely out of daughters of the same house, which is why its founding image is not a quarrel but two lives pointing in different directions from under one roof.

The 彖's mechanics are worth reading slowly, because both halves of the figure are described as moving: 睽，火動而上，澤動而下. Fire moves upward, the marsh moves downward. The 疏 explains why that is the definition of 乖 and not merely a picture of distance: 水火二物，共成烹飪，理應相濟。今火在上而炎上，澤居下而潤下，無相成之道，所以為乖 — water and fire together make cooking and ought to complete each other; but fire stands above and flames upward, the marsh lies below and moistens downward, and there is no way for either to complete the other, which is what divergence means. The problem is not that the two are far apart. It is that the two are arranged exactly so that their own natures carry them away from each other.

The 說卦's longer inventories put two entries on this page that are easy to miss. Lake's list runs 兌為澤、為少女、為巫、為口舌、為毀折、為附決。其於地也，為剛鹵，為妾、為羊 — marsh, youngest daughter, shaman, mouth and tongue, 毀折 which is breaking off, 附決 which is the falling away of what clings, and the hard salt ground that nothing grows on. 毀折 and 附決 are the trigram of separation read as two verbs. Fire's own list opens 離為火、為日、為電、為中女、為甲冑、為戈兵, and closes its substances with 其於木也，為科上槁 — as for wood, it is the hollow above and the withered top, which is what fire leaves of what it burns. The chapter on the eight body parts then gives this figure an eye and a mouth: 離為目…兌為口, 離 the eye above, 兌 the mouth below. A hexagram about seeing things differently and speaking past one another is built out of exactly those two organs.

The 彖 names three conditions under which a figure of divergence can still produce 吉 in small matters, and Wang Bi's note on them is a question followed by its answer: 事皆相違，害之道也，何由得小事吉？以有此三德也 — the matters are all at variance, which is the road to harm; how then is there 小事吉? Because it has these three virtues. The 疏 unpacks them one at a time: 說而麗乎明，不為邪僻 — delight attached to clarity, which is not the same as crookedness; 柔進而上行，所之在貴 — the yielding line advancing upward, which means it arrives at a place of honor; 得中而應乎剛，非為全弱 — the yielding line holding the center and answering the firm, which means it is not simply weak. And then the conclusion: 雖在乖違之時，卦爻有此三德，故可以行小事而獲吉也. Even in a time of variance, the figure has these three virtues, and so small affairs can go well in it.

One more passage belongs in this section, and it is the reason the top line carries a bow. The 繫辭下 gives a list of things the ancient kings took from the figures, and among them is 弦木為弧，剡木為矢，弧矢之利，以威天下，蓋取諸睽 — bending wood into a bow and sharpening wood into an arrow, and the advantage of bow and arrow in overawing the world, taken from 睽. The instrument of enforcement in the classic is assigned to the figure of things coming apart. The last line of this page is a man drawing one of those bows and then letting it go slack again.

The Judgment

睽：小事吉。

Kuí: xiǎo shì jí.

Our rendering: Opposition: small matters, good fortune.

Read character by character, the name first and then the judgment:

Three characters, and the whole of the judgment's honesty is the middle one. The 疏's gloss on 大事 and 小事 has already been quoted above, because it is where the figure's limits are stated: the great matters are labor and crowds, and they need agreement, while food and clothing need nobody's agreement. A person reading the judgment as a promise about a marriage, a household, or a company has enlarged it past what it says.

The 彖 opens by explaining the name from the two bodies rather than from the line text, 睽，火動而上，澤動而下 — and the 疏 notes what kind of explanation this is, 此就二體釋卦名為「睽」之義，同而異者也: the name is being read out of the two trigrams, and the phrase the 疏 chooses for that reading is 同而異, the same and different, which is the sentence the Image will use four lines later. In the 疏's account the two sisters are the same in what they are and different in where they are going, and the fire and water are the same in being needed and different in their direction.

Then the 彖 does something the judgment gave no sign of. Having established that heaven and earth, man and woman, and the ten thousand things are all split by 睽, it says in three parallel clauses that the split is not the end of the matter: 天地睽，而其事同也；男女睽，而其志通也；萬物睽，而其事類也。睽之時用大矣哉！ Heaven and earth diverge, and their work is one; man and woman diverge, and their will connects; the ten thousand things diverge, and their work is of a kind. The 疏 compresses the whole of that into four characters, 體乖而用合 — the bodies at variance, the use joined — and then spells out each of the three: heaven high and earth low, their bodies far apart, and yet they generate things and their work is one; man outside and woman inside, their places separate, and yet they make a house and their wills connect; the things of the world each with its own shape and its own image, and yet they all grow, and their work is of a kind. Wang Bi's note on the closing exclamation is a warning about who can use such a time: 睽離之時，非小人之所能用也.

Jungian reading: what the 疏 calls 體乖而用合 is the same proposition Jung spent much of his working life on under another name. Jung held that psychic life runs on the tension between opposites, and that the tension is not something to be resolved quickly — the two sides have to be held together as they are until something third appears that neither of them could have produced alone. He found the same pattern in the alchemical texts he read through the last three decades of his life, where the union of opposites requires two distinct substances and produces a product that is neither of them. Read the 彖 with that in hand and its odd shape becomes deliberate: it spends its first half establishing the split in the strongest terms the book has, and then declines to close it. Heaven and earth stay apart in that sentence. Their work is one anyway. The book's own name for the mistake is in the same 疏, in the phrase for the two sisters: they ought to have wanted the same thing, and the figure is what happens in a house when that assumption is left standing without being examined.

The Image

上火下澤，睽；君子以同而異。

Shàng huǒ xià zé, Kuí; jūn zǐ yǐ tóng ér yì.

Our rendering: Fire above, the marsh below: Opposition. The noble one therefore is at one with others in principle, and apart from them in office.

Wang Bi's note on the sentence is four characters for the first half and four for the second: 同於通理，異於職事 — the same in the principle that runs through things, different in the duties held. The 疏 makes it institutional, 佐王治民，其意則同；各有司存，職掌則異: serving the ruler and settling the people, the intention is one; each holds his own charge, and the duties differ. On the picture itself the 疏 is one line and worth keeping, 上火下澤睽者，動而相背，所以為「睽」也 — fire above and marsh below are 睽 because they move with their backs to each other. Not fighting. Facing opposite ways and walking.

The Image is the figure's answer to its own judgment, and the answer is not that the two sides should come to agreement. It does the opposite: it separates the thing that has to be shared from the thing that does not. 同 belongs to 通理, the principle that runs through the matter; 異 belongs to 職事, the work each one actually does. Every attempt to make a divergence go away by making everyone the same misreads which of those two words is load-bearing. The Image puts the sameness at the level of what the thing is for, and leaves the difference exactly where it was, in the hands and the hours.

Jungian reading: the failure mode Jung took from Lévy-Bruhl and warned about all his life is a state in which two people are not two, where the boundary between them has gone unconscious and each is living partly inside the other. It looks like closeness and it is the opposite of it, and the reason Jung kept warning about it is that it makes real relationship impossible: there is nothing for two people to be to each other if there is only one of them present. 同而異 is that warning in three characters. Jung's own formulation of the goal was that a person has to become the individual they actually are rather than a copy of what is expected, which is a claim about difference, and he added in the same breath that this is not separation — the individuated person is not the one who has left, but the one who can be distinct and still in relation. The Image lands on both halves in a single sentence and does not rank them.

The Lines

初九：悔亡，喪馬勿逐，自復；見惡人无咎。 (Huǐ wáng, sàng mǎ wù zhú, zì fù; jiàn è rén wú jiù.) Regret is gone. A horse is lost: do not drive after it, it comes back on its own. An ugly man is met: no blame.

Wang Bi's note opens on the line's position and stays there, 處睽之初，居下體之下，無應獨立，悔也。與四合志，故得「悔亡」. It stands at the beginning of divergence, at the bottom of the lower trigram, with no counterpart above it, and that is where the regret comes from; it shares an aim with the fourth line, and that is why the regret is gone. Then the horse: 馬者，必顯之物。處物之始，乖而喪其馬，物莫能同，其私必相顯也，故「勿逐」而「自復」也 — a horse is the hardest thing to hide; at the start of a divergence a horse is lost, nothing can be kept out of sight, and what is private will show itself anyway, so the counsel is not to chase it, because it comes back of its own accord. The 疏 adds only that the seeking is pointless on the same grounds, 不須尋求，勢必「自復」. On the last clause Wang Bi is unusually direct about why the ugly man is received rather than avoided: 時方乖離，而位乎窮下，上無應可援，下無權可恃，顯德自異，為惡所害，故「見惡人」乃得免咎也 — the time is one of separation, the position is the lowest there is, there is no counterpart above to call on and no authority below to lean on, and anyone who displays his own difference in that spot will be damaged by whoever dislikes it; so the ugly man is met, and only then is the blame avoided. The 疏's gloss on 見 settles what kind of meeting it is, 「見」，謂遜接之也, to receive him with deference, and the Small Says give the reason, 見惡人，以辟咎也 — receiving him is how the blame is avoided.

This is the figure's first line and it is entirely about what not to do. Do not chase the thing that is running, and do not refuse the person you would rather not see. The two pieces of advice are the same piece of advice: at the bottom of a diverging world, the things that move away from you come back by themselves, and the cost of standing on your own difference is paid to whoever is standing nearest.

九二：遇主于巷，无咎。 (Yù zhǔ yú xiàng, wú jiù.) Meeting the lord in a lane: no blame.

This is the figure's central correspondence — a firm line in the second place, a yielding line in the fifth, both of them central — and both of them are out of place. Wang Bi reads the line as a piece of logistics: 處睽失位，將無所安。然五亦失位，俱求其黨，出門同趣，不期而遇，故曰「遇主於巷」也. Standing in a time of separation, out of place, with nowhere to settle; but the fifth is out of place too, both go looking for their own side, they walk out and take the same road, and meet without having arranged it. The 疏 keeps the scale of the meeting small: 同趣相求，不假遠涉而自相遇，適在於巷. 言遇之不遠，故曰：「遇主於巷」 — they look for each other along the same road and meet without any long journey, right there in the lane, which is why the line says the meeting is not far off.

The lane is the point of the line. There is no hall, no audience, no appointment; two people who belong together find each other in a passageway on the way to somewhere else. And the Small Says refuse to read the irregular positions as a failure, 遇主于巷，未失道也 — the way has not been lost. The 疏 expands them without adding anything, 既遇其主，雖失其位，亦「未失道也」. Being in the wrong place is not the same as being on the wrong road, and the figure distinguishes the two in four characters.

六三：見輿曳，其牛掣，其人天且劓，无初有終。 (Jiàn yú yè, qí niú chè, qí rén tiān qiě yì, wú chū yǒu zhōng.) A cart is seen dragged back, its ox pulled up short; the man is branded on the brow and his nose is cut away: no beginning, but an ending.

Wang Bi opens the note with the general rule of the whole book and then applies it: 凡物近而不相得，則凶 — when things are near each other and do not get along, there is ruin. He then places the line so that nothing it needs is available: 處睽之時，履非其位，以陰居陽，以柔乘剛，志在於上，而不和於四，二應於五，則近而不相比 — the time is one of separation, the place is not hers, a yielding line in a firm place riding over a firm one below it, her will set on what is above, and not in accord with the fourth; the second corresponds with the fifth and so is near at hand without being a partner. With both of her neighbours unavailable she is described by what happens to her equipment: 輿曳者，履非其位，失所載也 — the cart is dragged because the place is wrong and the load cannot be carried; 其牛掣者，滯隔所在，不獲進也 — the ox is pulled up because what draws the cart is blocked. Then the disfigurement, and the 疏 gives both characters their technical sense: 黥額為天，截鼻為劓, branding the forehead is 天, cutting off the nose is 劓 — the two halves of the punishment coming from above and below, four from the top and two from the bottom, as Wang Bi puts it, 四從上取，二從下取.

And then, after the mutilation, the promise: 而應在上九，執志不回。初雖受困，終獲剛助 — it corresponds with the top line, holds its aim and does not bend, is trapped at first and gets the help of the firm at last, which is 无初有終. The Small Says give each half of the line its own verdict, 見輿曳，位不當也 and 无初有終，遇剛也, and the 疏's summary of the second half is as plain as it gets, 由遇上九之剛，所以「有終」也. The 繫辭下 states the same rule this line is built on in its own words, 凡易之情，近而不相得，則凶或害之，悔且吝 — when things are close and do not get along, there is ruin, or harm, and regret. This is the line where that rule applies in full, and the remarkable thing about it is the verdict: the disfigurement is described and never judged, no 凶 is issued, and the only outcome assigned to it is an ending.

九四：睽孤，遇元夫，交孚，厲无咎。 (Kuí gū, yù yuán fū, jiāo fú, lì wú jiù.) Opposition and isolation: he meets the primal man; trust runs both ways; peril, no blame.

睽孤 appears twice in this figure, here and at the top, and this is the more exact of the two. Wang Bi accounts for the isolation line by line: 無應獨處，五自應二，三與己睽，故曰「睽孤」也。初亦無應特立。處睽之時，俱在獨立，同處體下，同志者也 — it stands alone with no counterpart, since the fifth has its own correspondence with the second and the third diverges from it; and the first line stands alone too. In a time of separation both of them are isolated, both sit in the lower half, and they share an aim. From that the note turns to what the line does about it: 而巳失位，比於三五，皆與巳乖，處無所安，故求其疇類而自託焉，故曰「遇元夫」也。同志相得而無疑焉，故曰「交孚」也 — out of place, with the third and fifth both at odds with it, nothing to rest on, so it looks for its own kind and lodges itself there; that is meeting the primal man; two of a kind finding each other without suspicion is what 交孚 means. Then the last clause, 雖在乖隔，志故得行，故雖危無咎 — the separation remains, the aim still carries, and the peril is real without being blameable. The 疏 names the two men and then settles a word: 「元夫」謂初九也。處於卦始，故云「元」也。初、四俱陽而言「夫」者，蓋是丈夫之夫，非夫婦之夫也 — the primal man is the first line, called primal because it stands at the head of the figure, and since the first and the fourth are both firm lines, the 夫 in question is a man in the ordinary sense and not a husband. The Small Says give it in three characters, 志行也, the aim carries.

The line is worth reading against the assumption that a correspondence has to be a complement. These two are the same kind of line, both firm, both out of place, neither with anything above or below to lean on, and what the figure gives them is not a pairing but a recognition. 交孚 is two-way trust between two people in equally bad positions, and the line is honest about the price of it: 厲 stays on the page and is not talked away. The blame that is avoided is not avoided because the danger was imaginary.

六五：悔亡，厥宗噬膚，往何咎。 (Huǐ wáng, jué zōng shì fū, wǎng hé jiù.) Regret is gone: his own kin bite through the soft; going, what blame is there?

The fifth line is the yielding counterpart of the second, holding the honored place without standing correctly in it, and the note separates the two: 非位，悔也，有應故悔亡 — the wrong place is the regret, and having a counterpart is why the regret is gone. 厥宗 is the second line: 宗 is the word for the head of one's own house, and both Wang Bi and the 疏 narrow it here to one person, 宗，主也，謂二也. The strange phrase is 噬膚, and Wang Bi explains what is being bitten: 噬膚者，齧柔也。三雖比二，二之所噬，非妨巳應者也 — biting the soft means biting through something yielding; the third line stands next to the second, and the second bites through it, which is to say the soft thing that is in the way is not the counterpart and does not hold it back. The 疏 is more literal still, 噬膚謂噬三也…三是陰爻，故以「膚」為譬，言柔脆也 — it bites the third, and because the third is a yielding line it is figured as skin, thin and soft. The line then asks its own question, 以斯而往，何咎之有？往必合也, going on this way, what blame could there be, since the going must end in union.

The Small Says answer with the one word of celebration in the figure, 厥宗噬膚，往有慶也, and the 疏 explains what 慶 consists of: 有慶之言，善功被物，為物所賴也。五雖居尊而不當位，與二合德，乃為物所賴 — the word means that the good done reaches other things and other things come to depend on it; the fifth holds the highest place without holding it correctly, and by being in accord with the second it becomes the thing others lean on. The wedge between these two lines was a yielding line, and the figure's answer to it is not negotiation but a bite straight through it. Both lines in the pair are out of place and both get 悔亡, and the only 慶 in the figure falls on them.

上九：睽孤，見豕負涂，載鬼一車，先張之弧，後說之弧，匪寇婚媾，往遇雨則吉。 (Kuí gū, jiàn shǐ fù tú, zài guǐ yī chē, xiān zhāng zhī hú, hòu shuō zhī hú, fěi kòu hūn gòu, wǎng yù yǔ zé jí.) Opposition and isolation: a pig seen carrying mud on its back, a cart loaded with ghosts; the bow is drawn first, and unstrung after; not raiders, but a marriage being sought. Going, and meeting rain: good fortune.

The top line is where the figure's separation is at its maximum and where it breaks. Wang Bi's note here is by far the longest of the six, and it moves in one direction throughout: 處睽之極，睽道未通，故曰「睽孤」。巳居炎極，三處澤盛，睽之極也。以文明之極，而觀至穢之物，「睽」之甚也 — at the extreme of separation, where its way has not yet opened; the top line sits at the height of Fire's heat and the third sits in the fullness of the marsh, and this is the furthest the split goes; looking from the highest point of brightness at the filthiest thing there is. Then the two images, 豕而負塗，穢莫過焉 — a pig carrying mud, than which nothing is filthier — and 見鬼盈車，吁可怪也, a cart heaped with ghosts, at which anyone would cry out. And then the sentence the whole line turns on: 至「睽」將合，至殊將通，恢詭譎怪，道將為一。未至於洽，先見殊怪 — where the split reaches its end it is about to join, where things are most unlike they are about to connect, and the grotesque and the monstrous are what the way shows just before it becomes one. Before anything is reconciled, the strange things appear first.

The 疏 identifies the source and then notes the one word Wang Bi changed. The phrase comes from the 齊物論, 故為舉筳與楹，厲與西施，恢詭譎怪，道通為一 — a small peg set beside a pillar, an ugly woman beside a beauty, the extravagant and the strange, the way makes them one — and the 疏 quotes 郭象 on it, 舉縱橫好醜，恢詭譎怪，各然其所然，各可其所可，即形雖萬殊，而性本得同. Then the philological remark, 王輔嗣用此文而改「通」為「將」字者，明物極則反，睽極則通，有似引詩斷章，不必與本義同也: Wang Bi takes the Zhuangzi's 道通為一 and writes 道將為一, substituting about to be for is, because in the Yijing the extremes reverse — when separation reaches its limit, it connects. The bow follows immediately, 先張之弧，將攻害也。「後說之弧」，睽怪通也 — the bow is drawn to strike at what is feared, and then the string is let slack because the monstrous thing has opened a way through; and the 疏 gives the reading of the non-attack, 見怪若斯，懼來害己…物極則反，「睽」極則通，故「後說之弧」，不復攻也. Then the party that was mistaken for raiders, 四剠其應，故謂四為寇。「睽」志既通，匪能為寇，乃得與二為婚媾矣, the fourth is taken for a raider because it seizes its counterpart, and once the separated will opens it turns out to be no raider at all but the other half of a marriage. And the rain, 雨者，陰陽交和之道也。眾異並消，無復疑阻，往得和合，則吉從之 — rain is the way the firm and the yielding meet in harmony; the differences dissolve together, nothing stands in the way any longer, and the going ends in accord, so that good fortune follows it. The Small Says close the figure on four characters, 群疑亡也, and the 疏 says the last of them plainly: the pig, the ghosts, and the drawn bow were all one suspicion, and where the two sides are joined the way rain joins them, 向之見豕、見鬼、張弧之疑並消釋矣.

This is the figure's only 吉 in the line text, and it is awarded to the moment the quarrel is seen to have been one all along. Nothing in the top line says the other party was right, and nothing says the other party was wrong; what the line records is a pile of phantoms and a bow that gets put down. Jung held that whatever a person cannot see in themselves they meet outside, wearing somebody else's face, and that the end of a quarrel is not winning it but taking the picture back. A cart of ghosts, a pig, and a drawn bow are what the other person looks like when the picture is out there. 群疑亡 has a second edge to it, and it concerns the fourth line: the fourth is the raider in this picture, and the raider turns out to be someone asking for a marriage. The top line's good fortune is not a verdict on anybody. It is what rain does.

Daily Life

The subject of this figure is a difference that does not want to be dissolved, and the first thing to notice about it is the company it keeps. The 序卦 arrives from 家人 and leaves toward 蹇: a house whose way has run out produces divergence, and divergence left alone produces difficulty. Read the six strokes the other way up and 睽 becomes the Family again; invert every line and it becomes the obstruction that follows. This is one figure with three faces, and the two outside faces are the ordinary alternatives to holding a difference — going back to the house and pretending it is one thing, or letting it harden into an obstacle. Nothing in the figure rewards either.

The Image is where the page becomes usable, and it is a smaller claim than the one people usually arrive with. 君子以同而異, at one in principle and apart in office — the 疏's version, 佐王治民，其意則同；各有司存，職掌則異, is about as practical as a six-character sentence gets. In most real disagreements, the fight is not about the principle; it is about method, and the two get traded for each other at the first opportunity. Someone who wanted the same thing as you but works differently gets argued with as though he wanted something else, and someone who wants something else entirely gets tolerated because he works the way you do. The Image puts the sameness where it can be tested, in what the work is for, and leaves the difference where it belongs, in the hands. That is also the shape the 疏 gives the picture itself: 動而相背, moving with their backs to each other. Two people can walk away from each other all day without either laying a hand on the other.

The scope of the judgment is the discipline this figure asks for. 小事吉, and the 疏 is unusually specific that the boundary is a matter of hands: the great matters are 與役動眾, and they cannot be carried while people are at odds, while the small matters of food and clothing need nobody's agreement to get done. A person in the middle of a divergence usually has both kinds in front of them, and this figure's counsel is to work on the one that does not require the other person's consent. The census of the whole page supports it. No 凶 and no 吝 anywhere, two lines whose regret is simply gone, one plain 吉, and 咎 four times with one of those a question — a figure about two things that cannot complete each other hands out less damage than most of the figures in the book that are about things going right.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does Hexagram 38 mean in one sentence?

That two things can be close, suited to each other in principle, and moving in opposite directions, and that the figure's whole claim in that situation is 小事吉, small matters and no more. The 疏 defines the name as 乖異之名, the name for divergence, and immediately explains the limit: 大事謂與役動眾，必須大同之世，方可為之. The 彖 then refuses to leave it there, 天地睽，而其事同也；男女睽，而其志通也；萬物睽，而其事類也 — apart in body, joined in work — which the 疏 compresses to 體乖而用合. The figure contains no 凶 and no 吝 anywhere, and a man who walks away from you is not yet a man who has harmed you.

Does this hexagram mean a relationship is ending?

It describes the ending of agreement rather than the end of the relation, and the census is the evidence: no 凶, no 吝, no 悔 except two lines whose regret is gone, one plain 吉 at the top. The founding image is not enmity but 二女同居，其志不同行, two daughters of one house leaving for different marriages, which the 疏 describes as people who 理應同志, who ought by rights to want the same thing. The pair at the center of the figure, 九二 and 六五, are both out of place and both meet anyway, and the 疏 says the meeting needs no long journey, 不假遠涉而自相遇. What the figure punishes is not the difference; it is the pile of phantoms in the top line.

What is the pig and the cartload of ghosts in the top line?

They are what the other side looks like from the far end of a separation. Wang Bi places the line at 睽之極 and describes the view from there as 以文明之極，而觀至穢之物, from the height of brightness looking at the filthiest thing there is, and then gives the law the images obey, 至「睽」將合，至殊將通，恢詭譎怪，道將為一 — the monstrous appears just before things join. The 疏 traces the sentence to the 齊物論 and notes that Wang Bi writes 將 where Zhuangzi wrote 通, 明物極則反，睽極則通. The bow is drawn and then let slack, and the raiders turn out to be a marriage party. The Small Says close it with 群疑亡也, and the 疏 is exact about what died: the pig, the ghosts, and the drawn bow were one suspicion, and it belonged to the person doing the looking.

Why does the judgment promise only small matters?

Because the scope was measured by hands rather than by importance. The 疏's distinction is 大事謂與役動眾 and 小事謂飲食衣服，不待眾力 — crowds require a world in agreement, food and clothing do not — and the 彖 lists the three conditions that let even small things go well in such a time, 說而麗乎明，柔進而上行，得中而應乎剛, with Wang Bi's note that these three virtues are the only reason 小事吉 is available at all, 事皆相違，害之道也，何由得小事吉？以有此三德也. The figure's own closing exclamation is not small: 睽之時用大矣哉. The use is large; the claim is not.

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