Deliverance — 解

What Is Hexagram 40?

Hexagram 40, Xiè (解, also read Jiě), Deliverance, is Water below and Thunder above, ䷧ — rain and thunder arriving together, the storm already doing its work. It is the figure of a knot that has begun to give, and its judgment is not about escape at all: it is about the timing of one move, and which of the two moves it should be depends on whether there is anywhere left to go.

The 序卦 hands this figure the end of a difficulty: 物不可終難，故受之以解；解者緩也 — a difficulty cannot run on to the very end, and so comes 解, which means slackening. The sequence leaves it with a warning attached, 緩必有所失，故受之以損 — once things have gone slack, something is sure to be lost, and so comes Hexagram 41, 損, Decrease. The 雜卦 takes the pair in one line, 解緩也，蹇難也. The English title is accurate about the release and misleading about the source: nothing outside arrives to rescue anybody. What the figure names is the loosening that happens because the tension itself could not hold any longer.

The 疏 begins with the name, and the name is not simple. 「解」者，卦名也。然解有兩音，一音古買反，一音胡買反 — 解 is the name of the figure, and it carries two readings, one belonging to the first loosening of a difficulty and the other to the settled condition after the loosening is done. The 彖's opening phrase 動而免乎險 is what tells the commentary which of the two the book means here. Its own definition then runs to fourteen characters, 「解」者，險難解，釋物情舒緩，故為「解」也: the danger comes apart and things are released, so the word is 解. The 序卦's gloss, 解者緩也, says the same thing from the other side — not rescue but slackening, a rope that has stopped being taut.

Wang Bi reads the two trigrams for the name, 動乎險外，故謂之「免」。免險則解: the movement happens outside the danger, which is what 免 means, and once the danger is escaped the figure is 解. The 疏 spells out why the geometry matters: 遇險不動，無由解難。動在險中，亦未能免咎。今動於險外，即見免脫於險 — if you meet danger and do not move, there is no way through it; if you move while still inside it, you are not out of trouble either; and the figure is the third of those cases, movement on top of the water rather than movement in the middle of it. There is a version of this advice in every book about crisis and it is usually wrong, because most crises have to be entered. This figure is one of the cases where it is right, and its own name is the reason: what has to happen is not that somebody wins. It is that something lets go.

The judgment then does something the figure next door did not do. Where 蹇 says 利西南，不利東北, the southwest serves and the northeast does not, this judgment names only the southwest and stays silent about the other quarter; Wang Bi says why in one clause, 遇難不困于東北，故不言不利東北也 — the northeast is the quarter that blocks, and nothing in a figure of loosening blocks. The 疏 reads the two quarters in the language of administration, 西南坤位，坤是眾也。施解於眾，則所濟者弘 — the southwest is the position of 坤, 坤 is the crowd, and a loosening that reaches a crowd accomplishes more than one that reaches a person. The figure's whole interest is in how far a release spreads, and the rest of its clauses are conditions rather than promises: 無所往，其來復吉 is one case and 有攸往，夙吉 is another, and they are not the same advice.

Read the judgment and the six lines together and the wording can be counted. There is no 凶 and no 悔 anywhere in the figure — not in the judgment, not in a line, not in a Small Says. 吉 appears twice in the line texts, once as 貞吉 in the second line and once in the fifth; 吝 appears once, in the third line, attached to 貞; 咎 appears in one line text only, the first, and there inside the word 无咎; 无不利 comes once, at the top. The geometry does part of the work as well. This is 坎下震上, Water underneath and Thunder on top, ䷧, the firm lines numbering two and standing in the second and fourth places, the yielding four filling the rest. By the book's rule of place the figure is almost entirely out of order: only the top line stands where its kind belongs, and the other five do not — the mirror of 蹇, where the 疏 can count 二、三、四、五爻皆當位, the four middle places all correct by the rule. And the two lines that find no counterpart anywhere in the figure are the third and the top, which by the matching rule are the only pair in the figure that do not answer each other, 三不應上 as Wang Bi puts it in his note on the last line.

The figure's vocabulary of movement is the other thing worth counting. 往, to set out, appears twice and both times in the judgment; 來, to come back, appears once, also in the judgment. Neither word appears in any of the six line texts. In 蹇 the two words ran through five of the six lines and shaped every verdict; here they are confined to the opening, and the lines speak instead about who is holding on to whom. 孚, trust, appears twice, in the fourth and fifth lines, and 解, the figure's own name, appears twice inside the line texts as well, in 解而拇 and 君子惟有解. This is a figure about a pressure that has come off and the smaller problems that were underneath it.

Standing as they are, the six strokes make 坎下震上; reversed, they make Hexagram 39, 蹇, Obstruction, the difficulty the 序卦 has just come out of. Invert each line in turn instead and the result is Hexagram 37, 家人, The Family. The sequence arrives from an obstruction and the figure's own opposite is a household, which is a fair description of the ordinary situation this figure is about.

Trigram Structure

Water holds the bottom of this figure and Thunder the top. The 說卦 reduces each of them to one word, 震，動也…坎，陷也 — Thunder is the one that moves, Water the one that sinks in. Read in the order they stand, movement above sinking, those two words are the 彖 in miniature. The 彖 states it as a chain rather than a picture, 解，險以動，動而免乎險，解 — danger is the base, movement is what the base carries, and moving is how the danger gets left behind; and the commentary notes that the sentence is doing two jobs at once, 此就二體以釋卦名, explaining the name out of the two bodies and the bodies out of the name.

Both halves are sons, and the 說卦's genealogy says which: 震一索而得男，故謂之長男…坎再索而得男，故謂之中男 — a son comes of the first drawing and is counted the eldest, a son comes of the second and is counted the middle one. Here the eldest stands above and the middle son below, where in 蹇 the middle son held the danger above the youngest; and the reversal is the point: in the figure of the blocked road a younger son waited at the bottom, while here the eldest is on top and his one verb is to move. One chapter of the 說卦 hands the eight trigrams out among parts of the body, and this pairing yields 震為足…坎為耳, a foot above an ear. The ear is at the bottom, in the water, where the noise is; the foot is on top and has not moved yet. The 彖's 動而免乎險 is what happens when the foot finally does.

Two directions belong to these trigrams as well. The 說卦's fifth chapter runs the cycle of the year through the eight, and the two words for this pair are the two ends of it: 萬物出乎震，震，東方也 — the ten thousand things come out at 震, which is the east — and 坎者，水也，正北方之卦也，勞卦也，萬物之所歸也，故曰勞乎坎，water, the due-north trigram, the trigram of labor, the place to which everything comes home. The figure is built with toil and return underneath and emergence on top. Its sixth chapter supplies the two verbs the storm is made of, 動萬物者，莫疾乎雷…潤萬物者，莫潤乎水 — nothing stirs things as fast as thunder, nothing moistens as much as water — which is why the 彖 can describe the whole business in one breath: 天地解而雷雨作，雷雨作，而百果草木皆甲坼. Wang Bi's note on that sentence is a small essay on weather as politics, 天地否結則雷雨不作，交通感散，雷雨乃作也。雷雨之作，則險厄者亨，否結者散, and the 疏 finishes it, 天地解緩，雷雨乃作。雷雨既作，百果草木皆孚甲開坼，莫不解散也: the fruits and plants all open the cases they have been holding, and nothing is left unloosed.

The 說卦's eleventh chapter gives both trigrams their inventories, and the lower one is where this page's objects come from. Thunder's list runs 震為雷、為龍、為玄黃、為敷、為大涂、為長子、為決躁、為蒼筤竹、為萑葦。其於馬也，為善鳴、為馵足，為的顙 — thunder, dragon, the black and yellow, spreading, the great highway, the eldest son, decisive impatience, the green bamboo, the reeds; among horses, the good cry, the white-hind-legged, the white-starred forehead. Then 其於稼也，為反生 — among crops, the turning back to life — and 其究為健，為蕃鮮, at its furthest it is strength and abundance in fresh growth. Two of those words are the judgment's own sentences already written in a list. 為決躁, decisive impatience, is what the clause 有攸往，夙吉 asks for when there is somewhere to go; and 為反生, the seed that turns back to life in the ground, is 其來復吉 and 百果草木皆甲坼 in the vocabulary of a farm.

Water's list is the strange one, because three of the figure's own objects are words in it: 坎為水、為溝瀆、為隱伏、為矯輮、為弓輪 — water, ditches, what lies hidden, what bends straight, the bow and the wheel — and then, in the clauses near the end of the same paragraph, 為多眚、為通、為月、為盜, many calamities and passage and the moon and the thief. Take the three in turn. 為隱伏, what lies hidden, is the fox of the second line, and Wang Bi says so in the first words of his note on it, 狐者，隱伏之物也. 為盜, the thief, is what the third line's 致寇至 calls down, and the third line is the top line of this trigram, standing on the inventory that names it. 為弓輪, the bow and the wheel, is the bow of the last line, which shoots from the high wall. The figure does not reach outside its own lower half for anything it needs: its quarry, its thief, and its weapon were all listed in one paragraph of the 說卦 long before the lines were written, and the last line's arrow is the only one of the three that the figure uses well.

The Judgment

解：利西南，无所往，其來復吉。有攸往，夙吉。

Xiè: lì xīnán, wú suǒ wǎng, qí lái fù jí. Yǒu yōu wǎng, sù jí.

Our rendering: Deliverance: the southwest serves. Where there is nothing to set out for, the returning is good fortune. Where there is something to set out for, then go early: good fortune.

Read clause by clause:

The 疏 then quotes a commentator called Chu on why a judgment needs to give two opposite instructions in the same breath. 褚氏云：「世有無事求功，故誡以無難宜靜，亦有待敗乃救，故誡以有難須速也」 — there are people who look for credit when nothing is wrong, and to those the first clause is the warning: with no difficulty, be still. And there are people who wait for the ruin before they intervene, and to those the instruction is the second clause. Two kinds of people, and neither of them is described as wicked. The judgment is not a reading of the situation; it is a pair of corrections aimed at the two ways of misreading it.

Jungian reading: Jung wrote that the serious problems of life are never solved, only outgrown, and that this outgrowing asks for a change in the level of consciousness rather than a better answer. That sentence is a fair gloss on 緩. What the figure describes is not the arrival of a solution; it is the moment a tension has weakened enough that something can shift, and Jung's warning in the same essay, that what has been repressed reappears at the next stage in a new form, is the 序卦's own 緩必有所失 — what has gone slack will lose something, and the loss is the next figure. There is also a cost the figure names indirectly. A crisis organizes a life: it decides what matters, who is close, and what the day is for. When it lets go, the arrangement it imposed goes with it, and the person who was competent in the emergency is frequently lost in the quiet after, which is precisely what Wang Bi's note on 無所往 refuses to allow: 未有善於解難而迷於處安也. Jung's practice with such moments was to insist that the relaxation itself be taken seriously, because the material that was held at arm's length while the pressure was on comes up when the pressure comes off — which is why the image of this figure is a pardon rather than a victory.

The Image

雷雨作，解；君子以赦過宥罪。

Léi yǔ zuò, Xiè; jūn zǐ yǐ shè guò yòu zuì.

Our rendering: Thunder and rain rise: Deliverance. The noble one therefore sets faults free and lessens the sentence on crimes.

The 疏 reads the two verbs as a graduated scale rather than a mood, 赦謂放免，過謂誤失，宥謂寬宥，罪謂故犯，過輕則赦，罪重則宥，皆解緩之義也 — 赦 means to let go, 過 is a fault committed in error, 宥 means leniency rather than release, 罪 is a crime done on purpose; the light case is released and the heavy one is only reduced. The instruction does not say forgive; it says put two different weights on two different things, and it is careful about which of them gets the clean verdict. The closing half of the 疏's sentence gives the reason the image belongs to this hexagram at all: 皆解緩之義也, both of them have the sense of loosening. The storm has already done the punishing. Thunder and rain arrive together here, and a figure whose sky has just cleared is exactly the place where the size of the offense stops being the most useful thing to know about it.

The order of the sentence is worth noticing. The weather comes first, then the name is spoken over it, and the noble one's response stands last. The Image is not claiming that the weather is a moral lesson. Wang Bi's note on the 彖 clause behind it reads the storm as a relaxation of a closed system, 天地否結則雷雨不作，交通感散，雷雨乃作也, and the 疏 adds that when the rain comes down every planted thing opens the case it holds, 百果草木皆孚甲開坼. Something holding a whole system shut has given way; the noble one does the same thing at the level of a court.

Jungian reading: the hardest operation in Jung's ethics is not forgiveness of others but the recognition that the thing one is judging is also present in oneself, and he treated that recognition as the precondition of any just sentence rather than as a reason to stop judging. A pardon issued before that recognition is a way of not looking. The Image's scale, with one verdict for the mistake and a different one for the intention, is the shape a judgment takes once the judge has looked — it is specific, it distinguishes, and it stops short of claiming to know a whole person. The 繫辭 states the principle in one line this page has already had to quote, 无咎者，善補過也: the figure's mildest word, 无咎, is not the absence of fault but skill at mending one. The first line of this hexagram receives exactly that verdict, and the figure's name for what happens after a storm is the room to do the mending in.

The Lines

初六：无咎。 (Chū liù: wú jiù.) At the bottom: no blame.

The whole line is two characters of verdict, and no other line in the figure is this short. Wang Bi's note on it opens with a pun on the name, 「解」者，解也。屯難盤結，於是乎解也 — the word means untie, and the knotted difficulty named in Hexagram 3, 屯, comes apart here — which is to say the first line of this figure is standing in the place where the problem that opened the whole book's second half has finally loosened. It is a yielding line in the first place, which by the rule of place is the wrong kind of line for that position, and the note insists the position does not matter at this hour, 處此之時，不煩於位而「無咎」也. The 疏 gives the reason in a sentence about power and weakness, 夫險難未夷，則賤弱者受害，然則蹇難未解之時，柔弱者不能無咎，否結既釋之後，剛強者不復陵暴 — while a difficulty is intact the small and the weak take the damage, and a soft line at the bottom would indeed be at fault; once the block has opened, the strong stop pressing on them, and a soft line with no place to speak of is simply passed over. Its Small Says gives the reasoning, 剛柔之際，義无咎也, at the seam between firm and yielding there is no fault in the nature of things; Wang Bi glosses 義 as 理, what is reasonable, and notes that one clause in his own text, 或有過咎，非其理也, is missing from some copies — a small textual question worth one line because the clause exists only to say what the line does not claim.

The verdict is the mildest in the book and the 繫辭 tells a reader what it means, 无咎者，善補過也, no blame means a talent for repairing what went wrong. Coming first in a figure whose name is release, the line is the figure's own description of the party that gets off lightly: not the innocent one, the one that can put things back.

九二：田獲三狐，得黃矢，貞吉。 (Jiǔ èr: tián huò sān hú, dé huáng shǐ, zhēn jí.) A hunt takes three foxes and a yellow arrow comes to hand: holding to what is correct, good fortune.

This is the first of the figure's two firm lines, and it is out of place in the second position and still receives the figure's first 吉. Wang Bi's note explains both halves, 剛中而應，為五所任，處於險中，知險之情，以斯解物，能獲隱伏也 — firm and central, answered by the fifth line, employed by it, sitting inside the water and knowing how water behaves, and it is this that finds what lies hidden; the fox is not caught from above, it is caught by somebody who already knows where a fox would be. His gloss on the second half is a piece of classical color theory, 黃，理中之稱也。矢，直也 — yellow is the name for the middle in the system of colors, and an arrow is straightness — so the line comes home with three foxes and with the two instruments of a correct method, and the 疏 sharpens the first, 三為成數，舉三言之，搜獲歡盡, three being a complete number rather than a head count. It then says where the good fortune comes from, 田而獲三狐，得乎理中之道，不失枉直之實，能全其正者也.

The Small Says reduce it to the same word, 九二貞吉，得中道也, and the 疏 notices how odd that is: 明九二位既不當，所以得「貞吉」者，由處於中，得乎理中之道故也 — the line is in the wrong place for its kind, and the reason it still earns the verdict is that it is central, which in this figure's arithmetic outranks being correct. The lower trigram's own inventory supplies the animal with its word for what hides, 為隱伏, and this line is the one place in the figure where the hidden thing gets found without anybody being hurt. It is the figure's answer to the question of how a release is actually accomplished: by somebody who knows the terrain from inside it.

六三：負且乘，致寇至，貞吝。 (Liù sān: fù qiě chéng, zhì kòu zhì, zhēn lìn.) A burden on the back and a carriage to ride: the raiders are brought down on it. Holding to this: a stain.

This is the figure's only negative verdict, and the reason it is negative is stated by the 繫辭 rather than by the line. Wang Bi's note on it, 處非其位，履非其正，以附於四，用夫柔邪以自媚者也。乘二負四，以容其身 — it stands where it does not belong, it walks on what is not its own, it attaches itself upward to the fourth line and flatters with softness, riding on the second line and carrying the fourth on its back in order to keep its footing — and the note refuses it even the dignity of an accident, 寇之來也，自已所致. The 疏 identifies the two halves of the picture as two classes of person, 乘者，君子之器也。負者，小人之事也。施之於人，即在車騎之上，而負於物也, the carriage is the noble one's instrument and the carrying of loads is the petty man's work, and the line is doing both at once, riding while hauling, which is how the raiders can tell at a glance that the carriage is not its.

The 繫辭's eighth chapter turns the same line into a general law of provocation, and it is the sharpest thing written about it anywhere: 負也者，小人之事也。乘也者，君子之器也。小人而乘君子之器，盜思奪之矣。上慢下暴，盜思伐之矣。慢藏誨盜，冶容誨淫。易曰：「負且乘，致寇至。」盜之招也 — the burden is the petty man's work, the carriage is the noble one's instrument; a petty man riding the instrument of a noble one is what sets the thief to thinking about taking it, and slack order above with cruelty below is what sets him to thinking about attacking; careless keeping is a lesson in stealing and a painted face is a lesson in wanting; the line is about inviting the thief. The rule underneath it is arithmetic rather than moral: the harm invited is proportional to the distance between what a person is doing and what a person is. 說卦's inventory listed 為盜 in this trigram's own paragraph, and this line stands at the top of that trigram, wearing what the list says does not belong to it.

The Small Says change the noun, 負且乘，亦可醜也，自我致戎，又誰咎也 — it is shameful besides, and the harm is brought on by the line itself, so who else is there to blame. The line said 寇, raiders arriving; the Small Says say 戎, weapons, which relocates the trouble from the road to the equipment. This is one of the two lines in the figure that answer to nothing — the third and the top do not correspond — and Wang Bi's note on the top line states the rule from the other end, 三不應上. Its verdict uses the figure's only 吝, and 吝 is the small word the book keeps for the cost of a cramped decision rather than for the cost of a disaster.

九四：解而拇，朋至斯孚。 (Jiǔ sì: xiè ér mǔ, péng zhì sī fú.) Loosen the toe: the companion arrives, and there is trust with him.

The second firm line, and the figure's first instruction to let go of something. The 疏 reads the two words of the phrase in their old senses, 而，汝也。拇，足大指也 — 而 is your, and 拇 is the big toe — and then explains whose toe it is: 履於不正，與三相比，三從下來附之，如指之附足，四有應在初。若三為之拇，則失初之應，故必「解其拇」，然後朋至而信. The fourth line stands out of place, the third line sits directly beneath it and has attached itself like a toe to a foot, and the fourth line's actual counterpart is the first line, at the other end of the figure. Wang Bi puts the choice in a single clause, 三為之拇，則失初之應，故「解其拇」，然後朋至而信矣: keep the toe and lose the counterpart; loosen the toe and the companion arrives. Nothing in the line says the third line is an enemy. It is the thing that came to lean.

The Small Says put the blame on the position rather than the person, 解而拇，未當位也, and the 疏 spells out the counterfactual: 四若當位履正，即三為邪媚之身，不得附之也。既三不得附四，則無所解 — if the fourth line stood where its kind belongs, a flattering line could not have attached itself in the first place, and there would be nothing to loosen. It is the figure's one piece of structural blame, and it is aimed at a placement. The line's two firm words are 孚, trust, and 朋, the companion — the fourth line of this hexagram is the first place in it where the figure uses the language of company, and it uses that language only after the word 解 has been applied to something close.

六五：君子惟有解，吉；有孚于小人。 (Liù wǔ: jūn zǐ wéi yǒu xiè, jí; yǒu fú yú xiǎo rén.) The noble one has a loosening, and there is good fortune; there is trust among the petty.

The figure's ruler is a yielding line in the fifth place, central and not correct, and it receives the second of the figure's two 吉. Wang Bi reads the verdict as a matter of method rather than strength, 居尊履中而應乎剛，可以有解而獲吉矣。以君子之道解難釋險，小人雖間，猶知服之而無怨矣 — on the seat of honor, holding the middle, answered by a firm line, it can let the difficulty out; and when a difficulty is loosened by a noble one's way, the petty, whatever they have been up to, know enough to submit and to do it without resentment, which is what 有孚於小人 means. The 疏 disposes of the word 維 first, 維，辭也, it is a particle and no more, and then draws the consequence, 以君子之道解難，則小人皆信服之. Trust here is not a feeling between the ruler and the ones who made the trouble. It is the reason they stop.

The Small Says make that explicit and brief, 君子有解，小人退也, the noble one has a loosening and the petty withdraw; the 疏 identifies the petty as 作難者, those who made the trouble, and says they 信君子之德，故退而畏服之, they trust the virtue and so step back. This is the figure's most interesting structure: the line that is in charge does none of the work the second and fourth lines do. It has no fox to hunt and no toe to loosen. It occupies the middle, keeps a firm line answering it, and lets the pressure out, and the ones who created the pressure leave on their own. Two readings of 有孚于小人 are current — that the petty trust the noble one, and that the noble one extends trust to them — and the 疏 takes the first without ruling out the second, since the sentence can carry both and the figure's business is with what makes people stop rather than with who deserves what.

上六：公用射隼，于高墉之上，獲之，无不利。 (Shàng liù: gōng yòng shè sǔn, yú gāo yōng zhī shàng, huò zhī, wú bù lì.) The duke shoots a falcon on the high wall and takes it: nothing is unfavorable.

The last line is the only one of the six standing where its kind belongs, and it is the one that ends the figure's own problem. Wang Bi's note identifies the bird before it names the bow, 初為四應，二為五應，三不應上，失位負乘，處下體之上，故曰「高墉」 — the first and fourth answer each other, the second and fifth answer each other, and the third does not answer the top; the third has no place and is carrying what is not its own, and it occupies the highest place of the lower trigram, which is where the wall comes from. Then the two clauses that make the picture, 墉非隼之所處，高非三之所履 — a wall is not where a falcon belongs and the height is not what the third line stands on. What is being shot is not an enemy from outside; it is the same third line the previous lines have been working around, sitting up on something it took. The 疏 gives the bird and the wall their plain senses, 隼者，貪殘之鳥，鸇鷂之屬。墉，牆也, adds the reasoning 六三失位負乘，不應於上，即是罪釁之人，故以譬於集, and then accounts for the title: 公宅臣之極。上六以陰居上，故謂之「公」也 — a duke is the highest of ministers, and a yielding line at the top of a figure is given that rank, which is the only place in the figure where an office is named at all.

Timing is what Wang Bi emphasizes in the last sentence of the note, 上六居動之上，為解之極，將解荒悖而除穢亂者也。故用射之，極則後動，成而後舉，故必「獲之」，而「無不利」也 — standing above the trigram of movement at the extreme of the loosening, it is what clears out the perverse and the disorderly; but 極則後動，成而後舉, it moves only after the extreme, and acts only once the thing is complete, which is why the shot cannot miss. The 繫辭's fourth chapter gives the line its own commentary and makes the same point about instruments, 易曰：「公用射隼于高墉之上，獲之，无不利。」子曰：「隼者，禽也；弓矢者，器也。射之者，人也。君子藏器於身，待時而動，何不利之有。動而不括，是以出而有獲，語成器而動者也」 — the falcon is a bird, the bow and arrow are a tool, and the shooter is a person; the noble one keeps the tool about himself and does not move until the hour is right, so what disadvantage could there be; he acts without a hitch and steps out with his catch, and the sentence is about acting from a tool already finished. The bow in that sentence is a word in the lower trigram's inventory, 為弓輪, and the figure has been holding it since the beginning.

The Small Says close it in eight characters, 公用射隼，以解悖也; the 疏 defines 悖 as 逆, perverse, and identifies the target as 六三失位負乘，不應於上, the line that stood out of place, rode what was not its own, and answered to nobody. So the figure's last act, taken only at the end and only with a finished tool, is to settle a debt owed inside the figure itself rather than to march outward — which is the difference between this page and the difficulty it came from. In 蹇 the top line came back and followed a firm line inside; here the top line's good fortune is that it is aimed at what everyone has been able to see since the third place.

Daily Life

The situation this figure describes is the day after the pressure comes off, and the judgment's whole counsel is about one decision made in it. Wang Bi's warning on 無所往 is the practical center of the page: there has never been anyone good at taking a difficulty apart who was not at a loss in the calm that follows, 未有善於解難而迷於處安也. The instruction is conditional, and that is what keeps it usable. Where nothing is left to chase, the return is the whole of the right action, 無難可往，以解來復則不失中. Where something is genuinely waiting, the move should be made now rather than carefully, 解難能速，則不失其幾, because a difficulty undone early does not spend what it would have cost later. Chu's two kinds of people are worth keeping in the same sentence: the one who manufactures an errand so as to keep being needed, and the one who waits for the failure before helping. Neither is a villain and both are common, and the judgment is written as a correction aimed separately at each.

Inside that hour the figure has four things to say to four kinds of position. The second line is the person who knows how the terrain actually works from having been inside it, 處於險中，知險之情, and gets to make the single clean catch of the figure; the practical version of that is that expertise gathered inside the difficulty is the thing that is still worth something when the difficulty is over. The fourth line is the harder case, because the thing it has to let go of is not an enemy: 三為之拇, the third line attached itself, and the price of keeping it is the counterpart at the other end of the figure. Most of the people who hold someone in place after a crisis are people that person never chose, and the line's word for the operation is 解, the same word as the figure's name. The fifth line is the one with authority and does almost nothing: it holds the middle, keeps a firm line answering it, and lets the trouble leave on its own, 君子有解，小人退也. And the third line is the figure's only bad verdict, which it earns by riding while hauling, 乘者，君子之器也。負者，小人之事也, wearing the instrument of a class it has not joined, with the 繫辭's conclusion standing over it, 盜之招也, an invitation.

The Image adds the part that most releases skip. 赦過宥罪 is not an amnesty; it is a scale with a light verdict for the fault done in error and a reduced one for the crime done on purpose, 過輕則赦，罪重則宥, because after a storm the useful question is no longer how bad the offense was but what can be repaired. The 繫辭 puts the same thought inside the figure's mildest word, 无咎者，善補過也, no blame means a talent for mending what went wrong, which makes the first line of this hexagram a description of a skill rather than a certificate of innocence. And the 序卦's last word on the whole matter is the exit: 緩必有所失，故受之以損. Whatever has been loosened will lose something, and the next figure is the loss. What this one offers is the interval in which the loss is still a decision.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does Hexagram 40 mean in one sentence?

That a tension has come loose and the only real question left is timing: where there is nothing to go after, coming back is the answer, and where something is waiting, the move should be made early rather than carefully. The figure's own word for the event is 緩, slackening, in the 序卦's gloss 解者緩也 and the 雜卦's 解緩也，蹇難也. Nothing in it arrives from outside to rescue anyone, which is the sense the English word Deliverance carries and the character 解 does not. There is no 凶 and no 悔 anywhere in the judgment, the six lines, or the Small Says, and 吉 appears in the line texts only twice.

Why is the fifth line good fortune when it does nothing?

Because the figure's method is release rather than force, and the fifth line is the only place in it that has authority to spare. Wang Bi's note is 居尊履中而應乎剛，可以有解而獲吉矣, on the seat of honor, holding the middle and answered by a firm line; the 疏 adds what the line's trust does, 以君子之道解難，則小人皆信服之, and the Small Says finish the thought, 君子有解，小人退也. The line has no fox to hunt and no attachment to loosen. It holds the center and lets the pressure out, and the ones who made the trouble leave without being thrown out.

Why does the judgment only name the southwest, when Hexagram 39 names both quarters?

Because this figure is not up against a wall. 蹇 says 利西南，不利東北; here Wang Bi explains the silence in one clause, 遇難不困于東北，故不言不利東北也 — when a difficulty is coming apart the northeast is not what traps anyone, which is why the warning is absent. The 疏 then gives the positive reason for the quarter that is named, 西南坤位，坤是眾也。施解於眾，則所濟者弘, the southwest is the seat of 坤 and 坤 is the crowd, so a release is worth most where it can spread. The judgment is about how far the relief reaches, which is why its remaining clauses are conditions rather than promises.

What does the Image's instruction to pardon mean in practice?

A scale rather than blanket forgiveness. The 疏 defines both verbs separately, 赦謂放免，過謂誤失，宥謂寬宥，罪謂故犯，過輕則赦，罪重則宥, release for the fault committed in error and a widening of the room around the crime done on purpose, and both of them 皆解緩之義也, acts with the same sense as the figure's name. The 繫辭 states the principle behind the milder word, 无咎者，善補過也, and this figure's first line receives exactly that verdict. The storm has already done the punishing, and the question the Image answers is what a court is for once it has.

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