The Well — 井

What Is Hexagram 48?

Hexagram 48, Jǐng (井), the Well, is Water above Wind — ䷯, 巽下坎上: a source that neither moves nor belongs to anybody, a town relocatable above an immovable shaft, six strokes divided three and three, and the only judgment in the book whose word of misfortune falls on a pitcher broken at the lip.

The name is an object before it is an idea, and the subcommentary begins by saying so: 「井」者，物象之名也。古者穿地取水，以瓶引汲，謂之為井 — 井 is the name of a thing seen, not of a quality felt; in old practice people broke the ground to reach water and drew it up with a pitcher, and that is what the word names. Then it says what the figure does with the object: 此卦明君子脩德養民，有常不變，終始無改，養物不窮，莫過乎井，故以修德之卦取譬名之「井」焉 — this figure sets out the noble person's cultivation of their own conduct and their support of others: constant, unmoved, unchanged from first to last, feeding without running out, and nothing exceeds a well at that, which is why a figure about conduct borrows the object for its name.

That is the whole figure's frame, and it is unusual in one respect worth naming at the start. The book has figures for ascent, for obstruction, for increase and decrease, and each of them is about something happening. This one is about something continuing. Nothing in the judgment is won, and nothing in it is lost: the town moves and the well does not, nobody is richer for having drawn from it and nobody poorer, and the water does not improve because good people come to it or degrade because bad ones do. The only failure the judgment names is a failure of upkeep at the last moment — the rope paid out, the jar nearly at the lip, and then the jar snagged and broken above the water it had already reached.

A reader who has come through the previous figures will notice what is missing here. There is no 亨 in the judgment, and no 利貞, and no 吉. The six line texts carry exactly one grade of the highest order, 元吉, and they carry it at the top, on a line whose whole instruction is that a finished well should not be covered over. In between, the figure is content to be honest about the ordinary states of a source: silted up, running sideways down into the ground, cleaned and left undrawn, under repair, drawn and drunk, finished and shared.

Trigram Structure

In this figure Water stands over Wind: 坎 above, 巽 below — 巽下坎上, read from the bottom as 陰陽陽陰陽陰. The 彖 reads the arrangement as machinery, and its first clause is a description of a well rather than a picture of a landscape: 巽乎水而上水，井 — the lower trigram goes into the water and brings the water up. The subcommentary is exact about why those two trigrams and no others can say it: 此卦坎為水在上，巽為木在下，又巽為入，以木入於水而又上水，井之象也 — 坎 is water and stands above; 巽 is wood and stands below, and 巽 also means entering, so wood enters the water and then raises the water, and that is what a well looks like in three strokes.

The 說卦's one-word natures fix the two halves: 巽，入也 and 坎，陷也, entering and sinking. Everything the well needs is filed under those two trigrams. 巽為繩直 — the straight rope, which is the 繘 of the judgment; 巽為木 — the timber of the shaft and the frame; 巽為工 — the work and the workmanship, which is the repair of the fourth line; 巽為長女 — the eldest daughter. 坎為水、為溝瀆、為隱伏 — water, the channel it is drawn through, and the thing that lies out of sight; and in the 說卦's accounts of the compass and of the seasons the same trigram is the station where the year's work is done, 勞乎坎, with the chapter on the powers of things adding that nothing moistens as water does, 潤萬物者，莫潤乎水.

Two entries in the trigram lists matter more than the rest for this figure, and both are about the same failure. 坎為矯輮, bending and straightening, which is the well's repair work looked at as a craft; and 坎為通, the passable way, which is what the well is when it is working. Set against them, 巽為進退、為不果 — going forward and back, without result — which is the rope's motion when nothing is drawn. The figure is built out of exactly the two trigrams that can raise water and can fail to raise it: the wood that goes down into the water is the same wood that sits there useless when nobody is drawing.

The figure's arithmetic supports the reading. Read from the bottom, ䷯ is 陰陽陽陰陽陰: the two firm lines stand together in the lower half, at the second and third places, and the upper half holds one firm line, at the fifth, with yielding lines on either side of it at the fourth and at the top. Four of the six lines stand in places that suit them — the third, fourth, fifth and top — while the two lowest are out of place: the first is a yielding line in a firm place and the second is a firm line in a yielding place, which is precisely the pair the subcommentary singles out when it says the well's water sits at the bottom and stops there. Of the three possible answering pairs, one answers: 九三 and 上六, the top of the lower trigram and the top of the figure. The other two pairs are alike and cancel — the first and the fourth are both yielding, the second and the fifth are both firm.

Those two firm centers are the figure's engine, and the 彖 names them where a reader would expect a description: 改邑不改井，乃以剛中也, with the note supplying the argument, 以剛處中，故能定居其所而不變也 — because firmness stands in the middle, it can settle where it is and not move. The second and fifth lines are the reason a town can be abandoned and a well cannot: the one thing in the figure that stays put is the thing that is firm in the center, in both halves, at once. The same two lines are also why the figure's middle cannot answer itself: both are firm, and the book pairs unlike lines, so the well's two centers look at each other across 六三 and 六四 without a relation. What holds this figure together is not correspondence. It is the shaft.

Invert the six strokes and they stand as Water below Lake, which is Hexagram 47, Oppression — the figure this one dissolves. The Sequence joins the two in a single clause, 困乎上者，必反下，故受之以井, its reason being that pressure applied from above eventually turns a thing under and sends it lower, which is where a well is. The 雜卦's line about the pair is a piece of compression worth unpacking: 井通，而困相遇也 — the well is the figure that gets through, the obstruction is the figure that meets. Exchange every stroke for its contrary and the figure becomes Hexagram 21, Biting Through, Fire over Thunder: the well turned inside out is the instrument that breaks what is stuck in the mouth.

The 繫辭's inventory of nine figures together with their virtues also files this one next to its predecessor, and the entry is short enough to keep in view all the way down this page: 困，德之辨也。井，德之地也 — conduct is what gets sorted out in the obstruction, and the well is what gives it a floor. The same passage adds two further clauses about this figure alone: 井，居其所而遷 and 井，以辯義 — the well keeps its place and yet moves, and the well is the means by which a person sorts out what is right.

The Judgment

井：改邑不改井，无喪无得，往來井井。汔至亦未繘井，羸其瓶，凶。

Jǐng: gǎi yì bù gǎi jǐng, wú sàng wú dé, wǎng lái jǐng jǐng. Qì zhì yì wèi jú jǐng, léi qí píng, xiōng.

Our rendering: The Well: the town may be moved, the well is not moved. Nothing is lost, nothing is gained. Those who come and go are made clean at the well. Almost to the top and the rope is not yet out of the well; the pitcher is snagged. Misfortune.

Five clauses, and the first four of them are a description of a working source rather than an instruction. 改邑不改井 is the plainest statement in the book about what can and cannot be relocated: the settlement is mobile, the water under it is not. The subcommentary separates the two halves of the clause with a distinction it will use again: 以下明「井」有常德，此明「井」體有常，邑雖遷移而「井體」無改 — the well's virtue is constancy and the well's body is unmoved, and the town may move across the ground while the shaft keeps its place. The political reading of that line is easy and the book invites it, but the structural reading comes first: a community is a thing that can pick up and go, and a source is a thing that has to be kept.

无喪无得 is where the figure becomes strange, because it refuses both directions of the account. The subcommentary works it out as arithmetic rather than as ethics: 終日引汲，未嘗言損；終日泉注，未嘗言益 — drawn all day long and it is never said to have been diminished; fed all day long by the spring and it is never said to have increased. A well is not a budget. Nothing that happens to it is a gain and nothing is a loss, and 王弼's note on those four characters runs to four of its own, 德有常也 — the virtue in it is constancy — as though the point needed no argument.

往來井井 is the clause that made the commentators reach for the sense of the reduplicated character, and the reading they settled on is about hygiene rather than about traffic: 「井井」，絜靜之貌也。往者來者，皆使潔靜，不以人有往來，改其洗濯之性 — 井井 is the look of something clean and still; those who come and those who go are all made clean there, and the water does not alter the cleansing nature it has because people come and go. The clause is the figure's social claim in four characters. The well serves everyone who arrives, and is changed by nobody who arrives — which is the same sentence as 无喪无得, spoken from the other side.

Then the judgment turns, and the turn is the reason this page has to be careful about the word misfortune. 汔至亦未繘井，羸其瓶，凶 — almost arriving, and the rope not yet out of the well; the pitcher is snagged; misfortune. The vocabulary is technical and the subcommentary unpacks each piece: 汔，幾也。幾，近也。繘，綆也 — 汔 is nearly, and 繘 is the draw-rope — and then the mechanics of the accident: 雖汲水以至井上，然綆出猶未離井口，而鉤羸其瓶而覆之也 — the water has been raised to the top of the well, but the rope has not yet cleared the mouth when the hook catches the jar and turns it over. The note that stands beside the clause puts the whole thing in eight characters, 井道以巳出為功也 — the way of a well counts as accomplished only when the drawing is out — and draws the consequence, 幾至而覆，與未汲同也: nearly there and turned over is the same as never having drawn.

What the passage is warning about is therefore not drought and not accident. It is the shape of an unfinished job, and the subcommentary says so without softening it: 棄其方成之功，雖有出井之勞，而與未汲不異，喻今人行常德，須善始令終 — the work that was all but done, thrown away; the labor of drawing was real and it counts for nothing, which is a figure for a person's steady practice, which must be carried well at the end as at the beginning. The one word of the judgment that a reader might trip over is 亦, and the subcommentary stops to say that the wording is deliberately hedged: 言「亦」者，不必之辭，言不必有如此不克終者 — the phrase is the language of not-necessarily, and the sentence is not claiming that everyone who draws from a well breaks the jar. Then it answers the obvious objection, which is that a jar of water is not a tragedy: 計獲一瓶之水，何足言凶？以喻人之修德不成 — counting it out, one pitcher of water is hardly worth the word misfortune; what the word is aimed at is a person whose cultivation does not come off. The figure's only bad outcome is a failure of maintenance at the lip of the shaft, and it is written at the scale of a person rather than a village.

The 彖 distributes the judgment across the figure's parts, and its order is worth following. It begins with the mechanism, 巽乎水而上水，井, then names what the mechanism is for, 井養而不窮也, which the subcommentary receives as praise rather than as description: 歎美井德，愈汲愈生，給養於人，無有窮巳也 — the more it is drawn from, the more it gives, feeding people without ever being used up. It explains the immovability with the two firm centers. And it ends on the judgment's ending, splitting the two halves of the accident: 汔至亦未繘井，未有功也 and 羸其瓶，是以凶也, with 王弼 compressing the first into six characters, 井以巳成為功 — a well's merit lies in having been completed — and the subcommentary supplying the parallel it wants the reader to draw between water and conduct, 汲水未出而覆，喻脩德未成而止，所以致凶也 — water lost on the way up is conduct that stops before it is finished, and that is where the misfortune comes from.

Jungian reading. The clue this figure holds out to depth psychology is not its water but its property law, and it is in the first clause. 改邑不改井 says that the thing underneath the settlement belongs to no one in it and cannot be carried away by anyone in it; a well is drawn from, not owned, and the people who depend on it are tenants of something they did not make. That is the position Jung kept insisting the contents of the unconscious occupy when he called them the objective psyche — not because they are "objectively true," but because they are not the ego's possessions: they are found in us rather than produced by us, and they do not improve when we admire them or degrade when we ignore them. The figure's own account of that state is its most modern sentence: 終日引汲，未嘗言損；終日泉注，未嘗言益. Nothing a person does to the source changes what the source is. The only thing that can be changed is the shaft, the rope and the jar, which is to say the arrangements by which a life keeps access to what feeds it.

The second point is the one Jung returns to whenever he writes about not being able to hurry anything, and it is the judgment's last clause under a different aspect. 幾至而覆，與未汲同也 — nearly there and turned over is the same as never. Jung's writings on the individuation process are unusually unanimous on this: the work is not finished by an act of understanding, and the encounter that reorganizes a person arrives on its own schedule, which means the failure mode is almost never an insufficient insight but a premature conclusion, the ego declaring the job done at the point where it has merely had a good look at the water. Jung's standing image for the alternative was the alchemists' vessel, kept sealed for as long as the work takes, which is the same picture as the well-rope being paid out until the jar is clear of the stone and set down on the coping.

There is one more contact point, and it is in the middle of the figure rather than at its edge. 井養而不窮 — the more it is drawn from, the more it gives — describes a relation rather than a quantity, and it is the relation depth psychology spends its time on. What sits under a life is not a store that can be left alone until it is needed. It is reached only by being used, and a person who stops drawing from it does not keep it intact; they lose the way down to it, and what comes up later comes up through mud. The third line of this figure stands in exactly that condition, cleaned and undrawn, and the figure lets the line say what it feels about it — 為我心惻, it makes my heart ache — before it says anything about remedies. Whether the ache is evidence of a mistake in the world or of a duty unfinished is the question the line leaves with the reader.

The Image

象曰：木上有水，井；君子以勞民勸相。

Mù shàng yǒu shuǐ, jǐng; jūn zǐ yǐ láo mín quàn xiāng.

Our rendering: Water on top of wood: the Well. The noble one therefore rewards the people's labor and encourages them to help one another.

The picture is the mechanism again, seen as an achievement rather than as scenery. 王弼's note reads it as the moment when the water has arrived: 「木上有水」，井之象也。上水以養，養而不窮者也 — water on top of wood is the well's image; it is the bringing up of water for the purpose of feeding, and the feeding of a thing that does not run out. There is no lake in this picture and no view. There is timber and there is water above it, which means somebody drew it.

Then the Image attaches an instruction that is unlike any other in the book, and the strangeness is in its first verb. 君子以勞民勸相 — the noble one, by rewarding the people's toil, encourages them to assist each other. The subcommentary is explicit that the first word is not a description of hard work but a payment for it: 勞謂勞賚，相猶助也 — 勞 here means to reward or recompense, and 相 here means to help, not to look at and not to resemble. What follows is the figure's account of how a source is kept in use: 井之為義，汲養而不窮，君子以勞來之恩，勤恤民隱，勸助百姓，使有成功，則此養而不窮也 — the well's meaning is to be drawn from and to feed without exhaustion, and a noble person, by the same kindness that rewards work and draws people in, gives steady attention to hardships that stay out of sight and encourages people to help one another to results, which is how the feeding becomes inexhaustible. 王弼's note compresses the last move to a single comparison: 可以勞民勸助，莫若養而不窮也 — for rewarding labor and prompting mutual aid, nothing beats a feed that does not run out.

Two hard facts put this Image in a class by itself. Of the sixty-four Images, fifty-three open their instruction with 君子, seven with 先王, two with 后, one with 大人, and one — the twenty-third — with a bare 上; and among all sixty-four, this is the only Image whose instruction begins with the character 勞. The word appears nowhere else in any Image in the book. That is a specific piece of positioning: the one figure that is not about an event but about upkeep is also the figure in which the book's instructions turn to the subject of paying people for work and getting them to help each other. The well has no ceremony, no king, no expedition and no sacrifice in its Image. It has labor, wages and mutual aid, which is what the maintenance of a common source actually costs.

The 說卦's catalogs make the picture sharper without leaving it. 巽為工 — the workman and the work — is the trigram that stands under the water here, and 巽為繩直 is the plumb line and the rope; 坎為矯輮 is the bending straight of what has gone crooked. An Image about rewarding labor and encouraging help is drawn over the two trigrams the book otherwise uses for craftsmanship and for correction, and the figure's fourth line, 井甃, is the same thought in one character: the shaft lined with brick so that it will hold. In the sequence, this clause also sets up the figure that follows: 井道不可不革，故受之以革 — the way of a well cannot go without being reformed, which is why Hexagram 49 comes next. A maintenance figure that runs long enough eventually needs not repair but replacement, and the book says so in the same breath as its praise.

Jungian reading. The Image's instruction answers the question the judgment leaves open, which is who pays for the rope and the jar. 勞 is a wage, and the figure is clear that the source will not be kept by devotion; it will be kept by people whose work is recognized and who help each other do it. Jung's practical writing on method returns to this and almost never to technique: regular hours given to the material, a place where it can be written down, the ordinary discipline of coming back to the same seat. None of that is insight and none of it is inspiring, and his essays on method treat it as the greater part of the question. The figure's 勸相 — encouraging one another — is the other half of his position, and it is where his essay on the transference arrives: the work is not done by one person reading their own depths, and the relation between the two parties is treated in that essay as the container the work happens in, which is the same claim as an Image that instructs a noble person to get people helping each other keep a source open.

The Lines

初六：井泥不食，舊井无禽。 (Jǐng ní bù shí, jiù jǐng wú qín.) The well has gone to mud: nothing to drink from it. An old well: no birds.

The figure begins where a source ends up when nobody draws from it, and 王弼 builds the line out of position and neglect rather than out of bad character: 最在井底，上又無應，沈滯滓穢，故曰「井泥不食」也。井泥而不可食，則是久井不見渫治者也 — it sits at the very bottom of the well and has nothing answering it above, so it settles into silt, which is why the text says the water is mud; and mud that nobody can drink from means a well no one has come to clean for a long time. Then he widens the failure from the water to the place: 久井不見渫治，禽所不向，而況人乎？一時所共棄舍也 — a well nobody cleans is a well the birds do not come to, and how much less will people; it is a thing everybody has dropped at once. The Small Image gives the two halves of that sentence their own names, 井泥不食，下也 and 舊井无禽，時舍也, with the subcommentary reading the second charitably, 即是一時共棄舍也, set aside for a time and not for good.

The note on this line carries one of the figure's strongest links to the rest of the book. 王弼's closing argument is that the bottom of a well is where a virtue goes when nothing calls on it: 井者不變之物，居德之地，恒德至賤，物無取也 — a well is a thing that does not change and a place where virtue is stored, and there in the lowest position that stable virtue is worth least, so nothing takes from it. The subcommentary traces both of those phrases back to their sources, 繇辭稱「改邑不改井」，故曰「井者，不變之物」 and 《系辭》又云：「井，德之地」 — the first from this figure's own judgment, the second from the 繫辭's inventory of nine figures, where this one is given the phrase the line is quietly quoting. 井，德之地也. Conduct is what gets sorted out in the obstruction; the well is what gives it a floor to stand on; and a floor can lie there unused for years. Two counts sit with this line. 禽, the word for birds and game, is written in the judgment or line texts of only four of the sixty-four figures — here, once in Hexagram 7, once in Hexagram 8 and once in Hexagram 32 — and of the four, this is the only text where missing animals mean the place has been let go, rather than a hunt that failed or a bird deliberately released. And the character 无 in this line is printed 無 in the 正義 volume; the two copies differ in that orthography throughout the figure, and this page prints the 周易 page's form and notes the pair.

九二：井谷射鮒，瓮敝漏。 (Jǐng gǔ shè fù, wèng bì lòu.) The well is a creek shooting at minnows; the jar is cracked and leaking.

The second line is firm and central, which in most figures is the making of a line, and here it is the figure's most specific failure. 王弼's reading turns on direction: 谿谷出水，從上注下，水常射焉。井之為道，以下給上者也。而無應於上，反下與初，故曰「井穀射鮒」 — water in a ravine comes out and runs downward, always shooting down; the way of a well is to feed what is above it from below; and this line has nothing answering it above, so it turns downward to the first line instead, which is why the text has the well shooting at fish. 鮒，謂初也 — the minnow is the first line. Then the judgment on that: 失井之道，水不上出，而反下注，故曰「甕敝漏」也 — it has lost the way of a well, the water does not come up but goes down, and the jar is cracked and leaking. What follows is the figure's plainest statement of structural obligation: 夫處上宜下，處下宜上，井巳下矣，而復下注，其道不交，則莫之與也 — a thing placed above should give downward and a thing placed below should give upward; this well is already below and it pours further down, so its way never crosses anything, and nothing is with it.

The subcommentary makes the same point in an image that is the figure in miniature: 井而似穀 — a well that has become a creek. It goes on to explain why the line cannot simply be called bad: 九二上無其應，反下比初，施之於事，正似谷中之水，下注敝鮒 — the second line has nothing above to answer it and instead keeps company with the line below it, which in practical terms is water in a gully pouring down onto fish. The 子夏傳 is quoted for one detail of the vocabulary, 井中蝦䗫，呼為鮒魚也 — what lives in a well and is called a minnow is the little frog in it — and the Small Image closes the line in three characters, 井穀射鮒，無與也, which the subcommentary reads as a statement about connection rather than about merit: 井既處下，宜應汲上。今反養下，則不與上交，物莫之與 — a well this low should be drawn upward; feeding downward instead, it has no exchange with anything above, and so nothing exchanges with it.

Three items in this line occur exactly once in the sixty-four figures, and all three are here: 鮒, the minnow or little frog; 瓮, the earthen jar; and the pair 敝漏, cracking and leaking. There is also a textual variant here, since the copies differ. The 周易 page reads 井谷 for the gully and 瓮 for the jar; the 正義 volume reads 井穀 and 甕. This page follows the 周易 page — a valley is the image the commentary describes — and notes the pair rather than choosing silently.

九三：井渫不食，為我心惻，可用汲，王明，並受其福。 (Jǐng xiè bù shí, wéi wǒ xīn cè, kě yòng jí, wáng míng, bìng shòu qí fú.) The well is cleaned and still not drunk from: it makes my heart ache. It could be drawn from — let the king be clear-sighted, and all share in the good fortune.

This is the figure's human line, and it is the one strong line in the lower half of the figure: the third place is a firm line in a firm place, and it is one of only two lines in the figure that answer another — the pair being 九三 and 上六, the top of the lower trigram and the top of the whole. 王弼's note reads it as a well that has done everything right and been left alone: 渫，不停汙之謂也。處下卦之上，復得其位，而應於上，得井之義也。當井之義而不見食，脩巳全潔而不見用，故「為我心惻」也 — 渫 means that no filth is left standing in it; the line stands at the top of the lower trigram, in a place that suits it, and answers the top line, so it has the meaning of a well; and a well that has the meaning of a well and is not drunk from, a person whose self-cultivation is complete and who is not used, is what makes the heart ache. He then keeps the line from reading as mere complaint by fixing the direction of its water: 不下注而應上，故「可用汲」也 — it does not pour downward but answers the line above, which is why it can be drawn from.

The rest of the line is about who does the drawing, and it is unusually direct about the division of labor between a person and the world. 王明則見照明，既嘉其行，又欽其用，故曰「王明，並受其福」也 — when the king is clear-sighted, the line's conduct is seen, its usefulness is valued, and the text says that the fortune is shared. The subcommentary spells out that this is not a reward for virtue so much as the release of something already built: 井之可汲，猶人可用。若不遇明王，則滯其才用。若遭遇賢主，則申其行能 — a drawable well is like a usable person; without a clear-sighted ruler the capacity sits there unused, and with one the conduct and the ability both come through. The Small Image takes the line apart in two clauses, 井渫不食，行惻也 and 求王明，受福也, with 王弼 glossing the first as feeling rather than as judgment, 行感於誠，故曰「惻也」 — the ache is sincere and that is all that is claimed for it. 為 in the line is a quotation-worthy oddity: 為，猶使也, it means to make somebody do something, so the clause is not "I pity the well" but "the well makes my heart ache," which puts the feeling in the water's account rather than in the reader's.

One count belongs to the line, and it is the reason this clause keeps company with the book's other unjust situations. The character 福, good fortune in the sense of a share in something good, is written in the judgment or line texts of only four of the sixty-four figures: here, once in Hexagram 11, once in Hexagram 35, and once in Hexagram 63. In three of the four it is a thing conferred by somebody with the standing to confer it, and in this figure it is conferred by the ruler's attention — which is the figure's honesty about how much of a life is decided by whether anybody is looking.

六四：井甃，无咎。 (Jǐng zhòu, wú jiù.) The well is lined. No blame.

The fourth line is the figure's maintenance line, and the commentary treats it as the smallest and steadiest kind of good work. 王弼 reads it through what the line cannot do. It stands in a place that suits it and has nothing answering it — 得位而無應 — so it can keep itself and cannot feed anything above it, and what it can do is 可以修井之壞，補過而巳: repair what has broken in the well and make up for the damage. The subcommentary reaches for the 子夏傳 to fix the word: 甃亦治也，以磚壘井，脩井之壞，謂之為甃 — 甃 means repair too: lining a well with brick and making good what has given way is what the word names. Then it draws the parallel the line is for: 六四得位而無應，自守而巳，不能給上，可以脩井崩壞。施之於人，可以脩德補過 — a person in the same position cannot supply anybody above them, and what they can do is repair their own conduct and cover their own mistakes. The Small Image states the limit as plainly as the note does, 井甃无咎，修井也, and the subcommentary adds the sentence that keeps the line modest: 但可脩井之壞，未可上給養人也 — you can repair the well and you cannot yet feed anybody from it.

The words 无咎 stand in one of this figure's six line texts and in no other, and what that degree buys here needs spelling out. In a figure with almost no grades at all, the line that gets nothing but the absence of blame is the line that lined the shaft — the work that appears in no account of the well's output and is the reason the output is possible. Two textual details belong to it. The orthography of 无 is again 無 in the 正義 volume, and the 正義 volume prints the same Small Image with 脩 where the 周易 page has 修 — two forms of the one word for putting something in order, not two different words.

九五：井冽，寒泉食。 (Jǐng liè, hán quán shí.) The well is cold and clear: a cold spring, drunk.

The fifth line is the ruler's place, and the figure gives it no verdict word at all — no 吉, no 咎, no 悔. What it gives is a fact about quality and a verb about drinking. 王弼's note is concerned with what the line refuses: 洌，絜也。居中得正，體剛不撓，不食不義，中正高絜，故「井洌寒泉」，然後乃「食」也 — 洌 means clean; standing in the center and in the right place, firm in substance and unbending, it does not consume what is not right, and being centered, straight and clean it is a cold clear spring, and only then is it drunk. The subcommentary turns that into the figure's account of office: 餘爻不當貴位，但脩德以待用。九五為卦之主，擇人而用之 — the other lines do not hold honored positions and only cultivate themselves while waiting to be used; the fifth line is the ruler of the figure, and the ruler's work is to choose people and put them to use. It then explains the line's specific adjective as a test of what gets taken in: 既體剛直，則不食污穢，必須井絜而寒泉，然後乃食。以言剛正之主，不納非賢，必須行絜才高，而後乃用 — a firm and straight nature will not drink what is dirty, so the spring must be clean and cold before it is drunk; a firm and correct ruler admits no unworthy person, and conduct must be clean and ability high before anyone is taken on. The Small Image closes the line in four characters, 寒泉之食，中正也, and the subcommentary explains why the text insists on the coldness rather than the clarity: 必言「寒泉」者，清而冷者，水之本性，遇物然後濁而溫，故言寒泉以表絜也 — clear and cold is water in its own nature; it turns cloudy and warm only when it has met something, which is why the text says cold spring to show what being clean means.

Three words in this line are written once each in the whole classic: 泉, a spring; 寒, cold; and the character for the water's clarity, which is also this page's best textual crux. The 周易 page prints 井冽, a word for coldness; the 正義 volume prints 井洌, and the note glosses that one as 絜, clean. The two characters are near neighbours in sound and in use, and this page prints the 周易 page's form with the note's gloss standing beside it, since the two readings agree on the thing the line is describing. What the line does with all of it is worth stating plainly: the figure's ruler is not praised for anything he does. He is described as a spring that a person can drink from, and the whole of his office is refusing what he should not take in.

上六：井收勿幕，有孚元吉。 (Jǐng shōu wù mù, yǒu fú yuán jí.) The well is harvested: do not cover it. There is trust, and the great good fortune.

The top line is the figure's only grade above the merely blameless, and it belongs to a line whose instruction is entirely about not keeping something to itself. 王弼 reads the position first: 處井上極，水巳出井，井功大成，在此爻矣，故曰「井收」也。群下仰之以濟，淵泉由之以通者也 — at the very top of the well, the water out of the well, the work of the well complete: that is what this line is, which is why the text says the well is harvested; everything below looks up to it to get across, and the deep spring flows through it. Then the instruction: 幕猶覆也。不擅其有，不私其利，則物歸之，往無窮矣，故曰「勿幕有孚，元吉」也 — 幕 means to cover; do not treat it as your own and do not keep the profit private, and things come home to it and it goes on without end, which is why the text says do not cover it, there is trust, the great good fortune. The subcommentary explains that 收 is the vocabulary of a harvest rather than of a storehouse, 收，式胄反。凡物可收成者，則謂之收，如五穀之有收也 — anything that comes in at the end of its work is called a 收, the way grain has a harvest — and it makes the same argument about the covering: 井功巳成，若能不擅其美，不專其利，不自掩覆，與眾共之，則為物所歸 — the work is done; if the beauty is not monopolized, the profit not kept exclusive, the spring not hidden away but shared, then things come home to it.

The Small Image is four characters and a verdict, 元吉在上，大成也, and both halves of it can be counted. 元吉, the strongest grade the book hands out, is written fourteen times across judgment and line texts; twelve of those are in line texts, and this figure uses it once, here, at the top. The phrase 元吉在上 appears in only two Small Images in the whole classic — this one and the top line of Hexagram 10, where 視履考詳，其旋元吉 is answered by 元吉在上，大有慶也 — so the book reserves this exact construction for a top line that has reached the end of a long piece of work and is not shutting it up. Two more words are written once each in the classic and both are here: 收 and 幕. And the character 孚, trust and the confidence that comes with it, is written twenty-six times in the judgment and line texts of the sixty-four; here it is attached to the completed well rather than to any person in the figure, which is the only place in this hexagram where the word appears at all. The book's highest grade in this figure goes to a well that is finished and left open, and the figure has spent five lines showing what happens to wells that are neglected, misdirected, cleaned and unused, repaired, and finally drawn from by somebody who will not drink anything unclean.

Daily Life

The most portable thing in this figure is the absence of a promise, and it takes a while to see how useful that is. There is no 亨 in its judgment, no 吉, no 利貞. A life doesn't get a discount for having a source in it. The judgment's account of the source is that it neither gains nor loses and serves everyone who comes; its account of the person is that whoever is drawing has a rope and a jar and can ruin the whole operation at the lip of the shaft. Set those two halves side by side and the figure's practical claim becomes clear: the things that most reliably fail around a person are not the sources they depend on but the arrangements they keep for reaching them, and those arrangements are entirely within their control and almost entirely unglamorous.

The two lowest lines and the fourth line are the figure's three ways of having a source and not being fed by it. The first is neglect: 舊井无禽, nobody comes, and after enough of that nobody can, because the mud is not a mood — it is what happens to a shaft nobody maintains. The second is direction: the water is running, the line is firm and central, and because nothing above it is drawing, it pours downward onto whatever is nearest — 井而似穀, a well that has become a creek. This is the figure's portrait of a capability that has settled for an audience instead of a use, and the diagnosis is not moral: 其道不交，則莫之與也, its way crosses nothing, so nothing is with it. The fourth line is the opposite failure and the easier one to live with: the work gets done, the shaft gets lined, nobody is fed yet, and the text says the modest word it deserves, 无咎. In a figure that hands out almost no grades, no blame is the grade of the person who kept the thing alive while nobody was drinking from it.

The third and the fifth lines are the pair worth sitting with longest, because they are the same water looked at from below and from above. The third line is cleaned and unused, and the book lets it ache — 為我心惻 — without turning the ache into an accusation. Its clause 可用汲 is a statement of fact, not a demand, and the rest of the line says where the missing half has to come from: 王明, somebody clear-sighted enough to see what is there. That is a hard sentence for a competent person to read, because the figure is not offering them a way to become visible; it is telling them that a well cannot draw itself, and then letting them continue to be clean while they wait. The fifth line is the opposite seat, the person who does the looking, and its discipline is entirely about what it refuses to take in: 不食污穢, 不納非賢, the cold spring that has kept its own nature. Neither line is equipped to do the other's job, and both are described as springs rather than as people. The figure's quiet claim across those two lines is that a source and a user are two different roles, and that whoever holds one of them is usually asked to keep it clean rather than to make something happen.

Then the top line, which is the figure's real instruction and the one to keep for a long week. 井收勿幕 — the work is finished and it is not to be covered. Everything the figure has been enforcing about upkeep arrives at a line that says the finished thing should be left open, and the note supplies the reasoning in the shortest form available: 不擅其有，不私其利. A covered well is a private property; an open one is the reason a place exists. The book's strongest grade here is not for cleverness, not for effort, and not for purity — the fourth line had the effort and the third had the purity, and both got less. It is for the moment when someone with a completed source declines to own it. The temptation at the end of work like this is to mistake the person who drew the water for the well itself; this line is the remedy in four characters. Do not cover it. It is not yours to cover.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does Hexagram 48 mean in one sentence?

That a source is kept rather than won: 改邑不改井, a town that can move above a shaft that cannot, 无喪无得, no loss and no gain because it is not a budget, 往來井井, everybody made clean by it and nobody changing what it is, and then the figure's only word of misfortune landing on an unfinished job, 汔至亦未繘井，羸其瓶，凶 — which the commentary translates out of the mechanics and into conduct, 汲水未出而覆，喻脩德未成而止, water spilled on the way up is a practice stopped before it is finished.

Why does the judgment's only word of misfortune fall on a broken pitcher rather than on a person?

Because the figure's subject is maintenance, and maintenance fails at the end rather than at the start. 王弼's note on the clause fixes what counts as completion — 井道以巳出為功也, the way of a well is accomplished only when the drawing is out — and then says that near-completion is not part of the scale: 幾至而覆，與未汲同也. The subcommentary answers the obvious objection that a dropped jar is no tragedy, 計獲一瓶之水，何足言凶？以喻人之修德不成, and states the warning in full: 棄其方成之功，雖有出井之勞，而與未汲不異，喻今人行常德，須善始令終. Nothing in this figure punishes anyone. It reports what neglect and haste cost, and the figure's one bad outcome is a piece of good work thrown away at the lip of the shaft.

What does 君子以勞民勸相 ask for, and why is the verb of that instruction a wage?

It asks a person to reward the labor that keeps a common source in use and to get people helping each other do it, and the subcommentary is explicit that 勞 here is payment, not toil: 勞謂勞賚，相猶助也, with 相 here meaning to help, not to look at and not to resemble. The reasoning is in the same passage, 井之為義，汲養而不窮，君子以勞來之恩，勤恤民隱，勸助百姓，使有成功，則此養而不窮也, and 王弼's note compresses it to a comparison: 可以勞民勸助，莫若養而不窮也. Of the sixty-four Images, this is the only one whose instruction begins with the character 勞, which puts the book's one figure about upkeep in the company of wages and mutual aid rather than of ceremony.

Why does the top line carry 元吉 when the rest of the figure carries almost no grades at all?

Because the grade is attached to the moment when a finished source is left open. Four of this figure's six line texts carry no verdict word at all; the two that do are 无咎 at the fourth line, for repairing the shaft, and 元吉 at the top, for refusing to cover it: 幕猶覆也。不擅其有，不私其利，則物歸之，往無窮矣. The word 元吉 is written fourteen times in the whole book, twelve of them in line texts, and the Small Image's four characters 元吉在上 appear in only two places in the classic — here and at the top of Hexagram 10. The work in this figure that earns 无咎 is upkeep, and the work that earns the book's highest grade is the decision not to own what one has drawn out.

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