Joy — 兑

What Is Hexagram 58?

Hexagram 58, 兌 (duì), is Joy — also Englished as the Joyous, or as Pleasure — the fifty-eighth figure: 兌 Lake below and 兌 Lake above, two marshes lying level and sharing their water. Its subject is gladness that comes out of exchange between equals, and what happens to gladness when the exchange stops and only the pleasing is left.

The 疏 opens with the definition and then immediately makes it physical: 兌，說也。《說卦》曰：「說萬物者莫說乎澤。」以兌是象澤之卦，故以「兌」為名 — duì means gladness; the 說卦 says that of the things that gladden the ten thousand things, none gladdens like the marsh, and since this trigram pictures the marsh, the marsh supplies the name. Then the analogy is carried across to human affairs: 澤以潤生萬物，所以萬物皆說：施於人事，猶人君以恩惠養民，民無不說也 — the marsh moistens and things come up, and so everything is glad; applied to human affairs, it is a ruler feeding his people on kindness, and no one is not glad. Gladness here is not a mood that arrives from nowhere. It is the felt side of being supplied.

The same paragraph then puts the guardrail in, and the guardrail is the whole figure: 惠施民說，所以為亨。以說說物，恐陷諂邪，其利在於貞正 — kindness given makes the people glad, and that is where the passage comes from; but to gladden others by being pleasant risks falling into flattery and crookedness, and the profit of this figure lies in being correct. Two clauses, two mechanisms, and the second one explains why a figure with such a warm name spends four of its six lines on the failures of pleasantness.

The 序卦 puts it immediately after the wind that gets in: 入而后說之，故受之以兌；兌者說也 — only after getting inside is there gladness. That placement is an argument. Hexagram 57 is about influence that enters without forcing; 58 is what is felt once it has entered. You cannot be glad at something you have not got into, which is why the sequence does not offer joy as a starting point. And the next link is the honest one: 說而后散之，故受之以渙 — gladness, and then it scatters; the following figure is dispersal. The book does not treat joy as a state to be held. It treats it as a passage with two ends.

The 雜卦 states the pair from the far side in three characters each: 兌見而巽伏也 — the joyful shows, the wind keeps out of sight. That contrast is worth keeping. Of everything in this book, gladness is the least concealable condition: it is visible in the face before it is known to the person wearing it, and a gladness that has to be hidden has already stopped being the thing it claims to be.

Two other facts about the word belong here. In this figure the character 說, whenever the commentaries read it as 悅, is pronounced yuè and means gladness, not shuō, to speak — the same graph serves both, and the classic uses it in the older sense. And the graph 兌 itself keeps a 口 at its base, which is why 說卦 gives this trigram the mouth and the tongue, and why the classic's figure of joy is also the figure of speech: what is said, and to whom, and in what tone, is the whole of the subject. Of the six line texts of this figure, five carry the character 兌. The one that does not is the fifth, and what it says instead is 剝 — erosion. That single substitution is the best summary of Hexagram 58 there is, and it is worth arriving at slowly.

Trigram Structure

兌 is one yielding line over two firm ones: soft on the outside, firm underneath, and this figure doubles it, so each half repeats the shape. The same three strokes are stacked twice here, which places it among the eight doubled figures; it is the only one of that eight whose image is stated as a connection rather than a repetition. The others are doubled from above: heaven on heaven, thunder on thunder, wind following wind. 麗澤 is not stacked, and 王弼 makes the point by glossing the first character: 麗，猶連也。施說之盛，莫盛於此 — 麗 means joined, and there is no fuller giving of gladness than this. Two marshes at the same level, touching, neither draining the other. The geometry of this figure is lateral.

說卦 gives the one-word nature, and it is the same word as the name: 兌，說也. The fourth chapter, listing what each trigram does to things, says 兌以說之, and the sixth says 說萬物者莫說乎澤 — the marsh is what gladdens. Its station in the round of the year is autumn, and this is where the figure stops being cheerful: 兌，正秋也，萬物之所說也，故曰說 — 兌 is mid-autumn, the time when the ten thousand things are glad, and that is why it is called gladness. Autumn is harvest and it is also the season of cutting, and the same trigram carries both. Nothing in this figure survives by avoiding that. The gladness the book is describing is the gladness of the reaping, which is inseparable from the fact that something is being cut.

The eleventh chapter gives this trigram nine entries, and they read like a warning label: 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. A marsh; the youngest daughter; the shaman; the mouth and the tongue; breaking; attached and bursting; and, for its ground, hard salt earth; a secondary wife; a sheep. Take them in order. 為少女 places it as the last of the three exchanges between the primal pair, the child born after the family's line is already settled — charm without inheritance, which is exactly the position the book gives pleasure. 為巫 and 為口舌 put the same organ in two trades: address to what cannot answer, and talk to whoever is in the room. 為毀折 and 為附決 are the failure modes of the soft outside: things break where they were only bent, and what was attached comes away with a snap. 為剛鹵 is the entry worth pausing on: the bed of a marsh is hard, salt, barren ground. Under all that moisture the ground does not grow anything. And 為妾 names the social place: pleasure is welcome in the house and is not the household. The sheep, oddly, never appears in this figure's own text; the sheep lines in the book sit in Hexagram 34, 43 and 54, and this figure assigns the animal without ever using it.

Laid out, the six lines run firm, firm, yielding, firm, firm, yielding. Three are correctly placed: 初九 firm in the odd first, 九五 firm in the odd fifth, 上六 yielding in the even sixth. Three are not: 九二 firm in the even second, 六三 yielding in the odd third, 九四 firm in the even fourth. And no pair answers. 初九 over 九四 is firm under firm; 九二 under 九五 is firm under firm; 六三 under 上六 is yielding under yielding. Not one of the three correspondences is mixed, so not one is a correspondence. This is not a peculiarity of this figure but a property of all eight doubled figures, and it matters more here than elsewhere: it means that nothing in Hexagram 58 is conducted by a partner across the middle. Everything happens by contact, by adjacency, by what is level and next to what. The one relation the figure does have is lateral, which is why its image is two marshes and its emblem of joy is a friend.

The 彖 states the shape as a pair of clauses and the pair is the argument: 剛中而柔外，說以利貞 — firm at the centers, soft on the outside; that is gladness which holds to what is correct. 王弼's note on the pair is the plainest statement of the law in the figure: 說而違剛則諂，剛而違說則暴。剛中而柔外，所以說以利貞也 — gladness without firmness turns into flattery, and firmness without gladness turns into brutality. He then draws the consequence for each: 剛中，故利貞，柔外，故說亨. The 疏 puts the same thing in the language of defense: 外雖柔說，而內德剛正，則不畏邪諂。內雖剛正，而外跡柔說，則不憂侵暴 — soft in appearance and firm in substance, and flattery cannot get a hold; firm inside and soft in manner, and violence has no excuse. The two middle lines are the ones holding the centers, 九二 and 九五, and they are the figure's only firm purchase.

Set the figure against its two mirrors. Reverse every line and you get Hexagram 52, 艮 Mountain, whose one-word nature is 艮，止也 — stopping. Gladness spends itself outward; the mountain keeps still. Turn the figure upside down and you get Hexagram 57, 巽 Wind, the figure that came before, and the 雜卦 holds the pair in one breath: 兌見而巽伏也. The same soft line on the outside in both cases, and the opposite decision about being seen.

The Judgment

兌：亨。利貞。

Duì: hēng. Lì zhēn.

Our rendering: Joy: there is passage. Holding to what is correct is where the profit is.

Four characters of text, and not one of them is a promise. It makes two claims and joins them without argument. 亨, passage: something gets through. 利貞, what is profitable is correctness — the 利 is not a promise but a statement about what pays, and 貞 is the steady holding of a thing rather than a single right act. The 疏 supplies the reasoning for both halves in one move: 惠施民說，所以為亨 — kindness given, the people glad: that is the passage; 以說說物，恐陷諂邪，其利在於貞正 — gladdening others by pleasantness risks flattery and crookedness, so what pays is correctness.

That is the whole doctrine of the figure, and its shape is unusual. Most judgments in this book either promise an outcome or name a condition. This one names a mechanism and then names its failure mode in the same breath, and leaves the reader to notice that the failure is the mechanism working without a center. There is no third clause to soften it.

The 彖 unfolds it, and the first thing it does is repeat the name: 兌，說也。剛中而柔外，說以利貞，是以順乎天，而應乎人. Gladness firm at the center and soft outside, holding to correctness, therefore falls in with heaven above and answers to people below. 王弼 glosses the heaven half with a sentence that deserves its own paragraph: 天剛而不失說者也 — heaven is firm and does not lose its gladness. The 疏 expands: 天為剛德而有柔克，是剛而不失其說也 — heaven's virtue is firmness and it has a soft overcoming in it, so it is firm without having lost the capacity to gladden. Then the human half: 人心說於惠澤，能以惠澤說人，是下應乎人也. So the model is not "be pleasant." It is "be firm and still able to gladden," which is a considerably harder assignment, and the one this figure keeps setting.

What follows is the passage that made this hexagram famous in political writing, and it is worth reading as psychology rather than as statecraft: 說以先民，民忘其勞；說以犯難，民忘其死. Gladness before labor, and the people forget the labor; gladness before danger, and the people forget that they can die. The 疏 is careful about the order and repeats it twice: 先以說豫撫民，然後使之從事，則民皆竭力忘其從事之勞 — first settle the people with gladness, then put them to the work, and they will spend themselves and forget the toil; 先以說豫勞民，然後使之犯難，則民皆授命 — first gladden them, then send them into the difficulty, and they will give their lives. The claim is empirical and slightly uncomfortable: gladness is the only thing that makes cost forgettable. Nobody forgets a cost that was never preceded by anything but the cost. And the 彖 closes on 說之大，民勸矣哉 — gladness at its greatest, and the people urge themselves on; 勸 here is reflexive, they exhort themselves, no one has to stand behind them.

The Jungian reading of this hexagram is about the difference between feeling as a function of the psyche and pleasantness as a social instrument, and Jung's writing on the persona is the closest thing in his work to the 彖's second clause. The persona is not a lie. It is the face worn for a role, and no life manages without one; the trouble starts when the wearer can no longer tell the face from what it covers, and begins to take the mask's requirements for his own needs. What the 彖 adds to that is a diagnosis of the failure inside the mask: flattery is gladness that has lost its firmness, which means it has lost its center, which means there is nothing behind it to be glad about. The pleasant person who has nothing firm at the center is not hiding a self; he has stopped having one to hide, and the people around him feel the absence long before they can name it.

Jung's other contribution is the pairing he made between love and the will to power, each the shadow of the other. Hexagram 58 is where that pairing becomes concrete, because it is the figure of getting something by being agreeable — and the fifth line, where the ruler trusts the pleasant person at his side, is what the will to power looks like when it has learned to smile. The figure does not say that gladness and influence are incompatible. It says that in this configuration one of them is always paying for the other, and the reader is asked to work out which.

The Image

象曰：麗澤，兌；君子以朋友講習。

Xiàng yuē: lì zé, duì; jūn zǐ yǐ péng yǒu jiǎng xí.

Our rendering: Marsh joined to marsh: Joy. The noble one therefore takes up a text with friends, saying it over and doing it over.

王弼's whole note on the image is one sentence, and it turns on a single gloss: 麗，猶連也。施說之盛，莫盛於此 — 麗 means joined; there is no fuller giving of gladness than this. The 疏 builds the picture: 兩澤相連，潤說之盛 — two marshes touching, and the moistening at its height. That is a different image from every other doubled figure in the book. Two marshes side by side do not add up to a bigger marsh; they stay two, and what passes between them passes sideways. Each keeps its own water and neither dries out. It is a picture of exchange between equals, and it is the only such picture the trigram section of this book offers.

Then the human sentence, which is the surprising one: 君子以朋友講習. The 疏 unpacks the pair of nouns with an older gloss: 同門曰朋，同志曰友 — those who came in through the same gate are 朋, those who hold the same aim are 友. Companions of study and companions of purpose, and the figure requires both. 講 is to expound, to say a thing through until it is clear; 習 is repetition, the same act done again and again until it sits in the body. Then the claim: 朋友聚居，講習道義，相說之盛，莫過於此也 — friends gathered, going over the way and its rightness together: there is no fuller mutual gladness than that.

Put that beside the 序卦's next link, 說而后散之 — gladness, and then it scatters — and the image turns out to be doing repair work on the sequence. The book has just said that joy disperses; the image now says what does not. A pleasure that is consumed disperses: the meal ends, the evening ends, the good news is used up in a week. A pleasure that is rehearsed does not, because repeating it is the pleasure. Two people going over the same passage again next month are not re-consuming an old joy; they are making the joy again, and the marsh metaphor is exact about why: water that is shared at the same level does not run out.

Jung's practice had a hard rule that belongs here. Understanding something and being changed by it are two different events, and only the second one counts; he was impatient with analysis that produced insight and left the life untouched, and he insisted that what is seen has to be worked, repeatedly, in ordinary conditions, before it becomes anything. 習 is that insistence in a single character: not the insight, the drill. And 同志, the shared aim, is what keeps the drill from becoming routine — two people repeating a text with the same purpose in view are sharpening each other, while two people repeating a text with no purpose are only passing time. The image says joy at its fullest is a study group, and it means it literally enough to be disappointing. What it promises is not ecstasy. It is the specific, durable gladness of being understood by someone who is working on the same thing.

The Lines

初九 — gladness in tune

初九：和兌，吉。 Chū jiǔ: hé duì, jí.

Our rendering: Gladness that is in tune: good fortune.

The bottom line of the figure, firm in the right place, and 和 is a word for tuned strings as much as for social harmony. 王弼 gives the reason for the good fortune in a single clause: 居兌之初，應不在一，無所黨系，和兌之謂也 — at the beginning of gladness, with no single line it answers to, bound to no faction: that is what gladness in tune means. The 疏 spells out the consequence: 說物以和，何往不吉 — gladden things in tune, and where would one go that is not fortunate. Then the qualifier that makes it a moral claim rather than a pleasant one: 說不在諂 — the gladness here is not flattery, 履斯而行，未見有疑之者, walk on this and no one has yet doubted you.

The small image says only 行未疑也 — the conduct raises no suspicion. That is a modest sentence, and it is the compliment this figure pays where it trusts a line, because suspicion is precisely what pleasantness attracts. Here is the test the first line proposes: if nobody who knows you wonders what you are after, your gladness is in tune. If they do, then whatever it is, it is not this.

九二 — trust in the wrong seat

九二：孚兌，吉，悔亡。 Jiǔ èr: fú duì, jí, huǐ wáng.

Our rendering: Gladness with trust in it: good fortune; regret is gone.

九二 is firm in an even place and therefore out of position, and every commentary on this line begins from that awkwardness. 王弼: 說不失中，有孚者也。失位而說，孚吉，乃悔亡也 — gladness that has not lost the center is what has trust in it; gladness from a misplaced position, and yet trusted, is fortunate — and only then is regret gone. The 疏 draws out the sequence: 說而有信，則吉從之 — gladness with trustworthiness in it, and the good fortune follows; 然履失其位，有信而吉，乃得亡悔 — the position is wrong, but because the trust is there the good fortune comes, and the regret is removed.

The word order in the text is the teaching. 吉 comes before 悔亡: the good fortune is not the reward for having got into the right place; it is what happens when someone is trusted in the wrong one. Regret goes last because regret is what a misplaced life costs, and trust is the only thing that pays it down. The small image names the asset: 孚兌之吉，信志也 — the trust is in the aim, not in the record. 王弼's gloss is two characters, 其志信也.

In ordinary life this is the person doing work that does not match his title, in a place that does not fit him, and being relied on anyway. The figure does not tell him to move. It tells him that the discomfort of the wrong seat and the trust of the people around him can coexist, and that the second is what keeps the first from curdling into resentment.

六三 — gladness that comes looking

六三：來兌，凶。 Liù sān: lái duì, xiōng.

Our rendering: Gladness that comes looking: misfortune.

The only 凶 in the figure, and the diagnosis is about direction. 王弼: 以陰柔之質，履非其位，來求說者也。非正而求說，邪佞者也 — soft in substance, out of place, coming to seek gladness; seeking gladness without correctness is the crooked and flattering way. The 疏 is precise about the geometry: 三為陽位，陰來居之，是進來求說 — the third place is a firm one, a yielding line is sitting in it, and so it comes inward looking for gladness.

來 is the operative word. It is the verb of approaching someone, and what the line describes is a person who goes toward pleasure rather than receiving it — who arrives where the pleasing is and works the room. The figure does not condemn enjoyment. It condemns the errand. A yielding line in a firm place has no standing of its own, so it seeks standing by being agreeable, and the small image gives the structural reason with no moralizing at all: 位不當也 — the position is wrong. Everything in this line follows from a misfit, and the flattery is the misfit's strategy rather than its cause.

This is the figure's portrait of the audience-seeker, and the reason it carries the only 凶 in a hexagram about joy is that the strategy works often enough to be tempting. The third line is not punished for wanting to be liked. It is punished for having made being liked into a way of standing somewhere.

九四 — joy put on the scales

九四：商兌，未寧，介疾有喜。 Jiǔ sì: shāng duì, wèi níng, jiè jí yǒu xǐ.

Our rendering: Gladness held in appraisal, not yet at ease; what walls off the sickness brings delight.

商 is a double word — to deliberate, to weigh and cut, and also the merchant who does the weighing — and the line uses both at once: this is gladness that has become a matter of pricing. 王弼: 商，商量裁制之謂也。介，隔也。三為佞說，將近至尊。故四以剛德，裁而隔之，匡內制外，是以未寧也 — 商 is deliberating and cutting to measure; 介 is to separate; the third line is flattery on its way up to the ruler, and the fourth, firm in substance, must cut it off and hold it back, ordering the inside and controlling the outside, and that is why there is no peace yet. Then the outcome: 處於幾近，閑邪介疾，宜其有喜也 — from a position close to the ruler, fencing out what is crooked and blocking the sickness, delight is what it deserves.

The 疏 calls the flatterer by a blunt name: 佞邪之人，國之疾也 — the flattering and crooked man is the disease of a state. So 介疾 is not metaphor; it is quarantine. And 未寧 — not yet at ease — is the honest part of the line, because the deliberation is unfinished while the pressure is still on. Delight does not arrive during the weighing. It arrives after the wall goes up. The small image, 九四之喜，有慶也, widens the scope: the 疏 reads 有慶 as the ruler's approval and the reliance of everyone under him, which is the book's way of saying the joy was public, not personal.

Anyone who has had to decide whether a charming colleague is an asset or an infection knows the temperature of this line. The discomfort is not a sign that the judgment is going wrong. It is what judgment feels like while it is being made, in a figure where the whole temptation is to skip it and enjoy the company.

九五 — trust placed in erosion

九五：孚于剝，有厲。 Jiǔ wǔ: fú yú bō, yǒu lì.

Our rendering: Trust placed in what wears away: peril.

The ruler's line, and the single line of this figure that does not contain the character 兌. What it says instead is 剝, the name of Hexagram 23, the figure of erosion, of what strips a thing from underneath while everyone is looking at the surface. 王弼 explains how it happens: 比於上六，而與相得，處尊正之位，不說信乎陽，而說信乎陰，「孚於剝」之義也 — next to the top line and getting on well with her, holding the honorable and correct seat, and yet trusting not what is firm but what is yielding: that is trusting in erosion. Then he defines the word: 「剝」之為義，小人道長之謂 — 剝 means the way of small people growing long.

The 疏 supplies the structural cause, and it is the sentence that explains the line: 九五，處尊正之位，下無其應，比於上六，與之相得 — the honorable and correct seat, and nothing below answers it; so it attaches to the line above. This figure has no correspondence anywhere, and the ruler is the loneliest place in it. With no counterpart to speak to, the only conversation available is with the agreeable person standing next to him, and 與相得 is exactly what a competent flatterer provides. 信而成剝，危之道也 — trust, and from trust the erosion; that is the road of danger. Not ruin. 有厲 is peril, which in this book is a warning that still has time in it.

The small image then performs a trick worth pausing over. It says 孚于剝，位正當也, which sounds like praise — the seat is correct and in place — and 王弼 reads it as a reproach: 以正當之位，信於小人而疏君子，故曰「位正當」也 — because the seat is correct and in place, and it trusts the small man while keeping the noble one at a distance; that is why it says the seat is correct and in place. The 疏 agrees: 以正當之位，宜在君子，而信小人，故以當位責之也 — a seat like this should be held toward the noble, and it is spent on the small; the correctness of the seat is the accusation. Two characters of praise, and the whole judgment is in what they were supposed to have been spent on.

上六 — gladness that waits to be asked

上六：引兌。 Shàng liù: yǐn duì.

Our rendering: Gladness that waits to be drawn out.

Two characters, and the only line text in this figure that carries no verdict at all. 王弼: 以夫陰質，最處說後，靜退者也。故必見引，然後乃說也 — soft in substance, placed at the very back of gladness, quiet and withdrawing; it must be drawn out before it will be glad. The 疏 contrasts her with the third line and the contrast is the point: 最在兌後，是自靜退，不同六三自進求說，必須他人見引，然後乃說 — she sits at the far end, withdrawing of her own accord, unlike the third line which advances to seek gladness; she has to be invited, and only then is she glad.

引 is to draw a bow, to pull a thing toward you, to lead. The small image closes the figure on the flat note the book reserves for what is nearly right: 上六引兌，未光也, and the 疏 will not soften it — 雖免躁求之凶，亦有後時之失，所以《經》無「吉」文，以其道未光故也 — she escapes the misfortune of the frantic seeker, and she pays with the failure of having come too late, which is why the text gives no good fortune: her way has not become bright.

So the figure ends with two ways of getting gladness wrong, and they are mirror images. The third line chases it and is told misfortune. The top line waits to be asked and is told nothing at all — no blame, no good fortune, a blessing withheld. The book is more severe about the second one than it sounds, because a life spent waiting to be invited has no verdict to argue with; it simply does not light up. Between the two sits the fifth line trusting the wrong person and the fourth line doing the unpleasant weighing, and the whole of Hexagram 58 is in that arrangement: gladness is not something you go and get, and it is not something you sit still for. It arrives between people who are level with each other and doing something together, which is what the image said in the first place.

One last count, because the figure's vocabulary is unusually clean. 吉 appears twice, both in the lower half; 凶 once, at the third line; 厲 once, 喜 once, 悔亡 once. The character 咎 — fault, blame — does not appear anywhere in this hexagram, in the judgment or in any line. Its failures are all of another kind: a wrong direction, an unfinished deliberation, a misplaced trust, an hour that passed. Nothing here is a crime, and that is why nothing here is easy to notice.

Daily Life

The first practical use of this hexagram is a question with two parts, and it only works if you answer both. What actually gladdens you? And who is paying for it? The 彖 supplies the first half in the phrase about people forgetting their labor — gladness is the one condition under which human beings will spend themselves without keeping accounts. That is a real power and it is not a bad thing; almost everything worth doing is done by people who forgot how much it cost. The second half comes from the 疏's guardrail: the same force runs on pleasantness, and pleasantness without a center is flattery. So the audit is not "am I enjoying this." It is "is anyone being told a comfortable untruth so that this can continue." Where the answer is no, the gladness is likely the good kind, and it can be leaned on. Where the answer is yes, the figure's fifth line already describes the ending.

The second use is the image, and it is the part almost nobody takes literally. Find one person who is working on the same question you are, and make a standing appointment to go over it — not to report progress, not to network, but to say the material through and do it again. 講 then 習. This is the difference between a friendship built on regard and a friendship built on work, and the figure puts the second higher, because the regard has to be renewed by something. Two marshes at the same level do not need to be told to share. The condition is the level: the moment one of them is the teacher and the other the audience, the water stops moving sideways. That is why 同志 matters more than 同門 in the long run, and why the arrangement fails when one person's aim is to be admired.

The third use is the unpleasant one, and it is what the fourth and fifth lines are for. Somewhere in your circumstances there is a person whose agreeableness is doing work that agreeableness should not do, and the figure is blunt that noticing this will cost you peace before it gives you anything. 未寧, not yet at ease, is the expected condition of the weeks in which the judgment is being made. What the line promises is not that the decision will feel good. It promises 有喜, delight, on the other side of the wall — and the wall is the point, because 介 means to put something between. If you cannot name what you are separating yourself from, you have not made the decision yet, and the charming person can feel that as surely as you can.

The last use is small and worth more than it looks. The top line is gladness that waits to be invited, and the book gives it no verdict at all: no misfortune, no good fortune, 未光也, the way has not become bright. Most people read that as the safe option. It is not the safe option; it is the unwritten one. If there is something you would like to be part of and you have been waiting for the invitation, this hexagram's advice is not to wait more gracefully. It is to notice that a life arranged around not imposing has quietly arranged itself around not appearing.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does 兌 actually mean?

The 疏 gives the name, then the physical reason for it: 兌，說也, and 《說卦》曰：「說萬物者莫說乎澤」 — of the things that gladden the ten thousand things, none gladdens like the marsh, so the marsh supplies the name. The character 說 in this context is read yuè and means gladness, not shuō, to speak, though the same graph carries both and 說卦 does give this trigram the mouth and the tongue. The 疏 then states the mechanism: 澤以潤生萬物，所以萬物皆說 — the marsh moistens and things come up, and so everything is glad. Gladness, here, is the felt side of being supplied.

Why does a hexagram called Joy spend its lines on flattery and misplaced trust?

Because the 疏 puts the guardrail in the same paragraph as the definition: 惠施民說，所以為亨。以說說物，恐陷諂邪，其利在於貞正 — kindness given makes people glad and that is the passage, but gladdening by pleasantness risks falling into flattery and crookedness, so what pays is correctness. 王弼 states the same law in the 彖's note: 說而違剛則諂，剛而違說則暴 — gladness without firmness becomes flattery, firmness without gladness becomes brutality. A figure whose whole virtue is the soft outside is exactly where the soft outside needs watching, which is why four of the six lines are about gladness going wrong rather than right.

Why is the image two marshes and a group of friends studying?

王弼 glosses the first word and the whole image follows: 麗，猶連也 — 麗 means joined, and 施說之盛，莫盛於此. The 疏 fills it in with two marshes touching, 兩澤相連，潤說之盛, and then reads the human half through an older distinction: 同門曰朋，同志曰友 — same gate, companions; same aim, friends. 講 is to expound and 習 is to repeat, and the 疏's conclusion is that friends going over the way together is the fullest form of mutual gladness there is, 相說之盛，莫過於此也. Two marshes do not merge into one; they stay level and share.

What does 孚于剝 mean at the fifth line?

剝 is the name of Hexagram 23, the figure of erosion, and 王弼 defines it in use: 「剝」之為義，小人道長之謂 — 剝 means the way of small people growing longer. The fifth line holds the honorable and correct seat and yet trusts what is yielding rather than what is firm. The 疏 gives the cause, which is structural rather than moral: 下無其應，比於上六，與之相得 — nothing below answers it, so it attaches to the line above, and 與相得 is exactly what an agreeable person provides. The verdict is 有厲, peril, not ruin: a warning with time left in it. The small image's 位正當也 sounds like praise and is read by 王弼 as the accusation — the seat is correct, and that is what makes trusting the wrong person a waste.

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