PLATE XLVIII · FORTY-EIGHT OF SIXTY-FOURPLATE · XLVIII · Jǐng
Jǐng · The Well · 周易第四十八卦
UPPER TRIGRAM ☵ WATER · LOWER TRIGRAM ☴ WIND
卦辭
卦辭
THE JUDGMENT
“ The town can be moved;
the well cannot.
There is no losing,
no gaining.
People come and go,
the well gives.
If the rope almost reaches
but the jar is broken:
misfortune. ”“ The town can be moved;
the well cannot.
There is no losing,
no gaining.
People come and go,
the well gives.
If the rope almost reaches
but the jar is broken:
misfortune. ”
— Zhōu Yì, hexagram 48, judgment. c. 1000 BCE.
The longest image-judgment in this section. The well is the figure of what underlies all the moving of human life. The closing line is severe: getting close without completing is worse than not approaching at all.
象辭
象辭
THE IMAGE
“ Wood beneath water:
the image of the Well. ”“ Wood beneath water:
the image of the Well. ”
— Zhōu Yì, hexagram 48, image.
The original image continues: the noble person encourages the people in their work and exhorts them to mutual help. The well belongs to no one and serves everyone; the social order that sustains it is the small daily image of the same principle.
WHEN THIS HEXAGRAM APPEARSWHEN THIS HEXAGRAM APPEARS
If Jǐng has appeared in your reading, the book is naming an underlying source — a person, an institution, a discipline, a body of knowledge — that does not change with the comings and goings on the surface. The town can be moved; the well stays where it is. Whoever passes through can draw from it, and the well does not become more or less by the drawing.
Classical commentary reads this hexagram as the figure of the perennial source. What it names is whatever in the reader's life functions as that source — a meditation practice, a teacher, a friendship, a text, a craft. The hexagram appears when the question concerns the relation between the surface life, which is in motion, and the deep ground from which the surface life is being supplied.
What the book counsels is the careful maintenance of the connection to the source. The well is not the achievement; the access is. The strange closing image of the judgment — the rope that almost reaches, the jar that breaks at the last moment — is a warning against the kind of approach that comes close to the source but fails at the final stage. Almost-reaching is worse than not having started, because the well sits there ungiven.
Jǐng's failure mode is the assumption that the well will always be accessible without the work of maintaining the rope. The book is alert to this. The hexagram appears when the reader has been relying on a deep source and may have let the connection grow worn. The work is to mend the rope, fix the jar, and draw water with intent. The source will still be there. The question is whether the means of reaching it are intact.
COMPANION HEXAGRAMSCOMPANION HEXAGRAMS
Hexagrams that speak to Jǐng.
HEXAGRAM 16 · THE INVERSION
Yù, Enthusiasm. Where Jǐng is the deep underground source that does not change with the surface, Yù is the bright public surge of collective energy in a particular moment. The pair reads as the two registers of nourishment — the quiet underground supply and the visible communal event. The book pairs them because the brightness of Yù depends on a Jǐng-like reserve below it.
Read 豫 →HEXAGRAM 47 · TURNING-POINT KIN
Kùn, Oppression. The hexagram directly before Jǐng. Kùn is the lake gone dry, the depletion of resources; Jǐng is the unchanging source that becomes the only sustenance when the surface has been exhausted. Related as remedy — the book is observing that the way out of Kùn is often the deliberate return to a deeper supply that the surface life had forgotten to use.
Read 困 →ASK YOUR OWN QUESTIONASK YOUR OWN QUESTION
Or it may not. The oracle reads the moment as it is —
not the hexagram you came looking for.