The I Ching, Legge tr.

The I Ching, Legge tr.: The Yî King Text: Section I...

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This is an excerpt from the *I Ching* (Book of Changes), a Chinese classical divination text, presenting Hexagram 26 — *Tâ Khû* ("Great Accumulation") — along with its traditional line readings and explanatory commentary. The hexagram carries a dual meaning: restraint and accumulation, on the premise that what is held back builds in strength and virtue. The six individual line readings use concrete images — a carriage with its strap removed, a bull restrained with a wooden yoke, a castrated boar — to describe progressively different relationships between a repressive force and the energy it checks. The commentary explains that the first three lines represent those subject to restraint, while the upper three lines exercise it, and that the ultimate goal of this entire dynamic is the accumulation of moral virtue rather than material power. A notably distinctive claim is that the most auspicious outcomes come not from direct action or confrontation but from timely self-restraint and precaution — the person who willingly halts, or who neutralizes danger early (like defanging a boar before conflict arises), achieves better fortune than one who presses forward. The text concludes on an expansive note: once the work of restraint is complete, the accumulated virtue gives its possessor command over "the firmament of heaven."

The I Ching, Legge tr.: The Yî King Text: Section I...

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