Coming to Meet (Kâu)

Coming to Meet (Kâu), Hexagram XLIV, makes sudden encounter a political warning: a single weak line appears among five strong ones, and the danger lies in allowing that first intrusion to gather strength. Its commentary joins seasonal decline to the image of an unfit entrant seeking influence, and stresses restraint before the threat can spread.

Seasonal Image and Political Warning

The accompanying note places Coming to Meet in the fifth month, when both light and heat are supposed to begin diminishing. It follows the hexagram of the third month, in which the single divided line at the top of Breakthrough has been displaced and Humility has ruled over the fourth month. Now the divided line begins its return. The sequence makes the hexagram’s appearance part of a turning seasonal pattern, but the commentary gives that pattern immediate political force: King Wen reads the returning line as a small or unworthy man beginning to insinuate himself into the government.

The danger is a process, not merely an isolated meeting. If left unchecked, the intruder’s influence will grow; one good man after another will be displaced, and their vacant places filled by others of the same kind. King Wen’s judgment therefore enjoins resistance to the bad man’s encroachment. The decisive question is whether the first appearance is checked before it becomes a change in the character of government.

Meaning and Method of Interpretation

The name Kâu means suddenly and casually encountering or meeting with. The commentator connects that definition to the divided line’s abrupt appearance in the figure, then argues that the meaning of the hexagram governs how its individual lines are read. In this instance, that governing idea takes precedence over the more usual interpretation based on line correspondence.

This explanation also illustrates the translator’s broader account of how the text works. King Wen takes up the hexagrams in an order shaped by the contrasts between successive figures and states the significance of each as a whole, sometimes indicating what action its circumstances call for and whether it is fortunate. The Duke of Zhou then interprets the individual lines through symbolic illustrations and judgments of fortune; in the translator’s account, the interpretation of the whole should accord with the combined significance of those lines. But the figures do not, by themselves, simply disclose the moral teaching assigned to them: the commentator says that such sentiments are imposed on them by King Wen and the Duke of Zhou, sometimes by forcing the symbolism.

The First Line and the Need for Restraint

The first line is divided where, according to the usual rule of correctness, it ought to be whole. The commentary turns this mismatch into the image of a bold, bad woman who appears unexpectedly and seeks to subdue or win all five strong lines. The image extends the political warning: just as such a woman would not be chosen in marriage, a good servant of the country should resist the entry into government of an officer represented by her.

The line text gives that resistance a concrete form. Its subject is to be kept fastened like a carriage secured to a metal drag; with firm correctness there will be good fortune, but movement in any direction brings evil. If restraint fails, the subject resembles a lean pig that keeps jumping about. The commentary sharpens the image: the carriage must not only be stopped by its metal drag but also tied to something steadfast. External restraint and internal restraint must both oppose the bad man; otherwise what begins as an unexpected appearance becomes dangerous and repellent.

A Warning Against Easy Symbolic Certainty

The commentator treats Coming to Meet as evidence of interpretation at work, not as a meaning transparently contained in the diagram. The hexagram’s name supplies the governing idea of sudden encounter; its anomalous first line becomes the political figure of an unwanted entrant; and the line’s images of binding, movement, and a restless pig are made to serve the same warning. The result is a connected reading, but one the commentary openly describes as imposed on the figures rather than learned from them as self-evident doctrine.

That tension reflects the translator’s stated method. He rejects a literal rendering of the Chinese as a sequence of word-equivalents, arguing that its written characters are symbols of ideas and that translation must convey the writer’s thought intelligibly. A translator may add words to express what the original leaves implicit, while still aiming to render its meaning accurately and concisely. The interpretation of Coming to Meet thus carries two linked cautions: politically, do not allow a harmful influence to establish itself; interpretively, recognize how much work is being done when symbolic lines are made to speak as a coherent lesson.