Pleasure

Pleasure is the defining quality of Tui, a hexagram associated with a marsh or lake, and its promise of progress is conditional: mildness and harmony must be directed by firmness, correctness, and sincerity. The commentary follows pleasure through the six lines as both a source of good fortune and a force that can seduce, injure, or gather people around a leader.

Definition and Governing Condition

Tui intimates progress and attainment, but only when its subject is firm and correct. The commentary treats pleasure not as an uncomplicated blessing but as a human disposition whose effects depend on what guides it. Mildness and harmony can make a person agreeable; without integrity to govern them, however, they may drift from what is right. The hexagram’s opening condition therefore places ethical direction beside pleasure from the outset: enjoyment may be fruitful, but it cannot be trusted merely because it feels harmonious.

The image is a marsh or lake, where collected water gives rise to moistening vapours. The editors cited in the commentary compare this upward movement with the visible complexion of a person whose health is vigorous: in both cases an inward condition manifests outwardly. They use that analogy to explain how pleasure belongs to the hexagram, while also emphasizing that its soft lines owe their power to the strong lines. Mildness and harmony need strength to control and direct them. The natural image thus becomes an account of ethical dependence: pleasant feeling is not enough on its own, and its outward effects can fail to be correct if it lacks an ordering principle.

The Hexagram’s Pattern and Promise

The commentary asks where the promise of progress and attainment appears in Tui’s figure. It finds it in one weak line placed above each trigram and supported by two strong lines. In its interpretation, mildness and benignity are energized by a double portion of strength. The arrangement makes the favorable prospect a matter of relationship between qualities, rather than a simple equation between pleasure and success: softness is supported, and its effects can advance, because strength underlies it.

That reading fits the book’s broader account of how a hexagram’s meaning is formed. Its six lines are interpreted in relation to one another, while the significance of each line varies with the hexagram’s name and the condition it represents. Here, the whole figure establishes pleasure as the subject, but the line-by-line commentary tests that subject against particular positions, neighbors, and relations. The result is not one undifferentiated verdict. Each line presents a different circumstance in which pleasure may be inwardly sufficient, protected by sincerity, exposed to injury, or turned outward toward other people.

Inward Harmony and Sincerity

The first line, undivided, presents pleasure arising from inward harmony and promises good fortune. The commentary notes that the line is strong in a place of strength and has no proper correlate above it; it is therefore confined to itself. That isolation does not become a defect in this case. Its subject is sufficient, and the good outcome rests on an inwardly complete condition rather than on attracting support or relying on a corresponding line.

The second line, also undivided, locates pleasure in inward sincerity and likewise promises good fortune, with occasion for repentance disappearing. By position, the line ought to be weak, but it is strong; it has no proper correlate, and its adjacency to the weak third line could leave its subject vulnerable to harmful influence. Its central position, however, gives sincerity the power to counteract that risk. The contrast with the first line is precise: the first is fortunate through self-sufficiency, whereas the second is fortunate because inward sincerity steadies a potentially exposed position. In both cases, pleasure is made reliable by an inward quality, not by indulgence.

The Risks of Excess and Seduction

The third line marks the danger of excessive devotion to pleasure. The commentary, following the interpretation of the Khang-hsî editors, says that the threatened evil follows from making pleasure an excessive attachment. Where the first two lines find good fortune in inward harmony and sincerity, the third shows that pleasure can become harmful when it takes over as an end in itself. The warning is not against pleasure in every form; it concerns the loss of proportion that turns a favorable human feeling into a source of danger.

The fourth line encounters a more particular temptation. Its position beside the weak third line makes it possible for the third line’s influence to have an injurious effect. Yet the subject of the fourth reflects and deliberates before yielding to pleasure’s seduction, and the commentary therefore finds cause for joy. The line’s favorable turn comes not from being untouched by temptation but from pausing before it takes hold. Against the third line’s excessive devotion, the fourth offers a practical distinction: pleasure may border on harm, but judgment and self-command can prevent that proximity from determining the outcome.

The fifth line faces danger from the weak sixth line above, in whom it is represented as trusting. The commentary leaves the result open in its own terms: the subject’s strength and sincerity may be perverted into instruments of evil, or they may operate beneficially. Strength and sincerity are therefore not automatic safeguards. Their effect depends on the relation in which they are placed and on the trust that directs them. This uncertainty deepens the hexagram’s central caution: even qualities that usually guide pleasure well can be turned toward harm when their connection with others is compromised.

Attraction, Leadership, and Ethical Pleasure

The topmost line, divided, depicts its subject taking pleasure in leading and attracting others. Its symbolism resembles that of the third line, but the commentary gives no explicit positive auspice. The third-line subject attracts people around itself for the sake of pleasure; the top-line subject leads them to follow in pursuit of it. The distinction is one of direction and influence: pleasure moves from personal attachment toward the organization of other people’s actions. Because the line offers no stated favorable outcome, attraction and leadership remain ethically unsettled rather than being endorsed simply because others follow.

Across the six lines, Tui distinguishes pleasure that is inwardly grounded from pleasure that becomes excessive, seductive, or influential. Harmony can be fortunate when joined to self-sufficiency; sincerity can avert regret when a position is vulnerable; reflection can withstand a nearby temptation. But trust may distort good qualities, and the ability to attract followers does not itself establish that their pursuit is beneficial. The hexagram’s promise of progress thus remains tied to its opening requirement: pleasure bears fruit when firmness and correctness govern it, not when satisfaction is allowed to govern in their place.