Darkening of the Light, Line 4

The fourth line goes inside the darkness and comes out again. Legge's translation has the subject entering the left side of the belly, reaching the very mind of the darkening of the light, and then quitting the gate and the courtyard. It is the only line in the figure that treats understanding as a place a person travels into, and the sequence matters more than the image: he gets in, he learns what the thing actually wants, and he leaves.

The stroke is yielding in an even place and correctly placed at the base of the upper trigram Kun, which is to say it has just crossed out of the light and into the earth that covers it. That crossing is the whole of its situation. A line at this station is close enough to the centre of the darkening to see how it is organised and not yet held by it, and yielding is the quality that makes the approach survivable, because nothing about this position could be forced.

The gate and the courtyard are the boundary of a household in the language of the period, so leaving them is a departure from a place one belonged to rather than an escape from custody. What the line commends is neither infiltration nor endurance. It is the recognition that once the intent of a corrupt arrangement is genuinely understood, staying inside it serves no further purpose, and that the person who understands it is the person best placed to know so.

Six in the fourth place is counsel for somebody already inside the situation they are asking about. The line shows entry into the left side of the belly, the attainment of the true mind of the darkening, and then departure through the gate and courtyard. A querent drawing it is usually placed near the centre of something that has gone wrong, near enough to be trusted by it, and the reading concerns what to do with that access.

The answer is to use it and then to go. The line counsels no exposure, no reform from within and no public break, and it does not say the knowledge gained should be acted on at all. Its whole movement is comprehension followed by exit, which in a hexagram about brightness under the earth is the responsible use of proximity. Understanding what a thing intends is what makes leaving it a decision rather than a flight.

When the line changes, the upper trigram Kun becomes Zhen and the figure becomes Abundance, King Wen 55, thunder above fire, a fullness so complete that the classic warns it cannot be held for long. Read from inside the belly of a darkening, that says what the exit is for. What was learned in the dark becomes usable at scale once the person carrying it is outside, and the caution built into Abundance makes the same point about timing that this line makes about staying.