Holding Together, Line 1

Holding Together opens with an image of plain pottery rather than of people. Legge's translation shows the subject seeking, through sincerity, to win the attachment of what it approaches, and adds that if the breast is as full of good faith as an earthenware vessel is of its contents, further good fortune will follow in the end. The vessel is deliberately common. Nothing about it is ornamented or valuable in itself, and its whole worth lies in being genuinely full, which is exactly the standard the line sets for the sincerity that begins a union.

The Great Symbolism of the hexagram places water above the earth, a flow that runs together into whatever hollows will hold it, and reads the ancient kings as founding their states and keeping affectionate relations with their princes on that pattern. The first line is where that gathering starts. Nothing has yet been established, no bond has been tested, and the only thing the line can offer is the quality of its own intention.

Yielding at the base of the lower trigram Kun, the line lies further from the ruling fifth place than any other in the figure, and what it offers has to cross the whole height of the hexagram before it is answered. The small commentary promises that further good fortune comes, not merely that error is avoided. Union begun in genuine good faith, without display and without calculation, is credited here with drawing more than it set out to gain.

As a changing line, the opening six of Holding Together tells a querent that whatever alliance, partnership or approach the reading concerns should be made on the strength of sincerity alone, before any advantage has been established and before any leverage exists. The image of a plain vessel full to the brim carries the specific counsel: what is offered has to be genuinely complete rather than impressive, since at this earliest point there is nothing else to offer. The line promises not just the absence of blame but a further good fortune the querent did not set out to obtain.

Flipping this yielding line to firm turns the lower trigram Kun into Zhen, thunder, and the resulting figure of water over thunder is Difficulty at the Beginning, King Wen 3. The move is instructive rather than discouraging. A union approached with a full heart but with sudden assertion at its base becomes a sprouting under obstruction, full of energy and short of clear direction. The good faith is not lost, but it now has to force its way through resistance instead of flowing toward what would have received it.

A reading landing here is favorable and asks for patience with the pace. The querent is advised to make the honest approach and then let it be answered in its own time, rather than pressing the first movement into something more forceful than the situation can yet carry.