Li · The Clinging

Judgment and Plain-Language Notes

Li: Steadfast correctness is beneficial. Success. Keeping a cow brings good fortune.

The Tuan commentary glosses Li as clinging: sun and moon cling to heaven, grain and plants cling to the earth, and doubled brightness clinging to what is correct transforms the world. The Xiang image is two lights arising in succession, with the great person carrying the light on to shine in all four directions.

Li above, Li below: two lights laid one on the other. The original sense of the name is clinging or attaching, because light needs something to rest on if it is to last. The judgement favours correctness and says that rearing the cow brings good fortune, which puts the weight on staying correct and staying yielding. Brightness without restraint burns the one holding it. The lines move from a careful start, through the excellent central position, to the sun past noon, then to a violent reversal, and close with a campaign undertaken to set the state right. Brightness is good, and it has to cling to what is correct and know when to draw in.

The judgment gives beneficial steadfastness, success, and good fortune in keeping a cow, while the second six has supreme good fortune: the direction is positive. Yet the third nine's lament at old age and sunset brings misfortune, and the fourth's sudden burning, death, and abandonment is among the text's fiercest images of destruction. Even the fifth six reaches fortune through tears and grief. Favorable and adverse images appear together with extreme contrasts, hence the rating: Neutral. This is the app's interpretation of the text, not a guarantee of outcomes.

Worth doing: attach yourself to a legitimate aim, keep the boundaries clear, and let the work stay visible over time. Avoid: chasing the most dazzling performance, or leaning too heavily on a single person or source.

Understand This Hexagram Through Its Structure

Li upon Li: two brightnesses stacked, solid at the ends of each half and broken at its centre.

• Recognise the hexagram whose two halves are both Li.
• State how Li and Kan are related structurally.
• Say that flipping the first line of Clinging Brightness gives The Traveller.

Both halves of Li are Li: in each, the outer lines are solid and the middle one broken. The broken lines of the figure are the second and fifth; the other four are solid. It is the line-by-line opposite of Kan, and its halves are likewise identical, so it too is studied by flipping one line.

Li is fire, brightness, clinging. Two Li stacked describe light carried on and on. What is striking is that the two central lines are empty: in a structure of clear seeing, the core is yielding — light has no body of its own and must cling to something in order to burn. Tradition speaks of Li as both brilliance and attachment, and this is why.

A teaching example, not a prediction: an explanation that lands clearly does so because someone else's data sits underneath it. Li describes that structure of depending on something else.

The Six Lines: Original Text and Reflection

Nine at the beginning: Confused footsteps. Treat them with reverence; no blame.

The Xiang commentary says that meeting confused footsteps with reverence is precisely how fault is kept away.

At the outset the steps cross over one another and the threads are tangled, so a misstep comes easily. Keeping a careful and respectful attitude avoids fault; the point is not to turn careless because things are hectic.

When a new task opens with too many loose ends, slow down and put them in order, taking each detail seriously. That goes wrong less often than pushing several items at once.

In the current rush, which step did you take out of habit rather than after checking?

Six in the second place: Yellow radiance. Supreme good fortune.

Yellow is the colour of the centre. The Xiang commentary attributes the great good fortune here to holding the central way.

Clinging in the colour of the mean, neither to one side nor the other, is the best line in the hexagram. The brightness rests in a correct central position, neither overstated nor dimmed, hence the strong reading.

When your output matches your position, without grabbing credit or hiding what you can do, trust accumulates most easily. This is a state to maintain rather than a base to build on in a hurry.

Do your current output and your current position actually match?

Nine in the third place: Radiance of the setting sun. Without beating the earthen pot and singing, one laments great old age. Misfortune.

The brightness of the declining sun. The Xiang commentary asks how long such light can hold, marking the point where fullness turns towards decline.

The light has passed its height and is sloping west. If you cannot meet that calmly, all that remains is the lament of old age, which does not go well. The line says the state of mind matters more here than the light itself.

When a good run is visibly tapering, accept the change early and arrange the next stage instead of propping it up with nostalgia or complaint, which only makes the handover harder.

Are you still using a past high point to justify a present judgement?

Nine in the fourth place: Suddenly arriving, burning, dying, abandoned.

It comes abruptly, burning, dying, cast aside. The Xiang commentary says there is nowhere to be contained, meaning the place to cling to has been lost, which accounts for the violence of the images.

The arrival is sudden and fierce: like fire, like death, like being discarded. This is the harshest description in the hexagram. Once legitimate attachment and restraint are gone, brightness turns into a destructive blaze.

When a situation turns sharply, stop the loss first and cut the link that keeps the damage spreading, then talk about rebuilding. Adding to the position usually just widens the fire. This is a situational note, not a prediction.

If things worsened suddenly, which connection would you cut first?

Six in the fifth place: Tears pouring, grieving and sighing. Good fortune.

Tears fall in floods and there is grieving lament, yet the outcome is favourable. The Xiang commentary attributes this to clinging to the correct position of the ruler: even in fear, there is something proper to hold to.

Weeping and worry still turn out well, because the fear is a clear reading of the situation and the attachment is still to a correct place. Facing the difficulty honestly helps more than composure you do not feel.

Admitting you cannot hold it, saying the worry out loud and asking for help is not weakness. People willing to look at the real state of things usually find a way out sooner than those who grind on.

Which of your worries have you never said out loud to anyone?

Nine at the top: The king goes on campaign. There is merit in cutting off the chief; captives are not indiscriminately taken from his kind. No blame.

The king sends out a campaign with praiseworthy result, taking the chief offender and not the followers. The Xiang commentary says the purpose is to set the state right, hence no fault. The military image should not be read as a modern instruction.

Brightness at its height acts, and only the principal wrong is dealt with while the rest are left alone, so there is no fault. What matters is a clear boundary and a legitimate purpose, not widening the reach.

When handling a problem that has built up over time, address the actual knot and resist the pull to widen the blame, which draws other people into the damage.

Are you solving the real problem, or also settling accounts with other people along the way?

Try It Yourself

Flip the bottom line to yin and see what the lower trigram becomes.

This page has a hands-on exercise. It is built into the Traditional Chinese page: open the interactive exercise.

Quick Quiz