䷞咸 – Xian

Connecting with the Universe

ShanShangYouZe Xian JunZiYiXuShouRen

山上有澤，咸，君子以虛受人

There is the marsh on a mountain, which is the image of hexagram Xian. Learn from this - be humble and accept others.

 — DaXiang 大象    

Figure 1: Xian, in nature

As with the previous hexagram Cui, the first four words in this DaXiang sentence describe the pattern found within nature that best represents the hexagram. However, the starting structure of this sentence differs from all the other hexagrams I have gone through thus far. You may recall that the first Chinese character of each DaXiang sentence has begun with its top trigram. In this case, the first word 山 (Shan), which means mountain, is the symbol of the bottom trigram, Gen 艮☶.