Hexagram 30
The Clinging
離Lí
☲ Fire above, ☲ Fire below
Above the fire burns fire again: double brightness that can only last because each flame clings to something that carries and feeds it.
The JudgmentThe clinging: perseverance brings reward, it brings success. Care of the cow brings good fortune. Everything that gives light clings to something that carries it; if you want brightness to last, you must feed gentleness like a cow in the barn.
The ImageThe bright rises twice: the image of fire. Thus the great man, by continuing brightness, illuminates the four quarters of the world. Not shining once but burning anew every day: that is the work of the light. The sun rises twice in this sign; brightness is a habit, not an event.
InterpretationFire stacked upon fire: light, brightness, and the law that light cannot exist on its own. Flame clings to wood, insight to a person, inspiration to a form: everything that shines burns on something. It appears when the question arises what your light actually burns on: which body, which home, which work, which bonds carry you? Care for those carriers instead of taking them for granted, for a flame that despises its wood goes out. And care for the cow from the Judgment: gentleness, receptivity, the capacity to let yourself be nourished. Brightness without mildness scorches; brightness with mildness lights the four quarters of the world.
Place in the sequenceIn the depths of 29, The Abysmal, a person inevitably grasps hold of something; thus arises the clinging, the light that finds a hold. It forms a pair with 29 · The Abysmal.
Nuclear hexagram
The nuclear hexagram of The Clinging is 28 · Preponderance of the Great: The ridgepole sags: the load is greater than the structure can bear, and only an extraordinary step brings success now. It is formed from the inner lines and shows the hidden core of the situation.
The six lines
These texts belong to changing lines in a reading, from the bottom up.
Nine at the beginning
The footprints run crisscross:
if one remains serious in this, no blame. The morning of the light: everything comes in at once, impressions and obligations and messages shooting in all directions. Keep your inner seriousness in that first bustle (start calmly, one thing at a time, dedicate the day before it swallows you), and the whole day stays pure. The tone of the first hour is the tone of the day: choose it consciously.
Six in the second placeruling line
Yellow glow: sublime good fortune. Yellow is the color of the middle and of measure: no blinding white, no smoking smolder, but the even, warm brightness of midday. This is light at its best: culture, balance, taste. In everything you radiate, aim for this middle: not wanting to be fiercer than the matter asks, not duller than you can be. The golden mean here is not a compromise but the summit.
Nine in the third place
In the light of the setting sun, people beat on the pot and sing, or they loudly lament the approach of old age:
misfortune. The evening of the light: something is ending, a phase, a power, a life. Two false responses present themselves: intoxication (partying as if there were no end) and complaint (wailing as if the end undoes everything). Both miss the point. Transience asks not for noise but for inner freedom: seeing the end, and living fully and calmly precisely because of it. Only those who can accept the evening have truly had the day.
Nine in the fourth place
Suddenly it comes:
it flares up, dies down, is thrown away. The straw fire: power that consumes itself in one outburst. Enthusiasm without root, anger without direction, projects that explode and leave ash behind: everything that flares too fast burns itself up and scorches whoever comes too close. If you recognize this pattern in yourself (all or nothing, and empty afterward), the lesson is not less fire but more wood: build a carrier beneath your intensity, or after every flame you will be thrown away.
Six in the fifth placeruling line
Tears in streams, sighing and lamenting:
good fortune. Strangely enough a favorable line: these are not tears of self-pity but of turning inward, the moment when pride breaks and you truly see what is happening. Such tears purify: after this storm you see differently and act differently. Do not hold back grief that brings insight; it is the rain that does not extinguish the fire but cleanses it. Once the pride has been wept out, you burn more quietly and farther.
Nine at the top
The king uses him to march out and punish:
it is best then to kill the ringleaders and take the followers captive; no blame. Sometimes brightness must cut: an abuse burned out, an evil stopped. The law of this line is surgical: strike the core (the instigators, the patterns) and spare the followers, for whoever wants to punish everything becomes the next evil himself. Discipline without vengefulness, precision without fury: that is how the light punishes, and that is why it remains light.