Meaning
Where 損 has the lower trigram give to the upper, 益 turns the figure over: a line has come down from above to the lower trigram, the higher benefiting the lower. 益 means to add, to increase, to benefit, and the Judgment is wholly favourable: advantage in every move, and in the great crossing too.
The Image draws from wind and thunder a lesson in speed: when the superior man sees what is good he moves towards it, and when he has a fault he changes it. In our own reading, 益 is increase that flows downward and outward, generosity that makes others stronger. As always in the book, the top line marks the limit: increase that only takes and gives nothing back turns everyone against it.
The lines
The first line is given the strength for a great work; the second, like the fifth of 損, receives ten pairs of tortoise shells "whose oracles cannot be opposed", in Legge's English. The third is helped even through misfortune, if it is sincere; the fourth gives advice that is followed, and can be trusted with something as large as moving a capital. The fifth seeks with a sincere heart to benefit those below, and they recognise its goodness without being asked. The top line is the one whom no one helps and many attack, because its heart follows no rule.
Within 益 lies 剝, hexagram 23; its pair is 損, hexagram 41, and every line flipped gives 恆, hexagram 32.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 益 when the year, month and day leave 5 on eight, which puts 巽 wind above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 4, which puts 震 thunder below. Which line moves depends on what the whole total leaves on six, and each line turns the figure into a different hexagram:
- Line 1 (初九) moving: becomes 20 觀 Guān, Looking Out
- Line 2 (六二) moving: becomes 61 中孚 Zhōng Fú, Trust at the Centre
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 37 家人 Jiā Rén, The Household
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 25 无妄 Wú Wàng, Without Pretence
- Line 5 (九五) moving: becomes 27 頤 Yí, Nourishment
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 3 屯 Zhūn, First Shoots
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 23 剝 Bō, Stripping Away. Everyone born in the same lunar day and double hour has the same cast, so the figure describes a moment, not a person.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Trigram virtues (Shuogua, chapter 7)
- 震 moving, startling below; 巽 entering, pervading above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- eldest son below, eldest daughter above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- feet and dragon below; thighs and fowl above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Wood below, Wood above. The Han assignment of 梅花易數, book 1, also used by Jing Fang; not stated as such in the Zhouyi sourced
- Inverse and opposite
- Upside down: 41 損 Sǔn, Decrease; every line flipped: 32 恆 Héng, Constancy sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 42, from 20.75° to 26.375° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Increase: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 益 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Yî indicates that (in the state which it denotes) there will be advantage in every movement which shall be undertaken, that it will be advantageous (even) to cross the great stream.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Wind and thunder together; the superior man moves towards the good he sees and turns from his errors.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 巽 above when the year, month and day leave 5 on eight, 震 below when the same total with the hour leaves 4.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 42 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Wind and thunder together, each giving the other force: a time when giving from above makes everything below grow, and when one moves quickly towards what is good and away from one's faults.
Claims about it
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Gate 42 of Human Design, at 20.75° to 26.375° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 42.
falseWhat the record shows: The wheel is Shao Yong's circle rotated by Ra Uru Hu in 1987 to 1989 so that hexagram 41 starts at 2° Aquarius. No Chinese source we found puts the hexagrams on degrees of the zodiac.
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Being born under 益 Yì fixes a person's character.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: A modern reading with no source in the tradition. The Zhouyi has no birth hexagram; the cast reads a figure, not a person, and everyone born in the same lunar day and double hour shares it.
