Meaning
Heaven rises; water sinks. The two trigrams of 訟 move in opposite directions, and the character, with the speech radical, means to argue or to bring a complaint. The Judgment grants that the one who contends may be sincere, and says at once that sincerity meets obstruction. Caution brings good fortune; carrying the contest to the bitter end does not. It is good to see the great man, an arbiter, and not the time for a great undertaking.
The Image draws the practical rule out of the picture: since the two movements part from the start, the superior man takes counsel at the first step of anything he does. In our own reading, 訟 is about how quarrels grow: easiest to avoid before they begin, easiest to settle while positions are still soft.
The lines
The line texts are mostly about stepping back. The first does not drag the matter out, and though there is some talk, the end is good; the second is unequal to the fight and goes home to a small town of three hundred households; the third keeps to what it already has; the fourth gives up the wish to contend and returns to what heaven has ordained. Only the fifth, in the ruler's place, contends, and with great good fortune. The top line wins a leather belt of honour, and in Legge's English "thrice it shall be taken from him in a morning": what a quarrel wins does not last.
Its pair is 需, hexagram 5, turned over; within it lies 家人, hexagram 37, the household.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 訟 when the year, month and day leave 1 on eight, which puts 乾 heaven above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 6, which puts 坎 water 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 (初六) moving: becomes 10 履 Lǚ, Treading
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 12 否 Pǐ, Blockage
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 44 姤 Gòu, Encounter
- Line 4 (九四) moving: becomes 59 渙 Huàn, Scattering
- Line 5 (九五) moving: becomes 64 未濟 Wèi Jì, Not Yet Across
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 47 困 Kùn, Confinement
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 37 家人 Jiā Rén, The Household. 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)
- 坎 sinking, perilous below; 乾 strong, untiring above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- middle son below, father above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- ears and pig below; head and horse above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Water below, Metal 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: 5 需 Xū, Waiting; every line flipped: 36 明夷 Míng Yí, Brightness Wounded sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 6, from 172.625° to 178.25° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- Dispute: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 訟 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “Sung intimates how, though there is sincerity in one's contention, he will yet meet with opposition and obstruction …”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- Heaven and water moving away from each other; the superior man takes counsel at the first step of any affair.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 乾 above when the year, month and day leave 1 on eight, 坎 below when the same total with the hour leaves 6.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 6 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- Heaven moving away from water: a quarrel in which each side is sure it is right, which the text advises stopping halfway, and settling well at the beginning.
Claims about it
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Gate 6 of Human Design, at 172.625° to 178.25° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 6.
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 訟 Sòng 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.
