17. Suí 隨
FOLLOWING, ADAPTATION
FOLLOWING, ADAPTATION
Move unhurriedly, learn to serve others, follow the natural course of events.
Move unhurriedly, learn to serve others, follow the natural course of events.
Hexagram Structure
Below is Zhen, thunder and urging; above is Dui, joy. The combination sets the keynote of the sign: movement that is met willingly rather than under the stick. Following is voluntary here — people go after a more developed person not on orders but because they are caught up in that person's ideas. The same mechanism works in knowledge: freedom is won by submitting to objective truth rather than by turning away from it, and that is how new experience grows together with what is already known. The development is called primal: the movement coincides with the make-up of the world itself, and so it goes lightly. But lightness has a price, and the aphorism names it twice: steadiness and self-command. Joyful following without an inner core degenerates fast — the sign standing immediately after this one in the Book is decay, and the only way to keep from sliding into it is fidelity to truth and an exact fit with the common rhythm.
How It Works in Practice
If you hold positions of leadership, this is the time to strengthen them rather than to widen the circle of supporters. Recruiting new allies can wait; it is far more valuable to make firm the influence you already have and to put your own territory in order. Chasing the sheer quantity of support only scatters forces that will be needed later.
In practical affairs the bet is on the small. Be content for now with small victories and do not devalue them: as they accumulate, it is exactly these that pull the large ones after them — that is the mechanics of this period. The reverse order, swinging at once at something big on the assumption that the details will catch up by themselves, does not work here.
Aims may change, and for a stretch like this that is normal — do not cling to the original plan as to something sacred. What must stay unchanged are the principles: fidelity to them through any turn of course matters more now than fidelity to a particular design. The people walking behind you or beside you read exactly that, not the loudness of declarations.
The general mode of the period is with the current, not against it. This is not passivity: the current carries in the direction needed, and rowing against it is the one reliable way to lose. At the same time keep yourself ready for serious changes; they are already gathering. The wish will be fulfilled — with high probability.
Traditional Description
Above is the trigram Dui (Lake), below is the trigram Zhen (Thunder). The metaphorical image of this hexagram is a situation where, in the words of ancient Daoists, ‘if you want to take something, first you need to give something’. Since Thunder is associated with movement and mobility, and the Lake — with joy and rest, two seemingly opposite concepts unite in harmonious unity. There is both mobility and rest, which harmoniously replace each other, and sometimes complement.
To lead correctly and wisely, we must understand our place and the position of those who turn to us. We must learn to serve others before we can confidently lead them, and follow someone before we can expect to have followers ourselves. Without such knowledge, we can only resort to coercion and cunning, which will bring indignation and resistance. Following does not mean submission; following means embodying the grand ideas and plans of others.
Moreover, we need to know when to act and when to refrain from actions to replenish our energy. This is why the Chinese text uses the image of the sage who rests at the feast, restoring his strength and energetic potential. A prolonged period of relentless turmoil will lead to a loss of strength and enthusiasm, remember the need to seek rest in movement and movement in rest. Do not be obstinate, follow the natural course of events. This hexagram usually indicates a period of calm, not too rapid, yet constant forward movement.nnnnn
I Ching Talking
Be truthful to the beautiful. Happiness.
Hexagram Line Descriptions
Read more
The close: the goal is reached, and one last duty remains — not to break the tie with what led to it. To join with what has been gained, to keep the bond with the one you walked behind. The image of a sacrifice at the western mountain says the same thing: a return to the roots, to the place where the whole movement of the line and of the work began. Fidelity to the beginning is no sentimentality here but a condition of completeness — a road cut off from its source crumbles in retrospect.
Read more
The summit of the sign is truthfulness toward what is beautiful. A person finds what is genuinely best in the situation and holds to it with a trust that doubts cannot shake; such strength of trust is not naivety but the result of the whole road already walked. The personal fits harmoniously into the common here: following stops being a concession and becomes one's own choice, coinciding with the highest ideal. The good fortune of this step follows directly from that coincidence.
Read more
Going out into the outer sphere throws up a temptation: to turn following into seizure, to appropriate the fruits of the movement and dig into them with every ounce of stubbornness. Exactly this grip is called misfortune — a fixation on what has been taken halts development more surely than any opponent can, because the substance of the situation lies in the movement itself and not in the trophies. The antidote is formulated on the spot: hold the truth and stay on the road that clarity comes from. Then there is nothing to reproach a person for.
Read more
The crisis of the sign is the moment of a decisive choice of road. To bind yourself to the grown means losing the infant: moving forward and backward at once is impossible, and every choice is paid for by the loss of what was turned down. The consolation is deferred but stated plainly — later you will seek, and you will find. The task of the step is to choose the mature and not to look back at what was left behind. Steadiness is needed here not for a feat but simply to keep from straying off a direction already taken.
Read more
The danger of this step is stopping at the first thing that carried you away. The infant here is a strong but undeveloped impulse: as a beginning it was good, yet following it alone shuts off access to mature forces. The law of the position sounds almost arithmetical: bind yourself to the infant and you lose those already grown — both attachments cannot be held at once. What is less developed grows only by following what is more developed. Choosing a companion by stature, you choose your own ceiling along with it.
others to your side
Read more
A change is ripening in the leading beginning of the situation, and the first duty of whoever follows is not to sleep through it. Holding on to yesterday's leader out of loyalty to habit means falling behind time itself; what is required is agreement with its course — watching for changes in the one you follow and shifting your step along with them. The second condition is to go out of the closed house into the open: ties tied beyond the gate will bring success. Steadiness in such conduct leads straight to good fortune.
The six steps add up to a whole science: to notice a change in the one who leads in time, not to grow attached to the first impulse, to pay with a choice for what is mature, not to substitute spoils for the road, to keep faith with the best, and at the end to bow to the sources. The common core is single — following stays development for as long as it is voluntary and clear-eyed; whoever walks step for step is a student, not a slave. Carried through this way, the situation gives no chance to the decay that waits its hour in the next sign of the Book.