42. Yì 益
INCREASE, ACCUMULATION, ADDITION, MULTIPLICATION
INCREASE, ACCUMULATION, ADDITION, MULTIPLICATION
The best time to start a major project. Illuminate everything around with your strength. Give yourself fully and inspire people.
The best time to start a major project. Illuminate everything around with your strength. Give yourself fully and inspire people.
Hexagram Structure
Both trigrams of this sign are active, and they work in the same direction: Zhen, thunder, gives the initial push from the depth, while Xun, wind, picks the movement up from above and carries it wide. In the sequence of changes this directly continues Decrease: everything gathered through self-restraint is now to be put to work.
The sign does not accept a waiting stance — good is not awaited here but made, and only active creation can set anything against evil. The inner truthfulness developed at the previous stage now has to show itself in deeds. Hence the scale: the time suits serious undertakings and large changes, the crossing of the great water, as the old text would put it.
There is one condition for success — personal development and benefit to those around must go together rather than separately. The process has its limit too: unbroken increase overfills any vessel and prepares the passage to the next sign, the sign of the breakthrough.
How It Works in Practice
By the inner calendar the sign falls in April, the time of spring hopes. Its polarity is masculine: the phase is an active one, and answering it with waiting means missing its sense.
The layout in practical affairs is generous. The period favors people who are visible and capable: what was planned will be carried out, and work done will be paid for — not in part but in full. An assignment received from management will turn into personal advantage, even if it looks like ordinary office routine right now. An offer to relocate is not out of the question either — it fits the general pattern of a time of large changes, and brushing it aside is not worth it.
The warning concerns character rather than circumstances. You are lucky right now, and it is exactly on a wave of luck that it is easy to make a mistake out of pure stubbornness — and push away the people who usually helped you. The price of such a falling-out is higher than usual in this period: the support of those around is part of the very mechanism of the luck at work here.
In personal life an unexpected turn is possible: a feeling for someone you previously cared little for. Do not hurry to declare it a mistake — this period is fond of exactly such changes.
The practical prescription is short. Show more tolerance in your relationships. Steer clear of games of chance. And the wish you are holding in mind will come true with the help of someone in a higher position — do not push that hand away.
Traditional Description
Above is the trigram Xun (Wind), below is the trigram Zhen (Thunder). The metaphorical image of this hexagram is two active forces spreading unobstructed into the surrounding space, symbolizing activity and decisiveness.
The hexagram indicates that now is not the time to sit idle. Profit will increase through decisive, confident actions. While accumulating our material and energetic capital, we must not forget about self-improvement, learning from positive examples of others and changing the negative sides of our personality.
Figuratively, this hexagram can be imagined as symbolizing a time of development and growth. In external affairs, intensify your participation, persistently invest energy in the realization of your plans. This time is favorable for founding a new enterprise or starting a major project. Illuminate everything around, be like the rays of the rising sun. Give yourself fully and inspire people. During this period, the world is saturated with new energy. Get rid of old concepts, but do not fall into extremes in correcting mistakes. The Earth gives birth to all beings, the Sky covers everything that exists. Together they support and multiply myriad things. Understanding this, you will grasp the essence of multiplication.
In this atmosphere of prosperity, we must seize the moment given to us. The hexagram indicates that it is time to profit, benefit from successfully completed tasks, but remember to consider others and know the measure. This hexagram can also signify a new stage in life, a journey, a major event that it’s time to start.nnnnn
I Ching Talking
If, following the right path, you declare this to the prince, then everyone will follow you
Hexagram Line Descriptions
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The top line shows overdevelopment: the wish to increase other people's merits degenerates into a habit of putting obstacles in their way. The cultivation of hearts, carried to the point of harshness, stops being cultivation — a rigid mentor ends up with opponents rather than students. The outcome of the position is joyless: severity tears the ties with those around, and what was built starts to fall. Help given at stick-point adds nothing to the giver or the receiver — it breaks what was already standing.
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The fifth position is the summit of the sign, and there is one measure here: disinterestedness. The benefaction is directed downward, to those who are weaker, and is performed in silence — extracting gratitude from those you have helped devalues the gift itself. The paradox of the step is that anonymous generosity returns to the giver: helping without calculation raises a person's own merits to their highest. The good fortune promised to this line follows directly from that purity of motive.
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The fourth line begins the outward realization, and the scale here is immediately that of a state: the image of the step is the transfer of a capital, that is, a decisive rebuilding of the very foundations of life. Such a thing is not done alone. Success depends on being able to gather support: whoever walks the right road and speaks about it openly finds that people are ready to follow. The change of this position touches not only the person — it recuts the way of life of everyone nearby.
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The crisis of the third step unfolds among unfavorable events, and the sign proposes an unexpected move: to use the misfortunes themselves as material for growth. Resistance from the surroundings tempers the will — but only in someone whose inner truth is faultless. Strength of one's own is still short at this position, so a bearing is needed: to declare one's road openly to whoever stands higher, and to act on their sign. Loyalty to a model turns blows into a support.
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The second position is the inner peak of the sign. Merits grow here by themselves, like a harvest on a field long under cultivation: this is the delayed result of quenching one's egoism at the earlier stages. The image of a precious oracle with binding instructions already appeared in the fifth line of the previous sign — there it foretold, here it is fulfilled. Two things are asked of a person: a constant steadiness that nothing shakes, and a sincere reverence that weighs more than the most lavish offering.
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The bottom line inherits everything worked out during the period of Decrease and demands that the reserve be put into motion at once. Great deeds here are not a luxury or an ambition but the natural necessity of the moment: the dynamics of the situation itself promise a favorable outcome to whoever begins immediately. Putting off the start means squandering what was gathered. The experience of past restrictions serves as the foundation — and it is time to build on that foundation without waiting for a special invitation.
The six steps describe the whole cycle of active good: an immediate start on an accumulated base, the spontaneous growth of merits, a tempering by obstacles, the rebuilding of life with people as support, disinterested help to those below — and the warning of the finale, where generosity risks degenerating into dictate. The general law of the sign is simple: increase is alive as long as it is aimed at others, and it dies the moment it becomes an instrument of pressure. Holding that boundary is the main work of the whole period.