Coming to Meet in Growth

Something you thought you'd dealt with is back — charming, plausible, presenting itself as no big deal. Line 1 holds the key: this is the only cheap moment to stop it. The lean pig looks pitiful now; grown, it rages. Apply the bronze brake to the tendency in its first stirrings — firmly, immediately, before momentum gathers — because what willpower holds today with two fingers will drag it by a rope next season. All the later struggles of this hexagram are this line, postponed. And notice where the same law turns inward: seeing a flaw in others rouses the ego to pay insult for insult, and the ego indulged that way grows demonic power. Undermine it with humility — recall how long your own fears held you.

Meeting others and new experiences halfway — open-minded, patient, tolerant — is right and necessary; the discipline is the halfway. You go to meet within the limits of dignity and correct conduct, and no further. When an idea carries the element of seduction, when involvement would take you past those limits, the answer is reserve, at once, at the door. Line 2 shows the steady middle: the impulse contained like a fish kept in a tank — neither indulged nor violently suppressed, held under gentle constant pressure that gains ground without the rebound force provokes. Keep it private, too; don't parade either the struggle or the pride of managing it. And line 5 names the master's way — shade the melon rather than clutch it, work by example, and what force could never extract simply ripens and falls.