Hexagram 26: Da Xu

Mountain over Heaven · 山天大畜 · Tendency: Auspicious

Structure

• Number: 26 (King Wen sequence)
• Symbol: ䷙
• Upper trigram: Gen (Mountain)
• Lower trigram: Qian (Heaven)
• Lines: yang yang yang yin yin yang (bottom to top)

The statement

利贞。不家食吉。利涉大川。

——《周易》

What this hexagram indicates

This is a state of accumulating strength and waiting to release. Suitable for learning, reserving funds, refining plans, and cultivating a team. No need to rush to show results for now. The greater the power, the more it must be controlled; acting rashly with insufficient preparation easily wastes the accumulation.

A Buddhist reading

Daxu (Great Accumulation) is about storing up, and what gets stored is the way of no falsehood. Ouyi Zhixu calls this amassing the provisions for awakening, and insists that the storing happens by training the mind through actual circumstances, not by shutting the door on the world. His comment on heaven inside the mountain is memorable: one mountain holds the whole sky, and one thought holds ten ages past and present, so the words and deeds of earlier people can be taken in and turned into virtue of your own. The first line warns that rushing to save others before settling matters at your own feet invites disaster, since benefiting oneself is the ground of benefiting others. Only at the last line does the aspiration formed in seclusion move freely at last.

After Ouyi Zhixu (1599-1655), whose Chan commentary on the Changes reads each hexagram as a stage of practice.

The statement is quoted from the Book of Changes, which is in the public domain. The English reading on this page was prepared for this library.

Related hexagrams

• Previous / Inverted: Hexagram 25: Wu Wangthe whole figure turned upside down
• Next: Hexagram 27: Yi
• Opposite: Hexagram 45: Cuievery line changed to its opposite
• Nuclear: Hexagram 54: Gui Meilines two to four below, three to five above

Related

• Liu Yao Divination ChartLiu Yao casts a hexagram about one specific matter and reads its structure. Unlike BaZi or Zi Wei, which describe a person, Liu Yao describes how a situation stands at a particular moment. This page walks through the full process from casting to attribution.
• Mei Hua Yi Shu CalculatorMei Hua Yi Shu is traditionally attributed to Shao Yong. What sets it apart is how freely it casts: a time, a spoken number, a direction or something noticed in passing will all serve. It attaches no stems and no relatives, reading the trigrams directly. This page covers casting through to the subject and object.