Hexagram 58 for work
Hexagram 58 Pleasure (Lake) for work and career
At work Dui is the atmosphere in which people 'forget their toil', as the Tuan says: a team that enjoys its own company, a negotiation that goes well because both sides are glad to be talking, a leader who can make hard things attractive. The Great Image's friends 'discussing and practising together' is the picture of a good workshop or a good meeting. But the hexagram's structure is a warning as well as a promise — strong at the centre, soft at the edge — and the Judgment's 'steadiness is favourable' says that pleasant dealings need a firm core or they become mere agreeableness.
The lines are specific about the failure modes: flattery sought (three), flattery trusted (five), charm used as bait (six). The healthy positions are two, where sincerity is simply believed, and four, where someone weighs an easy option against a sound one and takes the sound one. A changing line in the lower trigram asks whether your own good cheer is honest; one in the upper trigram asks whose good cheer you are relying on.
The hexagram in brief
Lake upon lake: joy. Success through correctness — inner firmness, outer gentleness; friends discussing and practising together, a joy that makes people forget their toil.
Share joy honestly; be open but not flattering, and don't buy pleasure at the cost of principle.
The judgment
兌：亨，利貞。Tui intimates that (under its conditions) there will be progress and attainment. (But) it will be advantageous to be firm and correct.
Which line changed?
A changing line sharpens the answer. Each line of 兌 Pleasure (Lake) has its own page:
- 初九Nine at the beginningharmonious joy · nothing to doubt · self-contained
- 九二Nine in the second placesincere joy · trust · regret vanishes
- 六三Six in the third placeseeking pleasure · flattery · wrong place
- 九四Nine in the fourth placeweighing pleasures · unsettled · keeping away from harm
- 九五Nine in the fifth placetrusting the wrong one · danger · correct place
- 上六Six at the topdrawing others in · pleasure as lure · not yet bright
The same hexagram for
Questions
- What does hexagram 58, Pleasure (Lake), mean for a career question?
- At work Dui is the atmosphere in which people 'forget their toil', as the Tuan says: a team that enjoys its own company, a negotiation that goes well because both sides are glad to be talking, a leader who can make hard things attractive. The Great Image's friends 'discussing and practising together' is the picture of a good workshop or a good meeting. But the hexagram's structure is a warning as well as a promise — strong at the centre, soft at the edge — and the Judgment's 'steadiness is favourable' says that pleasant dealings need a firm core or they become mere agreeableness.
- What does Hexagram 58, 兌 Pleasure (Lake), mean?
- Lake upon lake: joy. Success through correctness — inner firmness, outer gentleness; friends discussing and practising together, a joy that makes people forget their toil.
Chinese text: the received Zhouyi (Wuyingdian lineage). English: James Legge, The Yî King, Sacred Books of the East XVI, 1882 (public domain).