شش خطی 23
فروپاشی، پوست انداختن (Bo)

Stripping away is dissolving. As to the qualities of the hexagram, above is mountain , stopping, below is earth , following: Yin grows as it goes along and yang stops; furthermore, in the body of the hexagram, there are five yins, which have dissolved it down to one yang—the yang energy is about to be exhausted and the yin energy is about to become pure; therefore it is called stripping away.

This hexagram represents acquired yin dissolving yang; it follows on the previous hexagram biting through. In biting through, action requires understanding, so we first investigate principle. Investigating principle means investigating the principle of waning and waxing of yin and yang.

People are born with five elementary combinations of yin and yang from heaven and earth; once they have life, they have essence—essence and life reside in one body. When people are first born, essence and life are one, the primordial and the temporal are merged into one, yin and yang are as yet undivided, wrong and right are as yet not distinguished; they are the image of wholeness. Then as they grow up and their energy becomes full, the primordial yang culminates and mixes with acquired conditioning—one yin surreptitiously arises. Then as the days and years go by, yin energy gradually grows, and yang energy gradually weakens. Until it wanes completely, yang energy does not stop; this is like the body of this hexagram, which five yins have stripped down to one yang.

At this point, yang cannot overcome yin; what remains is very slight yang. If people do not know this and still take the false for the real, and go somewhere to do something relying on their strength, they will surely come to the complete exhaustion of yang energy, which is very detrimental.

Here developed people have a way to suppress yin and enhance yang, which does not let yin energy dissolve yang completely away. That is where this one point of yang energy is not yet exhausted; they accord with it and stabilize it, getting rid of intellectualism, shutting out conditioning influences, and returning to the fundamental, original foundation.

What does not allow yang to avoid turning to yin is the circulating energy mechanism of heaven and earth; yet what is able to preserve yang in the midst of yin is the power of the practice of reverse operation of sages. Since sages have a path that is before time and yet not violated by nature, they can use it to usurp creation and turn life and death around. As for ordinary people, they go along with the course of creation, which strips away yang by yin; when yang energy has waned away and become pure yin, how can they not die? At the one hexagram stripping away, the sage has simply said that it is not beneficial to go anywhere—any who value essence and life would do well to understand this right away.

Stripping means removing. Above is mountain , below is earth ; mountains are joined to the earth. Mountains are high, the earth is low; joining mountains to the earth, the excess of the high is removed and the insufficiency of the low is fulfilled. This is the image of stripping.

What those in high positions see in this is that just as mountains cannot be stable unless they are joined to the earth, those in high positions cannot be secure unless they are kind to those below them. Therefore they take away from the high and give to the low, to enable those below to find their places. This is because the people are the basis of the country; when the basis is secure, the country is at peace—then those in high positions can also live peacefully in their homes and administer noncoercive government.

Among practitioners of the Tao, those with capacity and knowledge are the high ones, and those without capacity or knowledge are the low ones. When those who have capacity do not presume upon it, and those who have knowledge do not depend on it, and they take their excess of capacity and knowledge and pass it on to those lacking in capacity and knowledge, joining the high to the low, being fulfilled but dwelling in emptiness, then elevation is true elevation, fulfillment is true fulfillment. They transform the artificial into reality, rest in ultimate good unwavering, and abide securely in their homes, invulnerable to external influences.

The secure home for humans is benevolence; taking from those above to give to those below, when the inversion is made, stripping changes into return. Having returned, it is possible to rely on benevolence; the mechanism of enlivening operates, and nature and life are secured. In securing "their homes by kindness to those below" the celestial mechanism is finally revealed.