Hexagram 48

48 · Jǐng 井

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Below is the wood, above it the water. The wood descends into the earth to fetch the water up. It is the image of the ancient Chinese sweep well. The wood does not mean the buckets, which in early times were made of clay, but the wooden pole whose movements lift the water out of the well. The image also points to the plant world, which lifts the water up out of the earth in its veins. The well from which water is drawn also contains the idea of an inexhaustible provision of nourishment.

The well. One may change the town, but cannot change the well. It neither dwindles nor grows. They come and go, drawing water from the well. If one has almost reached the well water but the rope does not yet reach down to it, or one breaks one's jug, that brings misfortune.

In ancient China the capitals were sometimes moved, partly for the advantages of a site, partly when the dynasty changed. The style of building changed over the centuries, but from the most ancient times to this day the form of the well has stayed the same. So the well is an image of the social organization of humankind in its most basic necessities of life, an organization that is independent of all political forms. Political forms and nations change, but human life with its requirements remains eternally the same. That cannot be changed. This life is also inexhaustible. It neither dwindles nor grows, and it is there for all. Generations come and go, and all of them enjoy life in its inexhaustible abundance.

But for a good political or social organization of people, two things are necessary. One must go all the way down to the foundations of life. Any superficiality in the ordering of life that leaves the deepest needs of life unsatisfied is as imperfect as if one had made no attempt at order at all. Likewise, carelessness that breaks the jug is harmful. If, for example, the military protection of a state is carried so far that it provokes wars which destroy the state's power, that is a breaking of the jug. The hexagram also applies to the individual. However different people's aptitudes and education may be, human nature in its foundations is the same in everyone. And every person, in their education, can draw from the inexhaustible wellspring of the divine nature of the human being. But here too two dangers threaten: first, that in one's education one does not get through to the real roots of being human but gets stuck in convention – such half-education is as bad as no education – or that one suddenly breaks down and neglects the cultivation of one's being.

There is water above the wood: the image of the well. So the noble one encourages the people in their work and urges them to help one another.

Below is the trigram Xun, wood; above it, the trigram Kan, water. The wood sucks the water upward. Just as the wood, as an organism, imitates the activity of the well, an activity that benefits all parts of the plant, so the noble one orders human society in such a way that, like the organism of a plant, its parts mesh together for the good of the whole.