Kuai / Break-through (Resoluteness)
above:Tui The Joyous, Lake
below:Ch'ien The Creative, Heaven
Kwai requires (in him who would fulfill its meaning) the
exhibition (of the culprit's guilt) in the royal court, and a
sincere and earnest appeal (for sympathy and support), with a
consciousness of the peril (involved in cutting off the
criminal). He should (also) make announcement in his own city
and show that it will not be well to have recourse at once to
arms. (In this way) there will be advantage in whatever he
shall go forward to.
Overall Meaning
Breaththrough, the symbol of resoluteness
In Kwai we have the hexagram of the third month, when the last remnant,
cold and dark, of winter, represented by the sixth line, is about to
disappear before the advance of the warm and bright days of the approaching
summer. In the yin line at the top King Wan saw the symbol of a small or bad
man, a feudal prince or high minister, lending his power to maintain a
corrupt government, or, it might be, a dynasty that was waxen old and ready
to vanish away; and in the five undivided lines he saw the representatives of
good order, or, it might be, the dynasty which was to supercede the other.
This then is the subject of the hexagram, - how bad men, statesmen corrupt
and yet powerful, are to be put out of the way. And he who would accomplish
the task must do so by the force of his character more than by force of arms,
and by producing a general sympathy on his side.
The Thwan says he must openly denounce the criminal in the court, seek to
awaken general sympathy, and at the same time go about his enterprise,
conscious of its difficulty and danger. Among his own adherents, moreover,
as if it were in his own city, he must make it understood how unwillingly he
takes up arms. Then let him go forward, and success will attend him.