Yu to Jin: starting a side venture in a busy season

Date not recorded · A friend of Takashima · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 16 Yù (Enthusiasm), line 6 (top) moving, changing to Hexagram 35 Jìn (Progress).

Original text

友人某來謂曰。現今商事繁忙之時。別有見機。着手一事。請占其成不。筮得豫之晉。爻辭曰。上六。冥豫。成有渝。无咎。斷曰。冥豫者。昏冥於豫。是所謂沈溺而不悟者也。在商業上是妄想圖利。而不知其害也。急宜變志。斯可免咎。爻象如是。當知所戒。某聞此言。大有所感。反守舊業。免致破產。

In plain words

A friend of Takashima came and said: business is very busy right now, but I have spotted another opening and want to take it on; please divine whether it will work. The cast gave Yu with its top line moving, changing into Jin. The line reads: "Six at the top: blind in enjoyment; if one changes after it is done, there is no fault."

Takashima's judgment: "blind in enjoyment" means being lost in pleasure, what is called being sunk in something without waking up to it. In business, it means chasing a fantasy of profit without seeing the harm. Change your mind quickly, and you can avoid the fault. That is what the line shows, and you should take the warning.

The friend was much moved by this, went back to minding his existing business, and escaped bankruptcy.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the top line of Yu is read.
The line's place is the top: Yu, enjoyment, carried to its peak tips over into blindness, hence "blind in enjoyment".
"Blind" is made concrete as being dazzled by an opportunity, seeing the profit and not the harm.
"If one changes" is read as a call to change course quickly; do so, and there is no fault. The point of this reading is less to predict than to offer a way out one can act on.

About the outcome

"Escaped bankruptcy" is Takashima's record, but since the friend never took on the venture, there is no way to know whether it would have failed. Calling it an escape is hindsight from the side of the one who advised against it. This site does not treat it as evidence.

Applying it to your situation

When things are going well, it is easy to feel you can take on anything. "Blind in enjoyment" suggests stopping to look: is it the new opportunity itself that draws you, or the excitement of your current run of luck?

Original: Takashima Kaemon, Takashima Ekidan (expanded edition), recorded by Yanagida Ikusaku, Chinese text by Wang Zhiben, 1901. Translation, notes and reflection by this site.

These are historical records kept by the diviner himself. The outcomes are his own account; this site uses them to study how the lines were read, not as evidence that divination predicts events.

Cast a hexagram · All of Takashima's cases · The 64 hexagrams