Six Doors · No. 34

第34卦大壮 Dà Zhuàng · Great Power

Essence: Strength peaks; only right use keeps it from turning on you.

Judgment

Your leverage is at a high point, strong enough to move nearly anything. But power has no judgment of its own, and misapplied it recoils on its owner. The essential discipline now is to spend force only where it is right to spend it.

Sixty-four hexagrams, six doors each

Trigrams

Upper

震 Thunder

thunder

Lower

乾 Heaven

heaven

III

The lines

Line 1Strength felt only in the toes tempts a premature charge that is bound to fail.
Line 2When your strength matches your footing, simply staying on course brings good results.
Line 3The rash flaunt their power and the wise hold it back—a ram that butts the fence only snags its horns.
Line 4The barrier gives way at last, and your strength carries the load quietly, like the axle of a heavy cart.
Line 5Let the belligerence go while the ground is easy, and you will not regret its absence.
Line 6Stuck fast, unable to push on or pull back—stop forcing, for admitting the impasse is the first step out of it.

All the doors

Every single-step transition available from where you stand.

Inverse (綜) · Opposite (錯)

Inverse (綜)

Opposite (錯)

Written on this

Hexagram 34, Da Zhuang (Great Power): Meaning and How to Read It

Hexagram 34, Da Zhuang, Great Power, read closely: thunder over heaven, why force at its height has no direction of its own, its six lines, and how to read the cast.

5 min read