42 Gain (Pouring In) - The I Ching

Gain is the complement to the previous hexagram, Loss. While that hexagram showed the slow process of evaporation, here is a rapidly growing storm. Where Loss showed a thirsty man being given a bit of water, this shows us a cup overflowing, a key image from Psalm 23: My cup runneth over. Then the gains trickle down.

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Judgment: Loss’s judgment advised having faith in a distant excursion, and here we are rewarded. We can go the distance and profit from our gamble.

1 The good in life comes through our works; the greater our work, the greater our gain. We can not simply have faith and desire for profit.

James 2:17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

2 A complement to line 5 from the previous hexagram. The oracles from the shells tell the King to make sacrifices. If we are unwilling to make sacrifices, to take losses, it is impossible to make gains. 

“No pain, no gain.”

3 The evil means referred to here are profits made on the misfortune of others. Natural disasters, wars, and pandemics all can make fortunes for those in the right positions. So long as one is blameless, this need not be bad. Informing powers of impending disasters or the right measures to take is also gaining by misfortune. 

4 When the powers follow this given advice, it is a great thing. Consider the rare case of Jonah, who having warned Nineveh of God’s displeasure is shocked to see the King and people of the city follow his advice and repent. Often warnings can go unheeded, but in the case of this line, they are followed completely.

5 When we do great works through the goodness of our hearts, we don’t need to ask, good will come naturally. Jung wrote of exactly this: 

An old alchemist gave the following consolation to one of his disciples: “No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you.”

6 With all of this profit, we can go too far. We can grow attached to our gains, especially when they are ill gotten, and then our cup will break from  fearing to be spilt. This is one weighed down by their possessions, drowning because they would not let go of their valuables. Or overfilling a vessel and tripping from the weight, losing it all. This is the case of Satan in Ezekiel 28:

⁵ By thy great wisdom and by thy traffick hast thou increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches:
⁶ Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Because thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God;
⁷ Behold, therefore I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations: and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and they shall defile thy brightness.
⁸ They shall bring thee down to the pit, and thou shalt die the deaths of them that are slain in the midst of the seas.
⁹ Wilt thou yet say before him that slayeth thee, I am God? but thou shalt be a man, and no God, in the hand of him that slayeth thee.

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Profit and gain are good, but we can have too much of a good thing. We can not hold on to what we have; we all die empty handed. The changes between loss and gain are in themselves a great good, as trying to maintain a onesidedness is bad. The Tao is this way, in it nothing is lost and nothing is gained, it always remains in a constant, perfectly balanced state of change.

Nietzsche described exactly this when he explained his view of the world itself. “This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income.”

Be glad when you make gains, and remain unworried when you have losses. Each will change in due time.