Hexagram 11 · Peace
泰 · Tài
The Judgment
Peace. The small departs, the great approaches. Good fortune. Success. Heaven stands below and earth above, so their energies move toward each other and mingle. What is petty recedes and what is generous grows. Communication is easy, cooperation is natural, and things that were stuck for a long time begin to move.
The Image
Heaven and earth unite: the image of peace. Thus the ruler divides and completes the course of heaven and earth, and so aids the people, turning a good season into lasting structures.
Interpretation
This is one of the most favourable hexagrams in the book. Conditions are aligned, people are willing, and effort meets less resistance than usual. Relationships are open, information flows, and what you begin now tends to prosper. The instruction is not to relax but to use it. Good times are working capital: fix what is broken, invest, repair relationships, put agreements in writing, build the structures that will carry you through a harder season. Be generous, because generosity now returns multiplied and costs you little. At the same time, hold the awareness that runs through the whole hexagram: peace contains the seed of its own reversal, and complacency is the mechanism. Watch for the small slackening, the assumption that this will simply continue, the neglected maintenance. Stay attentive at the height of good fortune and you extend it considerably; take it for granted and it turns faster than you expect.
Love
A genuinely harmonious period, with easy communication and real mutual understanding. Deepen it rather than coasting on it. Make plans, meet each other's people, and say the affectionate things out loud while the season is generous. This is the season to make promises you intend to keep and to keep the ones already made.
Career
Expansion, cooperation, and rewarded effort. Launch, hire, invest, and formalise agreements now. Do not let success make you careless about detail or dismissive of the people who helped you climb; both matter when the cycle turns. Formalise agreements now and build the structures that outlast this favourable season.
Advice
Use this good season to build what will hold when the weather changes.
Line by line
When ribgrass is pulled up, the sod comes with it. Each according to his kind. Undertakings bring good fortune. Good people arrive in groups. Take the opportunity forward and bring your allies with you.
Bearing with the uncultured in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions: thus one may manage to walk in the middle. Be broad, brave, and impartial.
No plain not followed by a slope, no going not followed by a return. He who remains persevering in danger is without blame. Do not complain of the coming change; enjoy what you have.
He flutters down, not boasting of his wealth, together with his neighbour, guileless and sincere. Those with more come down to meet those with less, naturally and without condescension. Generosity is uncalculated here.
The sovereign gives his daughter in marriage. This brings blessing and supreme good fortune. A powerful party sets rank aside to make a genuine alliance. Humility at the top produces the best possible outcome.
The wall falls back into the moat. Use no army now. Make your commands known within your own town. Perseverance brings humiliation. The season has turned. Retrench honestly instead of fighting the tide.