Hexagram 26: Great Taming
大畜Dà Chù
A deep store of what you've learned.
The passages below are historical language. Their references to fortune, danger, and the exemplary person belong to the text’s world. Our modern explanation is an invitation to reflect on your situation.
The Judgment
Classical Chinese
大畜。 利貞，不家食，吉。利涉大川。
Our English rendering
Great Taming. Steadfast uprightness is favorable. Taking one's meals away from home brings good fortune. Crossing a great river is favorable.
The Image
Classical Chinese
象曰：天在山中，大畜。君子以多識前言往行，以畜其德。
Our English rendering
Heaven is within the mountain: Great Taming. A person of integrity learns much from earlier words and past deeds, thereby storing up virtue.
Translation note: 'Taking one's meals away from home' preserves the literal phrase. In its historical setting, it can refer to being sustained through public service, rather than offering advice about where to dine.
A modern reading
Heaven within a mountain is an image of great capacity held in reserve. Great Taming concerns the work of containing strength, knowledge, or resources until they can be used well. The Image makes that reserve specific: learn from what people have said and done before you. Past choices, including their consequences, can enlarge your judgment. An accumulated store becomes useful when you can draw on it at the moment a difficult undertaking requires it.
The Judgment moves from restraint to participation: meals away from home and a river crossing place cultivated capacity in a wider setting. Preparation can reach a point where it deserves a real task, audience, or responsibility. Consider where your learning has become dependable enough to serve someone beyond yourself. The mountain still supplies the image of containment, so bringing that capacity out also involves choosing a demand you can carry with care.
A question to sit with
What have you learned well enough to put into service, and which real task would test that readiness?
Source and method
The Judgment and Image are classical passages from the Book of Changes. The English rendering and modern explanation are Meow Ching’s editorial work. This page covers these two passages; it does not translate the six individual line texts.
Read the classical text on Wikisource · Our sources and method