Make Room to Receive

Reading it step by step

The last page, Fellowship, said: keep the door open. Once the door is open and someone walks in, the next step is finer: is there room inside you to hold them? The second half of the Changes opens with Xian (Mutual Response), which is about how people move each other.

First: a lake on a mountaintop. Put “heart” 心 under the character 咸 and you get 感, to feel and be moved. The hexagram has Lake above and Mountain below. A mountain is solid and full, yet this one hollows out its summit to hold a lake, and the lake in turn waters what grows on the mountain. So the Image says the noble person “receives others with an emptied heart.” The mountain is a person with ability and character, who still clears a space inside. Modesty on page 24 hid the mountain underground; here the mountain keeps an empty place at the top. Without that space, other people's words and troubles simply slide off you.

Third: at the top, response turns into mouth. Line 6 feels it in “jaws, cheeks and tongue”; the commentary says the talk runs away with itself. In the first rush of love we promise to fetch the stars; years later we notice we said more than we did. Receiving others with an emptied heart isn't about talking well. It is about listening, and leaving room.

There is an old story. A young man was unhappy on his side of the river and wanted to move across. He asked the old ferryman: are the people on the other side easier to live with? The ferryman said: first tell me about the people here. The young man complained for half an hour. When he finished, the ferryman said: the people over there are much the same. A heart crammed full can't take anyone in, wherever it goes. Clear a space in yourself, and the people in front of you start to look different.

One small thing to try today: when a friend is talking, stop drafting your reply and leave the phone where it is. When they finish, ask just one thing: “And then what happened?”

Only an emptied summit can hold a lake.