Da Chu is about accumulated power. Heaven, the strongest of the trigrams, is held within the mountain, and the old readers saw enormous energy being stored rather than spent. The judgment's odd phrase — not eating at home brings good fortune — was read as a saying about the strong man being fed at the court of a great lord: power, properly gathered, is put to work in a worthy place rather than hoarded. The name reads literally as “the great rearing” — the ancients pictured strength husbanded the way a herder manages a powerful animal.
Considered as a comment on one's calling, the figure teaches the discipline of restraint. The lines speak of stopping danger at hand, of taking the axletrees from the wagon, of a bull's headboard fitted while it is still young. Great force must be tamed before it is used — trained, structured, and directed — or it breaks whatever it touches. The ancients admired strength most when it was held quietly.
Among people bound to one another, the hexagram was read as the steadiness of a person who does not need to prove anything. The gelded boar in the fifth line — fierce by nature but made harmless — was the commentators' picture of raw impulse brought under control. Strength, in this reading, is not loudness; it is the quiet capacity to choose when to act and when to hold back.
As a stretch of the larger cycle, Da Chu marks a phase of preparation on a big scale. The mountain holding heaven is the book's image of a long gathering of force before a great undertaking. The old readers saw a season for building reserves, for study and training, and for keeping one's strength intact until the moment is ripe to spend it all at once.
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Cast the I Ching Oracle → Free · No sign-up · 3,000-year-old methodSource: Judgment and line texts follow the Wilhelm/Baynes rendering of the Yijing.