Yu is the hexagram of shared gladness. Thunder bursts upward from the earth, and the old readers saw the sudden joy that rises from the depths and carries everyone with it — the sound of music, the first note of a drum that sets a whole gathering in motion. The judgment is practical about it: enthusiasm furthers one to install helpers and set armies marching. Joy, rightly used, is not a private feeling but a public force, the thing that rouses people to act together.
Considered against the working life, the figure is about the power and the danger of high spirits. The lines are a careful scale — enthusiasm that expresses itself brings misfortune, but firm as a rock, not a whole day, brings good fortune. The commentators saw here the whole lesson of the figure: enthusiasm is a wind that must have a ballast. The person who is carried away by his own good feeling acts rashly; the person who keeps a steady center can use joy to move others without being moved off course himself.
For the bonds between people, Yu was read as the gladness that a relationship gives — and the vanity it can hide. The third line, enthusiasm that looks upward creates remorse, was the ancients' warning against the joy that is really a seeking after approval. And the fifth line, persistently ill and still does not die, was their somber note: the one whose gladness depends on others is never truly well. The joy worth having, the figure says, springs from within and asks nothing of the crowd.
Within a cycle, this figure marks a phase of rising spirits, the stretch when energy and good feeling are abundant and can be put to shared use. The image of thunder over the earth is the book's picture of joy breaking loose from the ground and filling the air. The counsel is to use the gladness to gather and move people toward a common end — and to keep a steady center, so that the enthusiasm carries the work instead of carrying the worker away.
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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.