A note on hexagram 30, line 4

Hexagram 30, Clarity, has a lot to say about understanding transience. The fourth line is especially emphatic:

‘Sudden,
Comes,
Burns,
Dies,
Thrown out.’

Here is something that flares up brightly, but dies away for lack of fuel. Wilhelm sees someone who ‘rises quickly to prominence but produces no lasting effects.’ Stephen Karcher sees ‘an omen of what must be cast out.’ And it seems to me that, since this line brings us into Hexagram 22, Making Beautiful, it describes how creating a bright image of something to let others see it is always a temporary thing.

This is one of those lines where it’s natural to assume all kinds of moral conclusions that Yi itself doesn’t actually mention. Wouldn’t it be better if the fire were stoked and burned steadily, instead of this ‘flash in the pan’ effect?

Well, maybe. Sometimes, no doubt. But after receiving this line last week, I kept on noticing another application. Something would go wrong, giving every sign of being a Great Big Disaster, and I would gulp in a deep breath and rush to put out the latest fire. And there were loads of them: emails not sent to new customers (will they report me to Paypal?), forum upgrade leaving pages in a mess, blog hacked (will subscribers report me to Aweber and get my account shut down for spamming?), and finally people reporting that they were logging in and seeing someone else’s username! Had I somehow corrupted my whole database, and what on earth was I going to do if it couldn’t be repaired?

And so on. Sirens, panic, rush, apologise, hurry hurry. And in every single case, the problem turned out to be trivial and easily solved, everyone was understanding, and no-one reported me to anyone.

I’d seen 30.4 carry this meaning before: not so much a flash in the pan as a storm in a teacup. The common element seems to be the simplest form of the story: first this blazes brightly and captures all your attention; then it’s past before you know it.