Heaven and earth meet and their breaths flow freely: a time when things go through. The text links good fortune to firm virtue and warns that every peak turns.
Heaven ☰, whose quality is strength, lies below earth ☷, whose quality is yielding. Zhu Xi reads tai as flowing through: heaven and earth meet and their two breaths pass freely between them, the yin going out and the yang coming in. He calls it the hexagram of the first month, favorable for one with firm virtue, though the later lines show flourishing reaching its peak and turning.
Judgment (卦辭)
The text attached to the whole hexagram, read when no line is changing.
泰，小往大來，吉亨。
Tai. The small goes, the great comes. Good fortune. Success.
Tai means flowing through. Heaven and earth meet, and their two breaths pass freely between them; Zhu Xi calls it the hexagram of the first month. The small is yin and the great is yang: earth has gone out to the outer place and heaven has come into the inner one. He also derives the figure from Hexagram 54, Gui Mei, with a yin line moving up to the fourth place and a yang line coming down to the third. Good fortune and success, he says, belong to one who has firm, yang virtue.
Image (大象)
The Image commentary (象傳) reads the whole hexagram from its two trigrams.
天地交，泰。后以財成天地之道，輔相天地之宜，以左右民。
Heaven and earth meet: Tai. The sovereign, accordingly, shapes and completes the way of heaven and earth and assists what is fitting to them, and so stands by the people.
When heaven and earth interact, the ruler works alongside them. Zhu Xi's note is two phrases: shaping and completing trims what goes too far, and assisting fills out what falls short. Governing, in this image, means keeping the balance of heaven and earth for the people's sake.
Lines (爻辭)
From the bottom line to the top. In the line names, nine (九) marks a yang line and six (六) a yin line.
Line 1, yang (初九)changing line in the shared reading
拔茅茹，以其彙，征吉。
Pull up cogon grass and the roots come up with it, together with its kind. Setting forth: good fortune.
The three yang lines at the bottom rise together, linked like grass whose roots come up in a clump when one stalk is pulled. Zhu Xi reads it as good fortune in going forward, for one who is firm and yang in character. He notes that Guo Pu's Donglin breaks the sentence after “its kind,” and that the first line of the next hexagram should be read the same way.
Line 2, yang (九二)changing line in the shared reading
包荒，用馮河，不遐遺，朋亡，得尚于中行。
Embracing the wild. Wading across the river. Not leaving behind what is far off. Cliques fall away. Thus one accords with the middle course.
Firm in a soft place, central in the lower trigram, and answered by the fifth line, the second line presides over this time of flow. Zhu Xi turns its phrases into qualities: tolerance wide enough to take in what is rough and untidy, decisiveness like wading straight across a river, not overlooking those far away, and not favoring a circle of friends. Whoever has these, he says, matches the middle path of this line.
Line 3, yang (九三)changing line in the shared reading
无平不陂，无往不復，艱貞无咎。勿恤其孚，于食有福。
There is no level without a slope, no going without a return. Correct and firm through hardship: no blame. Do not worry over whether what is expected will hold true. In one's food there is blessing.
This line is about to pass the middle of the hexagram, which Zhu Xi reads as Tai nearing its peak while blockage, Hexagram 12, Pi, is on its way: every level stretch tilts and every departure turns back. Xu means worry, and fu the trust that what one expects will come. His counsel is to stay correct through difficulty; then there is no blame, and blessing as well. Flourishing asks for the most care just as it crests.
Line 4, yin (六四)changing line in the shared reading
翩翩，不富以其鄰，不戒以孚。
Fluttering down. Not rich, yet its neighbors come along. Unwarned, they keep faith with one another.
Past the middle, Tai has peaked, and the three yin lines flutter down to return below. Zhu Xi notes that their kind follows them without any need for riches, and that they trust one another without needing orders. He reads this as petty people banding together against the right way, something the noble person should guard against. He adds a general rule: yin is empty and yang solid, so “not rich” always marks a yin line.
Line 5, yin (六五)changing line in the shared reading
帝乙歸妹，以祉元吉。
Di Yi gives his younger sister in marriage. With blessings: great good fortune.
Yin in the ruler's seat, the fifth line presides over Tai: soft, central, humble, and answering the firm second line below, which Zhu Xi calls the way of good fortune. Di Yi, he says, once drew this very line when giving his younger sister in marriage, which is why the text names him; other figures from the past in the classic, such as Gaozong and Jizi, are read the same way. One who is like this has blessings and great good fortune.
Top line, yin (上六)changing line in the shared reading
城復于隍，勿用師，自邑告命，貞吝。
The city wall collapses back into the moat. Do not use troops. Issue commands only within one's own town. Correct and firm: humiliation.
Tai has run its course and is turning into blockage, pictured as a city wall collapsing back into its moat. Zhu Xi reads the rest as counsel for that turn: do not try to fight it by force; simply hold one's own ground, giving orders only within one's own town. Even then, he says, correctness cannot escape some shame. What has been built up can still slip back into the ditch.
If you drew this hexagram
Which text to read depends on how many lines are changing. With none, read the judgment; with one, read that line; with more, follow Zhu Xi's rules in the Yixue qimeng.
Text: Zhu Xi, Yuanben Zhouyi benyi (原本周易本義), Siku Quanshu Wenyuange copy, as transcribed by the Kanseki Repository (KR1a0031), corrected and punctuated by K-magpie. Translation and explanation: written by AI (Claude) from Zhu Xi's commentary and checked against the text and commentary. Sources and the list of corrections are on the Today's Hexagram page.