Gate 52 — Keeping Still, Mountain — Temporary inaction undertaken on one's own initiative for the sake of an accurate assessment

Full breakdown

We're switching into the logical format now. When we looked at hexagram 58, we saw clearly the polarity between 58 and 52 — they sit directly across from each other on the zodiacal wheel. I pointed to the importance of energy for the logical process — the need for energy to experiment with, in order to guarantee the collective's future or ensure its safety. Hexagram 52, Keeping Still, is the gate of Inaction. It's focused energy, a pressure to concentrate on something. There's a huge difference between 52 and 53. The need to focus and concentrate stands diametrically opposed to a cyclical process that starts things and finishes them. Regarding the nature of the logical process and its format, one thing is completely clear: for logic to succeed, a deep identification is essential, one that makes repetition and focus possible. You have to identify strongly with a formula in order to spend a life proving or disproving it. It's a kind of devoting yourself to something, a devotion to a chosen line of work.

The quality of this fuel is passive — it has to do not with stress but with tension. The greatest depression gate 52 knows is the tension of being unable to find the right object to focus effort on. For an energy that carries the pressure to concentrate, it's deeply depressing that there's nothing worth concentrating on — nothing worthy of that concentration. It's very important to note the next step in Pluto's movement — it activates gate 9. Once it does, we'll have an enormous amount of energy for a very deep focus. The Pluto field will become the source of that focused attention. The commentary over the lines says: temporary inaction, taken on one's own initiative, for the sake of an accurate assessment. That's the essence of the tension that arises here. It exists for as long as the process of assessment is going on, because there's nothing else to do. If there's nothing to focus effort on, then there's nothing to do.

That's why, as a joke, I call this the Buddha gate. Buddha sits under a tree with his gate 52 and doesn't know what to do, because he knows perfectly well he isn't responsible for anything — not responsible for any action or deed. So he just sits there. He's enlightened, because there's no tension in him while he sits like that. That's true for everyone. And once you see it that way, you understand: while he sits there, he's waiting for the best, the ideal, opportunity to find something worth concentrating his effort on. Once something worthy of that concentration is found, real concentrating power arises — and that's exactly what brings the true satisfaction with the process, that's how real realization actually happens here.