March 16th, 1973

[continued]

The Chinese character “ku” represents a bowl in whose contents worms are breeding. This means decay It has come about because the gentle indifference of the lower triagram has come together with the rigid inertia of the upper, and the result is stagnation. 

Since this implies guilt, the conditions embody a demand for removal of the cause– Hence the meaning of the hexagram is not simply “what has been spoiled” but “work on what has been spoiled”