利有攸往

lì yǒu yōu wǎng

Advantageous to have a destination or course of action.

Meaning

A situational judgment indicating that it is beneficial to possess a purposeful direction or undertaking, contrasting directed agency with stagnation or aimless movement.

Grammar and usage

The evaluative predicate 利 (lì) governs the clause 有攸往. In this construction, 攸 (yōu) functions as a relative pronoun or pointer (similar to 所), nominalizing the verb 往 (wǎng) to indicate "that which one goes toward" or a specific destination.

Graphical notes

Variants include U+25762 for 利 and U+5F83 for 往.

Translator notes

1. Avoid translating 利 as "profit" unless the context is explicitly commercial; it typically denotes auspiciousness, propriety, or situational advantage.

2. The presence of 有 (yǒu) is significant: the benefit lies in the existence/possession of a course of action rather than merely the act of moving.

3. Depending on syntax, 攸 may be rendered as a formal pointer ("that which...") or absorbed into the verb to imply a purposeful destination.

Decontextualized translator aid. This page describes plausible lexical range; it does not choose what the term means in a particular passage.