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41. Decrease

sǔn · Thunder ☳ over Wind ☴

Deliberately giving up part of your resources to strengthen what matters.

The Noble One's Path

A lake at the foot of a mountain. Decrease begins with yourself — reining in anger and excessive desires, before you look at the rest of the world.

The Lesson

If you feel overloaded, let go of what's unnecessary. Restraint opens space for healthier growth.

A question to sit with

What in my life is now just dead weight I can consciously set aside?

Related hexagrams

In the I Ching no hexagram stands alone. Each one enters into relationships with others, and those relationships show the situation seen from the other side, in its opposite, and in its hidden tendency.

易

The classical deep dive for this hexagram — the Judgment and the Image after Richard Wilhelm — along with the texts of all six changing lines, is in the book. Get the book

卦

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