困

47. Exhaustion

kùn · Wind ☴ over Water ☵

Resources are shrinking — what matters now is your inner stance, not the circumstances.

The Noble One's Path

A lake without water. This is the most radical image of loyalty to one's own principles (Yi) — holding to what matters, even when nothing supports you from outside.

The Lesson

Stay calm. Your character is tempered most strongly precisely when you have no outer support.

A question to sit with

Can I keep my inner calm, even when nothing is going my way?

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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