Six Doors · No. 20

第20卦观 Guān · Contemplation

Essence: Hands washed, offering withheld; seeing comes first.

Judgment

Like the moment in the rite after the hands are washed but before the offering is made: the deepest attention comes just ahead of action. Your task now is not to do but to see—the larger pattern, yourself, the effect your presence has on others. Contemplation carried with that gravity is itself persuasive.

Sixty-four hexagrams, six doors each

Trigrams

Upper

巽 Wind

wind

Lower

坤 Earth

earth

III

The lines

Line 1A child's casual glance at events is forgivable in bystanders, but shaming in anyone with responsibility.
Line 2Peering through a crack gives a sliver of the truth—adequate for a sheltered life, useless for judging the whole.
Line 3Study your own life and its effects, and let that examination decide whether you advance or withdraw.
Line 4Given a clear view of the kingdom's real workings, take the guest's seat and lend your abilities.
Line 5In the seat of influence, examine your life by its fruits—what people become around you is the verdict on you.
Line 6Beyond self-review lies contemplation of life itself, free of the personal—the widest seeing, and the most demanding.

All the doors

Every single-step transition available from where you stand.

Inverse (綜) · Opposite (錯)

Inverse (綜)

Opposite (錯)

Written on this

Hexagram 20, Guān (Contemplation): Washed Hands, Withheld Offering

Hexagram 20, Guān, is the art of seeing before acting: wind over earth, the washed-hands moment of the rite, its ladder of vision, and how to read it when cast.

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