Six Doors · No. 52

第52卦艮 Gèn · Keeping Still

Essence: Stillness in the right place, at the right time.

Judgment

Stop when it is time to stop, move when it is time to move—true stillness is timing, not immobility. To be quiet enough to forget your own back, to cross the courtyard without registering who is in it, means the mind has stopped churning. Stillness like that carries no fault.

Sixty-four hexagrams, six doors each

Trigrams

Upper

艮 Mountain

mountain

Lower

艮 Mountain

mountain

III

The lines

Line 1Stop at the toes, before the first step is taken—stilling an impulse at its birth is easiest, and worth making a lasting habit.
Line 2The calves halt but cannot halt the one they follow; dragged along against your judgment, the heart stays heavy.
Line 3Clamping the waist rigid—stillness imposed by force—strains the back to splitting, and the danger smolders in the heart.
Line 4Bringing the whole trunk to rest, no longer wrestling with yourself, leaves nothing to reproach.
Line 5Still the jaws: speak with measure and in due order, and the words you would regret never get said.
Line 6A generous, wholehearted stillness carried through to the very end—this is composure at its most fortunate.

All the doors

Every single-step transition available from where you stand.

Inverse (綜) · Opposite (錯)

Inverse (綜)

Opposite (錯)

Written on this

Hexagram 52, Gèn (Keeping Still): Mountain, Timing, and Its Lines

A close reading of Hexagram 52, Gèn, Keeping Still — the doubled mountain, why stillness is timing not inaction, its six lines, and how to read it when cast.

6 min read