EN (English)
䷳
Hexagram 52 of 64
Keeping Still
艮 · Gèn
Mountain above mountain, the trigram of stopping doubled. The classic's hexagram of stillness, and one of the earliest meditation instructions in Chinese literature.
stillness
meditation
limits
stopping
- King Wen number
- 52 of 64
- Above
- ☶ Gèn · Mountain
- Below
- ☶ Gèn · Mountain
- Composition
- Mountain over Mountain
- Lines, bottom to top
- Broken · broken · solid · broken · broken · solid
- Chinese
- 艮 · Gèn
The Judgment
Keeping the back still, so that he no longer feels the body. He walks in his courtyard and does not see the people there. No blame.
A technical instruction. Stillness is located in the back, where there is no sensation and no wanting, rather than in the mind trying to quieten itself.
The Image
Mountains standing together: Keeping Still. So the noble person does not let their thoughts go beyond their situation.
Concentration defined as a boundary. Thought that stays inside its own circumstances is what the classic means by focus.
What it means
Gen doubled is the classic's account of stopping, and its Judgment is unusually technical. Keep the back still, so that you no longer feel the body; walk in the courtyard and do not see the people. The commentaries have read this as a meditation instruction for two thousand years, and the anatomy is deliberate. The back is the part of the body with the least sensation and the least appetite, so stilling it stills the wanting rather than fighting it.
The lines climb the body the way hexagram 31's climb it, and the parallel is intentional: there influence rises from toe to tongue, here stillness does the same. The third line is the warning. Stiffening the spine, forcing the hinge to hold, and the heart suffocates. Stillness imposed by rigidity is not stillness.
The fifth line brings it to speech, and the phrasing matters: the words have order. Not silence, but talk that has stopped outrunning thought.
The Image gives the general form. Thoughts that do not go beyond your situation. In this book that is not narrowness; it is the definition of concentration.
In a reading
Keeping Still as an answer says stop. Not abandon: halt, deliberately, and hold the position.
Its counsel is to keep your attention inside the situation you are actually in, and to let the stillness be structural rather than forced. The third line is the caution: if holding still is producing tension in your chest, you are gripping rather than stopping.
The six lines
Read a line's text only when the cast made it a moving line. They are listed from the top of the figure down, the way the hexagram is drawn.
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Nine at the top
Wholehearted stillness. Good fortune.
Stillness that is complete and unforced. The best line in the hexagram, and the shortest.
-
Six in the fifth place
Keeping the jaws still. The words have order. Regret disappears.
Stillness reaching speech. Not silence: speech that has stopped running ahead of thought.
-
Six in the fourth place
Keeping the trunk still. No blame.
Composure of the whole body, arrived at without strain.
-
Nine in the third place
Keeping the hips still, stiffening the spine. Dangerous. The heart is suffocated.
Forced stillness applied at the hinge. Rigidity mistaken for calm, and the classic marks it as a danger.
-
Six in the second place
Keeping the calves still. He cannot rescue the one he follows. His heart is not glad.
Held back while someone ahead goes wrong. The line records the unhappiness without excusing movement.
-
Six at the beginning
Keeping the toes still. No blame. Lasting steadfastness rewards.
Stopping before the first step. The easiest place to halt anything.
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