EN (English)
䷎
Hexagram 15 of 64
Modesty
謙 · Qiān
A mountain inside the earth: great substance holding a low position. The only hexagram in the book with no unfavourable line, and the classic makes clear why.
modesty
balance
levelling
carrying through
- King Wen number
- 15 of 64
- Above
- ☷ Kūn · Earth
- Below
- ☶ Gèn · Mountain
- Composition
- Earth over Mountain
- Lines, bottom to top
- Broken · broken · solid · broken · broken · broken
- Chinese
- 謙 · Qiān
The Judgment
Success. The noble person carries things through to the end.
The promise is completion rather than triumph. Modesty's advantage is that it does not generate the resistance that stops other people finishing.
The Image
A mountain within the earth: Modesty. So the noble person reduces what is too much and adds to what is too little, weighing things to make the sharing even.
The abstract virtue is given a concrete job: redistribution. Modesty here is a policy, not a manner.
What it means
Qian is unique in the classic: all six of its lines read favourably. The commentaries have been pointing this out for centuries, and the reason is structural. Modesty is the one position that provokes no counterforce, so it can be occupied at every level of a situation without creating a problem.
The image is exact. A mountain is not small, and this one is inside the earth, holding a lower position than its substance would justify. That is the definition being offered: not self-deprecation, and not the absence of weight, but weight that declines to sit on top.
The Image commentary makes it a matter of distribution. The noble person takes from the excessive and gives to the deficient, weighs things and evens the sharing out. Modesty in this book is an activity with an economic shape.
The last two lines are the ones people misread. A modest ruler may still march an army, and the sixth line points that army at their own city first. The classic is not describing weakness. It is describing strength that has stopped needing to be acknowledged.
In a reading
Modesty as an answer is about as safe as the book gets. Take the lower position, do the work, decline the credit, and finish the thing.
Its practical promise is completion: matters under this hexagram tend to get carried through, because nothing about your conduct is generating opposition. If the question involves rivalry or a claim to recognition, the counsel is to drop the claim and keep the work.
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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Six at the top
Modesty that shows. It helps to set the armies marching, to discipline one's own town and country.
Correction aimed inward first. The line turns the force on your own house rather than someone else's.
-
Six in the fifth place
Not parading wealth before the neighbours. It helps to attack with force. Nothing that does not further.
The surprise of the hexagram. Modesty is not pacifism, and a modest ruler may still need to act decisively.
-
Six in the fourth place
Nothing that does not further. Modesty in every movement.
Applied continuously and in detail, down to gesture.
-
Nine in the third place
A hardworking, modest noble person carries things through. Good fortune.
The ruling line. Real work plus no claim on it, which the classic considers close to unbeatable.
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Six in the second place
Modesty that shows. Steadfastness brings good fortune.
It has become visible in speech and bearing rather than being a private policy.
-
Six at the beginning
A modest and again modest noble person may cross the great water. Good fortune.
Doubled modesty at the very bottom, and the reward is permission for the largest undertaking in the book's vocabulary.
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