Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme

Switch Atlas

The Inner World

The Civil World

The Natural World

I Ching Hexagrams

Keeping Still

GUN
Gen

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Origin 1000 BCE to 350 BCE

King Wen hexagram 52, Keeping Still or the Mountain (Gen), is the Mountain doubled over the Mountain: stillness upon stillness, an image of meditative rest and of movement brought to its proper stop. It describes the art of keeping still, quieting the restless heart and mind so that one acts only when the time is right and rests when it is not. Its Judgment gives the image of keeping the back still so that one no longer feels the body, of walking in the courtyard and not seeing the people, a state of such inner quiet that the ego and its cravings fall silent, which is without blame. Its Image counsels the superior person not to let their thoughts go beyond their situation. As a reading it calls for stillness, composure, and staying present, teaching that there is a time to stop as surely as a time to move, and that inner calm is the ground of right timing and clear action.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
1000 BCE to 350 BCE 1Tradition: Zhou Yi, the Western Zhou divination core
Origin Period
1924 to 1950 2Tradition: Wilhelm-Baynes I Ching (1950)
Origin Period
400 BCE to 100 BCE 3Tradition: Zhou Yi and the Ten Wings
Origin Period
This hexagram's dating spans three distinct historical layers: the divinatory judgment text of the Zhouyi core, composed in the early Western Zhou around 1000 BCE and recovered in the Mawangdui silk manuscripts; the Ten Wings commentary tradition that gave the hexagrams their later philosophical reading, compiled across the Warring States and Han periods by around 400 BCE; and the English title used here, coined in Richard Wilhelm's 1924 German translation and carried into English by Cary Baynes. 2
Attributed Author / Compiler
By tradition: the hexagram statements to King Wen of Zhou, the line statements to the Duke of Zhou, and the Ten Wings to Confucius. 3Tradition: Zhou Yi and the Ten Wings
Attributed Author / Compiler
No named author. The core is a Western Zhou compilation with no compiler on record, and the ascription of the Ten Wings to Confucius was already being questioned inside the Chinese tradition by the eleventh century and is defended by no current scholarship. 3
Language
Classical Chinese 4
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
A progressive discipline of the self. The Ten Wings connect the figure to a stillness so complete that a person walks into their own courtyard and does not see the people in it, and this is the reading on which its reputation as the meditation hexagram rests. 5Tradition: Zhou Yi and the Ten Wings
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Line texts moving up the body - toes, calves, hips with the spine held rigid, trunk, jaws - are also the pattern of an omen series about pain or injury, and the third line's rigid spine and smothered heart read more like a physical complaint than a contemplative state. 4Tradition: Zhou Yi, the Western Zhou divination core
Identity
King Wen Number
52 1
Native Name
Gen 1
Attributions
Trigram Pairing
Mountain over Mountain 1
Order
Position in the Sequence
52 2Tradition: King Wen sequence, the received order
Position in the Sequence
55 2Tradition: Xiantian (Earlier Heaven) arrangement of Shao Yong
Learn More
Keeping Still, and a Hexagram About a Body

Hexagram 52 is the doubled mountain trigram, and its line texts do something no other hexagram does: they proceed up a human body.

The first line concerns the toes. The second the calves. The third the hips or the loins, with the spine held rigid. The fourth the trunk. The fifth the jaws, with the counsel that words have order. The sixth is noble-hearted keeping still, and good fortune.

The traditional reading, and Wilhelm's, takes this as a progressive discipline of the self, and the Ten Wings connect it to a stillness so complete that a person walks into their own courtyard and does not see the people in it. That is the passage on which the hexagram's reputation as the meditation hexagram rests, and it has been used that way for centuries within the Chinese tradition.

Translators working from the older stratum are more cautious. Line texts moving up the body are also the pattern of an omen series about pain, injury or a ritual involving the body, and the third line's rigid spine with danger and a smothered heart reads more like a physical complaint than a contemplative state. Rutt's version keeps the anatomy plain.

Both readings are defensible. What should be avoided is presenting the meditation interpretation as the text's original meaning, when it is a later and highly productive development of it.

It is also worth resisting the reverse error. The fact that a reading is later does not make it worse, and the contemplative tradition built on this hexagram is one of the more substantial things the I Ching has produced. The requirement is only to say which layer a claim belongs to.

Stopping at the Right Point

The practical content of hexagram 52 is not stillness in general but stillness that is correctly located, and the body sequence is what conveys it.

Stopping at the toes, before movement begins, is easy and is called blameless. Stopping at the calves, when the legs are already moving and the trunk is not, is called unhappy, the person cannot rescue the one they follow. Stopping at the hips, with the spine forced rigid, is dangerous. The higher the stopping point, the harder it is, and the more likely it is to be a matter of holding still under strain rather than of not having started.

That gradation makes the hexagram a question rather than an instruction. Where in the movement has the querent got to, and is stopping still available at low cost? The answer determines whether the figure counsels an easy pause or a difficult restraint.

The fifth line, about the jaws and words having order, is the one readers find most immediately applicable. Stillness at the level of speech is the specific discipline of not saying the thing, and the text treats it as achievable and as producing the disappearance of remorse.

The counterpart figure is hexagram 51, Thunder, its exact inversion. Where that one describes composure during an event, this one describes knowing when not to begin. Between them they cover the two halves of the question, and the King Wen sequence places them adjacently for that reason. Neither figure recommends its own principle absolutely; each is the answer to a different position in the same problem.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Corresponds To

Channel of Concentration, Human Design Channels

Channel of Concentration bridges Hexagram 9, Small Taming, and Hexagram 52, Keeping Still, per its own iching-correspondence fact; this edge names the 52 side.

Source The Human Design SystemRa Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower)
From Stress to Stillness, Gene Keys

Gene Key 52, From Stress to Stillness, corresponds to Hexagram 52, Keeping Still, per its own iching-correspondence fact.

Source Gene Keys: Embracing Your Higher PurposeRichard Rudd
Stillness and Focus, Human Design Gates

Human Design Gate 52, Stillness And Focus, corresponds to Hexagram 52, Keeping Still, per its own iching-correspondence fact.

Source The Human Design SystemRa Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower)

Disciplines That Use This

I Ching, Disciplines

The sixty four hexagrams of the Zhou Yi.

Source Zhouyi: The Book of ChangesRichard Rutt (trans.)

Originates in Language

Classical Chinese, Languages
Source Zhouyi: The Book of ChangesRichard Rutt (trans.)

Reached by Changing Lines

Development, Line 5, Hexagram Lines
Grace, Line 1, Hexagram Lines
Source The Sacred Books of the East, Volume XVI: The Yi KingJames Legge (trans.)
Modesty, Line 6, Hexagram Lines
Source The Sacred Books of the East, Volume XVI: The Yi KingJames Legge (trans.)
Splitting Apart, Line 3, Hexagram Lines
Source The Sacred Books of the East, Volume XVI: The Yi KingJames Legge (trans.)
The Wanderer, Line 4, Hexagram Lines
Work on the Decayed, Line 2, Hexagram Lines
Source The Sacred Books of the East, Volume XVI: The Yi KingJames Legge (trans.)
Sources
1. I Ching: The Classic of Changes, translated with an introduction and commentary, the first English translation of the newly discovered second-century BC Mawangdui texts
Edward L. Shaughnessy (trans.), Ballantine Books, 1996On the dating and composition of the Zhou Yi core
2. Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes) and Its Evolution in China
Richard J. Smith, University of Virginia Press, 2008On Shao Yong's xiantian ordering of the sixty-four hexagramsView the Source
3. The Five "Confucian" Classics
Michael Nylan, Yale University Press, 2001On the authorship question and the critique of the traditional ascriptionsView the Source
4. Zhouyi: The Book of Changes
Richard Rutt (trans.), Curzon Press, 1996On the body-part line texts read as anatomy rather than contemplationView the Source
5. The I Ching, or Book of Changes
Richard Wilhelm (trans.); Cary F. Baynes (English trans.), Princeton University Press, 1980Hexagram 52, the Judgement, the Image and the line textsView the Source

Take a Related Quiz

Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.