The Book of Changes · Zhong Fu

Hexagram 61: Inner Truth

Wind (wind, and wood growing) over Lake (still water held in a hollow)

Sincerity that reaches even what cannot reason: pigs and fishes, the tradition says, which is its way of naming the least persuadable audience there is. The figure is hollow in the middle, like an open heart.

The image

Wind over the lake. The reading is that a person discusses criminal cases in order to delay executions, because certainty is exactly what inner truth makes a person slower about.

Wind, above

Penetration, patience, and what works by not stopping.

Lake, below

Openness, pleasure, and what is said out loud.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Being prepared. Good fortune, and hidden motives underneath make it uneasy.
2. Line 2A crane calling in the shade and its young answering. I have something good; I will share it with you.
3. Line 3Finding a companion, and now drumming, now stopping, now weeping, now singing. Steadiness borrowed from someone else.
4. Line 4The moon nearly full, and the other horse goes astray. No fault in continuing without it.
5. Line 5Truth that binds, and holds the whole thing together. No fault.
6. Line 6A cock crowing at heaven. Constancy brings misfortune: a claim louder than what is under it.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 61 is Gate 61, Mystery.