Retreat — 遁

What Is Hexagram 33?

Hexagram 33, Dùn (遁, written 遯 in the older orthography), Retreat, is Heaven over Mountain — ䷠ — the hexagram of leaving on purpose: the figure that follows Duration in the sequence, whose judgment asks for passage and only a small steadiness, whose Image sets out how to move away from something growing without making an enemy of it, and whose six lines run from the person who leaves last and worst at the bottom to the person with nothing left to look back at on the top. The 序卦 gives the name in four characters, 遯者退也 — 遯 means to withdraw — and the 雜卦 sets this figure against the one that follows it with a single distinction: 大壯則止，遯則退也.

Two forms of the name are in circulation. 遯 is the form in the older received text and in the quotations on this page; 遁 is the form in common modern writing, and the page title uses it. Both mean the same thing: to step back, to get out of the way.

The figure is two yielding lines at the bottom with four firm ones above them, and the 疏, Kong Yingda's subcommentary, reads the shape as a statement about the time: 陰長之卦，小人方用，君子日消 — a figure in which the yielding grows; what is petty is coming into use and what is noble thins by the day. It adds the pace: 浸者，漸進之名, 浸 means advancing by degrees. The pressure in this hexagram is not an assault. It arrives the way water reaches a wall.

The book's transition to this figure comes out of the previous hexagram. Duration ends on 物不可以久居其所，故受之以遯, nothing can stay long in its place, and so Retreat follows; the clause after it is already about this figure's limit, 物不可終遯，故受之以大壯, nothing can stay withdrawn to the end. The book gives retreat one hexagram and then, one sentence later, states its ceiling. It is a move, not a destination.

The verdicts are worth counting, because they run against the mood of the name. 吉 appears three times, on the third, fourth and fifth lines; 无不利 once, on the top line; 厲 twice, on the first and third; 否 once, on the fourth. The characters 凶, 咎, 悔 and 吝 do not appear in any of the six lines at all. In a hexagram whose subject is the approach of something stronger, the book hands out remarkably few penalties, and the danger it does name belongs entirely to leaving late or leaving while still fastened.

Five of the six lines carry the name, each time with a different word joined to it: 遯尾, the tail of the retreat; 係遯, the retreat that stays tied; 好遯, the retreat one is glad of; 嘉遯, the retreat worth admiring; 肥遯, the retreat with room to spare. The earlier they come, the worse the leaving, and the higher they stand, the less there is left to hold them back. The second line is the exception, and it is the point of the figure: it does not use the word at all. 六二 stays in the middle of the lower trigram and holds what the others are abandoning, and the 疏 says what it is without hedging: 既非遯之人也。既非遯之人，便為所遯之主 — it is not one of those leaving; it is the thing being left. This hexagram has two subjects, not one.

Trigram Structure

Mountain below, Heaven above — 艮下乾上 — ䷠. The 說卦 gives the two trigrams one defining word each in its short list: 乾，健也，艮，止也, heaven is strength and mountain is stopping. Both are needed to read the figure, because a retreat that is only 止 is a paralysis and a heaven that is only 健 is a fight. The family list puts 艮三索而得男，故謂之少男 beside 乾，天也，故稱乎父: the youngest son below and the father above, the smaller pressed up against the greater.

The raw material of the Image is the two trigram images themselves, 天下有山. 王弼 reads the scene as 陰長之象, a picture of the yielding growing, and the 疏 makes the geometry explicit: 山者陰類，進在天下，即是山勢欲上逼於天，天性高遠，不受於逼，是遯避之象 — the mountain belongs to the yielding kind; its whole tendency is to press upward; heaven is high and far by nature and cannot be pressed; the distance that results is the picture of retreat. Nothing in the image is running. The mountain climbs, heaven stays where it has always been, and a gap opens between them that neither of them has to make.

The 說卦's longer catalog for 艮 turns out to be the vocabulary of leaving: 艮為山、為徑路、為小石、為門闕、為果蓏、為閽寺、為指、為狗、為鼠、為黔喙之屬；其於木也，為堅多節 — a mountain, a footpath, small stones, a gateway, fruit on the vine, a gatekeeper, a finger, a dog, a rat, the black-muzzled kind, and as wood a thing of many hard joints. Two entries matter here: 徑路, the footpath, and 門闕, the gate in a wall. So the trigram of stopping is also the trigram that gives the book its words for a way out. Heaven's own list runs 乾為天、為圜、為君、為父、為玉、為金、為寒、為冰、為大赤、為良馬、為老馬、為瘠馬、為駁馬、為木果 — heaven, circle, ruler, father, jade, metal, cold, ice, deep red, a good horse, an old horse, a gaunt horse, a piebald horse, fruit on a tree. Set the lists side by side and the contrast is already in them: nothing in the mountain's list is rich and nothing in heaven's list is a dwelling.

One more passage from the 說卦 belongs to this page because it is the book's map, not its poetry: 帝出乎震…成言乎艮, then 艮，東北之卦也，萬物之所成，終而所成始也，故曰成言乎艮, and in the closing paragraph of the same chapter, 終萬物、始萬物者，莫盛乎艮. The mountain stands at the northeast, where all things complete and, in completing, begin. In this book retreat is not the winter of a project. It sits on the hinge.

Two structural relations complete the picture. Read the same six strokes from the other end and they come out 乾下震上, heaven below and thunder above, which is hexagram 34, 大壯, the very figure the 序卦 and 雜卦 pair with this one. Reverse each line instead, firm for yielding, and the reading comes out 兌下坤上: hexagram 19, 臨, Approach, whose two firm lines growing from underneath are the exact inverse of these two yielding ones. Approach and Retreat are the same stage of the cycle seen from opposite sides, one on the way up and one on the way down.

The Judgment

遯：亨。小利貞。

Dùn: hēng. Xiǎo lì zhēn.

Our rendering: Retreat: there is passage. In small measure, holding to what is correct serves.

Read character by character:

The 疏 sets out the situation before glossing the words: 遯者，隱退逃避之名。陰長之卦，小人方用，君子日消。君子當此之時，若不隱遯避世，即受其害。須遯而後得通，故曰遯亨 — retreat is the name for drawing back and getting out of the way; in a figure where the yielding grows, the petty find their use and the noble thin away; a person who does not withdraw in such a time takes the damage; one gets through only after leaving, and that is why the judgment says passage. 王弼's note on the 彖 puts the same thing in four characters, 遯乃通也: withdrawal is the way through.

The harder clause is 小利貞, and the tradition carries two readings of it. The one this page follows is the 疏's: 陰道初始浸長，正道亦未全滅，故曰小利貞 — the yielding way has only begun to soak upward and the correct way is not yet wholly extinguished, so what is left to hold is small and holding it still serves. 王弼's note on the 彖 clause agrees in one line: 陰道欲浸而長，正道亦未全滅. The other reading takes 小 as 小事, small affairs, and hears a limit on scope rather than a measure of what remains: the things that can still be carried out correctly are the small ones. Both readings agree on the shape of the time, and the 彖 gives the reason the first one is possible at all. 小利貞，浸而長也, and the 疏 explains the counterfactual: 若陰德暴進，即消正道 — had the yielding come at a rush, the correct way would already be gone. It survives because the pressure is slow. That is not a comfort in this figure; it is the reason anything is still available.

The 彖's other clause is about capability rather than timing alone: 剛當位而應，與時行也, the firm line in its place, answering the one below, moves with the time. 王弼's note identifies it, 謂五也, and the 疏 explains that the fifth line is firm, holds the place proper to firmness, answers the second line, and keeps to the moment instead of resisting it, 相時而動, and that this is what the judgment means by passage. The 彖 closes with the book's formula of admiration, 遯之時義大矣哉, and the 疏 says what is being admired: 相時度宜，避世而遯，自非大人照幾不能如此 — to weigh the moment and leave at the right one is not given to anyone short of a great person who can see the incipient, a 大人 who 照幾, and that is why the 疏 says the matter is great. It takes 幾, the capacity to see a thing while it is still small. The 繫辭下 defines that word: 幾者，動之微，吉之先見者也。君子見幾而作，不俟終日 — the incipient is the small motion at the very beginning, the first visible sign of the good; the noble one acts when he sees it and does not wait for the day to end. That sentence is the practical content of this judgment, since every clause in it is a claim about timing.

Jungian reading: Jung's psychology has a use for a figure like this because it treats withdrawal as a movement of interest rather than a failure of nerve. In his account of introversion, libido turns away from an object not because the object is frightening but because it has stopped feeding the person's development; the turn is neither healthy nor unhealthy in itself, and the question that follows is what it is turning toward. That is the distinction the six lines are built to draw. Here leaving is a way of keeping something intact, and the lines that fail are not the ones that leave but the ones that leave while still fastened, 係遯, or leave only once the danger has arrived, 遯尾. The Image's double prohibition belongs to the same observation: a boundary held without hostility is a different act from a boundary held with it, and only the first can be held for long. What a person hates on the way out is what he keeps carrying.

The Image

天下有山，遯；君子以遠小人，不惡而嚴。

Tiān xià yǒu shān, dùn; jūn zǐ yǐ yuǎn xiǎo rén, bù è ér yán.

Heaven above and the mountain below: Retreat. The noble one therefore keeps the petty at a distance — no hostility, and no familiarity either.

The 注 supplies the scene's meaning, 天下有山，陰長之象, and the 疏 argues the picture through the two natures, as above: the mountain presses upward, heaven does not come down, and the gap between them is the figure. The instruction then turns that picture into conduct. The 疏's reasoning is worth having in full: 君子當此遯避之時，小人進長，理須遠避，力不能討，故不可為惡，復不可與之褻瀆，故曰不惡而嚴 — in such a time the petty advance, one must move away, and since force cannot settle the matter one must not make them into enemies, and must not grow familiar with them either. What remains when both of those are refused is distance: not a war and not a compromise.

The two halves of the sentence are doing different work. 遠小人 is the act; 不惡而嚴 is the manner, and the manner is where the difficulty sits. Anyone can move away. The Image asks for a move made without contempt and without intimacy, which is the only kind that does not have to be made again later.

The figure's own trigram adds one detail to the act. The 說卦's list for 艮 already contains the footpath and the gateway, so the book's image of stopping is also its image of the way out and the way through a wall. Elsewhere in this series the 大象 generally sends a person toward something: toward people, toward work, toward the season. This one names distance as the work.

The Lines

初六：遯尾，厲，勿用有攸往。 (Dùn wěi, lì, wù yòng yǒu yōu wǎng.) At the tail of the retreat: danger; there is no use in setting out anywhere.

王弼 defines both halves of the picture and then joins them: 遯之為義，辟內而之外者也。尾之為物，最在體後者也。處遯之時，不往何災，而為遯尾，禍所及也 — leaving means going from the inside to the outside, a tail is what hangs furthest back on the body, and at such a time not going would have cost nothing, but as the tail, harm reaches it. The 疏 fills in the scene: 小人長於內，應出外以避之，而最在卦內，是遯之為後也。逃遯之世，宜速遠而居先 — the petty are growing inside; the one furthest inside is the last to get out; in a time of flight one should be far away and first. The last clause it reads in the same key: 危厲既至，則當固窮，危行言遜，勿用更有所往 — once the danger has arrived, hold to your own poverty; conduct upright, speech low; do not look for somewhere to go. The Small Says grant the line its one mercy, 遯尾之厲，不往何災也: the danger belongs to the going, not to the staying. This is the lowest line of the figure and its only outright warning, and it is not the line of a coward. It is the line of someone who waited.

六二：執之用黃牛之革，莫之勝說。 (Zhí zhī yòng huáng niú zhī gé, mò zhī shèng tuō.) Hold it with the hide of a yellow ox: nothing will loosen it.

說 here is read 脫, to slip free, so 莫之勝說 is that nothing overcomes the hold. The line is the still point of the hexagram. 王弼 first fixes the position, 居內處中，為遯之主, and then asks the question that is the point of the line: 何以固之 — placed inside and centered, it is the pivot of the retreat, and everything is retreating from it; how is such a thing held? The answer is a method rather than a force: 若能執乎理中厚順之道以固之也，則莫之勝解. The 疏 unpacks the image: 黃中之色，以譬中和，牛性順從，皮體堅厚 — yellow is the color of the middle, the ox is compliant by nature, its hide is thick and tough; the hide therefore stands for thickness and compliance and not for grip. The 疏 also says what the line is: 二既處中居內，即非遯之人也。既非遯之人，便為所遯之主 — the second is not one of those who leave; it is what they are leaving. The Small Says reduce the whole matter to three characters, 固志也, the will is made firm. Of the six lines this is the only one that does not use the name, and the omission is exact: nothing here retreats. What survives a general departure is seldom the tightest hold; it is the one with the most give in it.

九三：係遯，有疾厲，畜臣妾吉。 (Xì dùn, yǒu jí lì, xù chén qiè jí.) A tethered retreat: sickness, and danger. Keeping servants and concubines, good fortune.

The 疏 states the position first: 九三無應於上，與二相比，以陽附陰，系意在二 — the third line has no answering line above it and stands next to the second, a firm line fastened to a yielding one. 王弼 draws the consequence: 在內近二，以陽附陰，宜遯而系，故曰系遯 — the time calls for leaving and this line attaches instead; and then, 遯之為義，宜遠小人，以陽附陰，系於所在，不能遠害 — the point of the word is to get distance from what is small, and a firm line tied to a yielding one, fixed where it happens to stand, cannot get clear of the harm. The Small Says read 疾 as 憊, 係遯之厲，有疾憊也: the line is not struck down; it is exhausted. Then 王弼 gives the practical half: 系於所在，畜臣妾可也。施於大事，凶之道也 — for a person fastened where he stands, keeping a household of servants and concubines is what can still be done, and attempting anything large on that footing is the road to ruin. The word 凶 there is 王弼's, not the line's: the line itself says only 有疾厲, and it is the commentary that names the larger failure. The Small Says give the reason for the limit, 畜臣妾吉，不可大事也. Read beside the second line, the pair is the figure's whole argument about attachment: the middle line holds what the movement leaves behind and is called firm-willed; the third holds what it ought to be leaving and is called sick.

九四：好遯君子吉，小人否。 (Hào dùn, jūn zǐ jí, xiǎo rén pǐ.) A retreat one is glad of: good fortune for the noble one; for the petty one, no.

王弼 locates the line and then splits its outcome on a single variable: 處於外而有應於內，君子好遯，故能舍之，小人系戀，是以否也 — placed outside yet answering to a line inside; a noble one is glad of the leaving and can let the tie go, a petty one clings to it and so comes out with no. The 疏 makes the two readings of one position explicit: 處外即意欲遠遯，應內則未能棄舍 — to be outside is to want distance; to answer a line inside is to be unable to let go. Both people in this line stand in the same place, and the difference is what each does with the tie. The 注 even fixes the pronunciation of the last word, 音臧否之否: it is the 否 of 臧否, read pǐ, marking a thing as bad, not the 否 of hexagram 12.

九五：嘉遯，貞吉。 (Jiā dùn, zhēn jí.) An admirable retreat: holding to it, good fortune.

The 疏's gloss of the name is 嘉，美也, admirable, that is, beautiful, and then it describes a position rather than a departure: 五居於外，得位居中，是遯而得正 — the fifth stands outside and still holds both the honored place and the middle. 王弼's sentence for it is the most interesting in the figure: 遯而得正，反制於內 — leaving, and holding its correctness, it governs the inside from outside. The second line answers it and does not resist, 二為己應，不敢違拒，從五之命，率正其志, so the yielding lines are not simply driving the nobles out; the figure's own good exit leaves still in charge. The note then brings back the Image's phrase, 不惡而嚴，得正之吉: outside the Image and its own comment, that phrase occurs once in this hexagram, on this line. The Small Says close on four characters, 以正志也. What the line describes is the difference between leaving and abdicating. This is the retreat of someone with authority over the thing being left, who takes himself out of the room without handing over what is his to hold.

上九：肥遯，无不利。 (Féi dùn, wú bù lì.) An ample retreat: nothing unfavorable.

肥 here is not the fat of a body. The 疏 quotes 子夏傳, 肥，饒裕也, ample, well supplied, and that is the sense the line runs on. 王弼 describes the position: 最處外極，無應於內，超然絕志，心無疑顧，憂患不能累，矰繳不能及 — outermost of all, with no answering line inside, its aim cut clean; nothing in the mind is in doubt; trouble cannot attach to it and the corded arrow cannot reach it. The 疏 compares it with the two lines below and says why it is the finest of the six: 四、五雖在於外，皆在內有應，猶有反顧之心。惟上九最在外極，無應於內，心無疑顧，是遯之最優 — the fourth and fifth are outside but each still answers a line inside and each still looks back; the top alone has nothing to look back at, and that is the finest retreat there is. 矰 gets a definition out of 鄭玄's commentary on the 周禮, quoted in the 疏: 結繳於矢謂之矰, an arrow with a silk cord tied to it. The cord is what makes it the exact image of a departure that can be pulled home again, and the top line is the one it cannot reach. The Small Says end in four characters, 无所疑也: nothing is in doubt.

How This Hexagram Shows Up in Daily Life

The demand of this figure is timing, and timing is the first thing the word retreat hides. The 疏 says the correct way survives only because the pressure is gradual, 若陰德暴進，即消正道, and the same 疏 praises the capacity to see a thing while it is still small, 大人照幾 — a capacity the 繫辭下 defines as the first visible sign, 幾者，動之微，吉之先見者也。君子見幾而作，不俟終日. In practice the decision this hexagram describes is made early, while it is still cheap, and from the outside it looks like nothing at all. By the time a departure is plainly the right call, the departure belongs to the first line, and the first line's verdict is 厲. This is not a text advising people to leave. It is an argument about when a person is still acting rather than reacting.

The lines describe two ways of leaving badly, one that splits on what a person does with the tie, two that work, and one that does not leave at all; none of the six is about courage. Leaving last and worst, 遯尾, is what happens when a departure is treated as a failure to be postponed. Leaving while still fastened, 係遯, is the person who has moved out of the room but not out of the argument, and the line's judgement on that is 有疾厲 — exhaustion, and danger. Leaving because one is glad to leave, 好遯, is the one the line says a noble one and a petty one do differently from the same position: one is glad and lets go, the other is glad and holds. And leaving with nothing left inside to answer to, 肥遯, is the top line, the one the 疏 calls the finest. What makes it finest is not virtue; it is that there is nothing on the other end of the line.

The Image's 不惡而嚴 is the part that transfers most directly. Workplaces and friendships are full of departures made in contempt: the resignation delivered as a verdict, the friendship ended as a case. The classic asks for a boundary with no anger in it and no familiarity either, and the 疏's reason is practical rather than moral — 力不能討, force cannot settle the matter. Whatever you hate on the way out you keep carrying, and this figure has a name for that carrying: 係遯. The opposite failure is as easy to recognize. The second line, the one thing in the hexagram that never leaves, exists to say that staying is a real answer, provided the staying has a method in it. It is held with a hide, not with a fist.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does Hexagram 33 mean in one sentence?

That leaving in time is itself a way through. The 疏 reads the judgment's 亨 as 須遯而後得通, passage granted only after the withdrawal; 王弼's note says 遯乃通也; and what is left of correct conduct in such a time is small, 小利貞, precisely because the pressure arrives by degrees.

Why does the same figure also go by 遁, and why Retreat rather than escape?

遁 and 遯 are two spellings of one word, to withdraw; the older form is the one in the received text and in the quotations here. It is called Retreat rather than escape because nothing in the figure is running: the 序卦's gloss is 遯者退也, to step back, and the Image shows a distance opening by itself between a mountain pressing up and a heaven that does not come down. Escape belongs more properly to the first line, whose leaving is a flight made too late, and that is the line the figure warns about.

What does 小利貞 mean at the end of the judgment?

That only a small correctness is still available, and that holding it still serves. The 疏 reads it as 陰道初始浸長，正道亦未全滅: the yielding way has begun to rise by degrees and the correct way is not yet wholly gone. The 彖 gives the reason it is not gone, 浸而長也 — it grew by degrees; and, as the 疏 says, 若陰德暴進，即消正道, a rush would already have extinguished it. The clause is not a license for small-mindedness; it is a statement about what a person can still keep hold of, and the second line, held with an ox hide, is the figure's own picture of it.

Why is the top line, 肥遯, treated as the best of the six?

Because of what it does not have. The 疏 says 是遯之最優 and gives the reason by comparing it with the lines below: 四、五雖在於外，皆在內有應，猶有反顧之心。惟上九最在外極，無應於內，心無疑顧 — the fourth and fifth are outside but each answers a line inside and each still looks back, while the top alone is outermost of all, with nothing inside to answer to and nothing in the mind in doubt. 王弼 adds that trouble cannot attach to it and the corded arrow cannot reach it, 矰繳不能及. The line is not praise of indifference for its own sake; it is the figure's last statement that a departure is finished only when nothing is holding the other end of it.

The I Ching is a mirror for reflection, not a prediction machine.