Decrease — 损

What Is Hexagram 41?

Hexagram 41, Sǔn (損), Decrease, is Mountain above and Lake below, ䷨ — and its name is a verb — something a person does — rather than a misfortune that happens to someone. The figure does not show something being lost; it shows something being given up on purpose: 損下益上, the lower reduced so that the upper can be supplied. Everything difficult about it lies in the two conditions the text attaches to that act — it has to be carried by trust, 有孚, which the judgment itself demands, and it has to be done at the right hour, 有時, which the 彖 adds — and almost all of the classical commentary on this figure is an elaboration of those two words.

The 序卦 arrives here from the figure before it, 緩必有所失，故受之以損 — what has gone slack is certain to lose something, and that loss is Decrease — and hands the sequence straight on, since a decrease that does not stop becomes an increase, 損而不已，必益。The 雜卦 gives the pair the widest frame in the book, 損、益，盛衰之始也: Decrease and Increase are where fullness and decline begin. The two figures are the same six strokes read from opposite ends, and the half of the cycle described here is the one that starts by taking something away.

"Decrease" is the standard English word for 損, and it is accurate about the direction of the motion and silent about everything else. Kong Yingda's subcommentary, the 疏, starts from the name itself, 損者，減損之名，此卦明損下益上，故謂之損 — decrease is the word for taking away, and this figure shows the lower reduced to raise the higher. Wang Bi states immediately what that motion is not: 損下益上，非補不足者也，損剛益柔，非長君子之道者也. Taking from below to give above is not the same as repairing a shortage, and softening the firm for the sake of the yielding is not the way of making a noble one grow. The book names the operation exactly and then declines to call it good in itself.

What is unusual is how mild the figure is once it is counted. The figure carries the book's highest verdict twice — 元吉 at the judgment and 元吉 again at the fifth line — and a count across all sixty-four figures finds only one other place where 元吉 is spoken twice in the same figure, which is 益, the figure this one becomes when it is turned over. It contains exactly one 凶, at the second line, and the words 吝, 悔 and 厲 do not occur in it at all; twenty-two of the sixty-four figures never use those three words anywhere in the judgment or the lines, and this is one of them. A figure built on deliberate subtraction turns out to be one of the gentlest things in the book, which is the first sign that its subject is not misfortune.

Trigram Structure

Lake lies at the bottom, Mountain stands on top, and the Image's four characters for the pair — 山下有澤 — are almost a plain field note on a marsh at the foot of a slope. The 疏 draws the geometry out of it, 澤在山下，澤卑山高，似澤之自損，以崇山之象也: the marsh is low and the mountain is high, and the pair looks like a marsh that has lowered itself in order to lift the mountain. Nothing in the picture says the marsh made a choice. The figure's name is what supplies the choice.

The 說卦 reduces the two trigrams to one word each, 艮，止也。兌，說也 — Mountain is the one that stops, Lake the one that is glad — and the 彖's first clause runs those two words into a direction, 損，損下益上，其道上行. Wang Bi reads the geometry as the reason for the direction: 艮為陽，兌為陰。凡陰順於陽者也。陽止於上，陰說而順，損下益上，上行之義也. The firmness stands above and the yielding answers it, so what the lower half does is by definition give upward. The 疏 says the same in one sentence, 陽止於上，陰說而順之，是下自減損以奉於上，"上行"之謂也, and then names the lines that are actually moved: 損剛者，謂損兌之陽爻也。益柔者，謂益艮之陰爻也. The firm lines being shaved are the two in the lower trigram; the yielding lines receiving are the upper ones.

These two halves are not neighbors that happen to be stacked. They are one of the four pairs with which the 說卦 opens its account of the world, 天地定位，山澤通氣，雷風相薄，水火不相射 — heaven and earth take their places, mountain and marsh exchange breath, thunder and wind brush against each other, water and fire do not shoot at one another. The sixth chapter of the same text gives each of them a superlative, 說萬物者，莫說乎澤…終萬物、始萬物者，莫盛乎艮: nothing gladdens things the way a marsh does, and nothing brings things to their end and starts them again the way a mountain does. That chapter closes by putting all four pairs back to work, 故水火相逮，雷風不相悖，山澤通氣，然後能變化，既成萬物也 — only with the pairs breathing together can transformation finish the ten thousand things. In this figure the breathing runs one way: upward.

The 說卦's tenth chapter gives both trigrams a family place, and this whole figure is built out of the youngest generation: 艮三索而得男，故謂之少男；兌三索而得女，故謂之少女. That genealogy also settles what the figure's near neighbors are. Flip every line of this figure — yang turned to yin and yin to yang — and the six strokes become 咸, Hexagram 31, the same youngest pair with the daughter on top and the son below; that is the figure of courtship, made of exactly the strokes this one is made of, each read against its opposite. Turn the same strokes the other way instead, upside down, and the eldest generation appears: 震一索而得男…巽一索而得女, the eldest son below and the eldest daughter above, which is 益, Hexagram 42. A figure of decrease built from the youngest pair, whose reversal is built from the eldest, is an accident of the sequence rather than a doctrine — but it is the kind of accident the book's readers keep noticing.

Of the six places, only two hold the kind of line they are supposed to hold: 初九 at the bottom and 六四 in the fourth place, which are each other's answering lines. The two centers are occupied by a firm line and a yielding line, and neither is in the right place for its kind, so 九二 and 六五 are both central and both incorrect — this figure does its business from the middle rather than from a seat of strength. All three pairs answer across the figure: places one and four, two and five, three and six are each a firm line facing a yielding one, so nothing here is unmatched and nothing is doubled. The place the text keeps worrying about is the lower half. If the second firm line also gave way, 兌 would become 坤 and the whole figure would be 剝, Hexagram 23, and the 疏 says so at the second line, 初九已損剛以益柔…九二復損己以益六五為六二，則成剝卦矣. A decrease stands one line away from a stripping, and what separates them is a decision to stop.

Neither trigram's inventory in the 說卦's eleventh chapter supplies anything this figure names. Mountain's list runs 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, and the marsh's runs 兌為澤、為少女、為巫、為口舌、為毀折、為附決，其於地也，為剛鹵，為妾、為羊 — and neither list contains a basket or a tortoise shell. The tortoise is in fact inventoried in that same chapter, but under 離, 為鱉、為蟹、為蠃、為蚌、為龜. Where the previous figure in the sequence found every object it needed ready-made in its own lower trigram, this one deals in quantities rather than things: two baskets, ten pairs of shells, one man subtracted from three. Its vocabulary is arithmetic. One word in the marsh's list does describe this figure's motion rather precisely, though from below: 為毀折, breaking.

The Judgment

損：有孚，元吉，无咎，可貞，利有攸往。曷之用？二簋可用享。

Sǔn: yǒu fú, yuán jí, wú jiù, kě zhēn, lì yǒu yōu wǎng. Hé zhī yòng? Èr guǐ kě yòng xiǎng.

Our rendering: Decrease: there is trust, and the great good fortune; no blame, and it may be held to; it serves to set out. What is it used for? Two baskets will do for the offering.

Read clause by clause:

The 彖 restates the judgment and then adds three clauses, and all three are about time. 二簋應有時 — Wang Bi: 至約之道，不可常也, the most sparing way cannot be the ordinary way, and the 疏, 二簋至約，惟在損時應時行之，非時不可也, it belongs to the hour of decrease and to no other. 損剛益柔有時 — Wang Bi: 剛為德長，損之不可以為常也, and the 疏 explains which lines are meant, 損剛者，謂損兌之陽爻也。益柔者，謂益艮之陰爻也, before adding the reason firmness cannot be shaved on a schedule, 人之為德，須備剛柔，就剛柔之中，剛為德長。既為德長，不可恒減. And 損益盈虛，與時偕行 — Wang Bi: 自然之質，各定其分，短者不為不足，長者不為有餘，損益將何加焉？非道之常，故必與時偕行也, things have their own measure, and a short one is not deficient while a long one is not excessive; the 疏 finishes the thought with one of its few memorable images, 盈虛者，鳧足短而任性，鶴脛長而自然…何須損我以益人，虛此以盈彼 — the duck's leg is short by its own nature and the crane's is long by its own, so why cut from oneself to add to another, or empty one thing to fill another? The line has been quoted ever since as a warning against leveling, and it is worth noticing that it stands in the commentary of a figure whose name means decrease.

The figure on the other side of the door states the same rule from its own end. 益's 彖 closes on 凡益之道，與時偕行, and Wang Bi's note there is the mirror of this one, 益之為用，施未足也。滿而益之，害之道也: increase is for what is not yet full, and adding to something already full is the way of harm. The 疏 on 益 also preserves a line from 向秀 that explains how the pair got its names, 明王之道，志在惠下，故取下謂之損，與下謂之益 — the names are assigned from where the people are standing: taking from those below is called decrease, giving to those below is called increase. Decrease and Increase are not two attitudes to wealth; they are one motion described twice, once by the party being drawn on and once by the party being supplied.

Jungian reading: the operation this figure describes has an exact counterpart in the psychology of projection. Jung held that an image or a quantity of interest lodged outside the self — in a person, a cause, a possession, a grievance — has to be taken back before individuation can move, and that this withdrawal feels like a loss while it is happening. That is the shape of 損: something is subtracted from the lower for the sake of the higher, which in psychological terms means from the instinctual and immediate for the sake of the ordering center. The 疏's warning about flattery, 諂諛, is the figure's own name for the counterfeit version, the giving that is really a purchase of approval: it lowers the giver without raising anything, which is why the judgment makes trust the first condition rather than an ornament. The second condition, 有時, is what separates an act from a habit — the same subtraction repeated past its hour is no longer sacrifice but erosion, which is the 疏's 則成剝卦.

The Image

山下有澤，損；君子以懲忿窒欲。

Shān xià yǒu zé, Sǔn; jūn zǐ yǐ chéng fèn zhì yù.

Our rendering: A marsh lies under the mountain: Decrease. The noble one therefore quiets his anger and closes off his appetites.

Wang Bi's note on it is two clauses long and as blunt as anything in the figure's commentary: 可損之善，莫善忿欲也 — of all the things that can be cut away, nothing is better to cut than anger and appetite. The 疏 explains the two verbs as a division of labor across time, 君子以法此損道，以懲止忿怒，窒塞情欲。夫人之情也，感物而動，境有順逆，故情有忿欲。懲者息其既往，窒者閉其將來。忿欲皆有往來，懲窒互文而相足也. Human feeling is moved by circumstance, and circumstance runs both ways, so anger and desire arrive from both directions; 懲 settles what has already risen and 窒 closes what has not arrived yet, and the two words are 互文, each doing part of the other's work. This is one of the few places in the book where a line of instruction is addressed to something as ordinary as a temper.

The figure's mirror image gives the other hand. 益's Image is 風雷，益；君子以見善則遷，有過則改 — wind and thunder, and the noble one moves toward what is good and corrects what is wrong — with Wang Bi adding 遷善改過，益莫大焉. Read side by side, the pair of images is a single ethics: Decrease says what to stop feeding, Increase says what to start doing instead. The 繫辭's list of nine virtues puts the same division into two adjacent clauses, 損，以遠害。益，以興利 — decrease is how harm is kept at a distance, increase is how benefit is raised up. Neither clause stands alone.

Jungian reading: 懲忿窒欲 is often read as a charter for repression, and the 疏's two tenses are what make that reading lazy. The verbs assume the impulse has already been seen: 懲 is applied to anger that has been named, and 窒 to a desire that can be anticipated. Jung's distinction between suppression and conscious renunciation runs along the same line — what is pushed away unseen returns as a symptom and takes its toll on the body or the mood, while the same renunciation made knowingly alters the structure and is not experienced as a wound. The difference between the two is attention, not severity. On this reading the Image asks for one small piece of discipline that anyone can begin today, which is why the sentence is quoted so often.

The Lines

初九：已事遄往，无咎，酌損之。 (Yǐ shì chuán wǎng, wú jiù, zhuó sǔn zhī.) The work done, go at once: no blame. Measure out the decrease you pour.

The received text reads 已事遄往, and the two comparison copies disagree about the first character: one prints 祀 with 已 as its alternate reading, the other prints 巳 throughout the figure and glosses it as 巳，竟也, which is the same word the received text spells 已 — the three graphs are routinely confused in the transmission, and quotations on this page follow the received 已. Wang Bi's note sets the order of operations, 居於下極，損剛奉柔，則不可以逸。處損之始，則不可以盈，事已則往，不敢宴安，乃獲無咎也: at the bottom of the figure, giving firmness up to serve the yielding leaves no room for idleness, and at the beginning of a decrease there is no room for self-satisfaction; finish the work and then go, and do not settle in for comfort, and the verdict is no blame. Then he adds the clause that makes this line more than a rule about timing: 剛以奉柔，雖免乎無咎，猶未親也。故既獲無咎，復自酌損，乃得合志也. Handing firmness to a yielding line escapes fault but does not yet produce closeness, so the line has to measure out what it gives.

The 疏 lays out three cases, and the middle one is the one people actually live in: 若廢事而往，咎莫大焉。若事已不往，則為傲慢。竟事速往，乃得無咎 — going before the work is finished is the greatest fault available here, and not going at all once the work is done is arrogance — a second fault the line's own verdict does not cover, though the 疏 names it. Then it says why measuring matters, 剛勝則柔危，以剛奉柔，初未見親也, too much firmness endangers the yielding side, which is why the instruction is 酌, measure it out, rather than give it outright. No other line of the six is told to measure what it hands over, and this one is told to measure it in the language of pouring. The Small Says give the line its aim, 已事遄往，尚合志也, with the 疏 glossing 尚 as 庶幾, as much as to say: go quickly, and your intention may yet meet the other's.

九二：利貞，征凶。弗損益之。 (Lì zhēn, zhēng xiōng. Fú sǔn yì zhī.) Holding to what is correct serves; setting out brings misfortune. It does not decrease — it increases.

This is the figure's only 凶, and it is pronounced over forward movement rather than over a fault. The 疏 states the limit case in three short clauses, 柔不可以全益，剛不可以全削，下不可以無正 — the yielding cannot be supplied in full, the firm cannot be shaved away entirely, and what is below cannot be left without something correct to stand on. Wang Bi then turns the argument on this one line: 初九已損剛以順柔，九二履中，而復損己以益柔，則剝道成焉, the first line has already given its firmness away, and if the second line, sitting in the center, gave its own away too, the way of stripping would be complete. The 疏 spells out the geometry behind the warning: 兌 carries two firm lines and 艮 carries one, so if the first line has already given its firmness away and the second does the same, both firm strokes of the lower trigram are gone, 兌 becomes 坤, 則成剝卦矣, and the figure is 剝, Hexagram 23. The second line is where a decrease would stop being a method and become a loss of structure.

So this line is told to stop, and told in the same four characters the top line will use, 弗損益之. What saves it is not its correctness — it stands in an even place with a firm line, which by the book's rule of place is wrong — but its position in the center. The Small Says make exactly that point, 九二利貞，中以為志也, and the 疏 draws out the consequence: 言九二所以能居而守貞，不損益之，良由居中，以中為志，故損益得其節適也, it can hold its ground and keep to what is correct because it is central in intention, and therefore its giving and its holding both come out measured. The figure's only 凶 is thus aimed at a movement, not at a person, and what it protects is the lower half of the figure from disappearing.

六三：三人行，則損一人；一人行，則得其友。 (Sān rén xíng, zé sǔn yī rén; yī rén xíng, zé dé qí yǒu.) Three on the road together lose one; one on the road alone finds his companion.

This is the most quoted line in the figure, and the 繫辭 takes it up directly in its lower fourth chapter, arriving at it by way of the two great unifications: 天地絪縕，萬物化醇；男女構精，萬物化生。易曰：「三人行，則損一人；一人行，則得其友。」言致一也 — heaven and earth woven closely together, the ten thousand things become pure; man and woman joining their essence, the ten thousand things come to birth; the line, says the commentary, is about making one.

Wang Bi's note counts the travelers: 三人，謂自六三已上三陰也, the three are the three yielding lines from this one upward. 三陰並行，以承於上，則上失其友，內無其主，名之曰益，其實乃損 — if all three go up together to serve the top, the top loses a companion and the inside loses its counterpart; what would then be called an increase is in fact a decrease. The 疏 fills in who is who: 上一人，謂上九也。下一人，謂六三也, the one at the far end is the top line and the one at this end is this line, and since this line is the only yielding line in the lower trigram and the top is the only firm line above it, they answer each other, 六三應於上九. If she went up with the two yielding lines above her in tow, 雖欲益上九一人，更使上九懷疑，疑則失其適匹之義也 — the top would end up with a company and without a partner, and doubt would replace the pairing. Alone, 則上九納己無疑，則得其友矣.

The figure's whole thesis is in that note's middle clause. A crowd of the same kind sent toward one receiving line is an increase in quantity and a decrease in what the line actually needed. The Small Says put the consequence in seven characters, 一人行，三則疑也: one on the road works, three produce doubt. Nothing here is about solitude as a virtue — this line's solitude ends in 得其友 — only about the fact that two is a number the book treats as structural and three as a disorder.

六四：損其疾，使遄有喜，无咎。 (Sǔn qí jí, shǐ chuán yǒu xǐ, wú jiù.) Reduce the illness; let it come quickly, and there is gladness: no blame.

This is the answering half of the first line, and the two of them are the figure's only correctly placed pair: a firm line in the first place and a yielding line in the fourth, each in the place its kind belongs to, facing each other across the figure. Wang Bi's note reads the line as a description of receiving, 履得其位，以柔納剛，能損其疾也。疾何可久？故速乃有喜, standing in the right place, taking the firm line in, and thereby reducing the illness; and an illness cannot last long, so speed is what produces gladness. The 疏 names the illness: 疾者相思之疾也, it is the sickness of longing — not a fault and not a possession, but the delay itself. Then it builds the exchange between the two lines, 初九自損己遄往，已以正道速納，陰陽相會，同志斯來，無復企子之疾: the first line goes at once after finishing, this one takes it in at once along the right way, and once the two sides meet there is no more of the ache of standing on tiptoe.

The 疏 is careful about where the blame would fall if the receiver were slow: 初九自損以益四，四不速納，則有失益之咎也. The giver has already done the hard part; a receiver who waits to be convinced turns the gift into a fault. The word 使 in the line is doing real work — 使遄有喜, make it come quickly — since it addresses someone with the power to shorten the interval. The Small Says reduce the verdict to seven characters, 損其疾，亦可喜也, and the 疏 answers them with a line of love poetry from the 詩經, 《詩》曰：「亦既見止」，「我心則降」。不亦有喜乎 — when I have seen him my heart subsides; is that not gladness of a kind. It is the only place in the whole commentary on this figure where the author reaches for a poem, and the poem he reaches for is about reunion, not about gain.

六五：或益之，十朋之龜弗克違，元吉。 (Huò yì zhī, shí péng zhī guī fú kè wéi, yuán jí.) Someone increases him; a tortoise worth ten pairs of cowrie cannot be contradicted: the great good fortune.

The ruler of this figure is a yielding line in the fifth place, and it is the one line of the six that says nothing at all about decreasing — the character 損 does not occur in it, and the verdict is the highest word the book has. Wang Bi explains the mechanism as a consequence of being low, 以柔居尊而為損道，江海處下，百穀歸之，履尊以損，則或益之矣: the sea sits below and every valley drains into it; on the seat of honor and holding to decrease, the line is increased. Then he insists on the particle, 或者，言有也, which the 疏 reads not as uncertainty but as somebody: 言其不自益之，有人來益之也 — the line does not increase itself, someone else does. The tortoises are 龜者，決疑之物也, the creature that settles doubt, and the 疏 records that 馬融 and 鄭玄 both cite the 爾雅's catalogue of the ten named tortoises for the phrase, 一曰神龜，二曰靈龜，三曰攝龜，四曰寶龜，五曰文龜，六曰筮龜，七曰山龜，八曰澤龜，九曰水龜，十曰火龜. There is nothing left for this line to be unsure about, and the full panel arrives anyway.

The commentary also says out loud that the clause is reused elsewhere, which makes the pair readable side by side. At 益, Hexagram 42, the second line reads 或益之，十朋之龜弗克違，永貞吉, and Wang Bi's note there says the line stands 同於損卦六五之位, in the same position as the fifth line of Decrease, with the 疏 adding the reason the wording is not quite the same: 位不當尊，故永貞乃吉 — in the mirror figure the identical gift goes to a line that is not on the throne, so it needs the added word 永, lasting, before it can be called fortunate. The book grants the unrefusable gift to the ruler of Decrease and to the second line of Increase, and adjusts the verdict to the seat.

The Small Says close the line in a direction the line itself left open, 六五元吉，自上祐也, and the 疏 fixes what 上 means: 上謂天也，故與「自天祐之，吉無不利」義同也, it means heaven, which puts the sentence in the same family as the one about help that comes from above. The line that receives is the one that earns the highest word in the book, and the only line of the six whose text never says 損.

上九：弗損益之，无咎，貞吉，利有攸往。得臣无家。 (Fú sǔn yì zhī, wú jiù, zhēn jí, lì yǒu yōu wǎng. Dé chén wú jiā.) It is not decreased but increased: no blame; held to correctly, good fortune; it serves to set out. He gains ministers and has no household.

The top line takes the second line's four characters, 弗損益之, and receives the opposite verdict; the difference is entirely a matter of where the figure stands when it speaks them. Wang Bi's note states the reversal in four characters, 損終反益 — when the decrease reaches its end it turns into an increase — and then explains why this line is not asked to give anything: 處損之終，上無所奉，剛德不損，乃反益之，而不憂於咎. There is nothing above it to be supplied. Firmness that has not been spent becomes, at this position, the thing that attracts. The 疏 adds what the line's 利有攸往 rests on, 不利於柔，不使三陰俱進，不疑其志，剛德遂長 — it does not give way to the yielding lines, does not let all three of them advance at once, and because its aim is not in doubt the firm line's quality grows.

Then 得臣无家, the strangest clause in the figure. Wang Bi reads it as a single motion, 居上乘柔，處損之極，尚夫剛德，為物所歸，故曰得臣。得臣則天下為一，故無家也 — it stands above the yielding lines at the extreme of the decrease, values the firm quality, and things come home to it, which is what 得臣 means; and 得臣則天下為一, having ministers the world is one, which is why there is no household. The 疏 gives the last turn to the phrase: 無家者，光宅天下，無適一家也 — no household because the whole world is the household. The figure that began by taking from below ends by holding everything, and the Small Says call that outcome what it is, 弗損益之，大得志也. The counterpart of this line is 六三, the one who traveled alone; the figure finishes with the companion arriving at scale.

Daily Life

This figure shows up when you are being asked, or asking yourself, to give something up: money, hours, credit, a working method, an attachment, a piece of a plan. The judgment's conditions are the practical center of the matter. Trust first, because the same transfer done to be liked rather than because it is right is the 疏's 諂諛, and it lowers the giver without raising anything: it is the difference between an offering and a bribe, and only the person doing it knows which one is in their hands. Timing second, because 二簋應有時 — the sparse offering is right in its hour and wrong outside it. Wang Bi's refusal to overpromise is worth keeping in view as well: 雖不能拯濟大難. This is not the figure of the rescue. It is the figure of the hour in which something has to be handed up, and the passage it promises is on the far side of that act rather than instead of it.

Three ways this goes wrong are named in the lines themselves. The first is the flatterer's version, giving in order to be approved of, which the commentary marks as carrying fault. The second is the version with no measuring: 酌損之, the instruction to pour out a measured amount, exists because 剛勝則柔危 — too much given endangers the side that receives it as much as too little. The third is the version that cannot stop, and the 疏 is explicit that the second line is where it crosses over, 則成剝卦矣: a decrease that keeps going stops being a method and becomes a stripping, which is a different and much worse figure. On the other side stands the person who has been giving for years and cannot remember choosing to, and for whom the top line's 弗損益之 is the door out: at the end of a long season of supplying others, the instruction is not to give more efficiently but to stop, and the line that says so is the one that ends up holding everything.

The Image turns the whole matter inward, and its two verbs are the part of the figure most people can use today. 懲忿窒欲 asks for one small piece of discipline — quiet what has already flared, close the door on what has not yet arrived — and the 疏's division of labor is the reason this is askable at all: 懲者息其既往，窒者閉其將來, one verb looks backward and one forward, and each does half the other's work. The pair's other half states what to do with the room this makes, 益's 見善則遷，有過則改, and the 繫辭 gives the two together in one breath, 損，以遠害。益，以興利. What the figure offers, in the end, is not a theory of loss. It is the oldest practical question in the judgment, asked once and never answered for the reader: 曷之用 — what is all this for?

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does Hexagram 41 mean in one sentence?

That something is being deliberately taken from the lower to supply the higher, and that the act is good only on two conditions: it has to be carried by trust rather than by the wish to be liked, 若不以誠信，則涉諂諛而有過咎, and it has to belong to its hour, 二簋應有時，非時不可也. The figure's own verb 損 means to take away, and the 疏 defines it that way from the first line, 損者，減損之名. What it promises is passage rather than rescue, 雖不能拯濟大難，以斯有往，物無距也, and its highest word, 元吉, is spoken twice — once at the judgment and once at the fifth line, which is the only line of the six whose text does not contain 損.

Is Decrease a bad hexagram?

It is one of the mildest figures in the book by its own vocabulary. The words 吝, 悔 and 厲 never appear in it, twenty-two of the sixty-four figures share that silence, and it contains a single 凶, at the second line, aimed at a movement rather than at a person. It also holds 元吉 — the highest verdict in the book — twice, where only 益, the figure made by turning this one over, does the same. What makes it difficult is not the outcome but the two conditions; a decrease performed without trust or at the wrong hour is the thing the commentary warns about, 則涉諂諛而有過咎.

Why do the second and the top line use the same four characters, 弗損益之, and come out differently?

Because the same words are spoken at opposite ends of the figure and do opposite work there. The 疏 states the limit case behind the second line, 剛不可以全削, and Wang Bi's note stops a decrease that is still in progress, since a second firm line giving way after the first would leave 兌 without its two firm strokes and make the figure 剝; its Small Says rest the verdict on centrality, 九二利貞，中以為志也. The top line's note says the process has run out, 損終反益, and there is nothing above it left to supply, so the same refusal to decrease becomes the source of what comes home to it, 得臣則天下為一. The characters are identical and the position decides them.

What does 懲忿窒欲 ask in practice, and how is it different from repression?

It asks for two verbs pointed in two directions, and the 疏 defines both: 懲者息其既往，窒者閉其將來 — one settles what has already risen, the other closes a door on what has not yet arrived, and the two are 互文而相足, each completing the other. Both presuppose that the impulse has been seen, which is what separates this from pushing something away unseen: a suppression nobody has looked at returns in another form, while the same renunciation made with attention changes the structure. The Image pairs with its mirror figure's instruction to move toward what is good and correct what is wrong, 見善則遷，有過則改, and the 繫辭 states the two together, 損，以遠害。益，以興利.

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