Keeping Still — 艮

What Is Hexagram 52?

Hexagram 52, Gèn (艮), Keeping Still — ䷳, 艮下艮上 — is the figure of stopping: a joint that will go no further, held there without force, by a person who finds the edge of a thing before pushing against it.

The name is a verb, and the judgment opens with an anatomy rather than an argument: 艮其背, stopping at the back. 王弼's first note on the figure is four characters long, 目無患也 — the eye is without trouble. The reason is anatomical: the back is the one surface of a body with nothing to look at. The subcommentary says it plainly: 背者，無見之物也。無見則自然靜止 — the back is the thing that cannot be seen, and what cannot be seen comes to rest by itself.

That sentence is the figure's engineering principle, and the 疏 spends its longest opening note on the alternative. 夫欲防止之法，宜防其未兆。既兆而止，則傷物情 — the way to stop a thing is to meet it before it has taken a shape; once it has a shape, stopping it by force injures its nature. Then the counter-scene, and it is a picture of a face rather than a back: 若施止於面，則對面而不相通，強止其情，則奸邪並興 — stop at the face and you are face to face with the thing and cannot get through it; force the feeling down and what is crooked multiplies.

What keeps this from being advice to withdraw is the 彖's clock. 時止則止，時行則行，動靜不失其時，其道光明 — stop when it is the hour to stop, go when it is the hour to go; when resting and moving each keep their hour, the way is bright. 王弼 will not let the stop become a habit either: 正道不可常用，必施於不可以行。適於其時，道乃光明也 — the correct way is not for constant use, it is applied where movement will not work, and when it fits the hour the way is bright.

The Sequence arrives here from the doubled thunder and gives a reason made of motion: 物不可以終動，止之，故受之以艮；艮者止也 — what cannot keep moving to the end is brought to a halt, and on that account the book steps here; and 艮 means to stop. The 雜卦 keeps the pair to one word apiece: 震起也，艮止也 — thunder lifts, mountain stops.

The verdicts are unusually spare. The judgment offers one word, 无咎, and nothing else: no 亨, no 吉. Across the judgment and the six lines, 吉 appears once, at the top; 无咎 three times; 厲 once; 悔亡 once; 貞 once, inside 利永貞. 凶 and 吝 do not appear at all. What looks like a figure about stillness is in fact a figure about a narrow and specific kind of correctness — the kind that promises nothing except that no fault will be found.

One more count belongs on the first page. The character 艮 appears seven times in the judgment and the six line texts, and every one of the six lines carries it: 艮其趾, 艮其腓, 艮其限, 艮其身, 艮其輔, 敦艮. The name is not a title hung over the figure. It is the verb in every sentence of it.

Trigram Structure

The figure is mountain under mountain. Counted from the first place upward, a mountain trigram is two yielding strokes under one firm one — 陰陰陽 — so the six strokes run 陰陰陽陰陰陽, with firm lines in the third and sixth places and yielding lines everywhere else. Three of the six stand in places that suit their kind: the second, third and fourth.

Among the eight one-word natures 艮 gets the plainest: 艮，止也. The 說卦 files it in the body as 艮為手, the hand, and in the family as 艮三索而得男，故謂之少男 — at the third seeking of the primal pair a son comes, and he is the youngest. Its compass station makes it the strangest of the eight: 帝出乎震，齊乎巽，相見乎離，致役乎坤，說言乎兌，戰乎乾，勞乎坎，成言乎艮 — the year's circuit ends at this trigram, and the 說卦 says why, 艮，東北之卦也，萬物之所成，終而所成始也，故曰成言乎艮, adding the line that has kept the figure in philosophical use ever since: 終萬物、始萬物者，莫盛乎艮 — for ending the ten thousand things and starting them, nothing exceeds mountain. In the chapter of moving powers it is the entry whose work is to bring the rest to a stop: 雷以動之，風以散之，雨以潤之，日以烜之，艮以止之 — thunder moves them, wind scatters them, rain moistens them, the sun dries them, 艮 stops them.

The long inventory reads like a list of edges. 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 — mountain, footpath, small stone, gate tower, the fruit that hangs on the vine, the gatekeeper, the finger, the dog, the rat, the black-muzzled kind; and among woods, the grain that is hard and full of knots. Four of those entries do most of the work here. 徑路 is the path that ends at the mountain instead of crossing it. 門闕 is the gatehouse, the thing that both blocks and admits. 指 is the finger, the part that indicates and cannot travel. 堅多節 is timber you cannot plane smooth — the wood that resists being made useful.

The geometry is where the figure's isolation shows. No line in this figure answers another. The 彖 states it as a fact and then reads the judgment out of it: 上下敵應，不相與也 — above and below stand opposed, and do not join. The 疏 asks the obvious question and answers it: 八純之卦皆六爻不應，何獨於此言之者，謂此卦既止而不加交，又峙而不應，與「止」義相協 — all eight doubled trigrams have no answering pair, so why does the book say so here? Because in this figure the non-contact is not only a property of the diagram but the meaning of the name: it stands and does not join, and standing without joining is what stopping looks like from outside.

Two transformations frame it. Turn the figure end for end and the doubled mountain becomes doubled thunder, 震, the figure immediately before this one in the Sequence. Deny each stroke its kind instead and it becomes 兌, the doubled lake. The doubled mountain itself has a name in the 疏: 兩山義重，謂之兼山也 — two mountains, the meaning repeated; 直置一山，已能鎮止。今兩山重疊，止義彌大 — one mountain already steadies things, and two on top of each other make the meaning of stopping larger.

The last structural fact is a body. The judgment stops at 背, and the lines then climb: 趾, 腓, 限, 身, 輔. One other figure in the book walks the same ladder — 咸, the figure of influence, whose six lines run 咸其拇, 咸其腓, 咸其股, then the heart, then 咸其脢, then 咸其輔，頰，舌. Two characters occur in exactly two figures of the sixty-four, and they are these two: 腓, the calf, and 輔, the jaw. In 咸 the body is moved from the outside and the last station is the tongue. In 艮 the same body is stopped, joint by joint, and the last station is the jaw held in order. 咸 stops at the back at its fifth line, 咸其脢，无悔, and 艮 begins at the back in its judgment. One figure feels its way up the body; the other learns where the body can be held.

The Judgment

艮：艮其背，不獲其身，行其庭，不見其人，无咎。

Gèn: gèn qí bèi, bù huò qí shēn, xíng qí tíng, bù jiàn qí rén, wú jiù.

Our rendering: Stopping at the back: the body is not got at. Walking through the courtyard: the people are not seen. No blame.

The sentence is built as two failures and a verdict, and the verb in the first failure is precise. 獲 is to catch, to take hold of, to come by; 不獲其身 is not the losing of a body, which the classic would say with 亡 or 喪, but the inability to get at it. 王弼 accounts for it by position: 所止在後，故不得其身也 — what is stopped is behind, and that is why the body is not got at. The 疏 draws the consequence in two steps, 所止無見，何見其身，故「不獲其身」。既「不獲其身」，則相背矣 — if the place where the stop is set cannot be seen, how should the body be seen? And once the body is not got at, the two sides are back to back.

That is what the second clause is doing. 相背者，雖近而不相見 — back to back, they are near and do not see each other; and so, 行其庭，不見其人. The courtyard is not empty. It is full of people who are on the other side of an orientation.

王弼 is under no illusion that this is a happy condition: 凡物對面而不相通，「否」之道也。艮者，止而不相交通之卦也。各止而不相與，何得無咎？唯不相見乃可也 — things face to face that do not pass through to one another are the way of 否, the figure of standstill; 艮 is the figure that stops without traffic; each stops and does not join, so how is there to be no blame? Only by not seeing one another is it possible. That is a narrow gate for the book's ethical vocabulary. The verdict is not virtue and not success. It is the absence of fault, granted on one condition: that the two sides do not meet.

The 疏 supports the reading with a sentence from outside the classic, and uses it as engineering rather than as piety: 故《老子》曰：「不見可欲，使心不亂也。」 — do not let the desirable be seen, and the heart is not thrown into disorder. Nothing in the note is about strength of will. Everything in it is about where the stop is placed.

The 彖 then performs the move that makes the figure philosophical. The text says 艮其背; the 彖 says 艮其止，止其所也 — it stops at stopping, and stops at its place. 王弼 names the substitution: 易背曰止，以明背即止也 — the back is exchanged for stopping in order to make plain that the back is stopping. The 疏 agrees that the words are the same clause read twice: 「艮其止」者，疊《經》文「艮其背」也. This is not a commentator tidying an anatomical detail. It is the claim that a body part can be structurally identical with an abstract noun, and the rest of the figure depends on it.

Then the clock, which is the part most often left out. 時止則止，時行則行，動靜不失其時，其道光明. A figure that only stopped would be a counsel of paralysis; the 彖 gives it an hour instead, and makes the brightness of the way depend on the fit between the act and its time rather than on the act itself.

The closing clause of the 彖 draws the two halves together: 是以不獲其身，行其庭不見其人，无咎也 — and so the body is not got at, the courtyard is walked without seeing the people, and there is no blame. The 疏 adds the reading that keeps the figure from being misanthropy: 明相與而止之，則「無咎」也 — it is joined-up stopping, each in its own place and not colliding, that earns the verdict.

Jungian reading. The back is the one surface of the body that cannot be seen from where the eyes are, and that is exactly why the figure chooses it. Everything a person can watch, a person can also manage: watched anger becomes a performance of calm, watched appetite becomes a diet, watched fear becomes a technique. The back is the region where no performance is possible, which is the region Jung gave to the shadow — not the evil part of a person, the unseen part, the part that keeps operating while the ego is facing forward and doing its accounts. The judgment's bet is that stopping is possible precisely there, because nothing is being negotiated. It is the difference between a person who ends a habit by monitoring it, which usually converts the habit into a project with a spreadsheet, and a person who ends it because the thing has no route left.

The second clause prices the cost honestly. 不見其人: a self that has stopped at its blind side is, for that hour, unavailable to the room, and the room notices. The classic does not call this condition good. It calls it 无咎, no fault, which is what you say about something that is correct and costly at the same time.

The Image

象曰：兼山，艮；君子以思不出其位。

Xiàng yuē: jiān shān, gèn; jūn zǐ yǐ sī bù chū qí wèi.

Our rendering: Two mountains, one upon the other: Keeping Still. The noble one therefore keeps his thinking inside his own station.

王弼's note on the second half is eight characters: 各止其所，不侵官也 — each stops in its own place and does not invade another's office. The 疏 first fixes the picture, 兩山義重，謂之兼山也，直置一山，已能鎮止。今兩山重疊，止義彌大, and then applies it: 君子於此之時，思慮所及，不出其已位也 — in this time, the reach of the noble one's thinking does not go outside his own place.

思不出其位 is ambiguous in a way English flattens, and the ambiguity is worth keeping. 位 is a seat, a station, a rank, an office. Read as rank, the line is the most conservative sentence in the book: know your place. Read as jurisdiction, which is how 王弼 and the 疏 both take it, the line is a rule about competence: a faculty has a territory and does not legislate outside it. The doubled mountain is the picture for the second reading. Two mountains do not argue about which one is the mountain; each occupies its ground, and their height is the same height.

Jungian reading. Jung described the psyche as a plurality of functions rather than a single voice, and the characteristic failure of a developed person is not a weak ego but an imperial one: thinking that delivers verdicts on questions of feeling, feeling that settles questions of fact, sensation and intuition each convinced it has seen the whole animal. 不出其位 is a rule of jurisdiction, and it is aimed at the faculty that is currently doing the most talking. The rule has a second use that the classical commentaries did not need a word for. Worry is thinking that has left its post: it is no longer about anything present, it has gone to live in a future that has not arrived, and it comes back with detailed reports from a country it has no business in. The Image's remedy is not to stop thinking. It is to put thinking back where its work can actually be done, which is almost always smaller and closer than where it had got to.

The Lines

初六：艮其趾，无咎，利永貞。 Gèn qí zhǐ, wú jiù, lì yǒng zhēn. Stopped at the toe: no blame. What serves is the long holding.

王弼 reads the position before he reads the body part: 處止之初，行無所之，故止其趾，乃得無咎 — at the beginning of stopping there is nowhere for movement to go, so the toe is stopped, and that is how no blame is reached; then 至靜而定，故利永貞 — perfectly still and settled, which is why the long holding serves. The 疏 supplies the anatomy and the reason: 趾，足也，初處體下，故謂之足。居止之初，行無所適，止其足而不行，乃得无咎 — the toe is the foot, the line sits at the bottom of the body, and at the start of a stop there is nowhere to walk to. The Small Image is one clause, 艮其趾，未失正也, and the 疏 makes the comparison explicit: 行則有咎，止則不失其正 — to go brings blame, to stop does not lose what is correct.

貞 in this clause is the long kind. 永貞 occurs six times in the sixty-four — at 小過, 比, 益, this figure, 萃 and 賁 — and its sense in each is a course held rather than a decision made.

Jungian reading. The toe is the smallest unit of movement, and the line's economy is the point: the cheapest place to stop is the first one, before the movement has acquired a name and a justification. Most people attempt the stop at the waist, because a toe does not feel like a decision yet. 永貞 supplies the half that good intentions leave out: a stop that lasts is not an act of will but a standing arrangement, and the arrangement is what the line asks for while the stopping is still small enough to be cheap.

六二：艮其腓，不拯其隨，其心不快。 Gèn qí féi, bù zhěng qí suí, qí xīn bù kuài. Stopped at the calf: he cannot lift what follows it, and his heart is not glad.

腓 is the calf, 拯 is to lift up or rescue, and 王弼 identifies 隨, the thing that follows, with the toe below: 隨謂趾也。止其腓，故其趾不拯也 — what follows is the toe; the calf is stopped, so the toe is not lifted. Then the psychology, in one sentence: 腓體躁而處止，而不得拯其隨，又不能退聽安靜，故「其心不快」也 — the calf is a restless thing placed in a stop; it cannot lift what follows it, and it will not fall back and obey the stillness, and that is why the heart is not glad.

The Small Image names the same failure from the other side: 不拯其隨，未退聽也, and the 疏 defines the verb: 聽，從也 — to hear is to follow; 既不能拯動，又不能靜退聽從其見止之命 — it can neither carry the movement forward nor step back and accept the order to stop.

This is the one line in this figure that has a feeling in it, and the feeling is neither grief nor anger. 不快 is discomfort, the low continuous kind. Nothing is lost here. Nothing is blamed here. The line is a description of a half-stop.

Jungian reading. 不快 is the affect of a function that has been immobilized but not retired. In an organization it is the middle layer that cannot approve and will not decline, and that answers every request with a status update. In a person it is the appetite that has been forbidden but not reorganized, which goes on producing a small unhappiness that gets attributed to circumstances. The line's precision is in having no disaster in it. A half-stop does not fail loudly; it grumbles, and the grumbling is the only symptom that something is still holding position.

九三：艮其限，列其夤，厲薰心。 Gèn qí xiàn, liè qí yín, lì xūn xīn. Stopped at the waist: the flesh along the spine splits; peril, and it burns the heart.

限 is the waist, the place of the belt, and 王弼 gives its structural reason: 限，身之中也。三當兩象之中，故曰「艮其限」 — the waist is the middle of the body, and the third line stands at the middle of the two trigrams. 夤 is the flesh along the spine, 當中脊之肉也; 列 is to split or sever. Then the consequence: 止加其身，中體而分，故「列其夤」而憂危薰心也 — the stop falls on the body and divides the middle, so the flesh is split and the anxiety of danger burns the heart. The 疏 adds the image the whole line turns on: 薰，燒灼也 — 薰 is scorching; 既止加其身之中，則上下不通之義也... 列夤則身亡，離心則國喪 — when the stop lands in the middle, above and below no longer pass; the flesh is split and the body dies, the hearts divide and the state is lost. 王弼 states the scale in eight characters: 體分兩主，大器喪矣 — the body with two masters, and the great vessel is lost; and the 疏 glosses 大器 as 國與身, the state and the person.

This is the only 厲 in the figure, and it is the warning the figure is built around. The waist is the hinge. A stop placed on a hinge does not stop a motion; it divides a body into two that no longer speak. The received text of 王弼 and the 疏 reads 列其夤 and 厲薰心; the 《周易》 page writes 裂 for the first of them and 閽 for the second, which does not change the sense of either.

Jungian reading. The line's precision is that the injury is reported somewhere other than where it was made. The cut is at the waist; the burning is in the heart. Anyone who has lived through a division between two incompatible halves of a life — the work and the marriage, the belief and the conduct, the family a person was born into and the one they are building — knows the migration. The division does not announce itself at the seam. It arrives as anxiety, and the anxiety is what gets treated, which is why the treatment so often fails: the seam is untouched. 大器喪矣 sets the price at the level of a life rather than a habit, and it is the reason the figure prefers the fourth line to the third.

六四：艮其身，无咎。 Gèn qí shēn, wú jiù. Stopped at the body: no blame.

王弼's note is a placement and a verdict: 中上稱身，履得其位，止求諸身，得其所處，故不陷於咎也 — the middle and upper part is called the body, the line stands in a place that suits it, and the stop is asked of the body itself, which is where it belongs, so it does not fall into blame. The 疏 explains why this line is the good version of the previous one, and the explanation is entirely structural: 艮卦總其兩體以為二身，兩體不分，乃謂之全，全乃謂之身。以九三居兩體之際，在於身中，未入上體，則是止於下體，不與上交，所以體分夤列。六四巳入上體，則非上下不接，故能總止其身不分全體 — the figure counts its two trigrams as two bodies; while they are not divided the body is whole, and whole is what 身 means. The third line sits on the seam between the two, still in the lower body and out of touch with the upper, and that is why the flesh splits. The fourth has entered the upper body, so above and below are not cut off from each other, and it can stop the whole body without dividing it. The Small Image compresses this to 艮其身，止諸躬也, and 王弼's note on that is eight characters: 自止其躬，不分全體 — it stops itself and does not divide the whole.

Jungian reading. The third and fourth lines perform the same operation one place apart, and the results differ completely. This is the difference between stopping a habit and stopping oneself: the first is a limb-level operation that produces a split and a symptom somewhere else, the second is a decision the whole system can absorb because every part of it was included in the decision. The verdict is still only 无咎. The figure does not reward the difference between a good stop and a disastrous one with anything more than the absence of fault, and there is a certain honesty in that; correctness is not the same currency as good fortune.

六五：艮其輔，言有序，悔亡。 Gèn qí fǔ, yán yǒu xù, huǐ wáng. Stopped at the jaw: the words come out in order; regret is gone.

輔 is the jaw, the cheek-and-chin assembly the 疏 calls 頰車, and the line stops speech at the point where speech is formed rather than where it is thought. 王弼's note is short: 施止於輔，以處於中，故口無擇言，能亡其悔也 — the stop is set at the jaw, the line holds the middle, and so the mouth has no words to sort out afterwards, and regret can be removed. The 疏 turns 序 into a positive requirement rather than a restriction: 言有倫序，能亡其悔 — the words have an order and a sequence, and that is how regret ends. The Small Image is 艮其輔，以中正也, and the 疏 concedes the technical point while keeping the verdict: 位雖不正，以居得其中，故不失其正 — the place is not the correct one for its kind, but it holds the middle, so it does not lose correctness.

The 《周易》 page prints 言有孚, with 序 given as the alternative reading; 王弼's text and the 疏 both read 序, which is the reading followed above. 輔 occurs twice in the sixty-four — at 咸上六, 咸其輔，頰，舌, and here. In 咸 the mouth is the last station of being moved. In 艮 it is the last station of being stopped.

This is the one place in the figure where something is taken away rather than avoided. The others produce 无咎; this one produces 悔亡, a debt cancelled.

Jungian reading. Speech is where an inner stop becomes visible to other people, and it is the last place a person can still undo a decision that was already made in the body. The discipline in the line is not silence — the mouth is not stopped, it is put under order. 有序 is sequence, the thing said in the order in which it can be followed, which is what separates an account from a discharge. Regret, here, is what words said out of order leave behind, and the remedy is order rather than fewer words.

上九：敦艮，吉。 Dūn gèn, jí. Thick stopping: good fortune.

敦 is thickness in the literal sense — dense, weighty, and, in the classic's usage, generous. 王弼 reads the position and then the quality: 居止之極，極止者也。敦重在上，不陷非妄，宜其「吉」也 — this is the far end of stopping, stopping at its limit; weighted and heavy at the top, it does not fall into what is not so, and good fortune is fitting. The 疏 defines the word first: 敦，厚也, and then the mechanism: 上九居艮之極，極止者也。在上能用敦厚以自止 — at the top it can use thickness to stop itself. The Small Image gives the figure's last word on the subject: 敦艮之吉，以厚終也 — the good fortune of thick stopping is that it ends thick; and the 疏: 言上九能以敦厚自終，所以獲「吉」也.

敦 appears three times in the sixty-four: 復六五, 敦復，无悔; 臨上六，敦臨，吉无咎; and here. Twice at a top line, once at the fifth.

This is the figure's only 吉, and it is granted to the one line that has no body part left to stop. The toe, the calf, the waist, the body and the jaw have all been used up. What is thick at the top is the stopping itself.

Jungian reading. 厚終 is the difference between stopping and quitting. Quitting is an event: it has a date, a speech, and usually an audience. A stop that has been repeated until it has weight is a character, and it is the only thing in this figure the book calls good fortune. The verdict is not given to insight, which the second line has and does not profit from, nor to effort, which the third line spends and is burned by. It is given to duration.

Daily Life

Read as a diagnostic, the figure is a ladder of stopping points, and most people are trying to stop at the wrong joint. The toe is the cheapest place and the least satisfying, which is why it is almost always skipped; the calf is where a stop has been imposed from outside and neither carried through nor accepted, and its signature is a low continuous displeasure with no event attached; the waist is where a person tries to stop a whole life at a hinge, and 厲 falls there and nowhere else in the figure, because a hinge-stop divides rather than halts; the body is the same stop made at the level of the whole person, and it is blameless; the jaw is where the stop has to become speakable, in order, and it is the only place in the figure where a debt is actually cancelled. The useful question is not whether one is good at stopping. It is which joint one is currently asking to do the work.

The second thing to keep is the clock, because this figure is the easiest one in the book to misuse. 時止則止，時行則行 is a single sentence with two halves, and the half that authorizes movement is in the same breath as the half that authorizes rest. A stop with no end condition is not this figure; it is 止 without 時, and it will look like peace for a while and then like a life with the doors closed. The practical test is a sentence: if the person cannot say what would make them move again, they are not stopping, they are hiding. The 疏's engineering principle points the same way — 防其未兆, meet it before it has a shape — because the cheap stop is always earlier than the impressive one.

The Image supplies the two civil uses, and both are about jurisdiction rather than renunciation. 思不出其位 is aimed at thinking that has taken over questions it cannot settle: the rehearsal of a conversation that will not happen, the audit of a decision already made, the projection of a difficulty into a year that has not been reached. None of that is thinking doing its work; it is thinking out of post, and the remedy is to give it a smaller, present, answerable question. 言有序 is the same rule at the mouth: not fewer words, but words in an order someone else could follow. And the figure's opening paradox is worth carrying out of the page. The back is the one surface a person cannot inspect, while everyone else in the courtyard sees it constantly. The judgment's answer is not to look harder, since the surface is not available to looking. It is to accept the orientation and then ask the people who are standing behind you, which is the one practical use of 不見其人: the people you are turned away from are the only mirror for the part you cannot see.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does Hexagram 52 mean in one sentence?

That the reliable place to stop is the place where nothing is being watched: 艮其背，不獲其身, the back and not the face, because 背者，無見之物也。無見則自然靜止 — what cannot be seen comes to rest by itself — and the figure's whole verdict is 无咎, no fault, with its single 吉 held back for the top line, 敦艮，吉.

Why does the judgment promise only 无咎, never 亨 or 吉?

Because 王弼 reads the figure as one of non-contact, and says so in the form of a question: 各止而不相與，何得無咎？唯不相見乃可也 — each stops and does not join, so how is there to be no blame? Only by not seeing one another is it possible. The line text is equally sparing: 吉 appears once, on the top line; 无咎 three times; 厲 once; 悔亡 once; 凶 and 吝 nowhere in the figure.

Is 艮 a figure of withdrawal?

No, and the 彖 closes that door in the sentence that opens it: 時止則止，時行則行，動靜不失其時，其道光明 — stop when it is the hour to stop, go when it is the hour to go. 王弼 adds that the correct way 不可常用，必施於不可以行 — it is not for constant use but applies where movement will not work. A stop that has no hour attached to it is not this figure.

Why does the Image talk about thinking rather than about the body?

Because 位 in that sentence is a jurisdiction, not a rank. 王弼's note is 各止其所，不侵官也 — each stops in its own place and does not invade another's office — and the 疏 applies it to 思慮所及，不出其已位也, the reach of thought not going outside its own place. The rule is aimed at a faculty answering questions outside its competence, which includes the worry that leaves its post and comes back with reports from a year it has never visited.

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