Wind — 巽

What Is Hexagram 57?

Hexagram 57, 巽 (xùn), is Wind — also Englished as the Gentle or the Penetrating — the fifty-seventh figure: 巽 Wind below and 巽 Wind above, one wind following another into the same space. Its subject is influence that enters rather than strikes: a charge repeated until it is understood, and the price of going soft past the point where softness still has an aim.

The name is defined before it is illustrated. 孔穎達's 疏 opens: 巽者卑順之名 — "xùn is the name for being low and compliant." The same breath does something less expected: 《說卦》云：「巽，入也。」蓋以巽是象風之卦，風行無所不入，故以「入」為訓 — the classic glosses the word as entering, because the trigram pictures wind, and there is nowhere wind does not go. Two glosses, then, one social and one physical: low, and entering. The 疏 ties them together: 巽之為義，以卑順為體，以容入為用 — low compliance is its substance, and being received and getting in is its function. The pair explains itself. A thing gets in because it does not push.

The 序卦 places this figure directly after the traveler: 旅而無所容，故受之以巽；巽者入也 — the traveler finds nowhere that accepts him, and so comes 巽, which is entering. That is the sequence's dry joke and also its argument: a person with no footing does not fix the problem by pushing harder. He fixes it by becoming something a door will open for. 序卦 then chains the next step, 入而后說之 — only after getting in is there delight — and 雜卦 states the same contrast from the far side: 兌見而巽伏也, the joyful shows itself, the wind keeps out of sight. Everything in this figure is done from below and out of view.

What makes it 重巽, doubled wind, is that one gust is weather and two are policy. The 彖 names the use: 重巽以申命 — wind upon wind, in order to state the charge again. 申 is the character for stretching something out, for saying a thing a second time so that it reaches where it did not reach the first. A command given once is a hope; a command repeated the way wind repeats itself — same direction, again and again, until things bend without breaking — is an institution.

Trigram Structure

巽 is one yielding line under two firm ones, and this figure doubles it, so the whole is soft at the base of each half and firm overhead, twice. It is one of the eight figures built from a single trigram repeated, and what the repetition is used for here — the restated charge — is what makes this the book's figure of instruction: nothing in it is a meeting of two things, only one inclination laid on top of itself.

說卦 files 巽 among the eight one-word natures: 巽，入也, entering. Its place in the round of the year is given in the same treatise: 齊乎巽，巽，東南也，齊也者，言萬物之潔齊也 — at 巽 things come even; 巽 is the southeast, and 齊 means that the ten thousand things are washed and leveled. That is a stage, not a season: the moment when what sprouted has finished differentiating and stands in rows, before the year turns to full brightness. Wind is what does that work. Nothing is added to the seedlings; they are simply combed into order, from the same direction, for long enough.

The image list in the eleventh chapter is unusually mixed, and the mixture is the point: 巽為木、為風、為長女、為繩直、為工、為白、為長、為高、為進退、為不果、為臭. Wood is the material, wind the element, the eldest daughter the family position. Then come the tool and the trade — the marking cord, the craftsman — and then the qualities: white, long, high. Then two that are not qualities at all but failures: 為進退, given to going forward and back; 為不果, inconclusive. And last, 為臭, smell. A trigram that contains both the marking cord and indecision is telling you what kind of tool compliance is: exact when it is measuring, useless when it is dithering. Smell matters too. Of all the senses it is the one that works by entering — nothing is aimed at, nothing is struck, and yet the whole room is changed.

The same chapter adds 其於人也，為寡髮、為廣顙、為多白眼、為近利市三倍；其究為躁卦 — thin-haired, broad in the forehead, much white in the eye, and near to profit threefold in the market; carried to its end, the trigram of restlessness. 巽為雞 and 巽為股 follow elsewhere: the bird that announces the hour, and the thigh, the part of the body that carries weight and decides nothing.

Laid out, the figure runs yielding, firm, firm, yielding, firm, firm. Three lines stand where their kind belongs: 九三 firm in the odd third, 六四 yielding in the even fourth, 九五 firm in the odd fifth. Three do not: 初六 yielding in the odd first, 九二 firm in the even second, and 上九 firm where a yielding line should stand, at the summit of the figure. Not one of the three pairs answers, because not one pair is mixed: 初六 sits under 六四, yielding beneath yielding; 九二 under 九五, firm beneath firm; 九三 under 上九, firm beneath firm. There is no crossing current anywhere in it. Whatever gets done here gets done by direct pressure along the vertical, not by correspondence.

The 彖 puts the weight on the two middle lines: 剛巽乎中正而志行 — firm, and yet compliant; in the middle and correct; and so the aim gets through. 王弼's note on that clause is compact: 以剛而能用巽，處乎中正，物所與也 — strength that can use compliance, standing in the middle and correct, is what things go along with. The 疏 then reads the geometry off the text: 故又就初、四各處卦下，柔皆順剛，無有違逆 — the yielding lines are the bottom of each trigram, and each yields upward to the firm lines over it. So the figure's whole argument is in three parts: soft at both bases, firm overhead, no answer across the middle.

Reverse every line and you get Hexagram 51, 震 Thunder: one firm line under two yielding ones, twice, whose one-word nature in the seventh chapter is 震，動也. Thunder moves a thing; wind enters it. The same event at two tempos, and the book keeps them as a pair of mirrors. Thunder arrives and is over. Wind arrives and stays, and that is why this figure is the one that gets to talk about instruction.

The Judgment

巽：小亨。利有攸往。利見大人。

Xùn: xiǎo hēng. Lì yǒu yōu wǎng. Lì jiàn dà rén.

Our rendering: Wind: a small passage. It serves to set out; it serves to see the great one.

Three clauses, and the first sets the ceiling. 王弼 explains why the passage is small without treating it as a disappointment: 全以巽為德，是以小亨也 — the whole figure takes compliance as its virtue, and that is why the passage is small. He then says what compliance is for: 上下皆巽，不違其令，命乃行也 — when both halves are compliant and nothing resists the order, the order gets through. The 疏 draws the boundary in one line: 全用卑巽，則所通非大，故曰「小亨」 — use nothing but low compliance and what you get through to is not large.

There is an argument buried here, and the 疏 quotes an older commentator to make it. 褚氏 says: 夫獻可替否，其道乃弘：柔皆順剛，非大通之道 — offering what is right and setting aside what is wrong is how a way becomes broad; softness that simply follows firmness is not the way of the great passage. That is a sharper claim than "be more assertive." It says the smallness is structural. A figure made entirely of compliance has no faculty for 替否, for setting a wrong thing aside, because setting aside requires a refusal somewhere. 小亨 is not a mood. It is the arithmetic of a shape with no counter-force in it.

The second and third clauses are the compensations. 利有攸往 gets a note and a reason: 巽悌以行，物無距也 — move compliantly and with deference, and nothing blocks the road. 利見大人 gets a shorter one: 大人用之，道愈隆 — when the great one uses it, the way grows higher still. The 疏 spells out the comparison: 但能用巽者，皆無往不利，然大人用巽，其道愈隆 — anyone who can use compliance finds the road open, but in the hands of a great person compliance goes further.

That is the figure's one asymmetry, and it is worth stating plainly. Compliance is a multiplier of whatever aim is behind it. In a small aim it produces a small passage: the man who agrees his way into the room and has nothing to do once inside. In a large aim it produces a large one, because the same unobstructed movement now carries something worth carrying. The judgment does not tell you to be softer or harder. It tells you that this is a transmission, not an engine, and asks what is being transmitted.

The Jungian reading here is the persona. Jung is careful with it, and his care is one this hexagram would recognize. The mask is not a lie; it is a function, the face a person puts on for a role, and a life without one is impossible. The trouble begins when the wearer forgets there is a face behind it and starts taking the mask's requirements for his own. What distinguishes the two conditions is not the amount of accommodation but whether anything is being aimed at through it — which is exactly the word the 彖 uses, 志 — aim — and exactly the word the small images keep testing. Flexibility with an aim is a skill. Flexibility without one is a way of disappearing while remaining visible.

The Image

象曰：隨風，巽；君子以申命行事。

Xiàng yuē: suí fēng, xùn; jūn zǐ yǐ shēn mìng xíng shì.

Our rendering: Wind following wind: Wind. The noble one therefore states the charge again, and then does the work.

Two winds, not one. The 疏: 兩風相隨，故曰「隨風」，風既相隨，物無不順 — the winds go one after another, and since they do, nothing fails to go along. Then the sentence that makes this an instruction rather than scenery: 風之隨至，非是令初，故君子訓之以申命行事也 — wind arrives as a follower, not as a first order, and that is what the noble one learns from it.

The wind that bends a field is not the first wind; it is the second, arriving while the grass is still leaning from the first. The image is not "issue a command." It is "issue it again." Most instructions that fail in the world fail at this exact point: they were stated once, at full strength, by someone who assumed that stating a thing is the same as transferring it. 申命 assumes the opposite — that the first statement only prepares the ground, and the second one is the one that lands.

The paired verb is 行事, doing the work, and the order is not reversible. Say it, then do it; say it while doing it; the saying is part of the doing. A command that is restated without being carried out becomes noise, and wind that never settles into an effect is only weather.

The Lines

初六 — the wobble at the start

初六：進退，利武人之貞。 Chū liù: jìn tuì, lì wǔ rén zhī zhēn.

Our rendering: Forward and back: what this needs is a soldier's kind of steadiness.

The bottom line of a compliant trigram, at the moment a charge is first announced. 王弼: 處令之初，未能服令者也 — placed at the beginning of the order, before anyone has been able to take the order in. Then: 成命齊邪，莫善武人 — for finishing an order and leveling what is crooked, nothing beats the martial temper. The 疏 explains the psychology with unusual patience: 法未宣，著體於柔巽，不能自決，心懷進退 — the rule is not yet published, the body is made of soft compliance, and it cannot decide, so the mind oscillates.

Note where the oscillation comes from. 說卦 lists 為進退 and 為不果 as properties of the trigram itself. The first line is not a weak person in a strong situation; it is the trigram's own signature showing up first, which is why the remedy has to come from outside the trigram's character. 疏 on the small image names the fear exactly: 欲從之，則未明其令 — to obey, and the order is not clear enough to obey.

The small image then performs a small miracle of compression: 進退，志疑也。利武人之貞，志治也. Doubt in the aim, then order in the aim; the same aim, two states. And the 疏 refuses to make the warrior a hero: 武非行令所宜，而言利武人者，志在使人從治 — force is not what issuing orders is for, and the line recommends it only because the aim is to bring people into order. It cites the precedent: 其猶《蒙卦》初六《象》曰「利用刑人，以正法也」 — the same move as at the beginning of Hexagram 4, where discipline is used to make the rule itself visible.

In practice this is the first week of any new arrangement: a policy, a role, a boundary. The failure mode is not cruelty. It is ambiguity that everyone can feel and nobody can name, and the fix is a clear statement of what is now true, delivered with enough firmness that it stops being a matter of interpretation. A soldier's steadiness is not aggression. It is the absence of wobble.

九二 — under the bed, among the spirits

九二：巽在牀下，用史巫紛若，吉，无咎。 Jiǔ èr: xùn zài chuáng xià, yòng shǐ wū fēn ruò, jí, wú jiù.

Our rendering: Wind under the bed: scribes and shamans in a crowd — good fortune, no blame.

The phrase 巽在牀下 is the figure's strangest image and it occurs twice, here and at the top, with opposite verdicts. 王弼 first explains the posture: 處巽之中，既在下位，而復以陽居陰，卑巽之甚 — in the middle of the compliant trigram, already low, and a firm line occupying a yielding place: compliance at its most extreme. Then the danger: 卑甚失正，則入於咎過矣, go too low and you leave what is correct, and fault comes in.

The escape is the sentence that earns this line its place: 能以居中而施至卑於神祗，而不用之於威勢 — able, because it holds the center, to spend the utmost lowliness on the spirits, and not to use it on power. The distinction is not the depth of the bow. It is the object of the bow. 疏: 史謂祝史，巫謂巫覡，並是接事鬼神之人也 — scribes for the invocation and shamans, women and men, all of them people who attend upon spirits; 紛若者，盛多之貌, and 紛若 is the look of a great many of them. Then the observation that earns the whole line: 人有威勢，易為行恭；神道無形，多生怠慢 — before someone with power it is easy to be respectful, and before a way that has no shape, most people go slack.

So the line separates humility from servility by pointing at the audience. Bending that deep toward what cannot pay you back is worship, and it is licensed here. Bending that deep toward whoever can is flattery, and the same words become the fault that 王弼 warned about. The small image closes with the reason it works: 紛若之吉，得中也 — the crowd of rites is fortunate because it is centered. Excess is contained by the middle place, not by moderation of manner.

Jungian reading: this is the difference between the religious attitude and social adaptation, and it is the reason he insisted they are not the same operation. One addresses the numinous and receives nothing back in the currency of advantage; the other addresses power and is paid. The line does not forbid the second. It says the second cannot be the source of the first, and that a life with only the second has an unacknowledged center — which is what the fifth line repairs by procedure — by announcing twice.

九三 — compliance with a wince

九三：頻巽，吝。 Jiǔ sān: pín xùn, lìn.

Our rendering: Wind with the face screwed up: a mean little shame.

頻 here is not frequency. 王弼 glosses it as 頻蹙, the face screwed up, and adds 不樂而窮 — unhappy and at the end of its resources. The 疏 makes the picture physical: 頻者，頻蹙憂戚之容也 — the expression of a person in distress. And it gives the structural cause: 九三體剛居正，為四所乘，是志意窮屈，不得申遂也 — a firm line in the right place, with a yielding line riding on top of it, so the aim is bent double and cannot be extended.

This is the figure's portrait of grudging compliance, and it is precise about why such a thing is shameful rather than tragic. Nothing about 九三 is wrong in substance: firm, correct, in its place. What fails is that the compliance is visible as a cost. He does what is asked and lets everyone see the price. The small image names it and stops: 頻巽之吝，志窮也 — the aim is exhausted.

There is a modern name for this and it is not laziness: it is the colleague who agrees to the plan and spends the meeting sighing, the partner who goes along and keeps the accounts. The work gets done, and something else gets communicated at the same volume — that cooperation is being extracted rather than given. Wind that arrives with a scowl is still wind, but nobody is refreshed by it. The shame is small — 吝 — which in this book is the mildest of the hard verdicts. It is the grade for a person who is not wrong and not free.

六四 — the hunt with three grades

六四：悔亡，田獲三品。 Liù sì: huǐ wáng, tián huò sān pǐn.

Our rendering: Regret is gone: the hunt brings back three grades of catch.

The hinge between the two halves. 王弼 states the account: 乘剛，悔也，然得位承五，卑得所奉 — riding on a firm line should produce regret, and yet it holds the correct place and serves the fifth line above it, so its lowness has something to serve. Then the outcome: 依尊履正，以斯行命，必能獲強暴，遠不仁者也 — leaning on what is honored and treading what is correct, moving orders in that posture, it will catch the violent and push the pitiless away.

The 疏 explains 三品 with the ritual list: 一曰乾豆，二曰賓客，三曰充君之庖 — the dried offering for the altar, the guest's portion, and what fills the ruler's kitchen. Three grades of one hunt, in descending order of ceremony and all of them used. This is a surprisingly concrete picture of a good outcome: not one big kill but a catch that sorts itself into what is owed upward, what is owed sideways, and what simply feeds the house.

Structurally 六四 is the one yielding line in the upper half, sitting in the even fourth, directly beneath the ruler, at the seam where the trigrams meet. Its influence is positional rather than exerted. Nothing here pushes; the place itself does the work, and the small image approves: 田獲三品，有功也 — there is achievement. Contrast with 九三 below it, correct in substance but with none of the position's advantages, and grinding. Wind that finds the vent does not need to press.

For a modern reader this is the line about the well-run week. The tasks that matter come in three grades — the obligation, the relationship, the plain maintenance of the household — and a week that only does the third is busy while going nowhere. The line's good fortune is a matter of sorting, not of effort.

九五 — three days before, three days after

九五：貞吉，悔亡，无不利。无初有終，先庚三日，後庚三日，吉。 Jiǔ wǔ: zhēn jí, huǐ wáng, wú bù lì. Wú chū yǒu zhōng, xiān gēng sān rì, hòu gēng sān rì, jí.

Our rendering: Holding firm: good fortune, regret gone, nothing unfavorable. No start, but an end. Three days before the 庚, three days after it: good fortune.

The ruler's line, and the one the whole figure has been building toward. 王弼 begins by naming its defect: 以陽居陽，損於謙巽 — firm in a firm place, which costs it something in a figure whose virtue is compliance. Then the compensation: 然秉乎中正以宣其令，物莫之違 — holding the middle and the correct while making the order known, nothing goes against it. So: 貞吉，悔亡，无不利.

Then the mechanism, which is the most practical passage in the hexagram. 化不以漸，卒以剛直用加於物，故初皆不說也 — a change made without gradation, applied all at once by firmness and straightness, and at first nobody is pleased. 終於中正，邪道以消，故有終也 — but it ends in the middle and the correct; the crooked way is used up, and so there is an ending. That is 无初有終: a bad reception and a good result, and the line is honest that the bad reception was avoidable.

庚 gets its definition from 王弼 and it is not the obvious one: 申命令謂之庚 — restating the charge is what 庚 means. Not "change," not "the seventh stem" in some calendrical fog, but the act of saying the order again. He then explains the interval: 夫以正齊物，不可卒也；民迷固久，直不可肆也 — you cannot level everything by correctness in one stroke, and where people have been lost for a long time, straightness cannot simply be unfurled. So: 故先申三日，令著之後，復申三日，然後誅而無咎怨矣 — state it for three days beforehand, and once it is clear, state it three days more, and only then enforce, and there is no resentment when you do. The closing note generalizes it: 甲、庚，皆申命之謂也 — 甲 and 庚 both mean restating the charge.

The small image gives the ground: 九五之吉，位正中也 — the good fortune belongs to the position, middle and correct. Which is the figure's warning to anyone reading this line as permission to be tough: the enforcement is licensed by the centering, not the other way around. Three days of announcement is not a courtesy added to the order. It is what makes the order an order rather than an ambush.

Jungian reading: this is the psychology of any change that has to be lived through rather than merely decided. What arrives first is not agreement but the loss of an arrangement, and people defend arrangements long after they have stopped defending the reasons for them. The rehearsal period works because it lets the old pattern fail on its own schedule instead of being executed, and because it gives the person making the change three days in which to discover what he has not thought through.

上九 — the axe that is lost

上九：巽在牀下，喪其資斧，貞凶。 Shàng jiǔ: xùn zài chuáng xià, sàng qí zī fǔ, zhēn xiōng.

Our rendering: Wind under the bed: he loses what he had stored, and the axe with it; holding to this, misfortune.

The same four characters as the second line, at the other end of the figure, and the verdict has reversed. 王弼: 處巽之極，極巽過甚 — placed at the extreme of compliance, and compliant past all measure. Then the loss: 斧所以斷者也，過巽失正，喪所以斷 — the axe is what cuts; go too soft and you leave what is correct, and you lose the thing that cuts.

The 疏 unfolds the metaphor without softening it: 斧能斬決，以喻威斷也，巽過則不能行威命 — the axe stands for the power to decide and end; over-compliant, one can no longer carry an order through to its consequence. 命之不行，是喪其所用之斧 — the order that never arrives anywhere is the axe lost. And 貞凶 is read as the worst form of the verdict: 失其威斷，是正之凶 — to lose the capacity to cut is, precisely, the misfortune of what is correct.

The small image completes it: 巽在牀下，上窮也。喪其資斧，正乎凶也 — at the top it is exhausted, and the 疏 glosses 正乎凶 as 正理須當威斷，而喪之 — by right, this position requires the power to end things, and it has none.

Set the two 牀下 lines side by side and the figure's spine appears. At the second line the deep bow is centered, its object the invisible, its result good fortune without blame. At the top the bow has no center left — the summit of a doubled trigram is the far end of its own tendency — and the object has become everything, so the axe goes. The posture was never the virtue. The posture plus a center is the virtue; the posture alone is how a person loses the ability to say no, and with it every yes he has given.

This is why 繫辭下 names 巽 three times in the one chapter that ranks nine figures by their virtue, and why the third naming is the surprising one: 巽，德之制也 — the regulating virtue; 巽，稱而隱 — it weighs, and stays out of sight; 巽，以行權 — with it one weighs and adjusts. 權 is the steelyard's counterpoise, the thing that makes measurement possible by sliding along the beam. A steelyard with its counterpoise lost, nothing left that it can weigh against — that is 上九. The virtue of wind is that it can be measured with. Lose the measuring and the wind is only air moving.

Daily Life

The first use of this hexagram is procedural and almost embarrassingly simple. If something you have asked for has not happened, the odds are good that it was never really stated — it was announced. Announce once, and you have produced information. State it, let it be tested, state it again, and then act. The three days before and three days after are not a ritual; they are the minimum interval in which a person can find out what the change actually costs the people living inside it, which is information you cannot get any other way. Most of what looks like resistance is a schedule problem.

The second use is the harder one, because it concerns the difference between flexibility and malleability, and the figure refuses to answer it by behavior. Its test is 志, aim, and that word runs through the whole page: the 彖 has 志行, the first line has 志疑 and then 志治, the third has 志窮. Four states of one thing, none of them decided by how low the person bends. So the useful question in a meeting, in a family, in a job where you are outnumbered, is not "am I being too accommodating?" It is "what am I aiming at while I accommodate, and would I still be able to name it out loud?" An aim that can be named survives a great deal of bending. One that cannot be named is already gone, and the bending is what people notice afterward.

The third use is the axe. Every position that requires cooperation also requires the capacity to end something: to stop a project, refuse a client, close a door, say the sentence that cannot be unsaid. This figure spends six lines on compliance and then ends by showing what happens when the capacity to cut has been traded away for the sake of getting along. 喪其資斧 is not a dramatic catastrophe. It is the ordinary condition of a person who has been agreeable for so long that no one, including him, can locate the place where his agreement stops. Keep the axe. You do not have to use it often. You do have to still have it.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does 巽 actually mean?

The 疏 answers with the name first: 巽者卑順之名, the word for being low and compliant. Then it adds the physical gloss from 說卦: 巽，入也, because the trigram pictures wind and 風行無所不入. The two meanings are not alternatives. 疏 states the relation: 以卑順為體，以容入為用 — compliance is the body, being let in is the use. The figure is about the kind of influence that gets inside something because it never presented itself as a force.

Why is the passage small if wind goes everywhere?

Because the smallness is a property of the shape, not a limit on reach. 王弼 — 全以巽為德，是以小亨也, the whole figure takes compliance as its virtue, therefore the passage is small; the 疏 adds 全用卑巽，則所通非大, use lowly compliance throughout and what it reaches through is not great. The 疏 also preserves 褚氏's sharper version: 柔皆順剛，非大通之道 — the yielding all follow the firm, and that is not the road of the great passage; 獻可替否 is what makes a way broad, the offering of what is right and the setting aside of what is wrong. Wind reaches everywhere and changes very little by itself. What it changes depends on what it is carrying, which is why the same judgment attaches 利見大人 to it.

The same phrase, 巽在牀下, appears at the second line and the sixth, with opposite verdicts. Why?

Because the words describe a posture and the lines judge its center. At 九二 the bow is licensed on two grounds: the line holds the middle, and 王弼 says its lowliness is spent 於神祗 and not 於威勢, on the spirits rather than on power. At 上九 there is no middle left — 處巽之極，極巽過甚 — and the bow has eaten the axe, 斧所以斷者也, the capacity to decide and end. Same gesture, one centered, one not. The figure is telling you that depth of deference is not the measure of anything.

What do 先庚三日 and 後庚三日 mean?

庚 is defined by 王弼 as 申命令謂之庚, restating the charge, and he adds that 甲、庚，皆申命之謂也 — both day-names mean the same act. The interval is the point: 夫以正齊物，不可卒也, you cannot level things by correctness in one stroke, so the order is stated three days before the turning and three days after, 令著之後，復申三日，然後誅 — and only then enforced, which is why there is no resentment. A command without a rehearsal period is not a stricter command. It is a shorter one, because it ends where the resistance begins.

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