Inner Truth — 中孚

What Is Hexagram 61?

Hexagram 61, 中孚 (zhōng fú), Inner Truth, is the sixty-first figure of the classic: 兌 Lake below, 巽 Wind above. Wind crossing open water is a weather that touches every part of a surface at once, and the figure takes that as its picture of trust: what it is made of when no one is watching, how far down it reaches, and what happens when the sound of it goes out ahead of the substance.

The 疏 — Kong Yingda's subcommentary in the 周易正義 — defines the name by where it starts rather than by what it produces: 「中孚」，卦名也。信發於中，謂之中孚 — the trust is issued from the middle; that is what is called 中孚. The character 孚 is a hand over a young one, 爪 above 子, and its oldest sense is to brood, to hold something small and alive until it can stand on its own. Trust in this figure is therefore not a claim a person makes about himself. It is a hand kept over something that would die if let go.

Its place in the Sequence is the argument in miniature: 節而信之，故受之以中孚 — a limit that has been kept is what turns into trust. The sixtieth figure sets the measure; the sixty-first is what a kept measure becomes over time. One line later the Sequence says what happens next: 有其信者，必行之，故受之以小過 — what is trusted will be acted on, and action overshoots. The 雜卦 spends only four characters on the whole figure: 中孚信也.

(Traditional copies print the negative as 無 and the preposition as 於; simplified ones use 无 and 于. Quotations below keep the traditional forms.)

Trigram Structure

The lower trigram is 兌, the lake: 說, delight; the mouth; the youngest daughter; in the 說卦's list of images, 為澤、為少女、為巫、為口舌、為毀折、為附決. Above it stands 巽, wind: 入, entering; wood; the eldest daughter; 為繩直, the plumb line; 為工, the craftsman; and 為進退、為不果, the going forward and drawing back that hesitates. Put the two natures side by side and the 彖's phrase is already visible: 說而巽 — delight that works by entering rather than by pressure.

The 彖 compresses the geometry into seven characters: 柔在內而剛得中. The two yielding lines, 六三 and 六四, are the two inner places of the figure; the two firm lines, 九二 and 九五, hold the two centers. So the soft thing is inside and the firm thing is centered, and 王弼 draws the character out of that arrangement: 剛得中，則直而正；柔在內，則靜而順；說而以巽，則乖爭不作。如此，則物無巧競，敦實之行著，而篤信發乎其中矣 — firmness in the center is straight and correct; yielding inside is still and compliant; delight carried by entering means quarrels never get started; nothing competes cleverly, plain conduct becomes visible, and a settled trust rises out of the middle of it. His note on 乃化邦也 makes the order explicit: 信立而後邦乃化也 — first the trust is established, and only then does the realm take its shape.

The construction backs the reading. Three lines sit where their kind belongs — 初九, 六四, 九五 — and three do not. Only two pairs answer across the figure, 初九 with 六四 and 六三 with 上九; the second and the fifth are firm at both ends of the center and have no correspondence, so the middle of this figure is held by two lines that agree without answering each other.

One more property belongs here because the page leans on it below: turn the whole figure upside down and nothing changes. 中孚 is one of exactly eight figures in the book that read the same inverted — 乾, 坤, 頤, 大過, 坎, 離, 中孚, 小過. Reverse every line instead of turning it, and it becomes Hexagram 62, 小過, 艮 below and 震 above: the figure of the small passing beyond, which the Sequence names as the next thing trust does.

The 彖's last image is a boat. 利涉大川，乘木舟虛也 — the crossing serves because one rides wood on water in a hull that is empty. 王弼 spells it out: 乘木於川舟之虛，則終已無溺也。用中孚以涉難，若乘木舟虛也 — wood on a river, in a boat whose inside is hollow, and in the end no one drowns; to cross a difficulty on inner trust is to ride that boat. 巽 supplies the wood and 兌 supplies the water, and the hull between them is defined by what it does not contain. A boat loaded with a cargo of self-assertion rides lower. The 疏 puts the crossing in the same key: 以中信而濟難，若乘虛舟以涉川也.

The Judgment

中孚：豚魚吉。利涉大川。利貞。

zhōng fú: tún yú jí. lì shè dà chuān. lì zhēn.

Our rendering: Inner Truth: the pig and the fish — good fortune. There is advantage in crossing the great river. There is advantage in holding to what is correct.

Character by character: 豚 is a pig, the small domestic animal kept at the bottom of the yard; 魚 is the fish, and 吉 is good fortune. 利 is what serves, what carries an advantage with it. 涉 is to ford, to wade across with the water around your legs; 大川 is the great river, wide enough that wading is a decision rather than an errand; 涉川 together is the standing phrase for a costly passage. 貞 is to take something as correct and keep to it, and the judgment asks for it last, after the crossing.

The strange pair is 豚魚, and 王弼 reads it as a test sample: 魚者，蟲之隱者也。豚者，獸之微賤者也 — the fish is the hidden one among creatures, the pig the lowliest among beasts. The 疏 builds the argument on top of that: 人主內有誠信，則雖微隱之物，信皆及矣。莫不得所而獲吉 — if the one in charge carries trust inside, it reaches even the hidden and the slight, nothing fails to find its place, and so the good fortune is obtained. So the pig and the fish are not decoration and not a riddle about sacrifice; they are the two creatures nobody bothers to include. Trust that reaches only the impressive guest is a performance. Trust that reaches the pig in the yard and the fish under the surface is a fact about the person holding it.

貞 gets its own warning in the subcommentary, which is worth keeping: 信而不正，凶邪之道，故利在貞也 — trust without correctness is the way of misfortune and depravity, and therefore the advantage lies in holding to what is correct. The 彖 closes the same loop from the other end: 中孚以利貞，乃應乎天也, and the 疏: 天德剛正而氣序不差，是正而信也 — Heaven's virtue is firm and correct and its seasons never miss their time, which is a correctness that also keeps faith. The judgment is nine characters in all: 豚魚吉 in three, 利涉大川 in four, 利貞 in two.

Jungian reading: sincerity is not a feeling, and it cannot be manufactured by intending it. What the depths of a person respond to is what is actually there, and they respond to it whether or not it has been announced. This is why the figure puts the pig and the fish before the great river: the private test comes first. You can talk yourself into a good intention in an afternoon, and the people closest to you will know within a week whether it was a decision or a mood. The judgment's order is the honest one — the small, unglamorous, unobserved part is where the crossing is either earned or not.

The Image

澤上有風，中孚；君子以議獄緩死。

Our rendering: Wind over the marsh: Inner Truth. The noble one therefore reopens the case and delays the death sentence.

The 澤 of the image is the same character the Trigram Structure called the lake: open water at the edge of land, marsh or lake depending on the season, and the wind does not distinguish between them.

王弼's note on the image is eight characters long and does most of the work: 信發於中，雖過可亮 — when trust rises from the middle, even a fault can be brought into the light. The 疏 first reads the weather: 風行澤上，無所不周，其猶信之被物，無所不至 — wind travels over the marsh and goes everywhere, the way trust covers things and leaves nothing outside it. Then it turns the weather into procedure: 中信之世，必非故犯過失為辜，情在可恕，故君子以議其過失之獄，緩舍當死之刑也 — in an age where trust sits at the center, a fault is not assumed to be a deliberate crime; the circumstances can be forgiven, and so the noble one deliberates over the case and stays the sentence that would end a life.

This is a strange instruction, and its strangeness is the point: an image of wind on water is turned into a rule about criminal procedure. 議 is to talk a matter over, to deliberate in company; 緩 is to slacken, to let time into the decision. The text does not say forgive, and it does not say acquit. It says reopen and slow down. The two verbs are what trust does to judgment when trust is real: it makes the verdict revisable and it puts a delay between the evidence and the ending.

Jungian reading: the inner prosecutor is fast and certain, and it delivers its verdict in the same breath as the evidence. Almost everyone who is hard on himself is running a court with no deliberation stage, and in Jungian terms the harshest of those verdicts usually come up from the shadow: what a person refuses to have considered returns as a certainty about himself. The figure's counsel is due process inside — not leniency as a policy, but a procedure: state the charge, hear the circumstances, allow the possibility that the fault was not deliberate, and let some time pass before the sentence is carried out. 緩死 is the whole technique in two characters. Delay the death sentence and you will find that most of the cases do not survive the delay.

The Lines

初九 — one thing, kept

虞吉，有它不燕。

Single-mindedness: good fortune. With something else besides, there is no ease.

王弼 reads 虞 as 專, undivided attention: 虞猶專也。為信之始，而應在四，得乎專吉者也，志未能變，系心於一，故「有它不燕」也 — this is the beginning of trust, its answer lies in the fourth place, and what it gets is the good fortune of not being divided; the will has not yet shifted, the heart is tied to one thing, and hence, with another thing besides, there is no ease. The 疏 supplies the gloss on 燕 — 燕，安也 — and then the psychology: 既系心於一，故更有他求，不能與之共相燕安也. The small image says the same in four characters, 志未變也.

The received 周易 text prints 有它不燕, with a note that one copy has 他 for 它; both are the same word for "something else". The line is the narrow gate of the whole figure. What the beginning of trust needs is not intensity but exclusivity — one thing held, not two held at once. Hold two at once and the ease drains out of a room without anyone being able to say when it started.

九二 — the crane in the shade

鳴鶴在陰，其子和之；我有好爵，吾與爾靡之。

A crane calls in the shade, and its young answers; I have a fine cup, and I share it out with you.

王弼: 處內而居重陰之下，而履不失中，不徇於外，任其真者也。立誠篤至，雖在闇昧，物亦應焉 — it sits inside, under the doubled shade of the third and fourth places, and yet does not lose the middle; it does not go out looking for approval, it carries what is genuine in it, and a trust that is settled and complete draws an answer even out of the dark. The 疏 reads 靡 as 散, to spread out and share, and draws the contrast with possession: 不私權利，唯德是與 — what it does not do is hoard; what it gives is what is worth giving.

The 小象 gives the mechanism a name: 中心願也, and the 疏: 誠信之人，願與同類相應，得誠信而應之，是中心願也 — the answer comes because the wish to meet its own kind was already at the center of the one who called. This is the line the 繫辭上 returns to and comments on at length, and the comment is worth having whole: 「鳴鶴在陰，其子和之。我有好爵，吾與爾靡之。」子曰：「君子居其室，出其言善，則千里之外應之，況其邇者乎！居其室，出其言不善，則千里之外違之，況其邇者乎！言出乎身加乎民；行發乎邇見乎遠。言行，君子之樞機；樞機之發，榮辱之主也。言行，君子之所以動天地也，可不慎乎！」

A word said in a room travels a thousand li if it is good, and a thousand li the other way if it is not. 言行，君子之樞機 — words and deeds are the hinge and the trigger: 樞 is the pivot a door turns on, 機 the release catch of a crossbow, two small parts on which a large movement depends. The comment's claim is mechanical before it is moral: the answer is built into the act of speaking rather than handed over afterward as a reward, which is why 榮辱之主, master of honor and disgrace, is said of the hinge itself and not of the one who works it.

六三 — the alternating mood

得敵，或鼓或罷，或泣或歌。

Meeting an equal: now drumming, now stopping; now weeping, now singing.

王弼 lays the geometry out first: 三居少陰之上，四居長陰之下，對而不相比，敵之謂也 — the third sits at the top of 兌, the younger yin trigram, and the fourth at the base of 巽, the elder; they confront each other across the seam but do not cleave to each other, because both are yielding, and that is what 敵 means here — not an enemy in the moral sense, but a matched opposite. Then the four verbs, each with its cause: 以陰居陽，欲進者也。欲進而閡敵，故或鼓也 — a yielding line in a firm place, wanting to advance, blocked by its opposite, so it drums. 四履正而承五，非己所克，故或罷也 — the fourth is in its proper place and carries the fifth, and is not something the third can overcome, so it stops. 不勝而退，懼見侵陵，故或泣而憂悲也 — beaten and withdrawing, afraid of being pressed, so it weeps. 四履於順，不與物校，退而不見害，故或歌也 — the fourth keeps to compliance, contests nothing, and withdraws without coming to harm, so the third ends up singing. 不量其力，進退無恒，憊可知也 — never measuring its own strength, with no constancy in advance or retreat, and the exhaustion is plain.

The small image gives the diagnosis in four characters, 位不當也. (The received text prints 可鼓或罷 in this one place, which is a slip for 或 — 王弼 and the subcommentary both read 或.)

This is the figure's portrait of a mood, and it is exact about the sequence: attack, collapse, self-pity, recovery. None of the four states is a decision. They are all reactions to the same unresolved relation with something that will not yield and will not attack. What makes the line worth keeping is that its 凶 is not pronounced — the book records the exhaustion and lets it stand, because there is nothing here to blame and nothing to correct except the seat, and the seat is not something the line can move.

六四 — the moon almost full, the horse's pair lost

月幾望，馬匹亡，无咎。

The moon nearly full; the horse's mate gone: no blame.

王弼: 居中孚之時，處巽之始，應說之初，居正履順，以承於五，內毗無首，外宣德化者也。充乎陰德之盛，故曰「月幾望」 — at the time of inner trust, at the opening of the entering trigram and answering the first of 兌, the trigram of joy, it keeps the proper place and follows what is compliant while carrying the fifth line above it; it assists inward without taking the lead and spreads its influence outward, filled to the fullness of a yielding virtue, and that is the moon nearly full. Then the price: 若夫居盛德之位，而與物校其競爭，則失其所盛矣，故曰絕類而上，履正承尊，不與三爭，乃得無咎也 — a line in a strong position that starts contesting with its peers loses the strength of the position itself; so it cuts off from its kind, goes up, keeps to what is correct, carries the honored place, does not fight the third, and thereby has no blame.

The small image names what was cut, 絕類上也, and 王弼's note on it is unusually plain: 類謂三，俱陰爻，故曰「類」也 — the kind means the third line; both are yielding, and that is why they are called a kind. 匹 is a matched pair, one of two animals in harness; 馬匹亡 is the harness with one horse gone.

幾 is the word to catch: nearly full, not full. The line the figure treats as closest to complete is placed a shade short of completion, and its 无咎 depends on that remainder. (The received text notes one copy reading 既 for 幾, and another 几; 幾 is the accepted reading.) What the line does is give up its matched pair in order to do the work above it — a trade that costs something real and is called blameless rather than good.

九五 — trust tied in a knot

有孚攣如，无咎。

There is trust, drawn tight: no blame.

王弼: 「攣如」者，系其信之辭也。處中誠以相交之時，居尊位以為群物之主，信何可舍？ — 攣如 is the phrase for trust that is tied; at the time when the middle of trust is what things meet through, in the honored place as the master of the many, how could trust be set aside? The 疏 defines the word: 攣如者，相牽系不絕之名也 — the name for being drawn to one another without a break. 攣 is a cramp, a tendon pulled tight; as an image of trust it is closer to a ligature than to a feeling. The 小象 says 位正當也, and the 疏 draws the warning out of the praise: 以其正當尊位，故戒以系信，乃得無咎。若真以陽得正位，而無有系信，則招有咎之嫌也 — being correctly in the honored place is why the line is warned to keep the tie; a firm line correctly placed but untied would draw blame.

The figure's ruler gets 无咎 and not 吉. Being tied to the people you are responsible for is blameless; it is not a triumph, and the book does not dress it up as one. What makes it the ruling line is not achievement but continuity — the one thing a center has to do is not come untied.

上九 — the sound that flies

翰音登于天，貞凶。

A bird's call climbs to the sky: holding to it, misfortune.

王弼: 翰，高飛也。飛音者，音飛而實不從之謂也。居卦之上，處信之終，信終則衰，忠篤內喪，華美外揚 — 翰 is high flight; a flying sound is a sound that flies with the substance not following it; at the top of the figure and at the end of trust, trust ends and thins, loyalty and solidity die inside while the ornament goes up on the outside. The 疏 finishes the thought: 信衰則詐起，而忠篤內喪，華美外揚，若鳥於翰音登於天，虛聲遠聞也 — when trust thins, contrivance begins; the sound of a bird goes up and the bird does not, and an empty noise is heard from far away. 虛聲無實，正之凶也 — an empty noise with nothing in it: that is the misfortune of the correct way. The 小象 answers itself in four characters: 何可長也, how could it last.

This is the only 凶 among the six lines, and it falls on the top place, which is where the book usually puts its warning about overreach. What makes this one distinctive is that nothing has been done — 信衰則詐起, the subcommentary says, so it does name contrivance, but what the line is actually convicted of is the gap: a sound outrunning its cargo. 音飛而實不從之 is a phrase to keep — a public voice separated from the private substance, still climbing, with nothing underneath it. The verdict is 貞凶, not 凶: holding to it is what turns the emptiness into misfortune, because an empty sound can be sustained for a while by repetition, and the while is the whole harm.

Daily Life

The boat is the figure's working image of how trust carries a person, and it is worth taking literally. A hull crosses water because it is hollow, and a person crosses a difficult season in the same way: not by carrying more conviction but by carrying less to defend. Anyone who has sat in a room with a person who has nothing to prove knows what the empty boat feels like — the conversation gets lighter, the facts become easier to say, and disagreements stop being contests. It is not humility as a manner. It is the lower center of gravity that keeps the vessel upright when the water is not smooth.

議獄緩死 is a procedure you can actually adopt, and it costs nothing but time. Before the internal verdict is delivered, state the charge as if someone else had brought it, ask what the circumstances were, and allow the specific possibility that the fault was not deliberate. Then let a night pass. Most of the harsh judgments people carry around do not survive being reopened once, and the fastest and least reliable court in anyone's life is the one that never adjourns. The figure does not ask for a softer sentence; it asks for a slower one.

The crane in the shade is about the words said where no one is listening, and the 繫辭's claim is stronger than a moral about honesty. 言行，君子之樞機 — the hinge and the release catch. What you say in private sets a mechanism that later fires in public, and the mechanism does not much care whether you meant it. This is why the figure's good fortune sits on the pig and the fish and not on the crossing: the crossing gets 利, permission, and the 吉 is awarded earlier, at the level of what nobody would ever check. It is won in the small, unwitnessed places where the trust either reaches down to the lowly things or stops at the level of what presents well.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does 中孚 mean literally?

"Trust issued from the middle." The 疏 in the 周易正義 defines it that way — 「中孚」，卦名也。信發於中，謂之中孚 — and the 雜卦 spends four characters on the whole figure: 中孚信也. The character 孚 is a hand over a young one, 爪 above 子, with the old sense of brooding, so the name carries the idea of something held and kept alive rather than something asserted. 中 is the inside of a person, the place the book keeps returning to when it wants to know whether anything is real.

Why does the judgment name a pig and a fish?

Because they are the two creatures nobody bothers to count. 王弼: 魚者，蟲之隱者也。豚者，獸之微賤者也 — the fish is the hidden one among creatures, the pig the lowliest among beasts; the 疏 adds that when trust is inside the one in charge it reaches even 微隱之物, the slight and the hidden, and nothing fails to find its place. The pair is a test sample before it is anything else: the reach of your trust is measured at the bottom of the yard and under the surface of the water, not in the room where you are admired.

Why would a hexagram about inner truth talk about reopening criminal cases?

That is what the Image does with its weather: 澤上有風，中孚；君子以議獄緩死 — wind over the marsh, and the noble one reopens the case and delays the death sentence. 王弼's eight-character note explains the turn, 信發於中，雖過可亮: when trust rises from the middle, even a fault can be brought into the light. The 疏 then reads it as a rule for an age of trust — a fault is not assumed to be a deliberate crime, the circumstances may be forgivable, and so deliberation and delay come before the sentence. The instruction is procedural rather than sentimental: reopen, and slow down.

What goes wrong at the top line?

The sound goes up and the bird does not. 翰音登于天，貞凶, and 王弼: 翰，高飛也。飛音者，音飛而實不從之謂也 — a flying sound is one whose substance does not follow it; at the end of trust the inside thins and the ornament rises. The 疏 calls it 虛聲無實, an empty noise with nothing in it, and the small image asks how it could last, 何可長也. It is the figure's only 凶, and what earns it is the gap rather than any one act of deceit: a public voice that has climbed away from the private substance, still rising, with nothing under it and 貞 holding it there.

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