The Judgment
Decrease, joined with sincerity, brings supreme good fortune without blame. One may stay steadfast in it, and undertakings prosper. How is it done? Even two small bowls suffice for the offering.
Hexagram 41
Decrease
Sun / Sǔn 損
Sun is the hexagram of the fruitful lessening: the lake evaporates itself upward, and the mountain is watered by the loss. Decrease of what is below, increase of what is above — the outer diminished so the essential can grow. Poverty of means, met with sincerity, loses all its shame: two small bowls, offered truly, outweigh a hecatomb offered for show.
Hexagram
41
Mountain ☶ (Kên, Keeping Still)
Lake ☱ (Tui, the Joyous)
Decrease, joined with sincerity, brings supreme good fortune without blame. One may stay steadfast in it, and undertakings prosper. How is it done? Even two small bowls suffice for the offering.
Classical frame
Judgment and image
Read these as the root statements before moving into modern interpretation, lines, and situation-specific paths.
The Image
The lake at the mountain's foot, giving up its mist to nourish the height: this is Decrease. In the same way, we curb our anger and restrain our appetites.
Deeper reading
The full meaning of Hexagram 41
Overview
Sun is the hexagram of the fruitful lessening: the lake evaporates itself upward, and the mountain is watered by the loss. Decrease of what is below, increase of what is above — the outer diminished so the essential can grow. Poverty of means, met with sincerity, loses all its shame: two small bowls, offered truly, outweigh a hecatomb offered for show.
The Judgment's astonishment is that decrease brings *supreme* good fortune — not endured, but embraced. Simplicity is not the absence of wealth; it is wealth relocated inward, and times of outward less are precisely the times of inward more.
The Spirit of Sun
The decisive decrease is the ego's. Sacrifice the attachments that swell it — desire, affection turned to clinging, repulsion, negation, alienation, irritation — and stillness follows of itself. The image names the daily practice: anger curbed, instincts restrained; the two great inflations answered by the one great discipline.
Practicality belongs here too: know your resources and live within them, without grasping past your reach. And the deepest instruction — decrease your own light to increase the light of others. Serving without seeking the glory of it is decrease perfected, and it returns as the only increase that keeps.
The Shadow Side
Decrease has false forms. Miserliness: withholding dressed as simplicity. Self-mutilation: giving away what integrity requires keeping — principles, dignity, the substance others depend on. And marketed sacrifice: renunciation performed for audiences, the ego fattening on its own diet. The test is the Judgment's word — sincerity. Decrease that isn't sincere is only loss; decrease that is, was never really loss at all.
Changing lines
Six line readings
Open any line for the full changing-line interpretation, including its direct answer, action guidance, and direction of change.
Line 1
Going Quickly When Tasks Are Done
Going swiftly when one's work is finished is without blame. But consider how much one may take from others.
Serve, and leave: help given, then released without waiting for thanks, credit, or the pleasant lingering that feeds the ego. Selflessness of this speed keeps the equilibrium intact on both sides — for the second clause cuts deep: even our help decreases the helped, if it obligates them, overshadows them, or teaches dependence. Give what genuinely serves, take no payment in attention, and be gone before gratitude becomes a debt.
Read line 1 in full
Line 2
Increase Without Self-Decrease
Steadfastness rewards; rash undertaking brings misfortune. One can increase others without decreasing oneself.
The boundary line: service that never spends the server's substance. Do not compromise principle to help, cater to another's ego, or throw yourself away in the transaction — assistance bought with integrity enriches no one. Hold your dignity, keep your centre, and wait for the right moment rather than forcing intervention. The paradox is exact: only the undiminished can truly give, and the truest increase of others starts from a self that stays whole.
Read line 2 in full
Line 3
Three Travel, One Departs
When three journey together, their number decreases by one. When one journeys alone, he finds a companion.
The arithmetic of intimacy: three breeds faction, division, the crowded heart; one, honestly alone, draws the true companion. Decrease here is subtraction that completes — releasing the surplus attachment, the extra allegiance, the inner crowd of competing wants, so that a genuine bond has room to form. Be selective in company, outer and inner. What is let go from the three returns, transformed, to the one.
Read line 3 in full
Line 4
Decreasing One's Faults
He decreases his faults — and makes the other hasten to come and rejoice. No blame.
The most welcome decrease of all: our own defects, honestly diminished. Review the attitudes obstructing progress — the emotional entanglements, the preoccupation with what others did or might do — and resist defining the problem or contriving solutions before the true perception arrives. Every fault reduced lowers the wall around us; those kept at a distance by our sharpness come gladly near as it softens. Self-correction is hospitality: the shrinking of what made us hard to approach.
Read line 4 in full
Line 5
The Increase None Can Oppose
Someone increases him indeed. Ten pairs of tortoise shells could not gainsay it. Supreme good fortune.
Decrease's harvest: upon the one who has sincerely lessened the ego and kept to the good, increase descends from the whole order of things — so decreed that ten oracles consulted together could not contradict it. This blessing is not sought and cannot be blocked; it gathers around steadfast goodness the way water gathers in the low place. Continue choosing the true; what comes to meet such choosing carries the seal of supreme good fortune, and its own momentum toward everyone connected to you.
Read line 5 in full
Line 6
Increased Without Depriving
Increased without taking from others: no blame. Steadfastness brings good fortune; undertakings prosper. One gains helpers — and no longer keeps a separate home.
The hexagram completes by inverting itself: decrease so thoroughly practised that increase flows through it to everyone at once, deprived of no one. Discipline and self-reliance have matured into generosity; the work now is lifting the less developed, not controlling them, with modesty intact and no toll charged. And the final image: the separate home dissolves — private good and common good no longer distinguishable. Whoever reaches this keeps nothing apart, and therefore lacks nothing at all.
Read line 6 in full
Sage advice
Offer the two small bowls: sincerity over splendour, essence over display. Curb the anger, restrain the wanting, and decrease from the ego outward — faults first, attachments next, self-importance always. What is genuinely surrendered is banked in a deeper account; the lake gives up its mist and the whole mountain greens. Practise loss like that, and supreme good fortune is simply the receipt.
Situation meanings
Read this hexagram through real life
Love
Less is the medicine — sincerity outweighs everything you could add.
Open interpretation
Career
Less is the medicine — trim the ego, and the essential grows.
Open interpretation
Business
Cut what's excess to feed the core — sincerity beats splendour.
Open interpretation
Family
Less is the medicine — two small bowls, offered honestly, are enough.
Open interpretation
Money
Less is the medicine — cut the surplus, keep the substance.
Open interpretation
Growth
Grow by subtraction — decrease the ego, and the essential thrives.
Open interpretation
Learning
Study less but truly — a few things deep beats many shallow.
Open interpretation
Creativity
Less is the making here — subtract to the essence, offered sincerely.
Open interpretation
Decision
Give something up first, then act — sincerely, and small.
Open interpretation
Spirit
Fruitful lessening — decrease the ego so the essential can grow.
Open interpretation
Community
Less is the medicine — a few true bonds outweigh a crowd.
Open interpretation
Transitions
This change subtracts — but sincerity outweighs everything you lose.
Open interpretation
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