Gen

One solid line resting atop two broken — the movement that has finally come to rest, the mountain that does not go anywhere.

Gen is the trigram of the Mountain, ☶: two yin lines below and a single yang line laid across the top like a summit that halts all further rising. Where its brother Zhen placed the yang line at the bottom to arouse motion, Gen places it at the very top, where it can go no higher — and so the meaning inverts. Gen is Keeping Still: the arrest of movement, the stillness of a mountain that has stood for ages and will stand for ages more. It is the trigram of meditation, of the pause, of the boundary beyond which one does not step.

As the last of Kun's sons to receive his yang line — in the topmost place — Gen is the Youngest Son. Its element is Earth in its most immovable form, and the Later Heaven arrangement sets it in the Northeast, the still point between the deep winter of the North and the awakening spring of the East, the threshold where one year ends and the next has not yet begun.

In divination Gen counsels stopping — not from failure but from wisdom. There are moments when the right action is no action, when to keep still is to keep one's balance. The mountain does not resent that it cannot walk; its stillness is its whole strength. Gen invites the quieting of the restless mind, the composure that comes when striving is set down.

The Figure

Related

• Zhen, Kan — the eldest and middle sons
• Dui — the youngest daughter, its counterpart among the daughters
• Qian, Kun — the father and mother of the eight
• Elements — the Western elements, the trigrams' cousin
• Taoism, Trigrams