损 Decrease
Upper trigram: Mountain (the mountain) · Lower trigram: Lake (the lake)
Sacrifice for gain — decrease the lower to increase the higher.
Modern interpretation
Give something up to gain something greater. Cut distractions, simplify commitments, and invest where it truly counts. This is not loss — it is concentration. What you release now returns later in stronger form.
The Judgment · 卦辞
有孚，元吉，无咎。可贞，利有攸往。曷之用？二簋可用享。
“In (what is denoted by) Sun, if there be sincerity (in him who employs it), there will be great good fortune:---freedom from error ; firmness and correctness that can be maintained ; and advantage in every movement that shall be made. In what shall this (sincerity in the exercise of Sun) be employed? (Even) in sacrifice two baskets of grain, (though there be nothing else), may be presented.” — James Legge, The Yî King (1882)
The six lines · 爻辞
Read from the bottom line upward. Each line pairs the received Chinese text with Legge's English translation.
已事遄往，无咎。酌损之。
“The first line, undivided, shows its subject suspending his own affairs, and hurrying away (to help the subject of the fourth line). He will commit no error, but let him consider how far he should contribute of what is his (for the other).”
利贞。征凶，弗损，益之。
“The second line, undivided, shows that it will be advantageous for its subject to maintain a firm correctness, and that action on his part will be evil. He can give increase (to his correlate) without taking from himself.”
三人行则损一人，一人行则得其友。
“The third line, divided, shows how of three men walking together, the number is diminished by one ; and how one, walking, finds his friend.”
损其疾，使遄有喜，无咎。
“The fourth line, divided, shows its subject diminishing the ailment under which he labours by making (the subject of the first line) hasten (to his help), and make him glad. There will be no error.”
或益之十朋之龟，弗克违，元吉。
“The fifth line, divided, shows parties adding to (the stores of) its subject ten pairs of tortoise shells, and accepting no refusal. There will be great good fortune.”
弗损，益之，无咎，贞吉，利有攸往，得臣无家。
“The topmost line, undivided, shows its subject giving increase to others without taking from himself. There will be no error. With firm correctness there will be good fortune. There will be advantage in every movement that shall be made. He will find ministers more than can be counted by their clans.”
About changing lines
In a real I Ching reading, hexagrams are built by casting coins or yarrow stalks six times, bottom line first. Some lines come out “old” (unstable) — an old yin or old yang flips into its opposite, producing a second hexagram that shows where the situation is heading. The changing lines are the moving parts of your answer: read their individual line statements above, and they point to the direction of change.
Ask a question and cast the coins — free, with a plain-English interpretation grounded in the classical text.
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