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Hexagram 32 · Héng

Duration

恆 · héng
Endure; constancy is the path of lasting things.
Zhèn · Thunder
above
Xùn · Wind
below

Core Meaning

The Judgment: Duration: success, no blame. Steadfastness rewards. It rewards one to have a direction and keep it.
The Image: Thunder and wind, perpetual companions. So the wise person stands firm and does not change direction.

Thunder and wind, perpetual companions, each renewing the other: Héng is duration — the endurance not of stone but of orbit, constancy achieved through continual movement along a settled path.

Its counsel distinguishes duration from rigidity: what lasts is a self-renewing cycle, not a frozen pose. Stand firm in direction, flexible in form. Demanding permanence at the start, hunting where no game lives, and restlessness enthroned as a lifestyle are its three named failures.

Duration in Your Question

Love & Relationships

Héng is the hexagram of lasting love, and it is precise about the mechanism: not the initial blaze but the orbit — recurring rituals, renewed attention, direction held through changing seasons. Demanding forever-guarantees at the very start, its first line warns, injures the thing that could have lasted. Endure by renewing, not by gripping.

Career & Money

Professionally, Héng favors the long practice: the craft compounded over years, the enterprise built on repeatable cycles rather than heroics. Its diagnostics are sharp — inconstancy of character attracts disgrace from all sides, and effort persistently applied in the wrong field yields no game however long you hunt. Fix the direction, then endure flexibly.

Personal Growth

Inwardly, Héng is the character question itself: what in you persists across moods and circumstances? Its practice is the noble one's — standing firm without changing direction — while its final line names the modern disease exactly: restlessness as a permanent condition. Choose a worthy direction and let the years, not the weeks, measure it.

The Six Lines

A line speaks only when it is a changing line in your own casting.

Line 1
Demanding permanence at the very start, before anything has grown: persistent misfortune. Nothing prospers.
Line 2
Regret vanishes: strength held in measure, applied exactly to what the moment can bear.
Line 3
One who gives no constancy to their character is met by disgrace from every side. Persistent humiliation.
Line 4
There is no game in this field. Searching forever in the wrong place yields nothing, however long one endures.
Line 5
Constancy through gentle following suits one role and ruins another. What is virtue in the follower is failure in the one who must decide.
Line 6
Restlessness made permanent — agitation as a way of life — brings misfortune.

Related Hexagrams

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