Water drawn up through wood: the well — the one structure this book calls permanent. Towns may be moved; the well cannot. Jǐng is the inexhaustible source and the human duty to keep it usable.
Everything depends on maintenance and access: the spring may be pure while the shaft is muddy, the water cold and clear while the rope falls short or the jug breaks. Having depth is nothing, this hexagram says, unless it can actually be drawn from — by you, and by everyone.
問Jǐng sees the relationship as a shared well: a source genuinely deep, needing regular tending to stay drinkable. Muddy neglect, broken jugs of communication, ropes that stop just short of real contact — the failures are all in the apparatus, not the water. Clean the shaft together: the restored well serves both, inexhaustibly, the more it is drawn from.
Professionally, Jǐng concerns your deep resources — expertise, networks, institutional knowledge — and their accessibility. The cleared well no one drinks from is the third line's heartbreak: capability unused for want of visibility or advocacy. Line the well when repair is needed, accept the unproductive maintenance period, then make the cold spring genuinely available.
Inwardly, Jǐng is the tending of your own source: the practices that keep the inner water clear and the rope long enough to reach it. Depth neglected silts up; depth hoarded helps no one. The final line is the mature standard — dependable, open to all, never exhausted: drawn from daily, and always full.
A line speaks only when it is a changing line in your own casting.