初九：已事遄往，无咎，酌损之。
After attending to your responsibilities, offer timely help while judging the amount. Sincerity does not require unlimited surrender.
I Ching Hexagram 41
Sǔn · Decrease
损 · Hexagram 41
Sun concerns a sincere, measured reduction that preserves strength for what matters. The Lake beneath the Mountain evokes an exchange of support. It does not make greater sacrifice more virtuous; it asks which desires, expenditures, and commitments should change with the circumstances.
Upper trigram: Mountain/Gèn
Lower trigram: Lake/Duì
The situation you may be in
You may be carrying too much or continually giving more to maintain an expectation. Distinguish reductions that restore room to live from cuts that damage an essential foundation.
How to respond
Reduce vanity, repeated waste, and demands that no longer fit while retaining sincerity and necessary support. Help within what you can carry so that giving becomes an adjustment rather than self-exhaustion.
Judgment and Image
Judgment
损：有孚，元吉，无咎，可贞，利有攸往。曷之用，二簋可用享。
Decrease combined with sincerity brings about supreme good fortune without blame. One may be persevering. It furthers one to undertake something. How is this to be carried out? One may use two small bowls for the sacrifice.
Image
山下有泽，损；君子以惩忿窒欲。
Lake at the foot of the mountain: Decrease. The superior person controls his anger and restrains his instincts.
Applying it to real life
Love & relationships
Release needless comparison and inflated expectations to make room for actual time together. Stability should not depend on one person's continual sacrifice; essential needs still deserve to be heard.
Career & work
Focus work, reduce distractions, and rebalance demands. Reduction should help essential work succeed rather than strip support while preserving appearances.
Choice & decisions
Ask what each sacrifice makes possible, who carries its cost, and who benefits. Seek a sustainable proportion rather than surrendering all your resources to demonstrate resolve.
Timing & pace
Reduction and replenishment change with the time. What should be reduced now may later need restoring. Begin with an adjustment proportionate to the burden and observe whether clarity and room return.
The six changing lines
The lines unfold from the bottom upward, describing one pattern of change from its first appearance to its extreme. If your reading has a changing line, begin with that position.
九二：利贞，征凶，弗损益之。
Maintaining your stable position can itself support another person. Help need not require sacrificing principles or hurriedly changing everything.
六三：三人行，则损一人；一人行，则得其友。
Competing attachments can obstruct a focused relationship. Releasing what does not fit may create room for a more appropriate companion.
六四：损其疾，使遄有喜，无咎。
Promptly reducing a harmful habit or unnecessary defensiveness allows assistance and goodwill to become useful.
六五：或益之，十朋之龟弗克违，元吉。
Sincere, proportionate adjustment may receive outside support. Accept help without interpreting every benefit as payment for a sacrifice.
上九：弗损益之，无咎，贞吉，利有攸往，得臣无家。
Mature benefit no longer depends on continually diminishing others. Seek shared gains that allow wider participation beyond private advantage.
A common misreading
Sun does not predict financial loss or demand unconditional giving. Its second and final lines allow benefit without damaging reduction, reminding you that help need not injure either person's foundation.
Related hexagrams
Text and interpretation
Updated 12 September 2026Reviewed by MysticEast Research
This page preserves the Chinese Judgment, Image, and line texts of the received Zhouyi. MysticEast's modern explanations are newly written to emphasize stages of change and practical judgment rather than fixed good-or-bad predictions.
Read the Zhouyi at the Chinese Text ProjectLet the hexagram meet your actual question
A guide gives you the map. A cast made with a clear question can help locate the exact stage of change you are experiencing.