Inmost Sincerity

Inmost Sincerity, the meaning given to Kung Fû, is the central virtue of Hexagram 61: an inward wholeness without preoccupation or selfishness, whose influence can reach other people and even the lower creatures. Its promise is not effortless success. The hexagram joins sincerity to firmness and correctness, making the virtue both an inward condition and a practical discipline.

Name and central claim

The hexagram’s opening judgment says that Kung Fû moves even pigs and fish, brings good fortune, and makes it advantageous to cross the great stream. It concludes by requiring firmness and correctness. The image thus sets an unusually wide measure for sincerity’s influence: creatures described as among the rudest and least susceptible may be affected by it, while the person who possesses it may undertake what is difficult. But the final qualification prevents sincerity from becoming mere feeling or good intention; it must hold to a sound course.

The figure and its interpretation

The commentary explains the virtue through the arrangement of the six lines. Two divided lines occupy the center, representing a heart or mind free from preoccupation and without consciousness of self. Undivided lines above and below them signify the solidity of the virtue that grows from this freedom. In the commentators’ reading, inward openness is not emptiness without substance: it is joined to a firm, unflawed moral character.

This account belongs to a wider interpretive method in which a hexagram’s name and overall subject guide the reading of its individual lines. The lines’ meanings vary according to their positions and their relation to the whole figure; they are not treated as a set of interchangeable maxims. Here, the central lines provide the image of an unoccupied heart, while the surrounding undivided lines make that receptivity durable rather than passive.

Sincerity in action

The first line depicts a person resting in himself: that self-possession brings good fortune, whereas seeking another as a source of rest will not provide it. The commentary connects this reading to the special interpretation of the hexagram, in which sincerity is centered within the person and derives its force from there. Its influence begins not in dependence on an external counterpart, but in inward integrity.

The second line turns inward virtue into a relation of response. A crane cries from its hidden retirement, its young answer, and an offer of good spirits is met by a willingness to share. The commentary reads the young crane as represented by the first line and sees, in the exchange, two people brought together through sympathy in virtue. The image gives sincerity a social consequence: what is inwardly genuine can elicit a corresponding response without being reduced to display or command.

The judgment’s reference to crossing the great stream extends the same principle to demanding action. The commentary says that the sincerely virtuous person can succeed in the most difficult enterprises, but again stresses the closing condition of firmness and correctness. Influence and capacity are therefore not licenses to act without restraint; sincerity’s effectiveness depends on steadfast right conduct.

Limits and significance

The top line warns against turning virtue into self-assertion. It depicts a cock attempting to mount to heaven and says that even firmness and correctness will bring evil. The image marks a limit: persistence alone cannot make an exaggerated or misdirected effort appropriate. Read alongside the opening promise, the warning distinguishes powerful sincerity from ambition that strains beyond its proper measure.

The commentary associates the hexagram with the highest human quality and notes that later interpreters connected its line pattern to freedom from selfishness and the solidity of virtue. It also says that the text supplies no example of sincerity affecting pigs and fish; the commentary explains those creatures symbolically as representing people who are especially unreceptive. The claim is thus presented as a moral principle, not as a narrated demonstration. In this reading, inward sincerity matters because it can form the basis of trustworthy relations and difficult action, while its insistence on correctness keeps influence from becoming mere force.