Kung Fû

Kung Fû, or Inmost Sincerity, names an ideal of inward virtue whose power comes from freedom from self-interest rather than from display or force. The hexagram’s central image joins an unoccupied mind to steadfast virtue: sincerity is inwardly whole, yet capable of affecting other people, spiritual beings, and even creatures regarded as difficult to move.

Meaning and Structure

The name Kung Fû is rendered as “Inmost Sincerity.” The commentary describes it as the highest quality of a person, one that gives its possessor power across distinct realms of relation: with spiritual beings, with other people, and with lower creatures. This is not merely a private feeling. Its significance lies in what an undivided inward character can accomplish in the world.

The figure’s arrangement supplies an account of that character. Two divided lines occupy its centre, where commentators see a heart or mind free from preoccupation and without consciousness of self. Two undivided lines lie below and above them, at the centres of the constituent trigrams, and represent the solidity of the virtue surrounding that empty centre. The image holds selflessness and firmness together: the mind is clear because it is not occupied by self-interest, and the virtue is substantial rather than vacant.

The commentary insists that this sincerity contains “not a single flaw.” Its absence of selfish preoccupation is therefore not weakness or unreality; the unoccupied centre is supported on both sides by solid virtue. The structure makes inward freedom and moral firmness mutually sustaining features of the same state.

Sincerity in Action

The text associates sincere virtue with success in the most difficult enterprises. Its reach is illustrated through the phrase “pigs and fishes,” which the commentators treat as symbols of people who are rudest and least susceptible to influence. The image makes the claim deliberately expansive: sincerity can affect not only those already disposed to respond, but also those presumed hardest to move.

The commentary says the interpreters give no specific instance of pigs and fishes being affected. The claim thus remains a symbolic account of sincerity’s reach rather than an anecdote about a particular encounter. Its emphasis falls on the principle: the power to influence arises from the quality of the person, not from a narrated display of technique.

That power does not release its possessor from practical discipline. The hexagram’s concluding requirement is that the person be firm and correct. Sincerity is not simply the intensity of conviction; it must be joined to steadiness and right conduct. The qualification gives the teaching its ethical limit, distinguishing effective inward virtue from mere force of feeling.

Interpretation and Ethical Emphasis

The commentary connects Kung Fû with the Doctrine of the Mean from its twenty-first chapter onward. Remusat rendered the term as “la perfection” and “la perfection morale”; Intorcetta and his coadjutors used “vera solidaque perfectio.” These renderings emphasize moral completeness and solidity, qualities consistent with the hexagram’s image of a clear centre held within firm lines.

The “Daily Lecture,” in its paraphrase of the Thwan, refers to the ancient Shun and the remarkable achievements of his virtue. That reference places sincerity within a tradition of exemplary conduct: the teaching points not only to a definition of inward quality but also to virtue understood through its effects. Yet the commentary does not expand this reference into a particular episode; Shun serves here as a historical exemplar of what virtue can achieve.

The commentary identifies the practical character of the teaching in its insistence on firm correctness. In its view, this practical emphasis distinguishes the best Chinese teaching across history. Kung Fû therefore joins an ambitious claim about the reach of sincerity to a restrained rule for its exercise: inner virtue may move what seems unresponsive, but it must remain steady and right.