Hexagram 5 — Xu, Waiting (水天需)

Xu (需) · water over heaven · clouds rising, and the wait for rain

Chinese / reading

需 · xū

Meaning

Waiting — biding one's time, and being nourished meanwhile

Trigrams

Above: ☵ Water / Below: ☰ Heaven

Binary

111010 (decimal 58)

Sequence

No. 5 / Previous: Hexagram 4 — Meng, Youthful Folly

What this hexagram is

The character xu means to wait, and also to need (as in "demand"). Above is Kan, water — here the clouds that have risen to the sky. Below is Qian, heaven, the strong and active force. When clouds have risen, rain will fall, but no one can make it fall: that is the image, and that is why one waits. The Sequence commentary explains why this follows Meng: "what is young must be nourished; hence Xu. Xu is the way of food and drink." What has just been born and is still young has to be fed. Xu is the waiting in which the feeding happens.

The shape of the hexagram says "wait" as well. Qian below is force that wants to advance; Kan above is danger. Strength stands in front of danger and does not charge. A weak party in front of danger panics and cannot wait; a strong one can. So the waiting in Xu is not the waiting of someone who can do nothing — it is the waiting of someone who could act and chooses not to yet. The first condition the Judgment sets is "there is sincerity" (孚): inner certainty. Because there is certainty, the waiting does not become empty hope.

The Judgment and the Image

The Judgment says "wait," and then ends with "it is advantageous to cross the great river" — go across. This is not a contradiction but a sequence, with the conditions stacking up: sincerity, then brightness and success, then good fortune through holding to what is right, and only then the crossing. When there is certainty, when the outlook is clear, and when one has waited while keeping to what is right, the decision to go through the danger becomes possible. Xu is not a hexagram about waiting for its own sake; it is waiting in order to cross.

Clouds rising to heaven — rain is waited for, not made

The Image says: clouds rise up to heaven — Xu; thus the superior man eats and drinks, and is at ease and cheerful. If the clouds are up, rain will fall sooner or later. But no one can push the clouds and make it fall. All that is in one's power is how to spend the time until it does, and the Image's answer is: eat, drink, and be at ease.

That is not an instruction to be idle. As the Sequence calls Xu "the way of food and drink," the time of waiting is a time of nourishing, and keeping body and mind strong is the preparation for moving the moment the rain comes. Worrying ahead of events, or reaching in before the time is ripe, is the same as pushing at clouds: it brings nothing forward.

How Wilhelm read this hexagram

Wilhelm reads Xu as a way of spending the time while fate is at work. The rain will fall when its time comes, and no one can make it fall. The question was what to do in the meantime.

When clouds rise in the sky, it is a sign that it will rain. There is nothing to do but wait until the rain falls. It is the same in life when destiny is at work.

From Richard Wilhelm's German commentary, rendered into English for this page by QOOQ Inc.

The load-bearing phrase is "a sign that it will rain." Waiting holds together only because the outcome can be seen coming; a wait without that is not Xu. Wilhelm goes straight on to reject worry and premature interference, and to say that one should strengthen the body with food and drink and the mind with gladness and good cheer — reading the Image's feasting as a plain instruction to prepare.

Wilhelm's commentary on Xu goes on through the six lines' closing distance to the water, and the "secret of the whole hexagram" he places in the fifth line. The whole of it, for all 64 hexagrams, is in the I Ching AI app.

The six lines

Applying it to an actual question

If Xu comes up with no moving lines, the answer is: not yet. But the Judgment's order gives you one thing to check before you wait — sincerity (孚), that is, whether you actually have the certainty that the outcome is coming. If you do, waiting holds. While you wait, follow the Image: keep your routine, feed body and mind. When the time comes, the decision to "cross the great river" is waiting for you.

With moving lines, read the relevant texts. Xu's six lines mark distance from the water's edge: the meadow (still far — first), the sand (closer — second), the mud (too close — third), blood (inside the danger — fourth), food and drink (a pause inside the danger — fifth), the pit (cornered — top). The hexagram reads as a measure of how close to the danger you now stand.

When a moving line turns Xu into another hexagram, read the resulting hexagram as the landscape after the rain. Xu is a hexagram of waiting, so the resulting hexagram tends to show what begins once the waiting is done.

Questions Xu answers well

• "Should I move now, or wait?"——Xu says wait — with one condition attached: "there is sincerity," the certainty that the outcome is coming. Without that certainty, it is not Xu's kind of waiting.
• "What do I do while I wait?"——The Image answers: eat, drink, be at ease — nourish body and mind, and keep your routine. The first line's "it is advantageous to keep to what is constant" says the same thing.
• "There is gossip and criticism; does it matter?"——The second line fits exactly. "There is a little talk; in the end, good fortune." Do not answer it, and it dies away, says the Xiang.
• "I've been pushed to the point where I can't wait any longer."——The top line. One falls into the pit, and three uninvited guests arrive. Receive them with respect rather than refusing them, and the end is good fortune. The situation turns from outside, in a form you did not expect.