I Ching · Hexagram 60 Limitation
Hexagram 60 line 5: Limitation, yang in the fifth place

I Ching 60.5
Sweet limitation brings good fortune. Going brings esteem.
The one who sets limits for others and keeps them first themselves, so that the measure is sweet rather than bitter. Restriction by example. The line credits this leadership with esteem.
Advice. Set the limits and keep them yourself first; then they are accepted gladly.
What changes when line 5 moves
Line 5 of Hexagram 60 is yang, a solid line. When it is cast as old yang (a 9) it flips, and the hexagram becomes Hexagram 19, Approach: A favourable time approaching, and the reminder that it will pass: use it before the eighth month.
Read together, the reading moves from Limitation toward Approach. Water in a lake with a bank: limits that give form and save strength, provided they are not galling. Lake below, earth above: the earth leaning over the water, the higher approaching the lower with care. Approach describes a rising time, spring coming, the strong lines entering from below and growing. The primary hexagram describes the situation; the changing line is the point of movement in it; the resulting hexagram is where that movement leads. Both hexagrams belong to the reading, and the changing line is the hinge between them.
Line 5 in context
- Love & relationships
- Set the limits and keep them yourself first; then they are accepted gladly. In love and relationships, Hexagram 60 reads: Boundaries, agreed and kept: what each of you needs, what each of you will not do, how much is enough. The reading favours limits that both of you accept and warns against ones that gall. The right measure makes the relationship strong at the joints.
- Career
- Set the limits and keep them yourself first; then they are accepted gladly. In career, Hexagram 60 reads: Discipline and economy: the scope defined, the hours set, the standard fixed. The reading favours clear limits that people can work within, and warns against constraints so tight that they break the people they were meant to shape.
- Money
- Set the limits and keep them yourself first; then they are accepted gladly. In money, Hexagram 60 reads: Budget. The reading is for thrift and measure, limits set deliberately and kept. It warns against both extravagance and a stinginess so severe it becomes its own harm. Find the proportion.
- A decision
- Set the limits and keep them yourself first; then they are accepted gladly. In decisions, Hexagram 60 reads: Choose the option with clear, bearable limits. Decide how much is enough before you decide anything else. The reading is against open-ended commitments and against ones so restrictive they cannot be kept.
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