Rén-Yang-Yang-Yang
The yin breath swells and the yang wanes.
The yin at full, the yang failing, and things grow slight.
1
He is good at taking away, and nothing is taken from him.
It happens in the dark.
He keeps a hollow in himself on purpose.
2
The heart gives up first, in the middle of him.
Then the body shows it.
He was cornered somewhere no one could see.
3
He cuts back his own bearing.
It shows on him as he climbs the steps.
He put the rein on himself.
4
He does less and less of the governing.
The rank comes down to meet the work.
There is nobody left for him to stand in front of.
5
He takes something off the center, and it is straight.
What is below holds up what is above.
This is exactly the weight a minister carries.
6
Deep, and wide open, and piled high.
He neither seals it nor hands it out.
Stone. The water in it will not find a level.
7
He takes something off the illness and off the worrying.
The danger does not arrive.
It was coming, and he made himself smaller than it.
8
Running down, running down, the sap goes.
What it leaves is the root it came from.
The tree is spending the thing that made it.
9
The taking-away comes to its end.
Climb the western mountain; stand over the great river.
Whoever has made himself small can stand up there.
THE IMAGE
An orchard master carefully pruning excessive leafy branches and suckers from laden pear trees with curved bronze shears, allowing the warm autumn sunlight to ripen the remaining golden pears to maximum sweetness.
THE COMMENTARY
Something is diminishing, being reduced, or needing to be deliberately made smaller. This may concern resources, responsibility, ambition, possessions, attachment, or simply the amount of strain you are carrying.
Decrease is not merely loss. Reduction can restore proportion, remove illness, and reveal what remains when excess is stripped away. Sometimes becoming smaller is precisely what allows you to survive what would otherwise overwhelm you.
The oracle asks what should be taken away and what must not be. Wise decrease preserves the root while reducing what consumes it. Unwise decrease cuts into the source of life itself and calls the resulting weakness simplicity.
This figure is one of 81 in Taixuanjing for Today, a book by Joe Perez that renders Yang Xiong’s Canon of Supreme Mystery in original verse, with expanded commentary, essays, and full instructions for casting the oracle yourself.