无妄 → 否

Commentary

Heaven grows weary of Zhou's virtue and transfers its mandate to the southern kingdom. With ritual and propriety the people are pacified; weapons and armor are set aside to rest. This verse invokes the Mandate of Heaven — the foundational political theology of the Zhou, here turned against Zhou itself. The phrase 'heaven wearies of Zhou's virtue' echoes the language of dynastic decline found throughout the Shijing and Shangshu. From Innocence to Standstill, the transformation is paradoxically stabilizing: heaven and earth cease to communicate in Pi, yet the verse presents this severance as a form of peace. When the old order exhausts itself, the new mandate brings stillness through ritual restraint rather than through force.