Duration

Duration (Chinese heng, the enduring) is constancy that renews itself — movement so ordered that it is "not worn down by hindrances." It is the title-theme of hexagram 32, whose commentary defines it:

Duration is a state whose movement is not worn down by hindrances.

Its Judgment shows that endurance is not stagnation but continued, purposeful motion:

DURATION. Success. No blame. Perseverance furthers. It furthers one to have somewhere to go.

Duration is already implicit in THE CREATIVE, where the ceaseless movement of heaven "never stops nor slackens, just as one day follows another in an unending course. This duration in time is the image of the power inherent in the Creative." What perseveres in the right acquires duration; what has duration can be relied upon. The theme therefore binds together constancy, self-renewal, and the enduring institutions of human life.