Nourishment

Nourishment is the care by which life and character are sustained — both what one takes in and what one gives out. It is the title-theme of hexagram 27, THE CORNERS OF THE MOUTH (Providing Nourishment), pictured as an open mouth framed by firm lips. Its Judgment turns the image into a double question of discernment:

Pay heed to the providing of nourishment
And to what a man seeks
To fill his own mouth with.

The commentary distinguishes nourishing others from nourishing oneself, and warns that the character of a person shows in what he chooses to be fed by. The theme reaches back to hexagram 5, WAITING, glossed as "nourishment," where strength gathers itself and is fed while the right time approaches. To nourish rightly — the body with food, the mind with truth, the people with good rulers — is to lay the ground of all lasting growth.