Nourishment

The judgment directs attention to 頤 and to seeking what fills one’s own mouth. The working translation uses “nourishment” for 頤, while recording its bodily range in the translation note. The excerpt does not reduce nourishment to diet or moralize appetite. Oriens reflection: food, information, attention, speech, and care can all be examined as forms of intake and provision, without treating that list as the text’s exhaustive meaning.

The judgment joins constancy and good fortune with two compact directives: 觀頤 and 自求口實. 頤 carries a physical range—jaws, cheeks, or the act of nourishment itself. The working translation renders the first clause as Observe nourishment; the second clause shifts to seek what will feed your own mouth. That shift deserves attention: the text distinguishes between watching how nourishment operates and actively securing one's own sustenance. It does not describe two identical acts.

The Mountain over Thunder trigram structure shows stillness above movement below, an arrangement later associated with the jaw's action of biting and releasing. The image commentary connects this to proper speech and careful selection of what one takes in, extending nourishment from food to language, ideas, and social exchange. That extension is interpretive development, not part of the terse judgment.

A modern reader can examine nourishment in multiple forms: the information one consumes, the speech one offers, the attention one gives or withholds, and the care one provides or seeks. The judgment does not claim that all these are named within it. What it does is place observation beside active seeking, suggesting that awareness and agency work together. The practical question is whether what fills one's mouth, literally or figuratively, is reliable, proportionate, and suited to actual need. Examine your intake and your provision with the same standard of care. The card supports deliberate attention to what sustains and what depletes, without turning that inquiry into a moral inventory.