泰 → 兌
Hexagram 11: Peace → Hexagram 58: The Joyous Lake
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 3, 4, 5).
Line 3
九三 无平不陂。无往不復。艱貞无咎。勿恤其孚。于食有福。
Nine in the third place means: No plain not followed by a slope. No going not followed by a return. He who remains persevering in danger Is without blame. Do not complain about this truth; Enjoy the good fortune you still possess.
Line 4
六四 翩翩。不富以其鄰。不戒以孚。
Six in the fourth place means: He flutters down, not boasting of his wealth, Together with his neighbor, Guileless and sincere.
Line 5
六五 帝乙歸妹。以祉元吉。
Six in the fifth place means: The sovereign I Gives his daughter in marriage. This brings blessing And supreme good fortune.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
水壞我里,東流為海;龜鳧讙囂,不覩慈母。
Water breaches our village, flowing east to the sea. Turtles and ducks cry in clamor; they cannot see their dear mother.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Earth above heaven, Peace inundated. Floodwaters destroy the village, pouring eastward into the sea. Turtles and wild ducks clamor noisily amid the ruins, and the children cannot find their mother. The scene is devastation after a flood: human habitation replaced by aquatic creatures, family bonds severed by rising waters. The mother-child separation is the verse's emotional core — chaos at its most primal. From Peace to The Joyous, paired lakes commune in mutual delight, and the gentleman gathers friends for learning. The transformation is bitterly ironic: where Joyous promises the pleasures of shared waters, this verse shows waters that shatter rather than unite. Joy requires that the lake be contained; uncontained, it becomes catastrophe.
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