否 → 蒙
Hexagram 12: Standstill → Hexagram 4: Youthful Folly
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 4, 5).
Line 2
六二 包承。小人吉。大人否。亨。
Six in the second place means: They bear and endure; This means good fortune for inferior people. The standstill serves to help the great man to attain success.
Line 4
九四 有命无咎。疇離祉。
Nine in the fourth place means: He who acts at the command of the highest Remains without blame. Those of like mind partake of the blessing.
Line 5
九五 休否。大人吉。其亡其亡。繫于苞桑。
Nine in the fifth place means: Standstill is giving way. Good fortune for the great man. "What if it should fail, what if it should fail?" In this way he ties it to a cluster of mulberry shoots.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
特善避患，福祿常存；雖有豺虎，不能危患。
Skilled at avoiding calamity; blessing and bounty ever abide. Though wolves and tigers lurk, they cannot bring harm.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Heaven and earth refuse to communicate, yet amid the stagnation one figure proves uniquely skilled at avoiding disaster. Fortune and rank endure, and though jackals and tigers prowl, they pose no threat. From Standstill to Youthful Folly, the sealed world of Pi gives way to the spring emerging below the mountain — naive but protected. Meng's image suggests the sheltering mountain above the hidden spring: what is not yet wise is nevertheless guarded by the terrain itself. The verse embodies Meng's paradox: innocence as defense. The one who survives the predators does so not through cunning but through an instinctive alignment with the mountain's shelter, remaining beneath notice where tigers cannot reach.
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