謙 → 豐
Hexagram 15: Modesty → Hexagram 55: Abundance
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 1, 4).
Line 1
初六 謙謙君子。用涉大川。吉。
Six at the beginning means: A superior man modest about his modesty May cross the great water. Good fortune.
Line 4
六四 无不利撝謙。
Six in the fourth place means: Nothing that would not further modesty In movement.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
拜跪請兔，不德臭腐；挽眉衘指，低頭北去。
Bowing and kneeling to beg for a hare; one gets only rotting, stinking refuse. Knitting brows, biting fingers; one hangs one's head and goes north.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Earth holds the mountain in modesty, but someone kneels and begs for a rabbit, only to receive something rotten and foul-smelling. Frowning and biting fingers in frustration, one bows one's head and departs northward. The scene is one of humiliating petition met with contemptuous refusal — the supplicant debased, the gift worthless. From Modesty to Abundance, thunder and lightning arrive together in overwhelming display. Abundance's image is the judge wielding thunder and fire to render verdicts. The verse reveals the gap between supplication and justice: one who grovels receives filth, while Abundance demands the sovereign clarity to distinguish true claims from false. Modesty's deference, when it encounters corruption rather than reciprocity, produces only degradation.
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