觀 → 益
Hexagram 20: Contemplation → Hexagram 42: Increase
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 1).
Line 1
初六 童觀。小人无咎。君子吝。
Six at the beginning means: Boy like contemplation. For an inferior man, no blame. For a superior man, humiliation.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
去辛就蓼，毒愈酷毒；避穽入坑，憂患日生。
Leaving the pungent for the bitter, the poison grows crueler still; fleeing the pit only to fall into another -- worry and misfortune multiply by the day.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wind over earth observes a flight from one poison into another. Leaving the pungent, one turns to smartweed — an even harsher poison. Dodging a pit, one falls into a trench; worries multiply daily. The verse captures a cascading failure of judgment where each remedy worsens the disease. Smartweed (liao) is more acrid than the ginger-like plant (xin) abandoned. Wind over thunder forms Increase, which should augment and improve through timely action. From Contemplation to Increase, the irony is biting: the hexagram of beneficial addition meets someone whose every addition is subtraction. What should increase welfare instead increases suffering, because the observer lacks the discernment to distinguish true remedy from disguised harm.
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