觀 → 巽
Hexagram 20: Contemplation → Hexagram 57: The Gentle Wind
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 2, 3).
Line 2
六二 闚觀。利女貞。
Six in the second place means: Contemplation through the crack of the door. Furthering for the perseverance of a woman.
Line 3
六三 觀我生進退。
Six in the third place means: Contemplation of my life Decides the choice Between advance and retreat.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
澤枯無魚，山童無株；長女嫉妬，使身空虛。
The marsh dries up, no fish remain; the mountain is stripped bare, no tree stands. The elder daughter seethes with jealousy -- she leaves the body spent and hollow.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wind over earth surveys a landscape stripped bare. The marsh has dried up and holds no fish; the mountain is bald without a single tree. The eldest daughter seethes with jealousy, and her body is left empty and depleted. Every image speaks of resources exhausted: water without life, mountain without growth, woman without generosity. Jealousy itself is a form of depletion — it consumes the jealous one rather than replenishing her. Doubled wind forms the Gentle, which penetrates gradually and persistently. From Contemplation to the Gentle, the pattern is one of gradual hollowing: wind over wind erodes not through violence but through ceaseless, invisible wearing away. Jealousy operates the same way, emptying the vessel from within through persistent corrosion.
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