剝 → 謙
Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart → Hexagram 15: Modesty
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 3, 6).
Line 3
六三 剝之无咎。
Six in the third place means: He splits with them. No blame.
Line 6
上九 碩果不食。君子得輿。小人剝廬。
Nine at the top means: There is a large fruit still uneaten. The superior man receives a carriage. The house of the inferior man is split apart.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
三婦同夫，忽不相思。志恆悲愁，顏色不怡。
Three wives share one husband; suddenly they cease to long for him. Hearts are ever grieving and sorrowful; countenances show no cheer.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Mountain upon earth collapses into earth containing a mountain — Modesty, where the great humbles itself beneath the small. Three women share one husband, yet suddenly cease to think of one another. Their hearts are perpetually sorrowful, their faces never at ease. The domestic arrangement that should embody harmonious hierarchy instead breeds alienation. No one fights openly, but affection has simply evaporated. From Splitting Apart to Modesty, the mountain that once rose above the earth now lies buried within it. The three wives mirror this inverted structure: outwardly they share the same household, but inwardly each is isolated. Modesty at its best equalizes and distributes fairly; here it manifests as emotional leveling — all reduced to the same joyless plane, none favored, none content.
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