剝 → 大過
Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart → Hexagram 28: Great Exceeding
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 4, 5).
Line 2
六二 剝牀以辨。蔑貞凶。
Six in the second place means: The bed is split at the edge. Those who persevere are destroyed. Misfortune.
Line 4
六四 剝牀以膚。凶。
Six in the fourth place means: The bed is split up to the skin. Misfortune.
Line 5
六五 貫魚。以宮人寵。无不利。
Six in the fifth place means: A shoal of fishes. Favor comes through the court ladies. Everything acts to further.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
百川朝海，流行不止。路雖遼遠，無不到者。
A hundred streams flow toward the sea, coursing without cease. Though the road be long and far, there is none that does not arrive.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Mountain upon earth strips away, revealing lake above wind — Great Exceeding, the ridgepole bowed under extraordinary weight. A hundred rivers flow toward the sea, their movement ceaseless. Though the road is long and distant, there is nothing that does not arrive. The verse takes Great Exceeding's imagery of overwhelming force and renders it as patient, inevitable convergence. Unlike the hexagram's sagging ridgepole, here the excess is liquid, flowing, unstoppable rather than structurally stressed. Every stream finds the ocean regardless of distance. From Splitting Apart to Great Exceeding, the mountain's collapse releases its substance into motion. What was solid becomes fluid; what was fixed becomes journeying. The gentleman 'stands alone without fear and withdraws from the world without melancholy' — the hundred rivers need no validation, only their own persistent direction.
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