剝 → 恆
Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart → Hexagram 32: Duration
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 2, 4).
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.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
羊頭兔足，少肉不飽。漏囊敗粟，利無所得。
Sheep's head, rabbit's feet; too little meat to sate. A leaking sack, spoiled grain; no profit to be gained.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Mountain upon earth erodes into thunder and wind — Duration, the hexagram of constancy through time. A sheep's head and a rabbit's feet: too little meat to satisfy. A leaking sack loses its grain; no profit can be secured. The verse is relentlessly bleak: every container fails, every promise of sustenance proves hollow. The sheep's head suggests a meager offering; the rabbit's feet imply a creature too quick to catch or too small to eat. The sack with holes is Duration's cruelest parody — constancy in loss. From Splitting Apart to Duration, the mountain's erosion should give way to thunder and wind maintaining their eternal cycle, but here what endures is only deprivation. Duration without substance is merely the persistence of want, a sack that leaks faster than it can be filled.
The Six Lines app includes all 4,096 Yilin verses, each with original ink brush artwork and full commentary. Download on the App Store