大畜 → 艮
Hexagram 26: Great Taming → Hexagram 52: Keeping Still Mountain
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 1, 2).
Line 1
初九 有厲。利已。
Nine at the beginning means: Danger is at hand. It furthers one to desist.
Line 2
九二 輿說輹。
Nine in the second place means: The axletrees are taken from the wagon.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
窟室蓬戶，寒賤所處。十里望烟，散渙四方。形體滅亡，下入深淵。終不見君。
A cave dwelling with a rush-woven door; the cold and humble dwell here. For ten li one sees only smoke; scattered and dispersed in all directions. Form and body perish; they descend into the deep abyss. In the end, the lord is never seen.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Heaven stored within the mountain faces doubled mountain — Keeping Still. A cave dwelling with a wormwood door — the abode of the impoverished and lowly. Gazing ten li into the distance, one sees only scattered smoke drifting in all directions. The body wastes away and descends into the abyss. One never sees the lord again. The 'wormwood door and jar-window' is the classical image of virtuous poverty, associated with Confucius's disciple Yuan Xian who chose integrity over comfort. Yet here the image is not noble poverty but terminal desolation: the body perishes, smoke disperses, and the lord is forever beyond reach. From Great Taming to Keeping Still, the mountain doubles down on itself — stillness compounded into paralysis. What was stored becomes a tomb.
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