大過 → 泰
Hexagram 28: Great Exceeding → Hexagram 11: Peace
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 4, 5).
Line 1
初六 藉用白茅。无咎。
Six at the beginning means: To spread white rushes underneath. No blame.
Line 4
九四 棟隆。吉。有它吝。
Nine in the fourth place means: The ridgepole is braced. Good fortune. If there are ulterior motives, it is humiliating.
Line 5
九五 枯楊生華。老婦得其士夫。无咎无譽。
Nine in the fifth place means: A withered poplar puts forth flowers. An older woman takes a husband. No blame. No praise.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
當年少寡，獨與孤處。雞鳴犬吠，無敢誰者。我生不辰，獨嬰寒苦。
Widowed young in her prime; alone she dwells in solitude. Roosters crow, dogs bark; none dares approach her. I was born at an ill hour; alone I embrace cold and hardship.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Lake over wind descends into the communion of heaven and earth — Peace. Yet this Peace arrives as bitter irony. A young widow dwells alone with only the lonely and desolate for company. Roosters crow and dogs bark, but no one dares approach. 'I was born at the wrong time,' she laments, 'and suffer cold hardship alone.' The verse inverts Peace's promise of cosmic harmony: heaven and earth exchange freely, but this woman is cut off from all exchange. Her solitude is not chosen withdrawal but enforced isolation — widowed young, she endures the very opposite of the hexagram's communal blessing. From Great Exceeding to Peace, the transformation suggests that even amid general prosperity, individual suffering persists. The roosters and dogs signal a populated village, yet she remains untouched by its warmth.
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