屯 → 乾
Hexagram 3: Difficulty at the Beginning → Hexagram 1: The Creative
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 2, 3, 4, 6).
Line 2
六二 屯如邅如。乘馬班如。匪寇婚媾。女子貞不字。十年乃字。
Six in the second place means: Difficulties pile up. Horse and wagon part. He is not a robber; He wants to woo when the time comes. The maiden is chaste, She does not pledge herself. Ten years–then she pledges herself.
Line 3
六三 即鹿無虞。惟入于林中。君子幾不如舍。往吝。
Six in the third place means: Whoever hunts deer without the forester Only loses his way in the forest. The superior man understands the signs of the time And prefers to desist. To go on brings humiliation.
Line 4
六四 乘馬班如。求婚媾。往吉。无不利。
Six in the fourth place means: Horse and wagon part. Strive for union. To go brings good fortune. Everything acts to further.
Line 6
上六 乘馬班如。泣血漣如。
Six at the top means: Horse and wagon part. Bloody tears flow.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
汎汎柏舟，流行不休。耿耿寤寐，心懷大憂。仁不逢時，復隱窮居。
Drifting, drifting, the cypress boat; floating on and on without rest. Sleepless through the watches; the heart bears a great sorrow. Benevolence does not meet its time; one retreats again to dwell in poverty.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Clouds and thunder churn above, but the creative force of pure heaven waits below. A cypress boat drifts endlessly, unable to moor, as its occupant lies awake night after night consumed by worry. This echoes the Shijing's 'Bai Zhou' ode, where a virtuous person adrift laments being unrecognized despite talent. The benevolent one has not met the right time and withdraws into poverty and seclusion. From Difficulty at the Beginning to The Creative, the verse maps the painful interval before breakthrough: the thunder-and-water tangle of Zhun contains latent heaven-over-heaven energy, but that self-generating initiative remains trapped until conditions align. The drift is not permanent defeat but the prelude to self-renewal.
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