屯 → 睽
Hexagram 3: Difficulty at the Beginning → Hexagram 38: Opposition
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 2, 4, 5, 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 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 5
九五 屯其膏。小貞吉。大貞凶。
Nine in the fifth place means: Difficulties in blessing. A little perseverance brings good fortune. Great perseverance brings misfortune.
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
伯蹇叔盲，莫與守床。失我衣裘，伐民除鄉。
The elder brother is lame, the younger is blind; neither can guard the bed. We lose our garments and furs; the people are harassed, the villages destroyed.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Clouds and thunder yield to fire above and lake below looking apart: initial difficulty fractures into opposition. The elder brother limps, the younger brother is blind — neither can guard the household. Garments and furs are lost, the people are conscripted, and villages are uprooted. The paired disabilities create a devastating image: the lame cannot flee, the blind cannot navigate, and together they cannot protect what is theirs. From Difficulty at the Beginning to Opposition, fire and lake pull in opposite directions, each evaporating the other. The household falls apart not from a single blow but from the compounding of individual incapacities. Where Zhun's difficulty was at least unified in its turbulence, Kui's opposition splits even the family against itself, and the disabled guardians embody a defense divided beyond remedy.
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