屯 → 損
Hexagram 3: Difficulty at the Beginning → Hexagram 41: Decrease
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 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 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
踦牛失角，下山傷軸。失其利祿。
The one-horned ox loses its horn; going downhill, the axle breaks. One’s profit and rank are lost.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Clouds and thunder transform into mountain above lake: initial difficulty descends into loss. A one-horned ox loses its remaining horn coming down the mountain, and the cart axle breaks. Profit and position are forfeited. The verse is tersely catastrophic: each element names a diminishment. The ox already lacked one horn; now it loses the other. The descent that should bring the ox safely home instead shatters the vehicle. From Difficulty at the Beginning to Decrease, the mountain drains the lake below. Sun's principle is deliberate reduction for the sake of higher ends, but here the decrease is involuntary and compounding. What little remained is stripped away, and even the means of conveyance is destroyed. The initial difficulty has not been overcome but has progressively consumed every resource.
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