恆 → 隨
Hexagram 32: Duration → Hexagram 17: Following
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 3, 5).
Line 1
初六 浚恆貞凶。无攸利。
Six at the beginning means: Seeking duration too hastily brings misfortune persistently. Nothing that would further.
Line 2
九二 悔亡。
Nine in the second place means: Remorse disappears.
Line 3
九三 不恆其德。或承之羞。貞吝。
Nine in the third place means: He who does not give duration to his character Meets with disgrace. Persistent humiliation.
Line 5
六五 恒其德貞。婦人吉。夫子凶。
Six in the fifth place means: Giving duration to one's character through perseverance. This is good fortune for a woman, misfortune for a man.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
昧旦不明，暗我無光，喪滅失常，使我心傷。
At dawn’s edge, no light comes; darkness robs me of all radiance. Ruin and loss overturn the constant; it wounds my heart.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder above wind, Duration's steady cadence, dissolves into lake above thunder — Following's willing submission to circumstance. Before dawn, no light; darkness overwhelms, leaving nothing visible. Order is destroyed and constancy lost, wounding the heart. The verse is one of pure lamentation: the pre-dawn hour that should promise coming light instead delivers only deeper blackness. Duration's rhythm — the reliable alternation of thunder and wind — collapses into a world where one must follow blindly because all guidance has vanished. From Duration to Following, the steady self-directed path gives way to submission, but here there is nothing worthy to follow. The heart grieves because the darkness is not the darkness before dawn but the darkness of a lamp permanently extinguished.
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