晉 → 睽

Commentary

Fire rises above the earth, yet the traveler heading east finds only elm bark to eat, trapped among dead tree stumps. Wife lost, home gone, ambitions exhausted — nothing but worry remains. Eating elm bark was a classical sign of famine conditions: when even the trees are stripped for sustenance, civilization has collapsed to bare survival. The dead stumps compound the desolation — even the elms have been consumed. From Progress to Opposition, the transformation mirrors the alienation. Fire above and lake below pull in contrary directions, creating the estrangement that defines this hexagram. The man who has lost wife, home, and hope embodies Opposition's central condition: everything that should be united has split apart, and the eye sees only divergence.