大畜

Hexagram 38: Opposition → Hexagram 26: Great Taming

Opposition
Fire / Lake
大畜
Great Taming
Mountain / Heaven
Changing LinesStable Lines

Changing Lines

This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 3, 4).

Line 3

六三 見輿曳。其牛掣。其人天且劓。无初有終。

jiànseeing
輿(a
(being) held up
its
niúoxen
chèhindered
its
rénoccupant's
tiānhead shaved (bald to heaven)
qiěand (even
(his
regardless of
chū(a
yǒu(but) there is
zhōng(a

Six in the third place means: One sees the wagon dragged back, The oxen halted, A man's hair and nose cut off. Not a good beginning, but a good end.

Line 4

九四 睽孤。遇元夫。交孚。厲无咎。

kuíestranged
(and) (all) alone
meet
yuán(a
(gentle)man
jiāoexchange
(in
(the) difficulty
(is) not
jiù(a) wrong(ness)

Nine in the fourth place means: Isolated through opposition, One meets a like-minded man With whom one can associate in good faith. Despite the danger, no blame.

Trigram Changes

Upper TrigramFire MountainThe Clinging → Keeping Still
Lower TrigramLake HeavenThe Joyous → The Creative

Yilin Verse

匿病不醫,亂政傷災。紂作淫虐,商破其墟。

Concealing illness, refusing the physician; misrule invites calamity. Zhou crafted cruelty and excess; Shang was shattered, its capital ruined.

— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE

Commentary

Fire above the lake, sickness concealed until the state itself sickens. The verse draws a sharp parallel: hiding disease and refusing treatment mirrors a ruler who lets governance rot. King Zhou of Shang indulged in debauchery and cruelty unchecked — his excesses are the undiagnosed illness of the body politic. Shang's capital was laid waste, its foundations reduced to ruins. The idiom 'conceal illness and avoid the doctor' carries the force of willful self-destruction: the patient who refuses treatment has chosen ruin. From Opposition to Great Taming, heaven stored within the mountain, the gentleman studies the words and deeds of the past to nurture virtue. The transformation warns that accumulated power must be informed by historical memory, or it calcifies into the very tyranny it should restrain.

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