升 → 訟
Hexagram 46: Pushing Upward → Hexagram 6: Conflict
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 3, 4, 5, 6).
Line 3
九三 升虛邑。
Nine in the third place means: One pushes upward into an empty city.
Line 4
六四 王用亨于岐山。吉。无咎。
Six in the fourth place means: The king offers him Mount Ch'i. Good fortune. No blame.
Line 5
六五 貞吉升階。
Six in the fifth place means: Perseverance brings good fortune. One pushes upward by steps.
Line 6
上六 冥升。利于不息之貞。
Six at the top means: Pushing upward in darkness. It furthers one To be unremittingly persevering.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
衰老困極，无齒不食。痔病痟瘵，就陰為室。
Wasted and aged, reduced to the uttermost; without teeth, unable to eat. Afflicted by sores and wasting illness, he retreats to the darkness for his chamber.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wood grows within the earth, yet here the body decays beyond all repair. Aged and exhausted to the utmost, toothless and unable to eat, afflicted with hemorrhoids and consumption, the sufferer retreats into the shade as though entering a tomb. The verse catalogs physical collapse with clinical, unflinching precision: every organ failing, every function impaired, life force guttering out. From Pushing Upward to Conflict, the ascending life force encounters heaven and water moving in opposite directions. What should rise instead meets resistance at every turn, and the body that once pushed upward now retreats into darkness — growth's opposite, where even the impulse to contend has been exhausted beyond recovery.
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