鼎 → 賁
Hexagram 50: The Cauldron → Hexagram 22: Grace
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 4).
Line 1
初六 鼎顛趾。利出否。得妾以其子。无咎。
Six at the beginning means: A ting with legs upturned. Furthers removal of stagnating stuff. One takes a concubine for the sake of her son. No blame.
Line 2
九二 鼎有實。我仇有疾。不我能即。吉。
Nine in the second place means: There is food in the ting. My comrades are envious, But they cannot harm me. Good fortune.
Line 4
九四 鼎折足。覆公餗。其形渥。凶。
Nine in the fourth place means: The legs of the ting are broken. The prince's meal is spilled And his person is soiled. Misfortune. A man has a difficult and responsible task to which he is not adequate. Moreover, he does not devote himself to it with all his strength but goes about with inferior people; therefore the execution of the work fails. In this way he also incurs personal opprobrium. Confucius says about this line: "Weak character coupled with honored place, meager knowledge with large plans, limited powers with heavy responsibility, will seldom escape disaster. "
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
腫脛病腹，陷廁污辱。命短時極，孤子哀哭。
Swollen legs, ailing belly; fallen into the privy, shamed and soiled. Life cut short, time exhausted; the orphaned child weeps in sorrow.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire over wind fills the cauldron, yet fire beneath the mountain illuminates only surface beauty in Grace. Swollen shins and a diseased belly, fallen into a latrine's filth and shame. Life cut short at its extremity — an orphaned child cries in anguish. The verse is unsparing: physical decay, bodily humiliation, premature death, and a child left alone to grieve. No historical allusion softens this; it is raw misfortune. From The Cauldron to Grace, the transformation is bitterly ironic. Grace decorates the surface — mountain over fire, beauty illuminated from below — but beneath the ornament lies disease and degradation. The cauldron's fire, which should refine, here only exposes what cannot be adorned. No amount of grace can dress a body falling apart.
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