艮 → 否
Hexagram 52: Keeping Still Mountain → Hexagram 12: Standstill
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 3, 4, 5).
Line 3
九三 艮其限。列其夤。厲熏心。
Nine in the third place means: Keeping his hips still. Making his sacrum stiff. Dangerous. The heart suffocates.
Line 4
六四 艮其身。无咎。
Six in the fourth place means: Keeping his trunk still. No blame.
Line 5
六五 艮其輔。言有序。悔亡。
Six in the fifth place means: Keeping his jaws still. The words have order. Remorse disappears.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
獨坐西垣，莫與言笑。秋風多哀，使我心悲。
Sitting alone by the western wall, none to share in speech or laughter. The autumn wind carries much sorrow; it makes my heart grieve.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Twin mountains stand still, and one sits alone by the western wall with no companion for talk or laughter. The autumn wind carries only sorrow, filling the heart with grief. The image is desolation refined to its essence: a single figure, a crumbling wall, a cold season, and silence. From Keeping Still to Standstill, mountain yields to the absolute separation of heaven and earth. In Standstill, heaven rises and earth sinks — there is no communication between above and below. The verse embodies this perfectly: a person frozen in place while the season of decay blows through. Stillness here is not discipline but abandonment, the mountain's solitude stripped of its dignity and left as pure loneliness.
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