艮 → 觀
Hexagram 52: Keeping Still Mountain → Hexagram 20: Contemplation
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 3, 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 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
衘命辱使，不堪其事。中墜落去，更為負載。
Bearing a mandate as lowly envoy, unequal to the task. Midway, it drops and falls away; replaced with yet heavier burdens.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Twin mountains stand still, but the envoy sent on a humiliating mission cannot bear the burden. Midway he stumbles and falls, then is forced to carry an even heavier load. The verse describes diplomatic disgrace: a messenger dispatched under degrading terms who collapses under the weight of his charge, only to have more piled upon him. From Keeping Still to Contemplation, doubled mountain yields to wind moving across the earth, the sage-king's image of observing the people to guide instruction. Yet the verse inverts that gentle overview: instead of contemplative authority surveying from above, there is a broken figure crushed from below. The mountain's height should grant perspective, but here it only measures how far one has fallen.
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