艮 → 升
Hexagram 52: Keeping Still Mountain → Hexagram 46: Pushing Upward
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 2, 6).
Line 2
六二 艮其腓。不拯其隨。其心不快。
Six in the second place means: Keeping his calves still. He cannot rescue him whom he follows. His heart is not glad.
Line 6
上九 敦艮吉。
Nine at the top means: Noblehearted keeping still. Good fortune.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
臏詐龐子，夷竈盡毀。兵伏卒發，矢至如雨。魏師驚亂，將獲為虜，涓死樹下。
Sun Bin deceived Pang Juan; the cooking-fires were dismantled and destroyed. Troops concealed, suddenly unleashed; arrows fell like rain. Wei's army, shocked and broken — the general was captured as prisoner. Juan died beneath a tree.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Twin mountains stand still, but beneath the surface a stratagem unfolds. Sun Bin feigns retreat, reducing his army's cooking fires night after night to simulate desertion. His rival Pang Juan, the Wei general who once had Sun Bin's kneecaps removed out of jealousy, takes the bait and pursues with light cavalry into Maling Pass. There, Sun Bin has stripped a tree and inscribed it: 'Pang Juan dies beneath this tree.' When Pang Juan lights a torch to read the words, ten thousand crossbows fire at once, arrows falling like rain. The Wei army collapses; Pang Juan dies under that very tree. The transformation from Keeping Still to Pushing Upward captures this perfectly: patient stillness conceals the slow, methodical rise that destroys the reckless pursuer.
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