艮 → 小過
Hexagram 52: Keeping Still Mountain → Hexagram 62: Small Exceeding
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 1, 3).
Line 1
初六 艮其趾。无咎。利永貞。
Six at the beginning means: Keeping his toes still. No blame. Continued perseverance furthers.
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.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
出門逢患，與禍為怨。更相擊刺，傷我指端。
Stepping out the gate, meeting calamity; becoming enemies with disaster. Striking and stabbing one another, wounding the tips of my fingers.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Twin mountains stand still, but stepping outside the door one encounters trouble immediately. Colliding with misfortune, hostility erupts on all sides. Blows are traded and blades cross, wounding the fingertips. The verse compresses violence into the smallest possible space: the moment of crossing the threshold, the instant of contact, the injury to the extremity. From Keeping Still to Small Exceeding, mountain yields to thunder above the mountain — the small bird that flies too high and falls. Small Exceeding counsels: exceed in reverence, in frugality, in grief, but never in ambition. The verse's figure exceeds the mountain's boundary by a single step and pays for it at the fingertips. The smallest transgression of stillness triggers disproportionate harm.
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