旅 → 離
Hexagram 56: The Wanderer → Hexagram 30: The Clinging Fire
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 1).
Line 1
初六 旅瑣瑣。斯其所取災。
Six at the beginning means: If the wanderer busies himself with trivial things, He draws down misfortune upon himself.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
既痴且狂，兩目又盲。箕踞喑啞，名為无中。
Already foolish and already mad, both eyes also blind. Sitting sprawled and mute; named as one who has nothing within.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire on the mountain, and a man feigns madness to survive. Both crazed and raving, his eyes blind, he sprawls with legs spread in the insolent 'jiji' posture, mute and dumb, erasing himself from notice. This almost certainly alludes to the Viscount of Ji (箕子), uncle of the tyrant Zhou of Shang, who feigned insanity to escape execution at court. The phrase 'named as nothing' (名為無中) captures his strategy: make yourself invisible, become no one. From The Wanderer to The Clinging, doubled fire blazes in mutual illumination. Yet the verse describes the deliberate extinguishing of one's own light. The wisest response to a tyrant's court is to blind oneself, to become darkness within a house of fire.
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