訟 → 屯
Hexagram 6: Conflict → Hexagram 3: Difficulty at the Beginning
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 4, 6).
Line 1
初六 不永所事。小有言。終吉。
Six at the beginning means: If one does not perpetuate the affair, There is a little gossip. In the end, good fortune comes.
Line 2
九二 不克訟。歸而逋其邑。人三百戶。无眚。
Nine in the second place means: One cannot engage in conflict; One returns home, gives way. The people of his town, Three hundred households, Remain free of guilt.
Line 4
九四 不克訟。復即命。渝安貞。吉。
Nine in the fourth place means: One cannot engage in conflict. One turns back and submits to fate, Changes one's attitude, And finds peace in perseverance. Good fortune.
Line 6
上九 或錫之鞶帶。終朝三褫之。
Nine at the top means: Even if by chance a leather belt is bestowed on one, By the end of a morning It will have been snatched away three times.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
東上泰山，見堯自言。申理我冤，以解憂患。
Ascending east to Mount Tai, I meet Yao and speak to him. I plead my grievance, to dispel worry and calamity.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Heaven and water diverge, but here a wronged soul climbs Mount Tai to plead before the sage-king Yao himself. The petitioner seeks to lay out an injustice and have the grievance resolved, dissolving worry and calamity. Mount Tai, the Eastern Sacred Mountain, was the site of imperial audiences and cosmic mediation. Yao exemplifies the ruler who judges with wisdom rather than power. From Conflict to Difficulty at the Beginning, the dispute of heaven-and-water enters the birth-struggle of cloud and thunder — where grievances, properly heard, become the seed of new order. The verse insists that even amid confusion, an appeal to righteous authority can untangle the earliest knots of difficulty.
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