節 → 蒙
Hexagram 60: Limitation → Hexagram 4: Youthful Folly
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 5, 6).
Line 1
初九 不出戶庭。无咎。
Nine at the beginning means: Not going out of the door and the courtyard Is without blame.
Line 5
九五 甘節吉。往有尚。
Nine in the fifth place means: Sweet limitation brings good fortune. Going brings esteem.
Line 6
上六 苦節貞凶。悔亡。
Six at the top means: Galling limitation. Perseverance brings misfortune. Remorse disappears.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
良馬疾走，千里一宿。逃難它鄉，誰能追復？
A fine horse races swift; a thousand li in a single night's rest. Fleeing disaster to foreign lands, who could ever catch or bring one back?
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Water over lake marks the boundary one must respect — or flee beyond. A fine horse gallops without pause, covering a thousand li in a single night's lodging. Someone escapes disaster by fleeing to a distant land, and no pursuer can recover them. The verse reads as pure flight: speed, distance, and the irrevocability of departure. From Limitation to Youthful Folly, the transformation is striking — the mountain spring at the base of the peak suggests obscurity, the young fool who has not yet learned. The fugitive trades the known world's constraints for the darkness beyond the frontier, where ignorance may paradoxically become shelter. What cannot be found cannot be harmed. The swift horse carries its rider past every limit into a realm where no old rules apply.
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