Hexagram 60: Limitation → Hexagram 59: Dispersion

Limitation
Water / Lake
Dispersion
Wind / Water
Changing LinesStable Lines

Changing Lines

This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 1, 6).

Line 1

初九 不出戶庭。无咎。

not
chūgoing out
the door
tíngthe chamber
no
jiùblame

Nine at the beginning means: Not going out of the door and the courtyard Is without blame.

Line 6

上六 苦節貞凶。悔亡。

bitter
jiélimitation
zhēnpersistence
xiōngis unfortunate
huǐbut
wángpass

Six at the top means: Galling limitation. Perseverance brings misfortune. Remorse disappears.

Trigram Changes

Upper TrigramWater WindThe Deep → The Gentle
Lower TrigramLake WaterThe Joyous → The Deep

Yilin Verse

仲伯季叔,日暮寢寐。醉醒失明,喪其貝囊,臥拜道旁。

The four brothers, as evening falls, sink into drunken sleep. Sobering blind in darkness, their money-purse lost; they lie bowing by the roadside.

— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE

Commentary

Water over lake regulates the household's order, but this verse shows that order dissolving into drunken chaos. The brothers — 'zhong, bo, ji, shu,' the four ranks of sibling seniority — as evening falls, sink into sleep. Drunk past awareness, they lose their sight along with their purse of cowrie shells, and end up prostrate by the roadside, bowing to no one. The verse is a tableau of collective degeneration: an entire generation of brothers squandering their patrimony in a single night of excess. From Limitation to Dispersion, the transformation scatters what remains. Wind over water — everything that was consolidated now disperses. Limitation's safeguards, drowned in wine, produce Dispersion's formless dissolution. The brothers' treasures scatter like wind across water, and the household that should have been their shelter becomes an empty word.

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