小過 → 節
Hexagram 62: Small Exceeding → Hexagram 60: Limitation
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 5, 6).
Line 2
六二 過其祖。遇其妣。不及其君。遇其臣。无咎。
Six in the second place means: She passes by her ancestor And meets her ancestress. He does not reach his prince And meets the official. No blame.
Line 5
六五 密雲不雨。自我西郊。公弋取彼在穴。
Six in the fifth place means: Dense clouds, No rain from our western territory. The prince shoots and hits him who is in the cave.
Line 6
上六 弗遇過之。飛鳥離之。凶。是謂災眚。
Six at the top means: He passes him by, not meeting him. The flying bird leaves him. Misfortune. This means bad luck and injury.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
山崩谷絕，大福盡歇。涇渭失紀，玉石既已。
Mountains collapse, valleys are severed; great fortune utterly ceases; the Jing and Wei lose their courses; jade and stone together are finished.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder rumbles above the mountain, but the mountain collapses and the valley is severed — great blessings cease entirely. The Jing and Wei rivers lose their order, and jade and stone are finished alike. The Jing and Wei (涇渭) were proverbially distinct — one clear, one muddy — and their 'losing order' (失紀) means the fundamental principle of differentiation has collapsed. When you can no longer tell jade from stone, value itself dissolves. The verse describes total systemic failure: geography ruptures, rivers merge indistinguishably, and quality distinctions vanish. From Small Exceeding to Limitation, the mountain's thunder becomes water resting above the lake — measured containment. But the verse shows what happens when limitation comes too late: the structures that should have set boundaries have already shattered, and no amount of regulation can restore what has been obliterated.
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