既濟 → 節
Hexagram 63: After Completion → Hexagram 60: Limitation
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 2, 3).
Line 2
六二 婦喪其茀。勿逐。七日得。
Six in the second place means: The woman loses the curtain of her carriage. Do not run after it; On the seventh day you will get it.
Line 3
九三 高宗伐鬼方。三年克之。小人勿用。
Nine in the third place means: The Illustrious Ancestor Disciplines the Devil's Country. After three years he conquers it. Inferior people must not be employed.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
應門內崩，誅賢殺暴。上下咸悖，景公失位。長歸無恆，望妻不來。
The inner gate collapses; both worthy and wicked are killed. Above and below all rebel; Duke Jing loses his position. Departing forever without return, watching for a wife who does not come.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Water sits above fire, but the inner gate collapses. Virtuous and wicked alike are slain; high and low are all in rebellion. Duke Jing loses his position. Separated for so long there is no constancy; one gazes for the wife who never comes. The verse catalogs political and domestic disintegration: the palace gate — boundary between inner court and outer world — falls, signaling that all distinctions have broken down. From After Completion to Limitation, fire-and-water balance yields to water above the lake — proper boundaries that regulate excess. Yet the verse shows what happens when limits fail entirely: without the gate, without the boundary, authority collapses and even the domestic bond dissolves. Limitation is the remedy this verse desperately needs but cannot find.
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