師 → 睽
Hexagram 7: The Army → Hexagram 38: Opposition
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 4, 6).
Line 1
初六 師出以律。否臧凶。
Six at the beginning means: An army must set forth in proper order. If the order is not good, misfortune threatens.
Line 4
六四 師左次。无咎。
Six in the fourth place means: The army retreats. No blame.
Line 6
上六 大君有命。開國承家。小人勿用。
Six at the top means: The great prince issues commands, Founds states, vests families with fiefs. Inferior people should not be employed.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
清人高子，久屯外野。道遙不歸，思我慈母。
The man of Qing, Gao Zi; long stationed in the outer wilds. The road is far, he does not return; he thinks of his kind mother.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Water hidden within the earth stations troops along the border, and here the men of Qing under Commander Gao idle in the open fields. The Shijing ode 'Qing Ren' tells how Duke Wen of Zheng, disliking his general Gao Ke, sent him to garrison the Yellow River frontier against the Di barbarians — then never recalled him. The soldiers drilled endlessly without purpose until the army dissolved. Far from home on a road too long for return, the speaker longs for his mother. From The Army to Opposition, fire and lake pull in opposite directions. The garrison mirrors this divergence: commander and sovereign, soldier and homeland, are fatally separated, each looking in a direction the other cannot follow.
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