比 → 鼎
Hexagram 8: Holding Together → Hexagram 50: The Cauldron
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 5 changing lines (lines 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
Line 2
六二 比之自內。貞吉。
Six in the second place means: Hold to him inwardly. Perseverance brings good fortune.
Line 3
六三 比之匪人。
Six in the third place means: You hold together with the wrong people.
Line 4
六四 外比之。貞吉。
Six in the fourth place means: Hold to him outwardly also. Perseverance brings good fortune.
Line 5
九五 顯比。王用三驅。失前禽。邑人不誡。吉。
Nine in the fifth place means: Manifestation of holding together. In the hunt the king uses beaters on three sides only And forgoes game that runs off in front. The citizens need no warning. Good fortune.
Line 6
上六 比之无首。凶。
Six at the top means: He finds no head for holding together. Misfortune.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
飲酒醉酗，跳躍爭鬭。伯傷叔僵，東家治喪。
Drinking wine in reckless excess, leaping and brawling. The elder brother is wounded, the younger falls stiff; the eastern household prepares a funeral.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Water upon earth dissolves into drunken chaos. Men drink until they are roaring drunk, leaping and brawling. The eldest brother is wounded, the younger collapses, and the eastern neighbor prepares a funeral. What begins as communal feasting — the most basic expression of Bi's fellowship — degenerates into violence and death. Wine, the social lubricant of ancient ritual, becomes the solvent that destroys family bonds. From Holding Together to The Cauldron, fire over wood should refine raw material into something sacred. But the verse shows the cauldron's contents spoiled: the transformative vessel that should elevate instead produces toxic excess, and the feast that should unite the family becomes its undoing.
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