小畜 → 恆
Hexagram 9: Small Taming → Hexagram 32: Duration
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 4, 5, 6).
Line 1
初九 復自道。何其咎。吉。
Nine at the beginning means: Return to the way. How could there be blame in this? Good fortune.
Line 4
六四 有孚。血去惕出。无咎。
Six in the fourth place means: If you are sincere, blood vanishes and fear gives way. No blame.
Line 5
九五 有孚攣如。富以其鄰。
Nine in the fifth place means: If you are sincere and loyally attached, You are rich in your neighbor.
Line 6
上九 既雨既處。尚德載。婦貞厲。月幾望。君子征凶。
Nine at the top means: The rain comes, there is rest. This is due to the lasting effect of character. Perseverance brings the woman into danger. The moon is nearly full. If the superior man persists, Misfortune comes.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
客入其門，奔走東西；童女不織，士棄耕畝；暴骨千里，歲寒無年。
Intruders enter the gate, rushing about east and west. The young women no longer weave; the scholars abandon their fields. Bleached bones stretch a thousand li; the year grows cold, the harvest lost.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wind above heaven hardens into thunder and wind locked together — Duration's unyielding persistence. But here endurance is a curse. Invaders enter the gates; people flee east and west. Girls abandon their looms, men forsake their plows. Bleached bones stretch a thousand leagues; the harsh year yields no harvest. From Small Taming to Duration, the verse shows Heng's dark face: when what persists is not virtue but catastrophe, duration becomes a trap. Thunder and wind reinforce each other endlessly, and here it is war and famine that refuse to relent. The bones across the landscape are the terrible monument to a suffering that has outlasted all capacity to endure. Constancy without righteousness is merely prolonged agony.
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