Oppression — 困

What Is Hexagram 47?

Hexagram 47, Kùn (困), Oppression, is Lake above Water, ䷮ — 坎下兌上, three firm lines and three yielding ones, a single answering pair in the whole figure, and the figure's own name standing inside all six of its line texts. It is the figure of being held in place: a marsh whose water has sunk below its own bed, an argument that will not be heard, a person whose resources have gone down under the floor they were standing on.

The character is the one for enclosure and straitness. The subcommentary defines it in a single breath: 「困」者，窮厄委頓之名，道窮力竭，不能自濟，故名為「困」 — 困 is the name for straits and exhaustion, for a road that has run out and strength that has given way and no means of getting oneself out; that is why the figure is called by it. The definition is as notable for what it leaves out. Nothing in it is about deserving, and nothing in it is about duration. The figure names a condition, not a verdict.

What the figure does with that condition is the first surprise. Its judgment opens with 亨, passage — the word the book uses wherever a figure opens outward — and the commentary treats the word as the figure's own gift rather than as a reward: 亨者，卦德也。小人遭困，則「窮斯濫矣」。君子遇之，則不改其操。君子處困而不失，其自通之道，故曰「困，亨」也 — passage is the virtue of this figure; a small person meeting it goes over the bank like a flooded stream, and a noble person meeting it does not change their grip, and because a noble person in straits does not lose the way that gets through, the text says there is passage. The phrase inside that sentence about the flooded stream is a quotation, and it is the reason this page will come back to the Analects: as the Analects has it, 君子固窮，小人窮斯濫矣. Whether or not the reader shares the book's confidence, the structural claim is exact. Passage is not what happens after the difficulty. It is what the difficulty is made of, if the person in it holds.

Wang Bi's note on the same word is blunter and puts the whole thing on a single distinction: 困必通也。處窮而不能自通者，小人也 — what is hemmed in always gets through; the one who is stuck and cannot get themselves through is the small person. Read as psychology rather than as ethics, the sentence says that the barrier is seldom the situation alone; there is almost always a second half of it, and the second half is the person's own handling.

The Sequence that carries the figures along explains where this one comes from in a clause that has already been quoted on the previous page: 升而不已，必困，故受之以困 — a climb that does not stop is what meets the obstruction, and that is why the book receives it with 困. And the same chapter says where the figure goes: 困乎上者，必反下，故受之以井 — what is pressed from above must come back down, which is why the Well is next. Between those two clauses the whole figure is already described: an ascent overrun, then a return to the bottom, to the source, to water that has to be hauled up by hand. The 雜卦 pairs the two figures from the other side, 井通，而困相遇也, the well as the figure of what flows and the obstruction as the figure of what one runs into.

The figure's signature clause, though, is its last one, and it is a piece of advice against advice. 有言不信 — words there will not be believed — with the 彖's explanation, 尚口乃窮也, and Wang Bi's note on it: 處困而言，不見信之時也。非行言之時，而欲用言以免，必窮宅也。其吉在於「貞、大人」，口何為乎？ — to speak from inside straits is to speak at a time when speaking is not believed; this is not the hour for words, and whoever tries to talk their way out has made a home in the dead end; the good fortune lies in being correct and of great stature, so what is the mouth for? It is also the hardest of the book's instructions to like. In a situation like this one, explanation is not a tool. It is the thing that makes the situation worse.

One more structural fact belongs at the front, because a reader coming from the previous page will notice it. The name 困 stands inside every one of the six line texts, in each case joined to the same particle: 困于, hemmed in by. There are six lines in this figure and six statements of what it is like to be held; the book does not give this figure a single line that is free of the condition it is named after.

Trigram Structure

In this figure Water stands under Lake: 坎 at the bottom, 兌 on top. The 說卦's catalogue of single-word natures gives both trigrams a character, and it gives them in the order that matters here: 坎，陷也。兌，說也 — sinking below, and gladness, or speaking, above. The 彖 begins from exactly that arrangement and reads the name out of it: 困，剛揜也, and the subcommentary unpacks the figure's own composition into a single image of social life: 兌陰卦為柔，坎陽卦為剛，坎在兌下，是「剛見揜於柔也」。剛應升進，今被柔揜，施之於人，其猶君子為小人所蔽以為困窮矣 — the lake is a yielding figure and the water a firm one, and the firm thing sits underneath the yielding thing, so firmness is covered over by softness; firmness ought to rise, and here it is buried, which applied to people looks like a noble one hidden by small ones and called stuck. The name of the figure is therefore not primarily about poverty or pain. It is about pressure from above pressing down on whatever is vigorous beneath it.

The next clause of the 彖 is where the figure's tone is set, and it is the reason this page's opening section spends time on 亨: 險以說，困而不失其所亨. Danger below, gladness above; the two trigrams together, and the passage is what survives the combination. Wang Bi glosses it as a manner rather than an outcome — 處險而不改其說，「困而不失其所亨」也, dwelling in danger without altering one's gladness — and the subcommentary fills the picture in with the figure's characteristic move: 坎險而兌說，所以困而能亨者，良由君子遇困，安其所遇，雖居險困之世，不失暢說之心 — danger and openness held at once, and the reason there is passage in straits is that a noble person runs into the condition instead of away from it, settles where they have landed, and does not lose the open heart in the middle of it. That is a specific and slightly uncomfortable piece of advice, and the figure's last line turns on the same shape.

The third clause locates the judgment's 大人 in the figure's arithmetic. 貞大人吉，以剛中也, and the subcommentary is explicit that 剛中 means the two centers: the second and the fifth places, both occupied by firm lines here, 此就二五之爻. It then says why the pairing of correctness and size cannot be split: 剛則正直，所以為貞，中而不偏，所以能大。若正而不大，未能濟困，處困能濟，濟乃得吉而無咎也 — firmness is what makes a line correct and the middle is what lets it be large; correctness without size cannot get anybody out of this figure, and getting out is what earns the good fortune and the absence of blame. A person who is merely upright and narrow is not the person the judgment is describing, and the figure is unusually candid about that. Being right is not enough in here. Something has to be big enough to carry the weight.

Both trigrams come with their own inventories in the 說卦, and the entries this page has to lean on are the ones about the mouth and about what water is like. 兌為澤、為少女、為巫、為口舌、為毀折、為附決, and 其於地也，為剛鹵，為妾、為羊: the lake, the youngest daughter, the medium, the mouth and tongue, breaking, and the thing that cleaves off when it is time; and in the earth, hard salt ground. Two of those entries are the figure itself. 為口舌 is the trigram of speech, and this is the figure whose judgment says that speech will not carry; 為剛鹵 is the cracked white ground of a dried lake bed, which is the Image one section down. And 為巫, the medium, is the trigram that supplies both of the figure's surviving rituals — the second line's 利用亨祀 and the fifth line's 利用祭祀 — which are the two places in this figure where the mouth is still allowed to work.

坎 brings the state of mind rather than the state of affairs. 坎為水、為溝瀆、為隱伏、為矯輮、為弓輪; 其於人也，為加憂、為心病、為耳痛、為血卦、為赤; 其於馬也，為美脊、為亟心、為下首、為薄蹄、為曳; 其於輿也，為多眚、為通、為月、為盜; 其於木也，為堅多心. Three entries there are the inside of this figure: 為加憂, sorrow added on top of what was already there; 為心病, illness of the heart; 為隱伏, the thing that lies hidden. The list also gives it 為血卦, the trigram of blood, which is the register the fifth line's mutilation is written in, and 為通, a passable way — the idea the judgment's first word carries, filed under the trigram that is standing in the danger. In the compass chapter of the same text the two trigrams are given the two halves of the year's work: 說言乎兌，戰乎乾，勞乎坎, 兌 at the season when things are glad and 坎 as the toil at the north; and the chapter on the six powers says the pair in one line each, 說萬物者，莫說乎澤 and 潤萬物者，莫潤乎水 — nothing gladdens things the way the marsh does and nothing moistens them the way water does. The figure's comedy is that in its own picture the marsh is empty and the water is underneath it.

Then the figure's own arithmetic. ䷮ read from the bottom is 陰陽陰陽陽陰: a yielding line, a firm line, a yielding one, and then two firm ones together at the fourth and fifth places with a yielding line on top. Three firm and three yielding, which is even by count and uneven by position: only the fifth and the top lines stand in places that suit them, and the four below them do not — including 九四, whose position is the specific complaint Wang Bi makes about it later on, 履不當位. Of the three possible answering pairs, exactly one answers: 初六 and 九四, the bottom line of each trigram. The two central places are both firm, which is the 剛中 the 彖 leans on, and they cannot answer each other, because the book pairs unlike lines and 九二 and 九五 are alike. The third and the top lines are both yielding, so neither of them has an answer either; the subcommentary on 六三 says it in four characters, 己又無應, and Wang Bi's note on the top line says the same from above, 下無其應. The figure of being held in place is built so that four of its six lines stand, in the technical sense, without a partner — the two centers because they are alike, the third and top because they are alike.

Turn the six strokes upside down and they are Hexagram 48, the Well — the pair the Sequence and the 雜卦 both join to this one. Reverse every stroke and the figure is Hexagram 22, Grace. And the 繫辭's list of nine figures with their virtues puts the pair side by side in a way the rest of this page will keep returning to: 困，德之辨也。井，德之地也 — the obstruction is where virtue is told apart, and the well is where it has ground to stand on. The same passage then adds two more clauses about it: 困，窮而通 and 困，以寡怨, in straits and still passing through, and the figure by which a person comes out with few grudges.

The Judgment

困：亨，貞大人吉，无咎，有言不信。

Kùn: hēng, zhēn dà rén jí, wú jiù, yǒu yán bù xìn.

Our rendering: Oppression: there is passage. For the correct and the great: good fortune, no blame. Words will not be believed.

Five clauses and four separate pieces of information, and the first two are the ones that need unpacking. 亨 comes before anything else in the judgment, before the patient clause about who benefits and before the warning about speech, and the commentary refuses to treat it as a promise held out to the reader: 亨者，卦德也 — passage is what this figure is like, not what it pays. Everything after it is conditional in a way the first word is not. The passage is the figure's nature; the good fortune is the person's business.

貞大人吉 is where the judgment turns into an instrument, and the syntax allows two readings, and the tradition keeps both. Read 貞 as a quality of the person, it says that whoever is correct and of great stature gets through: 處困而能自通，必是履正體大之人，能濟於困，然後得吉而「無咎」, with the subcommentary's own emphasis on the two adjectives being inseparable. Read the word as an instruction, it tells the reader to hold to what is correct and to be large about it, and the result is the same person. Wang Bi reads the whole clause through the figure's centers, 處困而用剛，不失其中，履正而能體大者也，能正而不能大博，未能說困者也, and the subcommentary adds the limitation that keeps the phrase honest: 若正而不大，未能濟困. Correctness that is narrow does not get anybody out of this figure. That is the figure's one genuinely hard demand, and it has to be stated plainly, because every other clause in the judgment is easier than this one.

无咎 comes third, and here the figure becomes generous in a way that readers who are used to the book's scale may miss. In most judgments 无咎 is a modest outcome sitting below the several grades of good fortune. Wang Bi reads it here as the ceiling of what can be hoped for and as good enough: 處困而得「無咎」，吉乃免也. Being unscathed in this figure is the good fortune. Nothing in the text promises that the obstruction lifts; what it promises is that a correct and large person passes through it without a mark on them, and that this is an outcome in its own right.

Then the last clause, which is the figure's real instruction. 有言不信: words will not be believed. The 彖 gives the reason and the consequence in one phrase, 尚口乃窮也, and the subcommentary turns it into a piece of practical advice: 處困求通，在於修德非用言以免困。徒尚口說，更致困窮 — the way out of straits is in the person's own cultivation and not in an argument that gets them off the hook; to lean on talk is to go further in. Wang Bi's note adds the timing: 非行言之時，而欲用言以免，必窮宅也 — this is not the hour when words are carried, and whoever tries to use them anyway has settled into the dead end for good; and then the note ends on a question that is almost comic, 口何為乎, what is the mouth for? In a figure whose upper trigram is the book's own trigram of the mouth and the tongue, that question is the whole page in four characters.

The 彖 distributes the judgment across the structure, and its order is part of the reading. It begins with the name, 困，剛揜也, and the gloss on those four characters is the shortest in the section, 剛則揜於柔也. It moves next to the two trigrams together, 險以說，困而不失其所亨, and adds a clause that is closer to astonishment than to definition, 其唯君子乎？ — who but a noble one could do this? Then the two centers, 貞大人吉，以剛中也, which is where the judgment's second clause is explained and where the subcommentary's distinction between being correct and being large gets its warrant. And it ends exactly where the judgment ends, with the mouth: 有言不信，尚口乃窮也. The sequence is the figure in miniature. The name comes from pressure, the passage comes from holding two opposites at once, the good fortune comes from a firm center, and the failure comes out of the mouth. The 繫辭's nine-virtue list gives the same reading in one clause when it calls this figure 德之辨也 and then explains itself with 困，窮而通 — straits are where virtue is told apart, because straits are where the talking stops working and only the holding remains.

One textual remark, since a reader who follows the series will have met the phrase before. 大人吉 occurs in only two figures in the whole classic: here, where the words open the judgment's second clause, and at the fifth line of Hexagram 12, 休否，大人吉. In this figure the phrase is at the judgment, where the book states what the whole figure is for. The one thing the judgment asks for by name is not cleverness, not patience, not even firmness alone, but size.

Jungian reading. The figure's opening move — that being hemmed in carries passage inside it — is a statement of the law Jung borrowed from Heraclitus and used all his life: enantiodromia, the running of a thing, when it reaches its extreme, into its opposite. Jung's definition of the term is worth having beside the 彖, because it is narrower than the popular version: what he meant was that a one-sided psychic attitude, pushed far enough, produces its opposite in the unconscious and eventually arrives at it in behavior. That is precisely the structure Wang Bi's note puts at the center of this figure, 困必通也, and it is the reading the topmost line acts out when it says that regret is what makes the way out possible. The figure is not promising relief. It is describing the mechanism by which an extreme position generates its own reversal.

There is a second, less comfortable contact point, and it is in the Image rather than the judgment. Jung devoted a great deal of his later work to the withdrawal of value from the world — the state in which things that used to draw a person simply stop drawing — the figure's own picture, with the water gone down under its bed. In the alchemical material he read so closely, that condition is the first stage of the work and it has a name, the blackening: not an illness to be cured but a stage that has to be gone through, in which the old attitude dies before anything can be built in its place. What the text does with that state is exactly what Jung's clinical writing insists on, and it is the reason this page keeps returning to the mouth. In the figure's own logic, the person in the blackening cannot argue their way out of it — 有言不信 — because the faculty that would do the arguing is the faculty whose one-sidedness produced the condition. Jung's version of the same point is that a conscious attitude cannot be corrected by more of that attitude, and his name for the correction was not advice but an encounter: something arrives from outside the ego's own arrangements. The figure's name for that thing is a person of great stature, 大人.

The Image

象曰：澤无水，困；君子以致命遂志。

Zé wú shuǐ, kùn; jūn zǐ yǐ zhì mìng suì zhì.

Our rendering: A marsh with no water: Oppression. The noble one therefore gives his life to the aim.

The picture is not of an empty marsh but of where the water went. Wang Bi's note supplies the physics in a single move and then refuses to let the reader enjoy it as scenery: 澤無水，則水在澤下，水在澤下，困之象也 — a marsh with no water means the water is below the marsh, and water below the marsh is what the obstruction looks like. The subcommentary draws the consequence outward from the marsh to everything standing in it: 「澤無水，困」者，謂水在澤下，則澤上枯槁，萬物皆困. The water did not evaporate. It sank. Everything above the new level is dry, and everything that was drinking from the marsh is now in the figure.

Then the Image does something the book does nowhere else. It attaches an instruction to a picture of irrecoverable dryness, and the instruction is not to find water: 君子以致命遂志. Wang Bi's gloss on those four characters is a quotation and a question: 處困而屈其志者，小人也。「君子固窮」，道可忘乎？ — the one who bends their aim in straits is the small person; a noble one is firm in straits — can the way simply be forgotten? The phrase inside those quotation marks is the Analects again, and it is doing the same work in both places: it marks the difference between a person who is stuck and a person who is bent. The subcommentary then states the instruction in the plainest words it will allow itself: 君子之人，守道而死，雖遭困厄之世，期於致命喪身，必當遂其高志，不屈撓而移改也 — a noble person keeps to the way even to death; even in a time like this, though it may cost the body, the high aim is carried through and is not bent or exchanged. 致命 does not mean death as an achievement; it means handing over one's life, one's standing, whatever the person has, to the thing they are for.

That instruction stands alone in the classic. 致命遂志 appears nowhere else in the sixty-four figures, and no other Image's advice is written as a statement of what to hand over rather than of what to do about the situation. The Images of the other difficulty figures all describe work that makes things better: 39's 反身修德 asks a person to turn back and cultivate, 29's 習坎 prescribes the steady practice of teaching, 28's asks for standing alone without fear. This one asks for something else, and the difference is the point. It does not ask that the condition be lifted. It asks what a person is when nothing about the condition gets better — which is the only question left once 有言不信 has taken the first and last of the usual remedies off the table.

Read with the trigram catalogues the picture gets sharper. The 說卦's entry for 兌 in the earth is 為剛鹵, hard salt ground, which describes the dried lake bed without a word of explanation, and the entry it files under 坎 for wood is 為堅多心 — hard wood with many piths, the phrase that gives water the texture of a thing that resists — which describes what is still down there. The 說卦's order of the year puts both trigrams on one circuit, 說言乎兌 and 勞乎坎 — the gladness of the west, then 戰乎乾 where the two powers contend, then the toil of the north: the figure's weather in one line, with the battle standing between its two halves. What the Image asks a person to do is continue the labor at the station where nothing is left to be glad about.

Jungian reading. The instructions in this book are versions of one demand, which is to keep the center of gravity in the right place while the situation does what it does; this Image is the demand with the most riding on it, and Jung is the analyst of what is at stake in it. In the alchemical writings he worked from, the stage of blackening is followed by nothing automatic: the texts are insistent that the work continues only because the operator continues it, with the vessel sealed and the fire kept low for as long as it takes, and Jung took the sealed vessel as one of his standing images for the attitude that does not leak. His own account of the years in which he went through this figure is the plainest evidence he ever gave that the Image's instruction is a description and not a piety. He had a professional position that was working and a body of theory that had come apart, and by his own later description he could not think his way out of it; what he did instead was keep working, follow the material as it arrived instead of steering it, and let the outcome be decided by something he was not directing. That is what the four characters describe: the aim held, the explanation given up, the outcome not negotiated. Jung also put the limit of the instruction as clearly as the book does, and in the same terms. He wrote repeatedly that the process cannot be forced and that any attempt to hurry it produces its own caricature — which is the fifth line of this figure, one section down, where a person who will not wait begins to cut.

The Lines

初六：臀困于株木，入于幽谷，三歲不覿。 (Tún kùn yú zhū mù, rù yú yōu gǔ, sān suì bù dí.) Seated on a stump: the seat is stuck. He enters the dark valley: three years without seeing.

The figure that is hemmed in begins at the bottom, and its first line is the one that gets out of the way. Wang Bi builds the whole image out of position and obstruction: 最處底下，沈滯卑困，居無所安，故曰「臀困於株木」也。欲之其應，二隔其路，居則困於株木，進不獲拯，必隱遯者也，故曰「入于幽谷」也 — at the lowest place, sunk and pressed, with nowhere to sit that holds, which is why the seat is a stump; it wants to reach what answers it, and the second line blocks the road; staying, it is stuck on the stump, and going forward it finds no rescue, so it is bound to disappear into the dark valley. Then the note adds the limit that makes the line bearable: 困之為道，不過數歲者也。以困而藏，困解乃出，故曰「三歲不覿」也 — the way of this hardship does not last more than a few years; it hides while the obstruction holds and comes out when the obstruction loosens, which is what the three years without seeing mean. The subcommentary is candid that the hiding is a choice forced by arithmetic, 勢必隱遯者也, and the Small Image gives the hiding its own name, 入于幽谷，幽不明也, with Wang Bi's gloss running in the same direction, 言幽者，不明之辭也。入于不明，以自藏也: the word dark is a word for not being seen, and going into the unclear is going into cover.

Two counts belong beside the line. 臀, the word for the seat and the hindquarters, is written in only three of the sixty-four line texts, and the other two — the fourth line of Hexagram 43 and the third line of Hexagram 44 — begin with the same eight characters, 臀无膚，其行次且, a seat stripped of its skin and a gait that keeps catching. This figure's version is not about pain. It is about a resting place made of dead wood. And 三歲, three years, is a phrase the book uses sparingly and always as a waiting period: it appears in five figures, twice in Hexagram 13, twice in Hexagram 29, and once each here, in Hexagram 53 and in Hexagram 55. The figure's first line is not a punishment. It is a shelter with a term on it.

九二：困于酒食，朱紱方來，利用亨祀，征凶，无咎。 (Kùn yú jiǔ shí, zhū fú fāng lái, lì yòng xiǎng sì, zhēng xiōng, wú jiù.) Hemmed in by wine and food: the vermilion apron is on its way. An offering will serve. Setting out: misfortune — no blame.

The second line is the only firm line in the lower half of the figure, and it is the only line whose problem is abundance. Wang Bi's note is among the longest in the section and it proceeds by subtraction, taking away everything the line does not have: 以陽居陰，尚謙者也。居困之時，處得其中。體夫剛質，而用中履謙，應不在一，心無所私，盛莫先焉 — firm in a yielding place, which is humility; standing in the middle of a time of straits; carrying firm substance and using it through the middle and through yielding; and having no single partner, so that the heart holds no private preference. Then he explains why an arrangement like that draws everything to itself: 夫謙以待物，物之所歸；剛以處險，難之所濟。履中則不失其宜，無應則心無私恃，以斯處困，物莫不至，不勝豐衍，故曰「困於酒食」，美之至矣 — yielding meets things and things come home to it, firmness handles danger and danger gets crossed, the middle keeps proportion and the absence of a partner keeps the heart free of private attachment; on those terms nothing fails to arrive, and what arrives is more than the line can hold, which is why it is 困于酒食, hemmed in by wine and food, the highest praise in the passage. The word 朱紱 in the next clause is the badge of rank that comes with the office, and the note explains its direction geographically: 坎，北方之卦也。朱紱，南方之物也。處困以斯，能招異方者也. Firmness in a yielding place, in the middle, with no favorite — that is what pulls in what comes from the other quarter.

Then the line turns. 豐衍盈盛，故「利用享祀」。盈而又進，傾之道也。以此而征，凶誰咎乎？ — full and overflowing, which is why an offering serves; but to press on from fullness is the way to tip, and whoever sets out on that footing and meets misfortune has nobody to blame. The verdict is 征凶，无咎, and the subcommentary separates the two halves exactly: 盈而又進，傾敗之道，以征必凶 … 自進致凶，無所怨咎，故曰「無咎」也 — the harm is real and it is self-caused, so the blame is nil. The Small Image closes it with a phrase about the middle, 困于酒食，中有慶也, and the gloss says what the middle is doing: 言二以中德被物，物之所賴，故曰「有慶」也.

There is a word in the line that stands nowhere else in the sixty-four. 朱紱, the vermilion knee-covering, is written once in the whole classic and this is the place; its darker twin 赤紱 is also written once, three lines below. 困于酒食 is nearly as rare: the only other figure whose line texts contain the pair 酒食 is Hexagram 5, where the fifth line reads 需于酒食，貞吉. In both figures the phrase belongs to a firm line in the middle of a yielding world, and in both it names a position that is comfortable while the weather is not.

六三：困于石，據于蒺藜，入于其宮，不見其妻，凶。 (Kùn yú shí, jù yú jí lí, rù yú qí gōng, bù jiàn qí qī, xiōng.) Hemmed in by stone, propped on thorns; he enters his house and does not see his wife: misfortune.

This is the figure's one unmixed verdict, and it is one of the handful of line texts the 繫辭 stops to work through at length — the same run of that text takes up 咸九四's restlessness, 解上六's hawk, 否九五's mulberry tree and 鼎九四's broken leg. Wang Bi reads it as a line that has chosen the wrong supports upward and downward: 石之為物，堅而不納者也，謂四也。三以陰居陽，志武者也。四自納初，不受已者。二非所據，剛非所乘。上比困石，下據蒺藜，無應而入，焉得配偶？在困處斯，凶其宜也 — stone is the thing that is hard and will not let anything in, and it means the fourth line; this line is yielding in a firm place and its ambition is martial; the fourth line has taken the first line and will not take this one; the second is not a thing to lean on, and a firm line is not a thing to ride on; pressed against stone above and propped on thorns below, with nothing answering it, it comes in and finds no partner — and in straits, standing like this, misfortune is simply what fits. The subcommentary supplies the two textures, 石之為物，堅剛而不可入也。蒺藜之草，有剌而不可踐也, and names the Small Image's two words for what has gone wrong: 乘剛 means the second line is the thorns, and 不祥 is glossed flatly, 祥，善也、吉也。不吉，必有凶也. The plant itself is spelled two ways across the public-domain copies — 蔾 in the 周易 page and in the 繫辭's own quotation of the line, 藜 in the 正義 volume — and this page prints the ordinary form and notes the pair.

What makes the line important is that the 繫辭 does not treat the misfortune as fate. It quotes the line and then puts a sentence in the Master's mouth, and the sentence is about misplacement rather than about luck: 易曰：「困于石，據于蒺蔾，入于其宮，不見其妻，凶。」子曰：「非所困而困焉，名必辱；非所據而據焉，身必危；既辱且危，死期將至，妻其可得見耶！」 — to be hemmed in by what a person ought not to be hemmed in by costs them their name, and to lean on what they ought not to lean on puts their body in danger; once the name is spoiled and the body is at risk the end is close, and how is a wife to be seen then? The order of losses in that sentence is the part to keep. Name first, body second, the wife last. And the word 妻 is itself rare in this book: it appears in only four of the sixty-four figures, twice in Hexagram 28, twice in Hexagram 9, once in Hexagram 2, and twice here.

九四：來徐徐，困于金車。吝，有終。 (Lái xú xú, kùn yú jīn chē. Lìn, yǒu zhōng.) He comes slowly: hemmed in by the bronze cart. A sting — and an ending.

The fourth line is the only line in the figure that answers anything, and the thing standing in its way is a friend. Wang Bi identifies the obstacle by name: 「金車」，謂二也。二剛以載者也，故謂之金車 — the bronze cart is the second line, a firm line that carries. Then the hesitation: 「徐徐」者，疑懼之辭也。志在於初而隔於二，履不當位，威令不行。棄之則不能，欲往則畏二 — the slow coming is the language of doubt and fear; its aim is on the first line and the second line stands between them; it stands in a place that does not suit it, so its word carries no weight; to give up is impossible and to go forward means going past the second line and being afraid of it. The verdict on that fix is 吝 — a sting, the book's word for the small persistent cost of a position that cannot be helped — and the subcommentary leaves no doubt about the emotion in it: 有應而不敢往，可恥可恨，故曰「吝」也. Then the line does something almost no line in this figure does: it ends well. 然以陽居陰，履謙之道，量力而處，不與二爭，雖不當位，物終與之，故曰「有終」也 — it is firm in a yielding place, it walks the way of humility, it measures its strength and does not contend with the second line, and so, though it stands in a place that does not suit it, things are with it in the end. The Small Image states the mechanism in two clauses, 來徐徐，志在下也。雖不當位，有與也, and Wang Bi's gloss on the closing phrase is short enough to quote whole: 位雖不當，執謙之故，物所與也.

One textual remark on the line, since the two copies of the classic in the public-domain sources part company here. The 周易 page writes 來荼荼 for the slow coming and 困于金轝 for the bronze cart, noting 徐徐 and 車 as the alternatives; the 正義 volume reads 來徐徐 and 困于金車. This page follows the 正義 text, which is also the one the subcommentary is commenting on, and notes the pair of variants rather than choosing silently.

九五：劓刖，困于赤紱，乃徐有說，利用祭祀。 (Yì yuè, kùn yú chì fú, nǎi xú yǒu yuè, lì yòng jì sì.) Nose and feet cut away; hemmed in by the crimson apron. Slowly there is ease: an offering will serve.

The fifth line is the ruler's seat, firm in a firm place, and it loses everything the humble second line was given. Wang Bi's note reads the whole line as an act of punishment that costs the one who orders it: 以陽居陽，任其壯者也。不能以謙致物，物則不附。忿物不附而用其壯猛，行其威刑，異方愈乖，遐邇愈叛。刑之欲以得，乃益所以失也 — firm in a firm place, trusting its own vigor; unable to draw anything to itself by yielding; angry that nothing comes, it uses its strength and its severity, and the further quarters grow stranger and the far and near grow more rebellious; the punishment meant to win things is the reason they are lost. Then he puts the two central lines of the figure side by side and says the whole thing in ten characters: 二以謙得之，五以剛失之 — the second won it by yielding and the fifth lost it by firmness. The subcommentary adds the compass that makes the pair exact, 兌為西方之卦，赤紱南方之物，故曰「劓刖，困於赤紱」也, and then draws the lesson the ruler is being taught: 此卦九二為以陽居陰，用其謙退，能招異方之物也。此言九五剛猛，不能感異方之物也 — the second line, firm in a yielding place, could draw what came from elsewhere; the fifth, firm and fierce, could not move it at all.

Then the line recovers, slowly, and the recovery is a matter of method. 體在中直，能不遂迷困而徐能用其道者也。致物之功，不在於暴，故曰「徐」也。困而後乃徐，徐則有說矣 — standing in the middle and straight, it can refuse to go all the way with its own confusion and can come to use the right method at leisure; the work of drawing things does not happen by violence, which is why the text says slowly; and 乃徐有說, slowly there is ease. The subcommentary takes that word for gladness, 則得喜說, rather than for a letting-go, and spells out the final clause and the last one of the line, 若但用其中正之德，招致於物，不在速暴而徐徐，則物歸之而有說矣 and 居得尊位，困而能反，不執其迷，用其祭祀，則受福也. The Small Image splits the line into its three clauses, 劓刖，志未得也。乃徐有說，以中直也。利用祭祀，受福也, and the subcommentary's note on the middle one names the resource the line has left: 居中得直，不貪不暴，終得其應，乃寬緩修其道德，則得喜說 — in the middle and straight, not greedy and not violent, it reaches what answers it in the end, and by quietly setting its own conduct in order it arrives at release.

Three counts belong to this line. 劓刖, the cutting of the nose and the feet, is written nowhere else in the sixty-four, and its own Small Image repeats the word — other figures cut as well, 睽's third line taking a nose and 噬嗑's opening line a foot, but only this one names both in a single pair. 赤紱, the crimson apron, is written once in the classic, here — the darker mate of the second line's vermilion one, which is written once too. And 祭祀, the word for the rite, is written twice in the whole book, both times in this line and its Small Image, while the second line's 亨祀 — the same rite, with 亨 printed in place of 享 — is written once. The upper trigram of this figure is, in the 說卦's own catalogue, 為巫, the medium; the two lines that survive in this figure are the two lines that keep a rite.

上六：困于葛藟，于臲卼，曰動悔。有悔，征吉。 (Kùn yú gé lěi, yú niè wù, yuē dòng huǐ. Yǒu huǐ, zhēng jí.) Hemmed in by vines, on ground that will not hold still. The text says: move, and regret. There is regret — setting out: good fortune.

The top line is the most tightly held position in the figure, and the only one whose text says outright that moving will be good fortune. Wang Bi: 居困之極，而乘於剛，下無其應，行則愈繞者也。行則纏繞，居不獲安，故曰「困于葛藟於臲卼」也 … 處困之極，行無通路，居無所安，困之至也 — at the extreme of the obstruction and riding on a firm line, with nothing answering it below, so that going forward only winds it tighter; it winds as it moves and finds no rest where it sits, which is why the text has vines and unsteady ground; and that is the obstruction at its limit, no road forward and no seat under it. The subcommentary defines the two images, 葛藟，引蔓纏繞之草，臲卼，動搖不安之辭, and clarifies a small oddity of the text, that only the first half of the line repeats the name of the figure, 應亦言「困於臲卼」，「困」因於上，省文也.

Then the line does the thing no other line in this figure does, and Wang Bi's note on it is the hinge of the whole hexagram: 凡物窮則思變，困則謀通，處至困之地，用謀之時也。「曰」者，思謀之辭也 — when things reach their end they think of change, when they are hemmed in they plan a way through, and standing at the extreme of obstruction is the hour for planning; the word 曰 is the language of thinking something over. What the planning arrives at is the surprise: 謀之所行，有隙則獲，言將何以通至困乎？「曰動悔」，令生有悔，以征則濟矣，故曰「動悔有悔，征吉」也 — and the plan is to bring about the thing that can be regretted, to let the regret be known, and then to set out and get through. The subcommentary puts it in the imperative the line means: 必須發動其可悔之事，令其有悔可知，然後處困求通，可以行而獲吉. The Small Image makes the same move in seven characters, 動悔，有悔，吉行也, with the gloss 知悔而征，行必獲吉也 — to know the regret and then go is to go to good fortune. Two more things about this line can be counted. The word 悔, regret, occurs twice in this figure's six line texts and both occurrences are here, in the top line — one of only two line texts in the sixty-four where the word is written twice, the other being the third line of Hexagram 16, which is a warning to a self-satisfied idler rather than an instruction to move. And the top line's position is, by the plain rule of odd and even places, the one that suits it — a yielding line in a sixth place — while the Small Image says 未當 anyway, and Wang Bi's note explains why: 所處未當，故致此困也, because it is riding on the firm fifth line. Position correct, relation wrong. That is the figure's last lesson in arithmetic, and it is the reason the top line can only get out by moving.

Daily Life

The most portable clause in the figure is 有言不信, and it is portable precisely because it is unwelcome. In a situation that has gone stuck, the two things a capable person reaches for first are both named in this hexagram as the things that make it worse: the explanation that would set the matter straight, 尚口乃窮也, and the pressure that would bring others into line, 忿物不附而用其壯猛，行其威刑. The judgment does not ask anyone to be quiet out of modesty. It reports a fact about the hours when somebody is hemmed in: at those hours their account of the situation is not credited no matter how good it is, and their weight does not move anybody no matter how much there is of it. The remedy the book does offer is unglamorous and structural. 處困求通，在於修德非用言以免困 — the way through is in what the person is, not in what they can argue.

The two central lines are the figure's pair of case studies, and reading them side by side is the most useful thing on this page. 九二 is firm in a yielding place, in the middle, with no favorite, and it ends up hemmed in by wine and food: the line has so much arriving that the arriving is its problem, and its one warning is 征凶, do not press outward from a full position. 九五 is firm in a firm place, in the honored seat, with an office and a crimson apron, and it ends up mutilating the people whose obedience it needs, and its recovery is measured out slowly. The commentary's sentence about the pair is the figure's whole social teaching in ten characters, 二以謙得之，五以剛失之. What is being described is not weakness winning. It is that the surest way to lose a hold on people is to try to be secure in it.

Two more lines are worth keeping as diagnostics. 六三 is the figure's warning about wrong supports, and the 繫辭's commentary on it names the losses in order: 名必辱 … 身必危, with the household as the last thing gone. The line is interesting because nothing external did this to it; the stone it is pressed against is the line above that will not take it in, and the thorns under it are the strong line it decided to lean on. Misplaced dependence is the failure the figure treats most harshly. 九四 is the opposite case, and it is the one most work gets done from: it has something to reach, the way is blocked by someone stronger who is not an enemy, and it cannot abandon the aim or go around the obstacle. Its instruction is a rate rather than a decision, 來徐徐, and its verdict is 吝，有終 — a small persistent cost, and an ending. Slowness here is not indecision. It is the only pace at which a person can come at what they want without turning the blocker into an enemy.

The Image's instruction is the one to keep for the bad week, and it is worth reading for what it leaves out. 君子以致命遂志 — the noble one hands over their life and carries the aim through. It does not say that the aim will succeed; it does not say the obstruction will be lifted by a certain date; and it does not trade the aim for comfort. What it asks is that the person be one thing all the way down when the situation will not be one thing at all. That is a heavy sentence to put in a page about being stuck, and the figure earns it by having spent five lines being honest about the alternatives. The exit it does have is at the very top, and it is not clever: 知悔而征，行必獲吉 — know the regret and then set out. Regret in this figure is not a penalty. It is the toll gate.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does Hexagram 47 mean in one sentence?

That being held in place carries passage inside it and refuses to be argued with: 剛揜也, firmness covered over by softness, with 亨 promised as the figure's nature rather than as a reward, 亨者，卦德也 and 困必通也, and then closing the door on the usual remedies — 貞大人吉, good fortune for whoever is correct and large enough, 无咎, no blame even though nothing gets better, and 有言不信，尚口乃窮也, no credit for the explanation and a dead end for whoever leans on one.

Why does a figure about being stuck open with the word for passage?

Because in this book 亨 describes what the figure is like and not what it pays out. The subcommentary is explicit, 亨者，卦德也, and it immediately draws the distinction that the whole page turns on: 小人遭困，則「窮斯濫矣」。君子遇之，則不改其操。君子處困而不失，其自通之道，故曰「困，亨」也. The same reading is in Wang Bi's note at its shortest, 困必通也。處窮而不能自通者，小人也 — what is hemmed in gets through; the person who is stuck and cannot get themselves through is a small person. The passage is a property of the condition. Whether a particular person is in possession of it depends on what they are made of, which is the job of the next clause.

Why does the judgment say words will not be believed?

Because in this figure the faculty that does the talking is the faculty that is at the top of it. The upper trigram is 兌, which the 說卦 catalogues as 為口舌, the mouth and the tongue, and the judgment's last clause is 有言不信, with the 彖's reason attached: 尚口乃窮也. Wang Bi's note on it is the bluntest advice in the figure, 非行言之時，而欲用言以免，必窮宅也 — this is not an hour when words are carried, and whoever tries to talk a way out has made their home in the dead end — and it ends on a question, 其吉在於「貞、大人」，口何為乎？, the good fortune is in being correct and of great stature, so what is the mouth for? The subcommentary supplies the alternative in one line: 處困求通，在於修德非用言以免困.

What does 致命遂志 actually ask for, and why is it the only instruction of its kind?

It asks a person to hand over their life and carry the aim through — 君子之人，守道而死，雖遭困厄之世，期於致命喪身，必當遂其高志，不屈撓而移改也 — and it sits in an Image whose picture is a marsh with no water under it, 澤無水，則水在澤下，水在澤下，困之象也. The four characters 致命遂志 appear nowhere else in the sixty-four, and no other Image's advice is written for a situation that cannot be improved: the other difficulty figures ask for cultivation, or steady teaching, or standing alone without fear, all of them things that alter the situation in time. This one asks what a person is when nothing improves. Wang Bi's note reaches for the Analects to say what is at stake in the choice — 處困而屈其志者，小人也。「君子固窮」，道可忘乎？ — the one who bends their aim in straits is the small person, and a noble one is firm in straits: can the way simply be forgotten?

The I Ching is a mirror for reflection, not a prediction machine.