The first line of Difficulty at the Beginning opens the hexagram with exactly the obstacle its name promises. Legge's translation gives the line simply as showing the difficulty its subject has in advancing, a plain statement of resistance rather than any elaborate image. Where other hexagrams open with a dragon in reserve or frost underfoot, this one opens with movement itself already checked, the first attempt to go forward meeting something that will not yield easily.
The line occupies the lowest place of the lower trigram Zhen, thunder, the trigram Chinese tradition associates with sudden movement and the eldest son, doubled beneath the upper trigram Kan, water, itself associated with danger and the middle son. Thunder stirring beneath water gives the hexagram's central image, movement struggling against a surrounding difficulty it did not create and cannot simply push through, and the first line shows that struggle at its rawest, before any strategy has yet been found to answer it.
Chinese commentary tradition reads this line as counsel to remain firm and to gather capable help rather than press forward alone. The difficulty named is not a sign that the undertaking is wrong, only that its beginning is hard, as every genuine beginning tends to be. The line's implicit teaching, carried forward through the rest of the hexagram, is that difficulty at the outset is answered by patience and alliance, not by force applied against an obstacle not yet understood.