Duration, Line 1

Duration opens by asking too much of itself and asking too soon. Legge's translation shows the subject deeply desirous of long continuance and gives evil even where there is firm correctness, with no advantage in any direction. The commentary on the image supplies the mechanism: the evil arises from a deep seeking to penetrate at the very commencement of things. Wanting something to last is not the fault. Demanding at the outset that it already be lasting is.

The figure sets thunder above wind, movement above gentle penetration, and its judgement holds that duration succeeds, is without blame, and further favours having somewhere to go. Lasting in this classic is never standing still; it is a course renewed inside a fixed form. A first line is the moment before any of that exists, when there is a beginning and no track behind it, and the text is blunt that a beginning cannot be asked to produce the evidence of an ending.

The stroke is yielding in an odd place, incorrect by the ordinary rule, at the floor of the lower trigram Xun. Xun is the wind and its attribute is penetration, which is why the commentary reaches for the word deep. A soft line at the base of that trigram has the disposition to press inward and none of the standing that would make pressing inward useful, so what it produces is depth with nothing underneath it.

Six at the beginning is a warning against demanding a guarantee. The querent wants to know that something will last, wants to know it at the very start, and the text answers that even correctness will not save the situation while that demand is being made, and that nothing whatever is advantageous. It is one of the sterner openings in the classic, and the severity is aimed at the timing rather than at the wish.

Practically it covers the moment when somebody tries to secure a commitment, an arrangement or a position permanently before it has had any chance to prove itself in ordinary use. The commentary describes this as seeking too deeply at the commencement, and the trouble is not that the answer will come back wrong. It is that nothing has yet happened from which an answer could be drawn, so the pressure falls on a structure with nothing supporting it.

When the line changes, the lower trigram Xun becomes Qian and the figure becomes Great Power, King Wen 34, strong lines rising with force enough to break through a fence and leave a ram caught in it. The destination is a diagnosis rather than a remedy. Impatience for permanence turns into raw strength applied where restraint was needed, and that figure's counsel to advance only in what is correct is the correction this line has already implied.