Great Power, Line 6

The topmost line ends the hexagram jammed. Legge's translation returns to the ram at the fence and finds it able neither to retreat nor to advance as it would wish, with nothing advantageous in any respect, and then attaches a condition: if the subject realises the difficulty there will be good fortune. The commentary on the image traces the whole situation to a want of care, and adds that the error will not be prolonged.

The sixth place is the station of excess, and Great Power has been warning about excess since its first line. The stroke is yielding in an even place, correct by the ordinary rule, at the top of the trigram of thunder and past the ruling fifth line. Correctness saves nothing at the extremity, and the softness of the line is why the position cannot be reversed: no strength remains up here to pull the horns out with, only the memory of the strength that drove them in.

What lifts the verdict is a change of knowledge rather than of circumstance. The text does not say the ram gets free. It says that recognising the difficulty produces good fortune, and the commentary promises only that the error will not last. That is the classic being exact rather than consoling. Nothing in the position moves, and the one thing still capable of changing is whether the person inside it understands what put them there.

Six at the top is a reading about a deadlock the querent built. Neither advance nor retreat is available, nothing is advantageous, and then the line turns on a single condition: acknowledge the difficulty and good fortune follows. That structure is rare in the classic, which usually attaches outcomes to conduct. Here it attaches one to seeing clearly, because conduct is precisely what the position no longer permits.

The commentary is blunt about the cause, tracing the jam to a want of care rather than to any outside force, and it limits the damage by saying the error will not be prolonged. Somebody drawing this line has usually pushed a thing to the point where every remaining option costs more than it returns, and the useful part of the reading is that the classic asks them neither to push harder nor to reverse. It asks them to stop misdescribing the situation to themselves.

When the line changes, the upper trigram Zhen becomes Li and the figure becomes Great Possession, King Wen 14, in which a single yielding line holds five strong ones by clarity rather than by force. That is the destination the acknowledgement opens onto. Strength which has run itself into a fence is not recovered by more strength, and what replaces it is the light the trigram Li stands for, the one thing this line was short of when the horns went in.