Obstruction, Line 1

The first line of Obstruction (King Wen 39) is drawn as yin, the numeral six in the old divination manuals. James Legge's translation renders the line as going forward leads to difficulty, remaining still brings ground for praise. The image sits inside a hexagram whose judgment as a whole concerns advantage found in the southwest, and the contrary in the northeast, advantage in seeing the great man, and in being firm and correct, and this line supplies one stage of that larger reading rather than a complete statement on its own.

Structurally the line stands at the lowest place of the lower trigram Gen, mountain in Legge's readings of the eight trigrams, while the upper trigram of the hexagram is Kan, water in the same traditional set of images. The Great Symbolism of the hexagram reads water above a mountain; the superior man turns round to examine himself and cultivates his virtue, and the first line takes its place inside that combined picture of Gen below and Kan above.

Read on its own the line neither opens nor closes the hexagram's argument. It marks the point where Gen is either forming (in the lower trigram) or completing itself (in the upper), and later interpreters treat its image, Remaining Still Brings Ground for Praise, as the concrete case through which the hexagram's abstract judgment becomes visible in a single situation rather than a general principle.

As a divinatory line, six at the first place of Obstruction reads within the hexagram's overall concern with advantage found in the southwest, and the contrary in the northeast, advantage in seeing the great man, and in being firm and correct. The line occupies a place that does not match its own nature in the classical doctrine that odd places favour a firm, yang line and even places favour a yielding, yin line. Its own text, that going forward leads to difficulty, remaining still brings ground for praise, is the particular fortune assigned to this one stage of the situation, not to the hexagram as a whole.

The first line corresponds by classical convention with the fourth line, and the two do not correspond here, since both lines share the same character. Read together with the trigram it belongs to, Gen in the lower position of the figure, the line marks the opening of the situation, before the trigram above it has any part in the reading, one stage in the six stage movement the hexagram traces from its first line to its last.

A change at this line, from yin to its opposite, is the mechanism the tradition uses to move from one hexagram to another. Flipping the first line of Obstruction turns Gen into Li while the other trigram, Kan, stays as it is, which yields Obstruction's changing partner, After Completion (King Wen 63), the hexagram this line is recorded as transforming into.