睽 Opposition
Upper trigram: Fire (fire) · Lower trigram: Lake (the lake)
Honest difference — do not force agreement; find the small common ground.
Modern interpretation
You see things differently, and that is simply the given. Do not force agreement — find the small shared interests and work outward from there. Opposition handled with patience often becomes complementarity.
The Judgment · 卦辞
小事吉。
“Khwei indicates that, (notwithstanding the condition of things which it denotes), in small matters there will (still) be good success.” — James Legge, The Yî King (1882)
The six lines · 爻辞
Read from the bottom line upward. Each line pairs the received Chinese text with Legge's English translation.
悔亡。丧马勿逐自复。见恶人无咎。
“The first line, undivided, shows that (to its subject) occasion for repentance will disappear. He has lost his horses, but let him not seek for them ;--they will return of themselves. Should he meet with bad men, he will not err (in communicating with them).”
遇主于巷，无咎。
“The second line, undivided, shows its subject happening to meet with his lord in a bye- passage. There will be no error.”
见舆曳，其牛掣，其人天且劓，无初有终。
“In the third line, divided, we see one whose carriage is dragged back, while the oxen in it are pushed back, and he is himself subjected to the shaving of his head and the cutting dff of his nose. There is no good beginning, but there will be a good end.”
睽孤遇元夫，交孚，厉，无咎。
“The fourth line, undivided, shows its subject solitary amidst the (prevailing) disunion. (But) he meets with the good man (represented by the first line), and they blend their sincere desires together. The position is one of peril, but there will be no mistake.”
悔亡。厥宗噬肤，往何咎？
“The fifth line, divided, shows that (to its subject) occasion for repentance will disappear. With his relative (and minister he unites closely and readily) as if he were biting through a piece of skin. When he goes forward (with this help), what error can there be ?”
睽孤见豕负途，载鬼一车，先张之弧，后说之弧，匪寇，婚媾。往遇雨则吉。
“The topmost line, undivided, shows its subject solitary amidst the (prevailing) disunion. (In the subject of the third line, he seems to) see a pig bearing on its back a load of mud, (or fancies) there is a carriage full of ghosts. He first bends his bow against him, and afterwards unbends it, (for he discovers) that he is not an assailant to injure, but a near relative. Going forward, he shall meet with (genial) rain, and there will be good fortune.”
About changing lines
In a real I Ching reading, hexagrams are built by casting coins or yarrow stalks six times, bottom line first. Some lines come out “old” (unstable) — an old yin or old yang flips into its opposite, producing a second hexagram that shows where the situation is heading. The changing lines are the moving parts of your answer: read their individual line statements above, and they point to the direction of change.
Ask a question and cast the coins — free, with a plain-English interpretation grounded in the classical text.
Start free reading