Small Taming, Line 6

Legge's translation of the topmost line reads that the topmost nine, undivided, shows how the rain has fallen and the onward progress is stayed, so that the full accumulation of virtue represented by the upper trigram must now be valued, though a wife, however firm and correct, is in a position of peril in maintaining such restraint. The commentary notes only that the rain has fallen and the movement is stayed because the power denoted in the figure has accumulated to its full measure.

Nine at the top closes Xun, the upper trigram, at its highest place, and it marks the point at which the small, gentle restraint that has run through the whole hexagram finally reaches completion. The Judgment's own image of dense clouds gathering from the west without yet releasing rain is answered here at last, the rain falls, meaning the accumulated force has finally been released rather than merely gathered.

Yet Legge's text adds a caution rather than simple triumph, since firmness that continues to insist on restraint after the restraining work is already done risks becoming its own kind of danger.

The image also closes the hexagram's language of accumulation begun in the Judgment, dense clouds gathering from the west, so that this final line answers the opening figure directly, cloud become rain, restraint become release.

Nine at the top, as a changing line, marks the moment restraint completes itself, the rain that the Judgment's gathering clouds had promised finally falling. A reading on this line suggests that whatever has been slowly held back through the hexagram's course is now released, and it carries Legge's own caution that continuing to insist on firm restraint once the work is actually finished can turn a virtue into a danger, particularly for whoever keeps holding the position past its use.

Flipping this line changes the upper trigram from Xun to Kan, Water, giving Kan over Qian, the hexagram called Waiting. The rain that has just fallen becomes, on the far side of change, the hexagram's own governing image, water gathered above heaven, the picture of nourishment anticipated with confidence rather than restraint finally spent. The movement is from an accumulation that has reached its limit toward a condition that has learned to wait for what has not yet arrived, the same patience turned toward the future instead of the past.

As the final line of Small Taming's arc, this position is where the entire hexagram's theme resolves, the small holding back the great for exactly as long as it takes for that force to be released rather than suppressed. A reading falling here points to release rather than further restraint, and to the waiting that properly follows a completed accumulation rather than one still building.