The Abysmal, Line 3

The third line sits at the join of the two waters and is boxed in on every side. Legge's translation has the subject confronted by a defile whether he comes or goes, with peril and unrest, and his endeavours leading him into the cavern of the pit, and it concludes that there should be no action. The commentary on the image says he will succeed in nothing. This is the one place in the figure where both trigrams press at once, the top of the lower Kan meeting the bottom of the upper Kan, and the line is caught between them.

The stroke is yielding in an odd place, incorrect by the ordinary rule, so the line has no strength of its own at the moment it most needs some. It is also past the centre of its trigram, which puts whatever steadiness the second line found behind it rather than within reach. A position with no firmness, no centrality and danger in both directions is one the text will not recommend any movement from, and the prohibition it issues is total rather than a matter of choosing the better road.

The counsel not to act is the substance of the line and not a failure to give advice. In a hexagram about surviving repeated peril there is a station at which every available exertion feeds the difficulty, and the text names it plainly. Stillness here is what the second line's small gain and the fifth line's containment are both eventually built on.

Six in the third place is the hexagram's instruction to stop. A querent drawing it is being told that coming and going lead to the same defile, that effort at this point deepens the situation rather than easing it, and that no action at all is the correct course. This is rarely what somebody in difficulty wants to hear, and the line is worded so that the counsel cannot be mistaken for a recommendation to try something different instead.

The structure explains the severity. The stroke is yielding in an odd place, incorrect by the standard rule, and it stands at the join between the two Kan trigrams with water below it and water above. The second line could gain a little because it was strong and central; this line is neither, and it has moved past the point where the lower trigram offered any footing without yet reaching anything the upper trigram provides. Every direction it can face opens on more of the same.

The changing line turns the lower trigram Kan into Xun and produces The Well, King Wen 48, a source that does not move and is not diminished by being drawn on. Read against a line forbidden to act, that is an unexpectedly generous destination. What replaces movement in a time of doubled danger is a fixed point other people can come to, and the stillness this line demands is what makes such a thing possible at all.