Hexagram 47: Kun

Lake over Water · 泽水困 · Tendency: Inauspicious

Structure

• Number: 47 (King Wen sequence)
• Symbol: ䷮
• Upper trigram: Dui (Lake)
• Lower trigram: Kan (Water)
• Lines: yin yang yin yang yang yin (bottom to top)

The statement

亨。贞大人吉，无咎。有言不信。

——《周易》

What this hexagram indicates

This hexagram signifies limited circumstances—resources, trust, or expression are blocked. It is suitable to hold the line, reduce futile explanations, and focus energy on areas that can actually change the situation. The harder it gets, the more you must avoid making rash promises or being crushed by short-term setbacks.

A Buddhist reading

Kun (Confinement) is a marsh gone dry. Ouyi Zhixu says that rising without pause must end in confinement, an ordinary turn of fullness and emptiness, and that a mind under pressure with thoughts obstructed is exactly where genuine openness begins. He splits the phrase about yielding up fate and fulfilling aspiration in two: outward hardship is a fate already fixed, to be accepted without contriving resistance, while inward aspiration belongs to you and is not to be abandoned even in upheaval. On the line about words that carry no conviction he is blunt: without real virtue put into practice, talk alone will never win trust, and arguing your way through only argues you into a corner.

After Ouyi Zhixu (1599-1655), whose Chan commentary on the Changes reads each hexagram as a stage of practice.

The statement is quoted from the Book of Changes, which is in the public domain. The English reading on this page was prepared for this library.

Related hexagrams

• Previous: Hexagram 46: Sheng
• Next / Inverted: Hexagram 48: Jingthe whole figure turned upside down
• Opposite: Hexagram 22: Bievery line changed to its opposite
• Nuclear: Hexagram 37: Jia Renlines two to four below, three to five above

Related

• Liu Yao Divination ChartLiu Yao casts a hexagram about one specific matter and reads its structure. Unlike BaZi or Zi Wei, which describe a person, Liu Yao describes how a situation stands at a particular moment. This page walks through the full process from casting to attribution.
• Mei Hua Yi Shu CalculatorMei Hua Yi Shu is traditionally attributed to Shao Yong. What sets it apart is how freely it casts: a time, a spoken number, a direction or something noticed in passing will all serve. It attaches no stems and no relatives, reading the trigrams directly. This page covers casting through to the subject and object.