Hexagram 6 · Song · Conflict

Dispute

Two directions pulling apart.

The situation

There's genuine conflict here, not a misunderstanding. Winning completely will cost more than the win is worth.

What it asks of you

Settle early, involve someone neutral, and don't take it to the end.

Read this against your own situation →

Where it leads

How it looks from the other side
Patience
Ready, but the moment isn't.
The opposite reading
Concealment
Light in a dark room.
What sits underneath it
The Team
Order begins at home.

The six lines

  1. initial Don't keep the matter going. A little talk, and it ends well. 不永所事,小有言,終吉
  2. second You can't win this one. Go home, stand down; three hundred households are spared. 不克訟,歸而逋,其邑人三百戶,无眚
  3. third Live off what you were given long ago. Risky, but it ends well. 食舊德,貞厲,終吉
  4. fourth You can't win this one either. Turn back, change your mind, settle into it. 不克訟,復自命,渝安貞,吉
  5. fifth Contending here. This is the best it gets. 訟元吉
  6. top Awarded a fine belt, and stripped of it three times before the morning is out. 或錫之鞶帶,終朝三褫之

The line texts are the oldest layer of the book. They are pictures, not instructions, and they are meant to be held against your own situation rather than decoded.

How this one is built

Written out as six lines, bottom to top, this pattern is 111010 — a solid line is 1, a broken line is 0. Every relationship above is arithmetic on those six digits, not interpretation: reverse the order and you get the other side, flip every digit and you get the opposite reading, take the middle four and you get what sits underneath. Anyone can check the result, which is what separates a structure from a fortune.

The sequence is built the same way. The sixty-four are arranged in thirty-two pairs, and turned upside down it becomes Patience. The rule holds for all thirty-two pairs without exception — twenty-eight joined by reversal, four by inversion.

In the received order it sits between Patience and Mobilization. The order is not alphabetical or random: the old commentary reads it as a chain, one situation giving rise to the next.