EN (English)
䷮
Hexagram 47 of 64
Oppression
困 · Kùn
A lake sitting above water that has drained away beneath it. The hexagram is about exhaustion and constraint, and about the particular misery of not being believed.
exhaustion
adversity
being unheard
endurance
- King Wen number
- 47 of 64
- Above
- ☱ Duì · Lake
- Below
- ☵ Kǎn · Water
- Composition
- Lake over Water
- Lines, bottom to top
- Broken · solid · broken · solid · solid · broken
- Chinese
- 困 · Kùn
The Judgment
Success. Steadfastness. The great person brings good fortune. No blame. When there is something to say, it is not believed.
The last clause is what makes this hexagram distinct. The difficulty is not only material; it is that your account of it carries no weight.
The Image
There is no water in the lake: Exhaustion. So the noble person stakes their life on following their will.
The most extreme Image in the book. When circumstances offer nothing, what remains is what you have decided to be.
What it means
Kun is exhaustion, and it is the bleakest hexagram in the book. A lake with no water in it: the container remains and the substance is gone.
Its distinguishing feature is in the Judgment's last clause. When you have something to say, it is not believed. The hexagram is not only about being depleted, it is about being depleted and having no credibility while it is happening, which the classic identifies as the specific cruelty of the situation.
The Image responds with the most extreme statement in the whole book. The noble person stakes their life on following their will. When circumstances have stopped supplying anything at all, what is left is the thing you have decided to be, and the classic says to hold it at any cost.
The third line is quoted in the Great Treatise as the type of the mishandled constraint: oppressed by stone, leaning on thorns, coming home to find his wife gone. Every support chosen fails, one after another.
The top line is where the hexagram turns. Tangled in creeping vines, telling yourself that moving brings regret, and the text says feel the regret and start anyway. Good fortune follows the beginning, not the plan.
In a reading
Oppression as an answer describes real exhaustion: resources gone, options narrow, and your account of the situation not being taken seriously.
Its counsel is endurance rather than strategy. Do not set out, do not expect to be believed, hold to your own standards, and wait. The top line is the one to act on when the paralysis has set in: begin, even badly, and the situation starts to move.
The six lines
Read a line's text only when the cast made it a moving line. They are listed from the top of the figure down, the way the hexagram is drawn.
-
Six at the top
Oppressed by creeping vines, moving uncertainly, saying 'movement brings regret.' Feel the regret, make a start, and good fortune comes.
Tangled by something that could be pulled off. The paralysis is self-reinforcing and the remedy is simply beginning.
-
Nine in the fifth place
Nose and feet cut off. Oppressed by the man with the purple knee bands. Relief comes gradually. It helps to make offerings.
Mutilation at the hands of authority, and then, without explanation, slow relief. The classic offers ritual rather than strategy.
-
Nine in the fourth place
He comes very slowly, oppressed in a golden carriage. Humiliation, and there is an end to it.
Constraint inside comfort. Slow, embarrassing, and it does finish.
-
Six in the third place
Oppressed by stone, leaning on thorns. He enters his house and does not see his wife. Misfortune.
The classic quotes this line elsewhere as the model of someone constrained by what will not hold them. Every support chosen is the wrong one.
-
Nine in the second place
Oppressed at meat and drink. The man with the scarlet knee bands is coming. It helps to make an offering. To set out brings misfortune. No blame.
Constrained even in the middle of plenty. Help is on the way and moving toward it would spoil it.
-
Six at the beginning
Sitting oppressed under a bare tree, straying into a gloomy valley. For three years, nothing is seen.
The bottom of the figure and of the situation. Three years is the classic's measure for a condition that must be waited out.
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