Keeping Still (Mountain)
The Firm Boundary
The limit that stops movement: stillness at the right moment, or withdrawal mistaken for wisdom.
Gen reads from the bottom up as broken, broken, whole. The firm line at the top closes the trigram off, and the tradition reads that as a mountain: movement arrested, a boundary that is not crossed. Its attribute in the Shuogua is standstill, and it is the youngest son, since the single yang line stands in the third place. In the Later Heaven arrangement it holds the north-east, the point at which the Shuogua places both the end and the beginning of all things. Doubled, it forms hexagram 52, which carries the same name.
Light
Stands for stillness, composure, restraint exercised at the right moment, firm limits, and the pause in which one cycle ends and the next is prepared.
Shadow
Can mean obstruction, isolation, obstinacy, an arrest that has outlasted its usefulness, and withdrawal mistaken for wisdom.
