The Book of Changes · Meng

Hexagram 4: Youthful Folly

Mountain (the peak) over Water (the gorge and the deep)

Inexperience, and the tradition puts the responsibility on the learner rather than the teacher. The oracle answers once; asked the same question three times, it stops answering.

The image

A spring at the foot of a mountain, going nowhere yet. The reading is that character is built the way a stream finds its channel, by persisting in one direction.

Mountain, above

Stillness, limit, and the place where a thing stops.

Water, below

Danger, depth, and what has to be gone through.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Discipline first, then freedom. Rules resented early are missed later.
2. Line 2Bearing with the inexperienced, including your own. Patience here is strength, not indulgence.
3. Line 3Do not throw yourself at someone who has something you want. It costs the thing you wanted.
4. Line 4Folly left alone hardens. Isolation is what makes ignorance permanent.
5. Line 5Childlike, not childish. Asking plainly is what makes learning fast.
6. Line 6Correct the error, not the person. Punishment aimed at a person makes an enemy.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 4 is Gate 4, Formulization.