Obstruction (Kien)

Obstruction (Kien), also called Difficulty and numbered Hexagram XXXIX, treats impeded movement as a political and practical condition requiring judgment about when to advance and when to stop. Its governing lesson is not that every obstacle can be overcome by greater exertion: in a kingdom made arduous to govern, action must answer to circumstance, firmness, correctness, and the presence of a capable leader.

Definition and Governing Judgment

The hexagram’s image is tied to incompetence in the feet and legs, and thus to difficulty in walking. The commentary extends that bodily impediment into a political one: the state of the kingdom makes its government an arduous task. The figure therefore offers guidance about how the ruler may meet difficulty, sometimes through activity and sometimes through discreet inactivity. Its central concern is not movement alone, but the judgment that distinguishes a useful advance from one that only compounds the trouble.

The main judgment identifies the southwest as favorable and the northeast as unfavorable, recommends meeting the great man, and associates good fortune with firmness and correctness. These directions are interpreted through the arrangement of the trigrams: the southwest is Khwăn, representing open country that is comparatively easy to traverse and hold, while the northeast is Kăn, associated with mountainous terrain that is difficult to cross. The geographical contrast becomes a practical calculation: take advantage of circumstances that promise success and avoid those that threaten difficulty or failure.

Political and Interpretive Context

The hexagram belongs to a work whose sixty-four short essays address moral, social, and political themes through symbolic language. In the account of its composition, King Wen gives each whole hexagram its significance and may indicate what action its circumstances call for, including whether action is fortunate or unfortunate; Duke of Zhou then interprets the individual lines. The judgment of Obstruction thus operates within a text that uses divinatory form to articulate counsel about human and political conduct.

That counsel is framed by a picture of a disordered kingdom. Under the Shang rulers, the country is described as demoralized: robbery, treachery, lawbreaking among officials, and violence among ordinary people have made rule uncertain. The account places King Wen, chief of the western principality of Zhou, amid this crisis. Although princes and people would have followed him against the tyrant, he held back rather than expose himself to the charge of disloyalty; after the suspicious ruler imprisoned him at Youli in 1143 BC, he occupied himself with the lineal figures. Obstruction’s attention to the difficulties of governing consequently resonates with a political setting in which both open action and restraint carry risks.

The commentary also presents the figures as more than instruments for predicting the future. Divination by stalks and the tortoise shell was an established practice, but the account imagines King Wen using the figures to consider natural qualities, principles of society, and the actual or possible condition of the kingdom. On this interpretation, the hexagram’s divinatory language can contain reasoned counsel: its warnings about blocked progress direct attention to the conditions under which action can work.

The Lines and the Choice to Stop

The line commentary makes the warning concrete. At the beginning, advance leads to greater difficulties, whereas remaining stationary affords grounds for praise. At the top, pressing forward again increases the difficulties; staying still instead brings great merit and good fortune, as well as advantage in meeting the great man. The repeated reversal is decisive: in this figure, stopping is not necessarily failure, and movement is not automatically progress.

The final commentary explains why remaining in place can be an active form of service. When the hexagram’s action is over, the weak sixth line has nowhere useful to advance; its subject should remain where he is and serve the great man directly below. In that service he, too, may become great, at least through meritorious action. The image of obstruction therefore ends not with the solitary defeat of an individual, but with a change of scale: achievement may consist in supporting the authority capable of addressing the larger difficulty.

Significance

Obstruction makes political competence a matter of proportionate response. Its symbolism links bodily difficulty, challenging terrain, and the arduous work of government, then turns that shared image into a rule for choosing among action, delay, and assistance. The judgment’s call for firmness does not mean stubborn advance; its line texts insist that correctness may require stopping, while its conclusion locates merit in loyal service to a great man. The result is a counsel of discernment: obstacles are neither ignored nor conquered by force alone, but assessed so that effort is spent where circumstances permit it to matter.