Fire burning below a mountain: adornment and refined form. Ornament helps things go through, but its reach is small, and at the end it returns to plainness.
Li ☲, fire, whose quality is brightness and clinging (麗), lies beneath Gen ☶, the mountain, whose quality is stopping (止). Zhu Xi reads bi as adornment: refinement shining within, limits holding everything in its place outside. Because the soft adorns the firm, things go through, but with the mountain halting movement, the benefit of going forward is only small.
Judgment (卦辭)
The text attached to the whole hexagram, read when no line is changing.
賁，亨，小利有攸往。
Bi: success. It is favorable in a small way to have somewhere to go.
Zhu Xi glosses bi as adornment. In the line changes he traces from Hexagram 41, Sun, and Hexagram 63, Ji Ji, soft and firm lines trade places so that each decorates the other, and the trigrams show brightness within and the mountain's stillness without, refinement with everything in its proper share. Where the soft comes to adorn the firm and light shines inside, things go through. Where the firm rises to adorn the soft and the mountain halts movement outside, going forward brings only a small benefit. Ornament helps, but it does not carry one far.
Image (大象)
The Image commentary (象傳) reads the whole hexagram from its two trigrams.
山下有火，賁。君子以明庶政，无敢折獄。
Below the mountain there is fire: Bi. The noble person brings clarity to the many matters of government, but does not presume to settle cases at law.
A fire below a mountain lights what is near but cannot reach far. Zhu Xi counts the routine business of government as small matters that such light can make clear, and the deciding of cases as a large one it should not presume to settle. Brightness within and a halt without draw the line between them.
Lines (爻辭)
From the bottom line to the top. In the line names, nine (九) marks a yang line and six (六) a yin line.
Line 1, yang (初九)changing line in the shared reading
賁其趾，舍車而徒。
Adorning the feet, one gives up the carriage and goes on foot.
At the bottom of the bright trigram, the first line (初九) has strength and clarity of its own and adorns only its feet. Zhu Xi reads the carriage as one that could not be taken rightly, so walking is chosen over riding by an improper road. Those who receive this line, he says, should place themselves the same way. Here ornament means preferring the humbler road when the grander one is not right.
Line 2, yin (六二)changing line in the shared reading
賁其須。
Adorning the beard.
A beard has no motion of its own; it moves with the chin. Neither the second line (六二) nor the third above it has a partner in the upper trigram, so the soft, central and correct second attaches itself to the strong, correct third and moves with it. Zhu Xi's advice for the line is to follow the firm yang above when acting. Ornament of this kind depends on what it adorns.
Line 3, yang (九三)changing line in the shared reading
賁如濡如，永貞吉。
Adorned and glistening. Lasting correctness and firmness brings good fortune.
Set between two yin lines, the strong third line (九三) is adorned and glossed by both, like something gleaming and wet. Zhu Xi sees the risk inside that pleasure: one can sink into comfort and drown in it. So the text ties its good fortune to correctness kept up over time. Being well regarded is pleasant; staying oneself through it is the harder part.
Line 4, yin (六四)changing line in the shared reading
賁如皤如，白馬翰如，匪寇婚媾。
Adornment left plain white. A white horse, fast as a bird in flight. Not a robber, but one seeking marriage.
The fourth line (六四) and the first are meant to adorn each other, but the third line stands between them, so the fourth goes unadorned and white. A horse matches its rider, Zhu Xi adds, so the horse is white too, and the longing to reach the partner below runs as fast as flight. The line in the way is no robber: the third is firm and stands correctly, and he says it is only seeking a marriage.
Line 5, yin (六五)changing line in the shared reading
賁于丘園，束帛戔戔，吝，終吉。
Adorning the hillside garden. The bundle of silk offered is slight. Cause for shame, yet good fortune at the last.
Soft and central, the fifth line (六五) is the master of ornament, and it values the root and real substance over show, which Zhu Xi sees in the image of a hillside garden. Yin tends toward thrift, so the bundle of silk it offers is slight, which can look shabby. Still, in matters of ritual, he notes, frugality is better than extravagance, and so the end is good.
Top line, yang (上九)changing line in the shared reading
白賁，无咎。
Plain white adornment. No blame.
By the end of the hexagram, ornament has gone as far as it can and turns back to its root, to having no color at all. Zhu Xi reads the white as that return to plainness and calls it a good way of making up for what went too far. The top line (上九) carries no blame because it lets adornment go.
If you drew this hexagram
Which text to read depends on how many lines are changing. With none, read the judgment; with one, read that line; with more, follow Zhu Xi's rules in the Yixue qimeng.
Text: Zhu Xi, Yuanben Zhouyi benyi (原本周易本義), Siku Quanshu Wenyuange copy, as transcribed by the Kanseki Repository (KR1a0031), corrected and punctuated by K-magpie. Translation and explanation: written by AI (Claude) from Zhu Xi's commentary and checked against the text and commentary. Sources and the list of corrections are on the Today's Hexagram page.