Heaven held within a mountain: great strength restrained and stored. Correctness, service beyond one's own household and the great crossing are all favored.
Qian ☰, heaven, whose quality is strength (健), lies beneath Gen ☶, the mountain, whose quality is stopping (止). Zhu Xi reads the hexagram as the great being held back and so stored: the mountain checks heaven's force, and strength within joined to solid, radiant substance without lets virtue renew itself day by day. Only great correctness makes such storing possible.
Judgment (卦辭)
The text attached to the whole hexagram, read when no line is changing.
大畜，利貞。不家食吉，利涉大川。
Da Xu: it is fitting to stay correct and firm. Taking meals away from home brings good fortune. It is favorable to cross the great river.
Zhu Xi takes 大, “great,” to mean yang: the mountain holds back heaven, a great force restrained and stored. Strength within and the mountain's solid, radiant substance without let its virtue renew itself day by day. In the line change from Hexagram 5, Xu, a yang line rises to the top; the soft ruler honors it; the mountain's stillness checks the strong. None of this is possible without great correctness. Taking meals away from home, he says, means drawing a stipend at court. Because the fifth line answers heaven's trigram below, crossing the great river is favored.
Image (大象)
The Image commentary (象傳) reads the whole hexagram from its two trigrams.
天在山中，大畜。君子以多識前言往行，以畜其德。
There is heaven in the heart of the mountain: Da Xu. The noble person learns much of the words and deeds of earlier times, and so stores up virtue.
Heaven held inside a mountain is not something anyone could see, and Zhu Xi says plainly that it need not exist; it is spoken only as an image. What it pictures is something vast held within something solid. The noble person does the same with the words and deeds of earlier people, taking them in to store up virtue.
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
有厲，利已。
There is danger. It is favorable to stop.
The two trigrams play different parts here, Zhu Xi explains: the three strong lines below are the ones being held back, and the lines above do the holding. The first line (初九) is checked by its partner in the fourth place. Pushing ahead would run into danger, so the text favors stopping. Being held back early is part of how strength is stored.
Line 2, yang (九二)changing line in the shared reading
輿說輹。
The carriage sheds its axle block.
Held in check by the soft ruler in the fifth place, the second line (九二) does not strain against it. Because it holds the center, Zhu Xi says, it can stop of its own accord, like a cart with its axle block taken off so that it cannot roll. Restraint here is accepted from within as well as imposed from above.
Line 3, yang (九三)changing line in the shared reading
良馬逐，利艱貞。日閑輿衛，利有攸往。
Fine horses race onward. It is favorable to stay correct and firm through hardship. Drill each day with chariot and escort; then it is favorable to have somewhere to go.
The third line (九三) is at the peak of the strong trigram and the top line at the peak of restraint, the moment when holding back gives way to passage. Both are yang, so neither checks the other, and they surge ahead together like fine horses. Zhu Xi warns that such hard, eager advance needs steadiness in difficulty and daily drilling first. He also notes that 日 here means “day,” as in sun and moon.
Line 4, yin (六四)changing line in the shared reading
童牛之牿，元吉。
A crossbar on the hornless young ox. Great good fortune.
Zhu Xi explains the young ox as one whose horns have not yet grown, and the crossbar as a beam fixed across the horns to keep it from goring, a device named in the Shijing. The fourth line (六四) holds back the first line while it is still young, when doing so takes little effort; hence great good fortune. He ties this to the Xueji: forbidding something before it emerges is called forestalling.
Line 5, yin (六五)changing line in the shared reading
豶豕之牙，吉。
A castrated boar's tusks. Good fortune.
By now the yang line it restrains, the second, has already grown strong, and holding it back is harder than it was at the first line. Yet the fifth line (六五), soft and central in the ruler's seat, finds the right moment and the point of control, which the castrated boar's tusks picture. The text gives good fortune, Zhu Xi notes, but not great good fortune as at the fourth.
Top line, yang (上九)changing line in the shared reading
何天之衢，亨。
How open is the highway of heaven! Success.
At the top, restraint has run its full course and turns into free passage. Zhu Xi reads the opening word as an exclamation: how open it is, the thoroughfare of heaven, with nothing in the way. What was stored through all the holding back can now go through.
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.