Upper ☶ Gen (艮, mountain) / Lower ☵ Kan (坎, water)
méng · 蒙
A spring at the foot of a mountain: the dimness of beginnings. A hexagram of teaching and learning, where success rests on sincere asking and correct guidance.
Water ☵, whose quality is peril, lies below mountain ☶, whose quality is stopping. Zhu Xi sees danger at the foot of a mountain as the setting of meng, the dimness of things just born. The firm second line can clear that dimness and the soft fifth line answers it, so the way goes through when the learner asks sincerely and both sides keep to what is right.
Judgment (卦辭)
The text attached to the whole hexagram, read when no line is changing.
蒙，亨。匪我求童蒙，童蒙求我。初筮告，再三瀆，瀆則不告。利貞。
Meng. Success. It is not I who seek the young and untaught; the young and untaught seek me. The first casting is answered. A second or third is disrespectful, and disrespect gets no answer. It is fitting to stay correct and firm.
Meng means dimness, Zhu Xi says, the unclear state of things just born. The firm, central second line leads the inner trigram and can clear away others' dimness, and it answers the soft fifth line, so there is a way through. The “I” of the text is the second line; the young learner is the fifth. When the one consulting is clear, others come seeking; when unclear, one should go and seek. A request should be weighed before it is answered, and one's own asking should be single-minded. For teacher and learner alike, correctness is what benefits.
Image (大象)
The Image commentary (象傳) reads the whole hexagram from its two trigrams.
山下出泉，蒙。君子以果行育德。
A spring comes out below the mountain: Meng. The noble person, accordingly, acts with resolve and nurtures virtue.
A spring that has just come out, Zhu Xi says, is sure to flow, and it flows by degrees. His short note can be read against the two halves of the sentence: water that must move matches resolute action, and its gradual course matches the slow growth of 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, yin (初六)changing line in the shared reading
發蒙，利用刑人，用說桎梏，以往吝。
Clearing away ignorance. It is favorable to use punishment on people, and then to remove the shackles. Pressing on brings humiliation.
Yin at the very bottom is dimness at its deepest. Zhu Xi says the inquirer should clear it away, and the method is to discipline sharply, then release for a while and watch what follows. Carrying on with punishment and never letting go leads to humiliation. Correction, in this reading, has to leave room for change.
Line 2, yang (九二)changing line in the shared reading
包蒙吉，納婦吉，子克家。
Embracing the untaught: good fortune. Taking a wife: good fortune. The son can run the household.
The second line leads the inner trigram and oversees all the yin lines, so the work of teaching falls to it. Zhu Xi notes that those it oversees are many and unlike one another, so no single demand will fit them all; firmness that does not go too far lets it embrace them. A yang line receiving yin gives the image of taking a wife, and a low line doing the work of those above gives a son who manages the house.
Line 3, yin (六三)changing line in the shared reading
勿用取女，見金夫，不有躬，无攸利。
Do not take this woman in marriage. When she sees a man with gold, she does not keep hold of herself. Nothing is favorable.
Yin in a yang place, neither central nor correct: Zhu Xi sees a woman who loses herself at the sight of a man with gold. He reads this as a warning to the one who casts it: a woman taken in marriage would be such a person, and nothing would be favorable. The man with gold, he suggests, is one who lures her with a gift of gold, like Qiu Hu of Lu.
Line 4, yin (六四)changing line in the shared reading
困蒙，吝。
Hemmed in by ignorance. Humiliation.
Both yang lines are far away, and the partner below is another yin line, so no one is near to clear this line's dimness. Zhu Xi calls it being stuck in ignorance, a cause for shame. He also gives a way out: seek those who are firm and clear-sighted and stay close to them, and the shame can be avoided. Being stuck is framed as distance from help, not as fate.
Line 5, yin (六五)changing line in the shared reading
童蒙，吉。
The young and untaught. Good fortune.
A soft, central line in the place of honor, the fifth answers the second line below. Zhu Xi describes it as pure and undivided, not yet formed, and willing to listen to others: the picture of a young learner. Its good fortune comes from that openness. Here the one in the seat of honor is the one who learns.
Top line, yang (上九)changing line in the shared reading
擊蒙，不利為寇，利禦寇。
Striking at ignorance. It is not favorable to act as a raider; it is favorable to ward off raiders.
Firmness at the top deals with ignorance too harshly, hence the image of striking. Zhu Xi warns that demanding too much and attacking too deeply ends up doing harm, as a raider would. Strictness fits only when it guards against temptations from outside and keeps the learner's natural purity whole. He adds that this applies to every kind of matter, not only to teaching.
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.