Hexagram 4 — Meng, Youthful Folly (山水蒙)
Meng (蒙) · mountain over water · inexperience, and the start of learning
- Chinese / reading
- 蒙 · méng
- Meaning
- Youthful Folly — inexperience, the start of learning
- Trigrams
- Above: ☶ Mountain / Below: ☵ Water
- Binary
- 010001 (decimal 17)
- Sequence
- No. 4 / Previous: Hexagram 3 — Zhun, Difficulty at the Beginning
What this hexagram is
The character meng shows plants growing over something and darkening it; by extension, a state in which things are not yet seen clearly — inexperience. Above is Gen, the mountain; below is Kan, water. Together they make a spring that has just broken out at the foot of a mountain and does not yet know where it will flow. The book places this fourth, right after Zhun, the difficulty at the beginning: what has just been born knows nothing yet. The Sequence commentary puts it plainly — meng is "the youth of things."
What matters is that the hexagram does not treat inexperience as a fault. The first word of the Judgment is heng, success: Meng goes through. The condition is placed on the learner's posture. "It is not I who seek the young fool; the young fool seeks me." The one who knows does not advertise; the one who does not know comes asking. And once an answer is given, asking the same thing a second and third time gets no answer. Both conditions are also the book's own rules for consulting it.
The Judgment and the Image
「蒙：亨。匪我求童蒙，童蒙求我。初筮告，再三瀆，瀆則不告。利貞。」
Meng: it goes through. It is not I who go looking for the untaught youth; the untaught youth comes looking for me. The first casting is answered. Asked a second and a third time, the oracle is profaned, and once profaned it does not answer. Holding to what is right brings advantage.
「山下出泉、君子以果行育徳」
A spring breaks out at the foot of the mountain: the image of Youthful Folly. Thus the superior man carries his actions through to the end, and so nurtures his character.
The clause "the first casting is answered; asked a second and third time, the oracle is profaned" is one of the few places where the book describes how it is itself to be used. Repeating a question until you get the answer you wanted profanes the consultation. The same sentence reads as teaching: a student who doubts the answer and keeps asking stops receiving answers. That is why "holding to what is right" closes the Judgment — a correct posture is the condition on which Meng's success depends.
The spring at the foot of the mountain — where will it flow?
The Image says: a spring breaks out at the foot of the mountain — Meng; thus the superior man carries his actions through and nurtures his character. A spring that has just surfaced is not yet a river. Its course is undecided, and it cannot move on until it has filled each hollow in its way. That is the image of inexperience, and it is not a negative one: a spring that keeps flowing becomes a river in the end.
"Carrying actions through" (果行) means finishing what one has decided to do; "nurturing character" (育徳) is what that finishing produces. The instruction is not "learn more" but "do not stop halfway." As the spring fills one hollow before moving to the next, the learner completes one thing at a time. That, the Image says, is how one learns in the time of Meng.
How Wilhelm read this hexagram
Wilhelm reads Meng as advice to both student and teacher. For the young, inexperience is no fault; find an experienced teacher and meet him with the right attitude, and success follows. The question was which side should move.
That is why the teacher must wait to be sought out instead of offering himself. Only then does instruction come at the right time and in the right way. The teacher's answer to the student's question should be as clear and decisive as what one expects of an oracle.
From Richard Wilhelm's German commentary, rendered into English for this page by QOOQ Inc.
Treating the teacher's answer and the oracle's answer as the same thing is the point. Both are given once, clearly, and neither answers a question asked in doubt to test it. A little further on Wilhelm adds that the hexagram therefore gives counsel to the teacher as well as to the student, and he reads the six lines as types on both sides.
Wilhelm's commentary on Meng goes on through each line's type of folly and how to handle it. The whole of it, for all 64 hexagrams, is in the I Ching AI app.
The six lines
Six at the beginning — first line from the bottom
「發蒙，利用刑人，用說桎梏，以往吝。」——蒙（もう）を発（ひら）く。用（もち）て刑人（けいじん）を利（よろ）し。用（もち）て桎梏（しっこく）を説（と）く。以往（もってゆ）けば吝（りん）。（愚かさを開発するためには、規律を適用するのが有利である。束縛は取り除かれるべきである。このまま進むことは屈辱をもたらす。）
At the first step of dispelling folly, the text says, it is useful to apply punishment — rules and discipline. But in the same breath it says to loosen the fetters. The Xiang reads this as "to set the law right": discipline exists to establish a standard, not to bind a person. Go on with the fetters still on, and the result is humiliation. The shackle at the start of learning is put on in order to be taken off.
Xiang commentary「象曰：利用刑人，以正法也。」——"Applying punishment is useful: it sets the law right."
Nine in the second place — the hexagram's governing line
「包蒙，吉；納婦，吉；子克家。」——蒙（もう）を包（い）るは吉なり。婦（ふ）を納（い）るは吉なり。子（こ）家（いえ）を克（よ）くす。（愚か者を親切に耐え忍ぶことは幸運をもたらす。女性の扱い方を心得ていることは幸運をもたらす。息子は家庭を管理することができる。）
To take folly in — to tolerate inexperience — brings good fortune. To take a wife brings good fortune. The son is able to run the household. This is the only yang line in the lower trigram, and it carries all the yin lines around it. The Xiang's "the firm and the yielding meet" names the bond between this line and the childlike six in the fifth place. It is the teacher's line, and its condition is written not as strictness but as containment.
Xiang commentary「象曰：子克家，剛柔接也。」——"The son can run the household: the firm and the yielding meet."
Six in the third place
「勿用娶女；見金夫，不有躬，無攸利。」——用（もち）て女（じょ）を取（めと）る勿（なか）れ。金夫（きんぷ）を見て、躬（み）を有（たも）たず。利（よろ）しき攸（ところ）なし。（青銅の男を見て、自分を見失う乙女を取るな。何も前進させるものはない。）
Do not take this woman, says the text — she sees a man of means and loses hold of herself, and nothing comes of it. In the context of learning this is the attitude that throws itself at whatever looks strong or impressive, losing itself in the process. The Xiang cuts it short: the conduct does not follow the right order.
Xiang commentary「象曰：勿用娶女，行不順也。」——"Do not take the woman: her conduct does not follow the right order."
Six in the fourth place
「困蒙，吝。」——蒙（もう）に困（くる）しむ。吝（りん）。（偏狭な愚かさは屈辱をもたらす。）
Stuck in folly: humiliation. The Xiang gives the reason — "alone, far from what is real." The fourth line is yin, flanked above and below by yin, touching neither the nine in the second place nor the nine at the top. It is the line farthest from anyone who could teach it, stuck by itself. Of the six, this is the only one with no contact with a yang line at all.
Xiang commentary「象曰：困蒙之吝，獨遠實也。」——"The humiliation of being stuck in folly: alone and far from the real."
Six in the fifth place — the ruler's place
「童蒙，吉。」——童蒙（どうもう）は吉なり。（子供のような愚かさは幸運をもたらす。）
Childlike folly: good fortune. A yin line in the ruler's place that answers to the nine in the second place below and receives instruction from it — this is the "young fool who seeks me" of the Judgment. The Xiang: docile, and so it yields. Even from the higher position, one admits what one does not know and learns from below. That is what turns the line to good fortune.
Xiang commentary「象曰：童蒙之吉，順以巽也。」——"The good fortune of childlike folly: docile, and so it yields."
Nine at the top — sixth line
「擊蒙；不利為寇，利御寇。」——蒙（もう）を撃（う）つ。寇（あだ）を為（な）すに利（よろ）しからず。寇（あだ）を禦（ふせ）ぐに利（よろ）し。（愚かさを罰することにおいて、違反を犯すことは有利ではない。唯一前進させるのは、違反を防ぐことである。）
Striking at folly — no longer containing it but hitting hard enough to wake it. The text attaches a condition: to act as the attacker brings no advantage; to act as the defender does. Severity is used only to protect. The Xiang's "above and below are in accord" can be read as: when that condition is met, those above and those below both accept it.
Xiang commentary「象曰：利用御寇，上下順也。」——"Using it to ward off attackers is advantageous: above and below are in accord."
Applying it to an actual question
If Meng comes up with no moving lines, first decide which side you are on: the untaught youth, or the one being asked. If the person asking the question is the learner, the Judgment's prescription applies as written — admit what you do not know, go and find the person who can answer, and do not doubt and re-ask the answer once you have it. If you are the teacher, wait to be asked, and when you answer, answer once and clearly.
With moving lines, read the relevant texts. Meng's six lines are a catalogue of what happens where learning takes place: putting on the shackle (first), containing (second), throwing oneself at what looks strong (third), stuck alone (fourth), asking simply (fifth), striking (top). Match yourself, and the other party, against them.
When a moving line turns Meng into another hexagram, that resulting hexagram shows where the spring flows out to. Meng is a starting-point hexagram, so reading the resulting hexagram as "where this learning is heading" tends to land.
Questions Meng answers well
- "Can I ask the same question again?"——The Judgment answers this directly. The first casting is answered; asked a second and third time, the oracle is profaned. Take the first answer.
- "Can I start before I understand it?"——Meng "goes through." Not understanding is not itself the obstacle. The two conditions are a posture of seeking and a posture of receiving the answer.
- "Should I be strict, or stand back?"——The first and top lines are the two ends: the shackle is put on in order to be taken off, and one strikes only to ward off. In the middle is the second line, containment — the governing line.
- "Should I go looking for a teacher or for help?"——"It is not I who seek the young fool; the young fool seeks me." This is a hexagram in which the learner moves and the teacher waits.
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