Bo: stripped from the bed legs, one fruit left

The mountain clings to the earth: five yin lines carry one yang

Bo (剝) is the 23rd hexagram: Kun (earth) below, Gen (mountain) above. There are five yin lines, and the only yang line left is the top one. The Shuo Gua says "Gen is stopping" and "Kun is yielding". Yin runs from the bottom up to the fifth place, and a single yang line remains at the top, like a mountain, or a fruit, pared from below until only the crown is left.

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Bo beside its reversed hexagram Fu: turn Bo over and the yang line at the top goes to the bottom.

The judgment and the Commentary: five characters, and a division that changes the sense

The judgment of Bo is only these words:

Not fitting to have anywhere to go.

It can also be divided as "not fitting; there is somewhere to go", while the Commentary quotes the words joined and explains them with "the petty are growing". The two divisions come out nearly opposite: the first is "not fitting, yet there is a place to go", the second "going forward does not suit". The whole Commentary reads:

Bo means stripping: the yielding changes the firm. "Not fitting to go anywhere": the petty are growing. Yielding and stopping it: that is reading the image. The noble person values waning and waxing, fullness and emptiness: this is heaven's movement.

"The yielding changes the firm" is read off the figure: yin lines rise from the bottom and turn the yang lines into yin one after another. "The petty are growing" explains the judgment. Then the Commentary gives an attitude: "yielding and stopping it" is Kun below yielding and Gen above stopping, so one goes along with it and stops it; "that is reading the image" means seeing the image clearly, and the verb for reading is the same character as in Guan. "Values waning and waxing, fullness and emptiness" esteems the turn from decrease to increase and from full to empty, which the Commentary assigns to "heaven's movement".

The Great Image: the mountain clings to the earth, thicken what is below

The Great Image reads:

The mountain clings to the earth: Bo. Those above accordingly thicken what lies below, and keep the dwelling secure.

A mountain stands high, but the word here is to cling: the mountain presses against the ground and its height is sinking. A common reading takes this as the image of a mountain being worn away. The conduct goes the other way: "those above thicken what lies below", strengthening the base, and "keep the dwelling secure", so that the house stands firm.

The figure has the upper part being stripped, while the conduct thickens the lower part, so the two point in opposite directions. Note also that the dwelling is the place to live, and the last line of the hexagram speaks of a place to live as well: "the petty person strips his hut".

The six statements: from the bed legs to a house, what is stripped keeps changing

In the six statements, what is stripped and what is left are all household things.

Line one, "stripping the bed at the legs", begins at the foot of the bed. The next phrase, "ruin to what is steadfast: misfortune", uses a word for ruin or wiping out, which tradition reads as destroying what is right; the Small Image says "it destroys from below". Line two strips the bed at the joint, one step higher than the legs, and the Small Image says "no one stands with it yet". Line four strips the bed at the skin, the surface a sleeper lies on, and the Small Image says "disaster is near at hand".

Line three sits among them and does something different: "stripping it: no blame". It says "stripping it" without saying what is stripped, and nothing is ominous. The Small Image says "it is parted from above and below". Line five changes direction: "a string of fish", like yin lines threaded on one cord; "through the palace women comes favor"; "nothing unfavorable", and the Small Image says "in the end no fault".

The top line is the only yang line in the hexagram: "a great fruit uneaten", one large fruit left on the branch; "the noble person obtains a carriage", where the received text reads "obtains a carriage" and one version has a word for "virtue" in its place; the Small Image also writes "obtains a carriage" and adds "the people carry him"; "the petty person strips his hut", stripping the house he lives in, and the Small Image says "in the end he cannot be used".

Neighbors of Bo: Fu, Kun, Guai, and "running out" in the Xu Gua

Turn Bo over and you have Fu (復): the yang line goes from the top back to the bottom, and the pair are each other's reversed hexagram. The nuclear hexagram is Kun (坤), six yin lines, with even the top yang line gone; the inverse is Guai (夬), each line changed to its opposite, five yang lines below and one yin line on top.

The Xu Gua attaches Bo to Bi (賁) like this:

When adornment has been pushed to the limit, success has run out; so Bo follows. Bo means stripping.

Adornment carried to its limit uses up the way through, and so comes stripping. For what follows, the Xu Gua says that things are not stripped to nothing: when stripping reaches the top and there is nothing left to strip, it turns back to the bottom, and that is Fu.