Hexagram 47 is 困 (kùn), usually rendered Oppression or Confining. Its structure is Dui (兌 duì), the Lake, set over Kan (坎 kǎn), Water. The upper trigram is a lake; the lower is water — but here the water sits below the lake rather than filling it. The picture is a pool that has drained through, leaving the lakebed dry. Something that should hold and nourish has been emptied out, and what remains is confined, short of resource, and unable to move as it wishes.
This is one of the more testing figures in the sequence, but it is not a figure of defeat. Kùn describes a person hemmed in by circumstances larger than their strength for the moment — funds low, energy spent, support withheld. In hexagram 47 the counsel is less about escape and more about how one carries oneself while the constriction lasts.
The two trigrams: Lake drained over Water
Lake over Water is a quiet contradiction. The lake (Dui) is the trigram of the open, the joyous, the expressive; water (Kan) below it is the trigram of danger and of the deep. When the joyous sits on top but its water has sunk away beneath, the outward face still wants to be light while the substance underneath has gone. That gap is the exact feeling of oppression: obligations continue, appearances must be kept, yet the reserve that would meet them is missing.
Read another way, danger (Kan) sits under openness (Dui). The difficulty is real and structural, not a passing mood. Kùn asks you to recognise the constraint honestly rather than to talk past it — and at the same time to keep the openness of the lake, which is to say, to keep your composure and your word intact while the pressure holds.
易经 · Book of Changes
Cast your own hexagram. Six throws build your hexagram and any changing lines, each linked to a plain reading. Free, in your browser.
The overall counsel of Kùn is unusual. It grants that success is still possible for those who stay steady — the constraint does not touch the inner person — while warning that words at this time carry little weight and are easily disbelieved. In plain practitioner voice: when you are visibly hemmed in, explaining and pleading your case tends to make things worse, not better. Others discount what you say precisely because you are pressed.
So the Judgment points inward. Hold to what is correct and let the situation speak for you over time. There is good fortune available here, but it is the fortune of character preserved, not of the obstacle instantly removed. The one caution worth keeping is that speech now convinces no one — better to be believed later by conduct than doubted now by protest.
The Image: the lake without water
The Image of hexagram 47 is a lake with no water in it — the natural picture of exhaustion. The lesson drawn from it is that the person of character stays committed to their purpose even at real cost — willing to give up comfort and even fortune rather than abandon what they know is right. When the outer means are gone, what is left to hold onto is intent.
The practical reading is steadying rather than grim. A dry lake is not a dead lake; it is a lake awaiting its source to return. The Image tells you not to abandon your direction because the resources ran thin. Conserve, endure, and keep the channel clear so that when water comes back the lakebed is ready to hold it.
Practical guidance: what Kùn tends to advise
As a tendency and not a verdict, hexagram 47 counsels the following in ordinary matters:
Work: a lean stretch — thin budget, blocked recognition, effort that does not yet pay. The move is to protect essentials, avoid new debt or over-commitment, and let results rather than pleas make your case. Do not resign in bitterness; steady conduct now is noticed later.
Relationships: you may feel unheard or hemmed in. Kùn warns that arguing your worth tends to backfire while the pressure is visible. Restraint, patience, and quiet reliability rebuild trust faster than justification.
Timing: this is a low ebb, not a permanent state. The wise response is to endure well, keep reserves, and refuse decisions made from panic. Force applied against oppression usually deepens it; steadiness outlasts it.
Across all three the through-line is the same: the constraint is external and temporary, the response is internal and durable. Kùn is where composure is proved.
Changing lines: where the confinement shifts
In a casting, moving lines mark where the situation is already turning. In Kùn the lines run from the deepest confinement at the base — oppression one partly sits in through passivity — up toward the top, where the constraint begins to loosen once you stop struggling against it. A single changing line transforms Kùn into a neighbouring figure. Hexagram 48 The Well is its natural counterpart: where Kùn is the drained lake, the Well is the source that always refills. Read the changing line as the edge along which your own oppression is ready to give way.
You can explore the full set on the 64-hexagram overview, or return to the I Ching hub for the trigrams and casting method. And if you want to see how the same trigrams and five elements shape a birth chart rather than a single cast, plot yours free with the Ba Zi calculator — the root system behind both is the same.
