Hexagram 20 · line 6
Contemplation
觀Guān
Observing their life. The exemplary person is without fault.
Line statement
上九
觀其生，君子无咎。
Observing their life. The exemplary person is without fault.
The top line stands outside the ruler’s active office but remains visible to others. Observation still calls for self-examination, now expressed from a third-person standpoint. Changing Line 6 to yielding turns upper wind to water and produces Hexagram 8.
Computed position
How this place works
- Trigram position
- outer · boundary
Line 6 is the boundary of the outer trigram.
- Polarity and place
- yang in an even place: not aligned
Its yang polarity does not match the traditional even-place convention.
- Correspondence
- Line 3: responsive
Its counterpart is Line 3; the two have opposite polarities and can be read as responsive.
One line changes