If Méng has appeared in your reading, the book is naming a particular kind of clarity — the clarity of admitting that you do not yet have the map. The character depicts a young plant covered over, or a child whose understanding has not yet broken through. This is not stupidity. It is the state from which any real learning begins.

The lower trigram is Water, the upper is Mountain. A spring is rising under unmoving stone, and it does not yet know its course. Classical commentary places this hexagram immediately after Zhūn, the sprout pushing through soil. First something is born. Then it has to find out what it is.

What the book counsels is the asymmetry of teacher and student. The teacher does not chase the pupil; the pupil seeks the teacher. Ask once, with sincerity, and listen. Ask the same question a second and third time, looking for a more flattering reply, and the channel closes. This applies to oracles and to most other forms of consultation.

Méng's danger is not ignorance but the refusal to inhabit it. The hexagram appears when the reader is reaching for an authority — a person, a text, a system — and the book is checking the posture of the reach. Come empty enough to actually receive, and the first answer will be enough.