If Jiǎn has appeared in your reading, the book is naming a configuration of blockage. Water above the mountain — a flood at the summit, with no way down that does not encounter difficulty. The character itself carries the sense of lameness, of walking with impediment. The hexagram appears when the previously workable route has stopped delivering, and continued force on it produces only fatigue.

Classical commentary is precise about the response. The southwest, in the King Wen geography, is the direction of yielding ground and gathered allies; the northeast is the direction of forward strain. The judgment names them by orientation, but the principle is general: there is a direction in which the work is still possible right now, and a direction in which it is not. The reader is being asked to find which is which.

What the book counsels is the reroute, with help. 利見大人 — fitting to see the great person. Do not solve the obstruction alone, and do not solve it by pushing harder against it. Seek counsel from someone with the standing to see the configuration whole, change the route, gather allies in the direction that does work, and consolidate from there.

Jiǎn's failure mode is the heroic persistence on the blocked road. The book is firm. There are seasons in which the path can be opened by sustained pressure; this is not one of them. The hexagram appears when the reader has been spending themselves against a wall that the configuration itself has set. The wall will not move. The work is to turn around, find the open direction, and start there.