Nothing Is Advantageous, and the Reason Is the Haste

Six at the beginning is a warning against demanding a guarantee. The querent wants to know that something will last, wants to know it at the very start, and the text answers that even correctness will not save the situation while that demand is being made, and that nothing whatever is advantageous. It is one of the sterner openings in the classic, and the severity is aimed at the timing rather than at the wish.

Practically it covers the moment when somebody tries to secure a commitment, an arrangement or a position permanently before it has had any chance to prove itself in ordinary use. The commentary describes this as seeking too deeply at the commencement, and the trouble is not that the answer will come back wrong. It is that nothing has yet happened from which an answer could be drawn, so the pressure falls on a structure with nothing supporting it.

When the line changes, the lower trigram Xun becomes Qian and the figure becomes Great Power, King Wen 34, strong lines rising with force enough to break through a fence and leave a ram caught in it. The destination is a diagnosis rather than a remedy. Impatience for permanence turns into raw strength applied where restraint was needed, and that figure's counsel to advance only in what is correct is the correction this line has already implied.