The Object of Pursuit Changes, and the Gate Is Left Behind

Following opens with a change of direction rather than an act of loyalty. Legge's translation of the first line shows its subject changing the object of his pursuit, promises good fortune if he is firm and correct, and adds that going beyond his own gate to find associates will achieve merit. Two movements are described and both are outward. What is being followed changes, and where companions are sought moves past the household.

A strong stroke correctly occupies this odd position at the foot of the lower trigram Zhen, the thunder that supplies the hexagram's movement. Following is often read as a passive virtue, and the first line refuses that reading before it can settle: the figure begins with initiative, and the initiative consists in giving up a previous attachment. Nothing in the line suggests the earlier object was unworthy. It suggests only that holding to it now would be standing still.

The gate is the boundary of what is familiar and already owed. Associates found inside it are inherited rather than chosen, and the merit the text promises is attached specifically to crossing out. Read as the opening of the hexagram, this line establishes that following in this figure is not submission to whatever one is already attached to, but a deliberate choice of what is worth attaching to, made by someone free enough to change their mind and go looking.