Immunity to Influence Is Not the Same as Good Judgement

Nine in the fifth place is easy to misread as a success. No occasion for repentance sounds like a clean result, and structurally the line is the strongest in the hexagram, firm and central and correct in the ruling seat. The commentary refuses the compliment: the aim is trivial. A querent drawing this line is being told that they are unlikely to go wrong and equally unlikely to accomplish anything that mattered.

Read against the rest of the figure the verdict makes sense. The hexagram's Image counsels keeping the mind open so that others may approach, and every line beneath this one describes some degree of being moved. A person who has arranged to be unreachable has solved the problem of the third line's handhold and has also opted out of influence altogether, which in this hexagram is the entire subject under discussion.

When the line changes, the upper trigram Dui becomes Zhen and the figure becomes Small Preponderance, King Wen 62, in which small things may be attempted and great ones may not, and the bird is counselled to fly low. The destination is candid about the scale available. Where the aim is trivial, the honest way forward is to attempt what is genuinely within reach and to stop mistaking an absence of error for an achievement.