The Flesh Along the Spine Above the Heart, Where Nothing Is Felt

Holding the ruling seat, the fifth station is given almost nothing to feel. Legge's translation places the movement in the flesh along the spine above the heart and grants that there will be no occasion for repentance. The commentary on the image adds one dismissive remark: his aim is trivial. Between them they describe a station at which the influence has reached a part of the body that cannot register it and cannot act on it either.

The choice of location is deliberate in a figure built on anatomy. The back above the heart is behind a person, out of sight, and the flesh there is the least responsive tissue in the series the hexagram has been climbing. Where the calves could carry somebody away and the thighs could fasten onto a leader, this region does neither, so the absence of regret is achieved largely by the absence of anything happening.

The stroke is strong, central and correctly placed in the ruling seat of the upper trigram Dui, which by the ordinary rule is the best position available anywhere in the figure. The result is a useful corrective to that rule. A ruler perfectly placed, immune to being swayed and aiming at nothing worth aiming at, escapes every fault the hexagram catalogues and achieves none of the mutual influence the hexagram exists to describe.