The Admirable Return and the Company That Makes It Easy

Legge's translation calls the turn described in this second position the admirable return, and attaches good fortune to it without qualification or condition. Where the opening line was measured by distance, this one is measured by quality. Nothing here is difficult or costly; the return is simply well made, and the text does not trouble itself to explain why beyond calling it admirable.

Classical commentary reads the ease of it as a matter of company. This is a yielding line correctly placed in an even position and central to the lower trigram Zhen, and it rests directly above the single strong line that carries the returning light of the whole figure. Its virtue is not independent of that neighbour. It stays close to what is good, follows it willingly, and receives the good fortune of the movement without having had to originate the movement itself.

That dependence is nowhere treated as a weakness. Return is a hexagram about recovery after a dark time, and recovery is more often a matter of attaching oneself to something already turning than of turning entirely by oneself. The admirable return belongs to someone who recognised what was worth staying near, and the line credits that recognition as a genuine virtue rather than as an accident of position.