Approach, Line 2

Repetition in the second line is deliberate. Legge's translation again shows its subject advancing in company with the line below, promises good fortune, and adds that advancing will be in every way advantageous, the strongest unqualified statement anywhere in this hexagram. Where the first line had a condition attached, the second has none, and the Little Symbolism supplies a curious reason: the subject does not yet entirely follow the commands of the fifth line above.

That remark is easily read as criticism and is better read as description. A strong stroke occupies the second, even place, incorrect by the standard rule but central in the lower trigram Dui, and its correspondence runs to the yielding ruler in the fifth place. Independence of judgment at this station is what a soft ruler above actually needs from a strong line below, since such a ruler governs by drawing capable help rather than by issuing instructions to be executed to the letter.

The pairing with the first line matters as much as the difference. Both strong lines advance together into the four yielding lines above, and the second carries the movement's centre. Its freedom from qualification is the hexagram's high point of confidence, placed early, before the third line shows what the same advance looks like once substance has dropped out of it.

Among the most favourable readings in this hexagram, nine in the second place withholds nothing. Good fortune is stated, advancing is called advantageous in every way, and no condition is attached to either. A querent drawing this line on a question about approaching an opportunity, an office or a person of influence is being told that the movement is sound and that the usual cautions do not apply at this stage.

The commentary's note that the subject does not yet entirely follow the commands from above is the practical heart of it. Readings landing here often involve someone advancing under an authority whose instructions they do not follow to the letter, and the text treats that independence as part of why the advance works. A strong line in the second place, central though incorrect for an even position, is expected to bring judgment of its own rather than compliance.

The caution is only about company. This line advances together with the strong first line, not against it, and the good fortune belongs to a movement that keeps the partnership intact. Independence from the authority above is endorsed here; independence from the ally below is not what the line describes, and a querent who reads it as licence to act entirely alone has taken the wrong half of it.