Following, Line 1

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.

Nine at the beginning answers a querent who is reconsidering a commitment: an allegiance, a project, a line of work, a person whose lead they have been taking. The reading is favourable to the change and unusually specific about how to make it. Alter the aim, hold to what is correct while doing so, and then seek company outside the existing circle rather than reassembling the same group around a new plan.

The second half is the part querents most often skip. Having changed direction, the natural move is to bring along whoever is already close, because those relationships are established and cost nothing to maintain. The line treats that as the way the change fails. Merit is promised for going beyond the gate, which in a practical reading means new colleagues, unfamiliar rooms, people with no stake in the previous arrangement and no reason to defend it.

The condition on the good fortune is firmness, and it applies to the new direction rather than the old one. A querent who changes objective and then keeps revisiting the decision has not really changed it. What the line describes is a single clean turn followed by steady pursuit, and it is worth noting that this is the only position in the hexagram where the querent is the one choosing what to follow rather than being caught in an attachment already formed.