Following, Line 2

The second line states a loss without arguing about it. Legge's translation shows its subject cleaving to the little boy and letting go the man of age and experience, and stops there. No misfortune is pronounced and no remedy is offered. The whole force of the line is in the second clause: the attachment to the lesser figure is not condemned in itself, but it is shown to have a price, and the price is the other relationship, which cannot be kept at the same time.

Yielding in an even place, central in the lower trigram Zhen, this line is correct by the positional rule, which makes the outcome all the more pointed. Correctness of placement does not save a line from choosing badly. What draws it is proximity: the strong first line sits immediately below, near and available, while the more substantial connection lies further off. Following, in this hexagram, moves toward whatever is closest unless something intervenes.

Read beside the third line, which reverses the choice exactly, this line supplies the negative half of a matched pair. The two together make the hexagram's sharpest structural point, that following is exclusive. Attachment is not a portfolio to be diversified, and the text declines to imagine a version in which both the little boy and the man of experience are kept. One is held, the other is let go, and the line is content to name which.

Six in the second place answers a querent attached to the nearer and lesser of two options. Common shapes are a comfortable friendship that crowds out a demanding mentor, a small project that consumes the time a serious one needed, or an ally who is agreeable rather than useful. The line does not call this wicked. It says that the choice has already cost the other thing, and it invites the querent to look at what has quietly been let go.

Nothing in a reading of this line should suggest that both can be held. The text is exclusive by design, and its usefulness in divination comes from forcing the trade into the open. A querent will often insist that the two attachments are compatible and that the neglected one can be resumed later. The line's structure, with the lesser figure immediately adjacent and the greater one out of reach, is the answer: proximity has already decided the matter unless something is deliberately changed.

Because no misfortune is pronounced, this is a reading that describes rather than warns, and the honest counsel is proportionate. If the querent finds, on looking, that what was released matters more than what was kept, the third line of the same hexagram shows the reversal and treats it as still available. If it does not matter more, the line has cost them nothing but the clarity of knowing which of the two they actually chose.