Treading, Line 1

Legge's translation of the first line reads that the first nine, undivided, shows its subject treading his accustomed path, and that if he goes forward there will be no error. No image of a tiger appears yet; the line describes conduct that has not yet come near anything dangerous at all.

The line sits at the base of Dui, the lower trigram of Lake, in the lowest and correctly yang seated place, directly beneath the whole ascending structure of Qian, Heaven, that gives the hexagram its name and its central image of treading on a tiger's tail. At this first position, though, the tiger is still four lines away. The subject walks a path already familiar, ordinary conduct undertaken without ambition to test itself against anything greater, and Legge's brief line offers no complication because none yet exists.

Read against Treading's Judgment, which promises progress and success from the very act of walking behind Heaven without being bitten, the first line is where that walking is easiest, since it has not yet drawn close enough to the tiger for caution to matter. Plain, accustomed conduct is itself sufficient here, and moving forward in it draws no error only because nothing threatening has yet entered the path.

As a changing line, nine at the beginning of Treading reads as permission to proceed along a course already familiar, without yet needing the caution the hexagram will demand later. A querent drawn here is shown a path plain enough that going forward causes no error, since whatever danger the hexagram's central image, treading on a tiger's tail, eventually names has not yet been approached at this earliest position.

Flipping this line changes the lower trigram from Dui to Kan, Water, giving Qian over Kan, the hexagram called Conflict. The ease of an accustomed path, walked without incident, gives way on the far side of change to a hexagram built entirely from contention and dispute, heaven and water moving in opposing directions rather than one following safely behind the other. The movement is from untroubled ordinary conduct toward open disagreement, a reminder that the same plain confidence that draws no error here can, if the position shifts, become the friction Conflict describes.

Within Treading's own arc, the first line is the point furthest from the tiger, before the hexagram's real subject, cautious conduct in the presence of overwhelming strength, has become relevant at all. A reading landing here suggests the present course is safe to continue exactly as it is, with the caution the later lines will require not yet due.